Kapri

Dreadful news today. Looks like a young army cadet was hacked to death with a machete. It's being treated as a terrorist attack.
Sorry, can't post link at the moment - maybe someone could do it for me.

Kapri

There is footage on the itv news site of the killers. They talk to a camera with the body lying in the background. It looks like they were waiting for the police.

bingobob777

2 nutters hack somebody to death and the PM is flying back to consider raising the Terrorist Threat Level to serious.

What a ****** joke. Shocking incident, but I'm more likely to get killed by lightning than a terrorist, I hardly consider either as serious.

Manipluating someones death to try and force more monitoring and laws on us.

Dreamy

This was an absolutely appalling, sickening, barbaric murder.

I can only feel for the family of that soldier if the film clip is being played in the UK as much as it is over here. Media outlets are positively salivating over it, which is almost as disturbing.

mikelincs

Well ITV have just given the killers several minutes of air time showing one of them talking to someone filming him on a mobile phone. That should never have been shown, the killer has blood all over him and is still carrying the machete and knife

Shard

When the perpetrators are caught red handed, and threatening that their group (Islamists) are going to continue killing, and that the government won't be able to provide protection, locals do take an interest, yes.

cresta57

Do you think the media should have been gagged & the event given no air time?

The footage being bandied about via facebook, Youtube & the rest of the world's news media would have gone viral on the net regardless of any attempt at censorship.

Shard

+1

It's ridiculous to suggest the media should not be reporting on this. And judging by what every British news channel and newspaper is running this evening, they agree.

ozzieeagle

Small amount of concern in South London as to whether the EDL will become puppets of what these looneys set out to acheive..... division and fear. We'll know in the next 48 hours.

Hopefully not as the EDL are small in number and reprisals would have happened already.

Dreamy

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be reported or that locals wouldn't take an interest- it's the number of times that the footage of a blood dripping murderer has been aired.

In one hour on morning tv here in Australia, that clip was shown pretty much every other news story. Media outlets are pretty much orgasmic about it.

Shard

Probably not what you want to see while you're slurping down your cornflakes but it's quite an image. It's straight out of a horror movie.

Amazulu

Welcome to your future

GarryP

Actually I kind of think it should be shown - but probably for different reasons than the obvious. I feel it shows two key points:

1. The individuals aren't clinically insane. They know what they are doing and why.
2. They are stupid at hell though, and obviously haven't thought it through at all.

As such it actually reduces the 'terrorism' of the attack - these are idiot thugs who have taken onboard a mishmash of ideas as an excuse for lashing out at society (something young men are prone to do). No real organisation, no real plan, no concept of the outcome - just revelling in violence. They have more in common with a drunk 17 year old glassing someone on a Friday night than trained military carrying out a planned operation.

These types of idiots aren't really a threat, they are thugs that need to be found and dealt with - same as any thug. The only threat would come if someone actually engaged their brain (and even that would be relatively easy to deal with).

BadgeIsBack

I agree that the modus operandi showed men making a point but I disagree with other points - these are not just thugs they are terrorists! They carried out a mission just like soldiers only their cause was different. They are not stupid, just focused to their cause.

It is actually one of the most chilling terroist acts I remember - why? because the random attack happened in London in broad daylight and they stayed around to show this MO (as we've said). This heralds a new sort of terrorism arguably. It could happen to anyone and there will be copycats. In fact, it is actually something to be very serious about...

We have been desensitised to it happening in the desert in the Middle East and we have become densensitised to bombs going off with, initially no face to the attack. We saw brutal murders in Belfast but the killers did not hang around....

Gordon Barlow

It's quite possible - and I say this with no pleasure at all - that the killers wanted to show the British public the kind of violence that British soldiers are doing to innocents in other parts of the world. It was a vicious and savage crime, but (in the killers' minds) perhaps no more vicious and savage than crimes committed by NATO military forces in the home towns of the killers' families. Of course we can't get into the killers' minds, but it's certainly possible that my guess is on the money.