This may be the new face of terror -- smaller attacks in seemingly random places by home grown terrorists. While I oppose the death penalty per se, I do not oppose law enforcement and/or the military using deadly force to stop someone in the act of committing terror. I don't think it is a deterrent, and I also thought these crazy jihadists wanted to die to meet their 5,000 virgins or whatever.

The soldier killed in an attack on a London street has been named as Drummer Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Drummer Rigby, 25, from Manchester, leaves behind a two-year-old son.

Two men are under arrest after police shot them near Woolwich Barracks after Wednesday's attack. A man and a woman were arrested on Thursday.

Two of the suspects, believed to include Michael Adebolajo, were known to security services.

The latest arrests were on suspicion of conspiracy to murder in relation to the killing of Drummer Rigby, Scotland Yard said. Both people were aged 29.

The victim's name was announced by the Ministry of Defence pending formal police identification.

"An extremely popular and witty soldier, Drummer Rigby was a larger than life personality within the Corps of Drums and was well known, liked and respected across the Second Fusiliers," the MoD statement said.

"He was a passionate and life-long Manchester United fan."

He had joined the Army in 2006, and is described as a "loving father to his son Jack" and someone who would be "sorely missed by all who knew him".

'Senseless murder'
Drummer Rigby had taken up a post with the Regimental Recruiting Team in London in 2011.

"An experienced and talented side drummer and machine gunner, he was a true warrior and served with distinction in Afghanistan, Germany and Cyprus," said 2nd Fusiliers commanding officer Lt Col Jim Taylor. "His ability, talent and personality made him a natural choice to work in the recruiting group."

Capt Alan Williamson said: "Drummer Rigby or 'Riggers' as he was known within the platoon was a cheeky and humorous man, always there with a joke to brighten the mood."

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said: "This was a senseless murder of a soldier who has served the Army faithfully in a variety of roles including operational tours in Afghanistan.


Graphic footage from ITV News shows a man with bloodied hands making political statements
"Our thoughts today are with his family and loved ones who are trying to come to terms with this terrible loss."

Speaking earlier outside 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameron said the attacks were "solely and purely" the responsibility of the individuals involved.

Mr Hammond was asked if the attack showed how vulnerable soldiers were, whether they were in uniform or not.

He replied: "I think it reminds us how vulnerable we all are, but it also reminds us, by the response of the public, that we are not going to be cowed by this kind of terrorist action."

In other developments:

The Metropolitan Police said police officers arrived within nine minutes of the first 999 call and armed officers were there within 14 minutes
An increased police presence will be in Woolwich and the surrounding areas through Thursday night and "as long as needed", Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Crime and Operations Mark Rowley said
Properties in Greenwich and Saxilby, Lincolnshire, have been searched in connection with the attack
With dozens of witnesses to the killing, police are urging them to contact the Met's anti-terrorism hotline with information
Chief of Defence Staff General Sir David Richards said: "It's always a tragedy, it's particularly poignant that it happened on the streets of this capital city of ours.


Michael Adebolajo was filmed at a protest
"We're absolutely determined not to be intimated into not doing the right thing - whether it's here in this country or in Afghanistan or wherever we seek to serve the nation."

Security at Woolwich Barracks and others in London has been increased, and Gen Richards said: "I'm confident that base security is as tight as it's every been, and necessarily so.

"It's a very difficult balancing act. We are very proud of the uniform we wear, we have huge support around the country, this is a completely isolated incident."

Shortly after the killing a man, thought to be 28-year-old Mr Adebolajo, was filmed by a passer-by, saying he carried out the attack because British soldiers killed Muslims every day.

Sources said reports the men had featured in "several investigations" in recent years - but were not deemed to be planning an attack - "were not inaccurate".

According to BBC sources, Mr Adebolajo, a Briton of Nigerian descent, comes from a devout Christian family but took up Islam after leaving college in 2001.

Continue reading the main story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22644857

Incidents like this the Left need to condemn as hardcore as possible because these assholes behind this monstrosity are right wingers, religious extremists who apparently tolerate living in a western cosmopolitan society. Remember the UK Parliament are debating legalizing same-sex marriage. Maybe the idea of gay people being happy set these lunatics off?

But of course the UK Left won't, out of some misguided sense of being PC or worse not wanting to help fringe crazies like the UKIP. Which is stupid. Avoiding taking upon this cause just gives the UKIP and that ilk the chance to own the conversation, and air out their racist, paranoid nonsense which really misses the absolute cause of this murder.

My apologies for not reading all the news reports, but where are the muslim clerics denouncing these acts? Unless my feeble mind is missing something, I don't recall Christians doing anything like this. In the name of Allah....muslim claims to be a peaceful religion. I'm waiting.

Farouk Murad, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, says the attack is "an insult and attack against our faith and our community", adding: "We must stand united against this kind of criminal activity... Islam does not under any pretext give the licence to kill innocents on our streets.

Julie Siddiqi, of the Islamic Society of Britain, tells BBC Radio 4: "The people who did this act yesterday do not speak in my name, do not speak for my community or the rest of the country. We have to come out with the strongest condemnation, which is what I'm seeing this morning."

The Greenwich Islamic Centre condemns Wednesday's "barbaric murder": "The Muslims of the Greenwich Islamic Centre in the Royal Borough of Greenwich... share the grief and sorrow of the nation. Our hearts go out to the family, colleagues and friends of the victim of this despicable and horrific tragedy."

The Greenwich Islamic Centre adds: "The local Muslim community has always enjoyed an excellent relationship with the people from all walks of life regardless of their religion, colour or ethnic background. At this moment of confusion, uncertainty and naturally highly charged emotions, we earnestly appeal to the media not to rush to judgement and wait for the final findings by the law enforcement agencies."

Mrs Azeem in Peterborough emails: This attack is barbaric totally against what the Koran and our prophet teaches us. Islam is about peace. It teaches us love and respect for every being. No true Muslim could behave in such a manner. It also causes tensions between communities. I just pray we can learn to accept people of all faiths and communitie

Rise in anti-Muslim attacks after Woolwich soldier killing

By Catrin Nye
BBC Asian Network

A small group of English Defence league supporters gathered in Woolwich on Wednesday night
Continue reading the main story
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As a small group of supporters of the English Defence League gathered at the scene of the brutal killing of a soldier in Woolwich, they marked a wider pattern of anti-Muslim feeling across the UK, according to monitoring groups.

The EDL grouped at Woolwich Arsenal station near the scene of the murder on Wednesday and pelted police with bottles.

Their leader, Tommy Robinson, stated: "They're chopping our soldiers' heads off. This is Islam. That's what we've seen today.

"They've cut off one of our Army's heads off on the streets of London."

Two mosques were attacked in the aftermath of the killing, one in Essex, the other in Gillingham in Kent with events there unfolding live on Twitter.

'Smashing things'
Police were at the mosque just after 21:00 BST on Wednesday and a local Muslim shop owner tweeted: "They broke the book case and some other windows.

"Guy ran in and started smashing things."

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

It seems that groups like the EDL have capitalised on this incident quite well both at a street level on with online support”

Fiyaz Mughal
Director of Faith Matters
He added: "However bad the backlash is, it's nothing compared to what the prophets went through. Stand firm and patient - Allah is with us."

A spokesman for Kent police said a man was in custody on suspicion of racially-aggravated criminal damage.

Essex Police are questioning a 43-year-old man arrested outside the Islamic Centre in Braintree on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and attempted arson.

He was detained after officers were called to reports of a man, armed with a knife, in Silks Way.

No-one was injured but Essex Police have increased patrols as a result.

Conservative MP for Braintree, Brooks Newmark, has met leaders at the mosque and said he was stunned by developments.

'Anti-Muslim hatred'
He said: "I was shocked to see that in Braintree, a relatively small market town, with a very small Muslim community who are fairly well integrated into our community, that this would happen.

"The mosque is in a converted house and doesn't even look like a traditional mosque."

Tell Mama (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks), a London based group that monitors anti-Muslim hatred, spent the evening logging any incidents of Islamaphobia that occurred in reaction to events in Woolwich.

It documented 38 reports of anti-Muslim incidents - most of them online and eight at a street level.

By comparison, in its first year of operation (to March 2013) Tell Mama recorded 632 incidents in total, averaging at about 12 a week.


Fiyaz Mughal of Faith Matters says he has had direct threats
Tell Mama said the latest incidents involved, at their worst, threats to kill but largely low-level abuse - spitting, negative comments about Muslims and one incident in which a woman was threatened with violence.

It also said on top of the recorded attacks on mosques there were five further threats to attack religious buildings.

Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, which runs Tell-Mama, told BBC Asian Network that his address had been posted directly to Twitter and users had been invited to shoot him.

He said the organisation expected to be dealing with more hatred over the coming days.

He said: "I think we are going to see a growth of activity over the next few days, we are already seeing activity online from people who we thought were no longer a problem.

"It seems that groups like the EDL have capitalised on this incident quite well, both at a street level on with online support."

'Just delusional'
He added that his organisation was contacting police and mosques ahead of Friday prayers.

He added: "We are concerned with Friday coming up because of the sheer numbers who will be going to the mosque - we are asking police to monitor prayers to make sure everything can pass smoothly and we are just hoping for no more flash demos."

In Woolwich local British Muslim Murad Rasul, 30, told BBC Asian Network he was concerned about any backlash because relations had always been good in the area.

He said: "I've been born and raised in this area of Woolwich and the Army barracks have been a part of the Greenwich borough forever.

"There has never been any animosity between any members of the Muslim community and the Army."

Mr Rasul said, for him, the men who carried out the attack were not representing Islam or Muslims.

"Anybody could carry out this act and shout 'Allahu Akbar' - they're just words.

"You can't kill an innocent person and try and justify it with religion - they're just delusional."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22636991

BRING BACK GRAMMAR AND SPELLING IN SCHOOLS!

That's a pretty stupid thing to say, frankly. I understand the anger and confusion and fear, but why are you separating "white person" from "muslim"?

Careful, sonny, you're sounding like a thick bigot who doesn't know his arse from his face.

Haven't you read any history? You "don't recall"?

What a very stupid and ignorant thing to say.

"In the last analysis terrorism is an idea generated by capitalism to justify better defense measures to safeguard capitalism." - Rainer Werner Fassbinder

I cringed when the first news reports mentioned very early on yesterday that the victim was wearing a Help the Heroes t-shirt. And I was appalled when the BBC's Nick Robinson referred to the suspects as being "of Muslim appearance". Eh?!

Everyone should read this: "Death by the Barracks", by Richard Seymour, who analyses the dialectical relationship between ongoing governmental policies and the English Defence League's own political objectives. Some quotations from the article:

"The consequence of over a decade of syncopated Islam-baiting has been a pronounced political turn to the Right, especially on questions of immigration, nationality and 'race'. Coterminously, 'Britishness' has increasingly been merged with militarism. The ultimate test of one's integration, one's loyalty to 'British values', is to fight for said values. The ultimate proof of one's betrayal is to insult the soldiers who defend them. One can be against war, on the ground that it is too much benevolence for an undeserving mob, but one can't denounce the troops themselves. The case of Azhar Ahmed, whose sole offence was to castigate British soldiers on Facebook, indicates the potential costs of doing so, particularly for a Muslim. It also illustrates the centrality of the state to the development and implementation of these ideologies."

"Cameron was briefly magnanimous enough to say, yesterday, that the attack was not the fault of Islam but of the individuals alone. The Muslim Council of Britain and the Ramadhan Foundation corroborated this exoneration of the faith with their strenuous denunciations of the killing. But they will know very well that such corroboration implied that the exoneration was needed. They will also know that in his speech Cameron also referred to the problem as one of 'extremism', and it is this which he charges ordinary Muslims with tolerating or harbouring. They will know that Cameron's government will hold Muslims and Muslim organisations answerable for this, irrespective of diplomatic statements made in the heat of the moment. Their every statement can now be combed for potentially disloyal nuance. Police searches, internment, a few more Forest Gates - all this is possible until the government is satisified with the degree of cooperation it is receiving."

"And it is because of the dominant role of the British state, and in the context of that state's action, that a right-wing 'counter-jihadist' politics of street mobilisations and violence has developed."

In other words, those angry, confused many who have for too long been disillusioned with and continually failed by their government (in fact, an entire political system), who are now misplacing their energy and time to a racist political group (the EDL) are doing so under the false assumption that their own objectives are entirely different from the government's.

But big business and fascism are bedpals through and through.

I'm fearful, in all honesty, because I know how rapidly things can escalate when irrationality and confusion are the driving forces behind a group of people desperate for purpose and direction.

But I think we should also fight fear, and the bigotry with which it manifests itself.

You're wrong as shit homey, these guys are a product of the Western liberal system. They just didn't get off the boat from some backwards village in Pakistan or Somalia, they were reared in the West. The same with the Tsarnayev brothers, they weren't from war torn Chechnya, but the liberal college towns in Mssachussets. Their degenerate liberal surrondings cause them to seek out the most fundamentalist aspects of Islam. The Muslims still have their responsibilities not to immigrate to these countries though, I mean they are going out of their way, spending thousands of dollars to immigrate from Muslim countries to non Muslim countries that are against the teachings of Islam.

^and we've heard from the extreme right nonsense peanut gallery. Somebody else wanna talk?

Thank you. I shouldn't respond to these things under the influence of alcohol.

Here's a link to video that contains some information on the killers backgrounds - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22651303

Here's a link that's contrary to the comments i posted yesterday
of muslims condemning the attack

Radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary has said he was "shocked" by the murder of a soldier in Woolwich, but has refused to condemn the attack.

Drummer Lee Rigby was killed in broad daylight on Wednesday by two men, who were subsequently shot by police. The suspects, now known to be Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were known to security services.

Mr Choudary told the BBC's Newsnight programme that he encountered Adebolajo at a number of Islamist demonstrations.

"When I saw what took place I was shocked... but what he said in the clip, I think not many Muslims can disagree with," he added.

Mr Choudary was participating in a Newsnight discussion on the attack with Shams Adduha Muhammad, imam and director of Ebrahim College, and Julie Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain. Newsnight's presenter Kirsty Wark chaired the discussion.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22650053

We've been through this before with you, no adult commentary, just childish little insluts. The guys in London didn't drive over from Heathrow after their plane ride from Karachi. They found their ideology and it was nurtured in Britain, just like the Tsarnayev Brothers in Massachussets. The more degenerate the West becomes the more young Muslims in the West are going to embrace fundamental Islam. The liberal turds behind multiculturalism thought these Muslims would stop taking their religion serious and assimilate into the wider liberal society, but that ain't gonna happen buddy, we are going to see more and more of this stuff in the future. Guys like you can keep the blinders on though, and call everyone who doesn't agree with your crap a "lunatic," a "nutter," etc.

Very true. There's a lot of horror in this world, and we can't defeat it if we're shackled by fear, bigotry and ignorance.

I feel very sorry for this gentleman's family, who have to deal with the painful senselessness of his loss of life.

Clegg quotes Koran to condemn attack - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22655020

You listen to this guy ranting and his argument of the West killing Muslims crumbles for a few reasons.

First, the Brits, U.S., etc. are in Afghanistan because A) that's where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were based, and B) to protect Muslims from other Muslims.

Second, right now, Muslims are killing other Muslims in far greater numbers then those being killed by Western "infidels." See Syria, for example.

Third, he mentions "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." But when have any Western soldiers ever stabbed and attempted to cut off the head of a Muslim?

This guy doesn't care about his fellow Muslims. Just spreading Islamism.

+1 Especially for the bolded part.

If you seriously think Muslims are blowing things up due to "liberalism" in the west you're out of your mind.

A few developments from today -

A statement of condemnation of the murder by the Greenwich Islamic Centre is displayed on its door. It says the centre shares in the "grief and sorrow of the nation".

The Metropolitan Police say a 29-year-old woman and a 31-year-old woman arrested as part of the murder investigation have been released without charge. A 29-year-old man arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder remains in custody.

The Metropolitan Police say searches are ongoing at six residential addresses - three in south London, one in east London, one in north London and one in Lincolnshire.

Murder suspects Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale remain in hospital in a stable condition.

After Friday prayers, Swaleh Ahmed, the imam of Woolwich Mosque, tells reporters his heart "goes out to the family, colleagues and friends of the victim of this despicable and horrific tragedy".

Paul Ramsamy, a neighbour of Michael Adebowale, says he feels lucky he wasn't attacked when he met Mr Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo while he happened to be wearing military style clothing and boots.

One man is in custody after being arrested by Lincolnshire Police following an investigation into messages sent on social media following the death of soldier Drummer Rigby. Officers are continuing to search a house in Saxilby in Lincolnshire in connection with their inquiries.

Police have carried out a full search of this flat in Greenwich, which is registered in the name of Michael Adebowale.

The Metropolitan Police said two women arrested as part of the murder investigation had been released without charge, but a 29-year-old man arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder remains in custody.

Woolwich murder sparks anti-Muslim backlash

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22664835

Here's a video of the attackers charging at police then being shot - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woolwich-attack-video-watch-full-1908975

The liberalism of Western Europe, and increasingly of the U.S., certainly makes it easier for these radical Islamists to flourish.



Those police should have done everybody a favor and put two in their heads after they were down.

Does that mean we should appeal to Muslims who would enslave women, rule under Islamic law and blow up anything that doesn't agree with them? Hell no. You make them understand the US and Europe ain't changing the way they do things, they try any attacks they get pulverized with a missile

Not at all. I'm all for pounding them all into the dust. Of course, the libs of the West are just as bad as the radical Islamists; just on the other end of the spectrum. And the irony is, the radical Islamists exploit the naivete and multi-culturalism of Western libs to their advantage.

Western civilization is centuries ahead of that of Arab nations. I don't think you can call that extreme liberalism, it's basic right and wrong

In many ways, yes, but ironically enough, the one thing Muslims are right about are the excesses and increasing moral bankruptcy and secularism of Western civilizations. Of course, what the Islamists would do about it is all wrong, and ultimately trade one evil for another.

I think you should take this back and apologize to the liberals here.