Manchester

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AndyThomas
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Manchester

Post by AndyThomas »

I hope no-one's been affected by the events in Manchester last night. I've seen a few concerts there, very shocking.
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Crash
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Re: Manchester

Post by Crash »

I just hope we're not in for another one:
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/so ... li=BBoPWjQ

Perhaps it means that IS are feeling the pain in Iraq and Syria and other places. Perhaps it just means that the bomber was crazy, (which we knew already).

I did like what Trump had to say about them. I think he's right that we don't want to glamourise or sensationalise them:
I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them from now on losers, because that’s what they are. They’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers. Just remember that.
I think that this disaster will make the Conservatives' election win bigger.
We have a tough former Home Secretary as Prime Minister. I suspect that, once she has the election mandate and the mandate for brexit, the Islamic extremists in this country are going to have an interesting time.
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Re: Manchester

Post by Crash »

We've been extremely lucky to have had a major reduction in the number of such incidents in comparison to what we saw in the first half of this year.
That is only because of the success of MI5 - 9 attempted attacks prevented since March:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/t ... li=BBoPRmx

The media in the UK doesn't like to have to report on such matters either. The BBC would far rather spend your license fee trying to sour you against the UK's departure from the European Union than linger on this particular topic.


As it happens, here's a story from today about the investigation into the terrible events of Manchester:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/m ... li=BBoPRmx
Naturally, he was already a 'person of interest' but rather than being shipped off to somewhere, he was free to do what he wanted.
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felice
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Re: Manchester

Post by felice »

Crash wrote: Tue Dec 05, 2017 11:14 pm Naturally, he was already a 'person of interest' but rather than being shipped off to somewhere, he was free to do what he wanted.
There are lots of people of interest, most of whom haven't committed terrible crimes. Having an unaccountable government agency going round picking up innocent people and shipping them off to "somewhere" without trial or due process strikes me as a really bad idea.
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Re: Manchester

Post by Crash »

Having an unaccountable government agency ... picking up innocent people and shipping them off ... strikes me as a really bad idea.
I'm not suggesting that we round people up at random and deport them.
However, we have people in the UK that wish us and our country a lot of harm.

In my estimation, the Manchester bomber lost his right to live in the UK as soon as he made preparations to deprive many innocent people; including women and children of their lives.

Since the rash of attacks in the first half of this year, MI5 has clearly been more pro-active in intercepting threats from Islamic extremism.
We can conclude this from the statistically-significant, substantial and sustained reduction in terror attacks in the UK since June/July.
Each terrorist responsible was already known by MI5 to have links to Islamic terrorism.

What I think I was trying to get at in my earlier message is that I wish that they had adopted this approach sooner.
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felice
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Re: Manchester

Post by felice »

Crash wrote:What I think I was trying to get at in my earlier message is that I wish that they had adopted this approach sooner.
That's reasonable. The Manchester bomber was born in Manchester, though. If evidence that he was planning a crime had been discovered, he should have been arrested, put on trial, and (assuming a guilty verdict) sent to prison.
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Re: Manchester

Post by Crash »

Yes, I can get 100% behind that idea.

Let me be hypothetical for a moment though...

There is a lot that President Trump says that I fail to agree with; particularly in the area of the rights of women.

However, one idea that he voiced a number of times during his campaign for election was "while these people don't value their own lives, they do infact care about their families".

Now, I don't think that the idea of punishing the families of attackers is something that we or they in the US should pursue and I'm sure that you will be of the same opinion.
You would punish a lot of innocent people and you would never know where to stop; whether at immediate family or at what point.

But the reason that I found that I had slightly-greater-than-zero sympathy for Trump's above idea is that we don't have as many deterrants against this as we do in other cases.
The terrorists don't value their own lives.
They're happy to blow themselves and others sky-high.
They're content to be taken down by police special response units.

Our whole system of criminal justice is predicated on the notion that "you do X - you get fined" or "you do Y - you get imprisoned".
In a lot of cases, those things mean nothing to the people that we're talking about.
That's because they don't care about money or their own lives let alone the lives of others. And that is why that belief system and world-view is incompatible with our society and system of justice.

It's as though, to me, we're trying to stretch a justice system to cover a problem that it wasn't originally meant for.
It's a little like asking the police to fight a war.

We can be thankful that many of the folk that wish us harm are untrained, inexperienced and fairly incapable individuals.
Trump was definitely right when he dubbed them "losers". That seems to be one of the best things that we have going for us.
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Re: Manchester

Post by AndyThomas »

Complex area of course, but I think you see two clear types - the "true believers" versus those who are vulnerable to radicalisation. The latter probably have mental difficulties a lot of the time, and so may not succeed - but if they have true believers supporting them that might be something else again. The true believers are of course out for martyrdom and automatic ascension to heaven, I suppose. I guess that as you say, they do so knowing that their family are going to be supported by other believers should they wish to be. It's a strange thing, to do such terrible acts yet simultaneously have an absolute belief that you have the ultimate get out of jail free card.

For me, I think, it's about education. True believers are often going to be of that mindset because of the environment they were brought up in. The vulnerable are also to some extent a product of their environment. If these individuals were better educated, better cared for, they might have far less reason to walk down these paths. I also think that if you look at what the US started targeting in terms of cash depots, there was a hell of a lot of money wrapped up in all this. I doubt everyone taking part was in it just for religious reasons - someone's always profiting somewhere. Shut that down and a lot of the incentive drops out too I think.

As for stopping these things, the lone actors are always going to be difficult to stop. The best way to stop them to my mind would be to stop them starting in the first place, but that's a cultural problem not so easily solved. It's very difficult to address that in what can be very closed communities, I suppose. However, our laws do allow action before things happen - the question is can we see that in time, and the security services must have to make incredibly difficult calls with finite resources as to when a threat really becomes credible and how long they can hold off with a view to gathering intelligence before they act.
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Re: Manchester

Post by Crash »

That is a really important thing to remember.
I'm quite sure that there are plenty of people that are just not ... resilient in that way and are open to exploitation in all kinds of ways including that.

It's not very difficult for anyone to lose hope completely and conclude quite firmly that the world cares nothing for them (which is probably true).
It's makes sense to me that you'd ask yourself "what do I have to lose"?
From there, I can imagine that you'd be easily drawn into almost anything.

Our society has aspects that drive people to disillusion; inequality (which I feel is on the increase) and an increasing void of any spirituality (which is entirely peoples' right) which consumerism is happy to fill.
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felice
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Re: Manchester

Post by felice »

Crash wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:01 pmIt's not very difficult for anyone to lose hope completely and conclude quite firmly that the world cares nothing for them (which is probably true). It's makes sense to me that you'd ask yourself "what do I have to lose"?
Yep, that's the core of the problem. And the only solution is to start caring and making sure everyone does have something to lose. Ending poverty and discrimination would go a long way towards that, though there will always be mental health issues that are trickier to help people with.

Religion isn't really all that relevant; people are people everywhere. There are plenty of nominally Christian white guys who go on killing sprees in the US, for example, and Buddhist terrorists in Myanmar. Terrorists of any background are often not at all devout. And they often either don't care about their families, or want revenge for what's already been done to their friends or families.
Our society has aspects that drive people to disillusion; inequality (which I feel is on the increase) and an increasing void of any spirituality (which is entirely peoples' right) which consumerism is happy to fill.
Absolutely agreed on inequality and consumerism. Spirituality is more problematic, since it tends to require believing in propositions of dubious veracity, and often comes with arbitrary and sometimes dangerous rules; I'd be reluctant to encourage more of it.
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