Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Terror threat raised to critical, so there'll be armed soldiers joining armed police in city centres and key sites tomorrow. For god's sake don't do anything stupid like hurry through a tube station with a rucksack on.

[Snake Plissken]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Met up with some friends at the vigil. Absolutely packed out. Excellent speeches from, I think, th Bishop of Manchester. Will confess that the rendition of "This Is The Place" broke me, but it did that for a huge section of the crowd.

And then I ended up being interviewed by RT UK.

So all in all, one weird ass day.

[Lang Spoon]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Fuck no, like things weren't bad enough, here's Fergal Keane, BBC news. If any fucker will find a singed tedybear/doll at the scene, it will be tinytears himself.

[Paul S]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Manchester needs to remember what it stands for:
Matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs

[Janik]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Hot Pepsi wrote: In a way, he's right, which would be a first for him. There's also an irony in it since a huge part of his support comes from similar "losers" in America.

In either case, these are people who are alienated and troubled and see no hope or meaning in their day to day life, so they latch onto a "movement" that gives them somebody else to blame for their problems and a chance to feel like they can do something bigger than themselves.

This sort of thing will never go away unless we somehow build a world where everyone feels included and valued.

A fair number of the British born jihadists have been from comfortably off middle class families, with the bombers often University educated (including this one, it seems). In fact Universities have come under suspicion as one of the key venues where radicalisation happens. These are people with a decent hope of success in Western society. Most people working in a professional environment in Britain will have had a colleague with a Pakistani background or similar, I would guess. So, for me, this doesn't fly as an explanation. These people are often not dumb, and are not losers in life, and yet they still get angry enough to end up doing things like yesterday.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

EIM wrote:

ISIS would love internment. The inmates would come out far more radicalized than before they went in.

Hopkins - ignore her, she is just a troll.

She's not a troll any more. She's gone past that. She's a dangerous racist who has found herself a platform.

Precisely. She's a Mosley who outsources her thugs.

[Lang Spoon]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

You can certainly be successful in many aspects of life and be alienated to the point of being susceptible to some nasty beliefs. Especially if there's some part missing in your life or psyche (like empathy) And maybe some people are just bad bastards.

[Come along, Min]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Is that about Hopkins or Abedi?.
Who's really worse though eh ?.

Food for thought.

[EIM]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Why do you put a full stop after a question mark?

[WOM]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

He's a UKIPer and a Brexiteer. You're lucky it's not all run together in one sentence like a pensioner's Facebook post.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

I suppose that a credo than combines violent struggle, religious faith and a strict morality and emphasises historical persecution and an afterlife in paradise for the righteous will appeal to a varied cross-section of potential adherents, from angry young men, the purposeless and disappointed all the way through to the pious.

[GCostanza]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Nocturnal Submission wrote: I suppose that a credo than combines violent struggle, religious faith and a strict morality and emphasises historical persecution and an afterlife in paradise for the righteous will appeal to a varied cross-section of potential adherents, from angry young men, the purposeless and disappointed all the way through to the pious.

Yes, but it's not a universal thing to Islam. Blame these asshats in the main.
Still relevant a decade later.

Oh and Corbyn attended the vigil, with no fanfare till now.

[Snake Plissken]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Corbyn, Farron, Bercow and Burnham were on the stage. There were some mutterings about why Burnham didn't say anything but any politician of any stripe saying something could have been taken the wrong way so right decision was made.

At the end, people wanted Corbyn to say something but he didn't.

There were mutterings that May would be coming out as well and the mood at that point from people hearing this was ugly as hell. I'm going to be charitable here and blame it on her security people, but it seems that she came up to MRI to see the injured and part of the security involved moving some of the kids out of the cancer ward for a few hours.

She was back in London by 10pm, giving it the politicians favourite - chairing a COBRA meeting. It's a room, for fucks sake, not a top level elite task force.

[Arturo]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Shocked to find this chap is my neighbour's son.

She had no idea he was homeless or where he was. Desperately sad on so many levels.

[Paul S]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Lang Spoon wrote: There aren't many times I envy folk with some kind of religious belief, but now is one of them.

Bellringers have been doing us proud. Loads of quarter peals rung yesterday for the victims of the attacks in Manchester and probably many more still to come:

Bellringers ring for Manchester

[Crusoe]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Luke R wrote: Is that about Hopkins or Abedi?.
Who's really worse though eh ?.

Food for thought.

Trolling after something like this. What a man.

[Uncle Ethan]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

I completely get what people mean by wishing they were religious or believed in hell at the moment. However, it makes me extremely glad that I am not religious. How on earth can anyone get caught up in any ideology or belief system to such an extent that they think it is right to walk into a crowd of children and blow them up? I know it is stating the obvious but fucking hell, just why?

I'm glad there are people like the homeless guy Steve around who balance out the fuck-knuckles and quarter-wits who carry out or cash in on these atrocities. I hope he doesn't get what seems to be an inevitable backlash from the tabloids as they start digging dirt on him just because they can.

Finally I hope my one-time colleagues in journalism can at some stage ask what on earth they are doing with their lives if their careers require them to repeatedly push a woman to share gory details of what she has seen, when it is clear she is trying to block it out, as one BBC reporter did last night.

To those of you closer to this than I am, my thoughts are with you. Love, don't hate, it's the only way out of this mess.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Gonna leave this here as a sincere reading recommendation, not directed at anyone in specific - but for anyone who wants a better understanding of the motives and drivers that underly these atrocities - and potential strategies for stopping them from happening.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/1765-the-muslims-are-coming

The book looks at and critiques the flaws in prevailing models of extremism and discusses Salafism, surveillance culture and counter-extremism methods. It's really good.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Dominic Grieve was very good on the telly just now. No wonder Murdoch didn't want him as Home Secretary.

[Diable Rouge]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Thankfully, this leading Irish imam has been unequivocal in his response.

[GCostanza]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

So just like all reasonable Muslims then.

Though Louise Mensch is a little more surprising?

[EIM]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Diable Rouge wrote: Thankfully, this leading Irish imam has been unequivocal in his response.

Thankfully? What were you expecting?

[Snake Plissken]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Scrolling through his timeline I see that Mensch has done yet another u-turn in her opinions.

[Diable Rouge]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

EIM wrote:

Thankfully, this leading Irish imam has been unequivocal in his response.

Thankfully? What were you expecting?

You often hear complaints that Muslim representatives are either reluctant to go public with their criticisms of attacks, or else dress them in equivocation, so at least he can't be accused of sugarcoating his response.

[Janik]

Manchester & London - Serious Incidents

Diable Rouge wrote: You often hear complaints that Muslim representatives are either reluctant to go public with their criticisms of attacks, or else dress them in equivocation, so at least he can't be accused of sugarcoating his response.

Complaints from whom?
I don't really get why Irish Imams would be expected to comment on this in any case. They can if they wish to of course, but not releasing any public statements would be as acceptable as, say, the Bishop of Leicester failing to go public with a condemnation of Brevik.