Armed police respond to serious incidents at London Bridge and Borough Market – with members of the public urged to reach areas of safety.
Since late yesterday evening [Saturday, 3 June], the Metropolitan Police Service has been responding to incidents in the London Bridge and Borough Market areas of south London. We are treating this as a terrorist incident and a full investigation is already underway, led by the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command.
[...] Six people have been killed in terror attacks on London Bridge and at Borough Market.
Three male suspects have been shot dead by police.
Canisters seen around the body of at least one of the suspects have been “established to be hoaxes”, police said.
Police believe all of those directly responsible for the attack have been killed.[...] Since March there has been the Westminster attack by Khalid Masood, who mowed down pedestrians near parliament and stabbed a policeman, resulting in six deaths, including his own: and the Manchester bombing two weeks ago that killed 22. And now London again.
[...] An editor in the Sun’s London Bridge Street office says police confirmed that a number of blasts heard [...] were controlled explosions.
Source: The Guardian
An investigation into the foreign funding of extremist Islamist groups may never be published, the Home Office has admitted.
The inquiry commissioned by David Cameron, was launched as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats in December 2015, in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Isis into Syria.
But although it was due to be published in the spring of 2016, it has not been completed and may never be made public due to its "sensitive" contents.
It is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia, which the UK recently approved £3.5bn worth of arms export licences to.
Source: The Independent
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday June 04 2017, @04:26AM (4 children)
Don't forget the UK. Once Theresa May became PM, freedom became an old pastime and a lost cause. Also the pesky European Court of Human Rights will be out of the picture soon enough.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Jiro on Sunday June 04 2017, @05:28AM (3 children)
The EU isn't doing too well on freedom itself. [slashdot.org]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @06:00AM (1 child)
Not that you are COMPLETELY wrong, but I suggest that you consider that it is justified for people to believe that the freedom to say the most asinine and hateful lies is not quite comparable with e.g. the freedom to not be imprisoned without cause or trial.
We do not allow people to intentionally hurt other people physically, and we trust the courts to get things right and not over-apply it.
There is a good argument for the same thinking to be applied to psychological abuse.
Not expecting you to agree with it, but at least recognize the reasonableness of the argument (assuming you are not one of those people who to support their view of free-speech-above-everything claim there is no such thing as psychological abuse and if words hurt you it's your own fault, I doubt there is enough common basic ground for me to have a discussion with those people).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @09:57AM
The most hateful lies are getting people murdered - Islam is one such set of hateful lies.
Look at the migrant crime rates and tell me the EU isn't allowing this.
No, the sentances are too lenient.
So lock up the EU officials inviting mass migration, sweeping the crime statistics under the rug and calling for "hate crime" legislation in order to silence those who tell the truth.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday June 04 2017, @01:19PM
The media were a great facilitator in the rise of fascism in Europe in the '30s -- Martha Gellhorn [amazon.com] gives a vivid description of the [contents of] German newspapers, and corresponding atmosphere, of that time. That is the background against which limits of free speech (and actions, it might be added: bringing the nazi salute in public will bring you at least a fine, and might land you in jail in my own country) must be seen: lessons drawn from blood, not hypotheticals.
If you want to learn more about the dangers of "free" speech, in this context, as well as in modern times, I can recommend Victor Klemperer's Language of the Third Reich [amazon.com]. Among other things, you might learn that the "fake news" meme was used by the nazi's too:
The Language of the Third Reich (2002), pp. 207-208.