Manchester terror attack, 2017

[NewJerseyRich]

London attacker well known to police. Subject of documentary

"The Jihadist Next Door"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DsG9yQrdD4

[NewJerseyRich]

CNN is at it again.....

Here they are before setting up the shot....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb5PPnuu3bs

This is what aired on screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhFyN-Y0Is0

[firehazard]

[Mike from Boston]

well, except for the seven people who were killed....

[DzM]

well, except for the seven people who were killed....

Surely that's the point. There were a lot more than seven people that died in the plague, the fire, the blitz, etc. I read this to be "Tragedies happen yet London persists and abides." I don't see it in any way taking away from the horrors of any of the tragedies mentioned, but rather it's a testament to the strength of everyone in and around London (in exactly the same way that "Boston Strong" was a rallying cry for Boston not to be cowed and defeated by the Marathon bombing attack while not at all taking away the victims).

Could be I'm reading it wrong though. Maybe you're right.

[Mike from Boston]

well, except for the seven people who were killed....[/quote]
Surely that's the point. There were a lot more than seven people that died in the plague, the fire, the blitz, etc. I read this to be "Tragedies happen yet London persists and abides." I don't see it in any way taking away from the horrors of any of the tragedies mentioned, but rather it's a testament to the strength of everyone in and around London (in exactly the same way that "Boston Strong" was a rallying cry for Boston not to be cowed and defeated by the Marathon bombing attack while not at all taking away the victims).

Could be I'm reading it wrong though. Maybe you're right.[/quote]

Well, it sucks to be right. I guess my thought is the same thing (vehicle bridge attack) happened 10 weeks ago. I think the time for sayings are long gone-if you are on FB, you don't notice much talk about it (say "We stand with London", or your profile picture with the UK colors). Why after every story, do the majority of the terrorists end up being "known to authorities"?? It just seems to me Western Intelligence is either not doing enough or not being allowed to do their jobs. I include the US, Britain and French intelligence units. Why are these terrorists allowed to travel with impunity??

From Irish Central:

As more and more details became known about the suicide bomber Salman Abedi, it began to look like a major failure by the security services and the state. It also began to look like the initial outrage of British politicians over the early publication of the bomber's name in the American media had more to do with that failure being exposed than their claims the investigation had been compromised.

Boston, San Bernadino and Orlando were all intelligence failures From NBC News:


The Russian government warned U.S. authorities that Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a violent radical Islamist more than a year and a half before the April 2013 bombing, but authorities missed multiple chances to detain Tsarnaev when he was traveling to and from Dagestan for terror training, according to a soon-to-be released Congressional report.

Another attack in Paris today...

[DzM]

Yeah, the repetition of failures is demoralizing and depressing. But as anyone that has worked in security will tell you, to be in security means you have to be right all the time. When you're not right everyone notices, and when you are nobody notices you doing your job. When your goal is to evade security YOU just have to be right once. Additionally it is extremely difficult to stop people that are willing to die. They can be in very small groups without a large network of support since, by definition, they're not planning to need that network to help them get away.

The sword of Damocles that is hanging over us right now is that we have conflicting priorities. We demand safety, but we demand free access (or nearly so) to weapons. We demand that "something should be done" about people that have expressed dangerous ideas, but we don't want thought-crime to be punishable by prison/internment/disappearing (well ... not when the thought-crime gun is pointed OUR way. When it's pointed toward someone who is voicing ideas we hate? Well...) We want rule of law, but we want the law to be able to be broken to keep us safe. We despise tyranny, but we're willing to demand tyrannical practices to provide safety.

What I'm getting at is that we live in relatively free and open societies and, conservative or liberal, we all basically cherish that openness for ourselves. Unfortunately that ALSO provides cover for dickheads of all kinds to express their depraved and evil ideologies AND acts, and sometimes there will be nothing that can be done to stop it until after the fact. Dickheads will still find ways to kill innocent people even after we're willing to live with circumstantial evidence and loose accusations being enough to have anyone's door kicked down in the middle of the night.

I'll leave you with the thought that whenever you give The Gubment a new power to in some way intrude on somebody else's life, imagine that SAME power in the hands of someone you hate and you suspect will use that power against you. When looked at in that light I suspect you will be less willing to make it easier for armed teams to burst into your room and disappear you into the night.

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row

[left]

You said it all, DzM, Clash quote included.

[firehazard]

You got it right, DzM.

I used to work very close to where the Westminster attacks took place, and to drink after work (or sometimes during work) in a pub there. The Manchester attack happened very close to where my eldest daughter lives and works. My youngest daughter walks across London Bridge on her way to and from work every day. Most of the arrests of suspects connected to the latest attacks were made in the borough where I was born. So it all feels very close to home. London still feels like my home city, even though I no longer live there. It's seen a hell of a lot over the years, and it's still standing, despite the various horrors inflicted on it.

And what the dickheads want is to create fear. And to provoke the kind of reaction which ends up with our freedoms being lost or restricted. If that happens, they have succeeded in their aims.

The deaths of innocent people is appalling. But what the dickheads don't want is for others to carry on with their ordinary lives, with resilience, with solidarity, even with a sense of humour. There was a bomb alert in the centre of the city where I now live one evening this week. A restaurant in the area was evacuated. One of the diners was interviewed by local media. "I just grabbed my crème brulée and ran," he said.

There have very obviously been failings in the intelligence and security services over the latest spate of attacks. Almost all of the dickheads were known to them, some of them had even been reported to the security services by members of their own communities. One of the London Bridge dickheads had been reported to UK intelligence services by their Italian counterparts.

The authorities have the powers they need already. But in this country, at least, they are hampered by the fact that as part of the Tory government's drive for austerity, there have been very substantial cuts to the funding of the police and security services over the last several years, which has inevitably lessened their effectiveness. They were warned about this by, among others, the Police Federation, but chose to ignore those warnings. Rather than admitting this, the response of the same Tories to the latest attacks is to propose a ripping up of human rights legislation, and thus encroaching on some of the liberties which we all share. Which is sort of doing the dickheads' job for them, if you think about it.

But then I guess the prospect of government encroachment on human rights is only a problem if you happen to be a human.

Anyway, that's it for me.

[Mike from Boston]

Thanks for the thoughtful dialogue on this very important matter. Just an FYI, I do have family in both London and Manchester, so this stuff worries me. I also spent half my honeymoon in London, I was in Ireland for a wedding on 7/7/05 and headed over to the UK days after. As oft mentioned, being exposed to this in Boston, this worries me.

I do agree with your premises, there was alot of discussion yesterday about Theresa May's comment about regulating the Internet to stop radicalization via the computer. This power with the Government doesn't sit well with me.

Reading about the Italian-Moroccan dead suspect though, who based on news reports I have read, may no secret of his desire to fight for ISIS, why would the UK allow him in the country? I know guys who were barred from entering Canada for fishing trips and Hockey games, due to years old Drunk Driving convictions!

I will sign off for now and cue up Guns of Brixton!

[Low D]

It's worth noting that Brits themselves objected to the characterization (by American media) that they were "reeling" or "under siege". We should never presume to speak for the victim (especially when we are dirty colonials and THEY, at least, speak the proper king's english).

One way they rebelled against this was with the twitter hashtag #ThingsThatLeaveBritainReeling - my favourite example being a guy "fleeing" the area of the attack with his pint glass in hand, not spilling a drop.


You can see the thread here:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ThingsT ... g&src=tyah

British-born now-american John Oliver did a great segment on this on Sunday night that i encourage you all to watch, because if you can't laugh...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-KrkB45Ghw

[DzM]

[T]he response of the same Tories to the latest attacks is to propose a ripping up of human rights legislation, and thus encroaching on some of the liberties which we all share. Which is sort of doing the dickheads' job for them, if you think about it.

Once I get out of the micro-view of these disasters (the innocents killed and wounded, the dickheads that thought it was justified, etc) and start looking at the macro-view, this is what gets me the most depressed. It's like there are two giant horrible forces racing each other to see who can come up with the most horrible way to build a world for all of us to live in. On the one side you have these nihilistic dickheads that think killing innocent people is a valid way to express themselves, or authoritarian dickheads that are ready to through individual liberty out the window in response.

I am sadly resigned that random attacks and violence are going to happen in our world. It's terrifying, and infuriating, but there's not a lot I can do about it other than keep living my life. I try to comfort myself by saying that other parts of the world have it much, much worse than I do and even in those places the odds of dying or being maimed in a intentional terrorist attack are lower than being hit be a car (or in many parts of the world, of dying from a lack of clean water or a steady supply of nutritious food). I refuse to let myself be paralyzed with fear over what a small handful of nihilistic dickheads do. I hate that I am resigned to the fact that these kinds of events happen and will go on happening, but that's the world I live in.

I am frightened and infuriated that after every single one of these events, though, there are heads of government ready to pounce with PATRIOT Acts and "if our human rights laws prevent us from taking action, then we will change those laws," and that there are a cadre of citizens urging them on out of a misplaced and misguided sense of terror. Warrantless wiretaps? No problem! Indefinite detention? The writ of habeus corpus is for wusses! Extrajudicial assassination of not only foreign citizens, but our own too? Well that just sounds reasonable! Black site torture and execution? Well that didn't work well int he past, but I think it's just 'cause we didn't torture hard enough! Kindness and compassion for people fleeing dire circumstances (including genocide, mass rape, starvation, arbitrary execution, etc)? But they're weird, talk funny, and are just downright FOREIGN! (And going back a little in time: The whole community is to blame for what these dickheads are doing, so I think we're pretty much justified using machine guns against crowds at stadiums. After all, SOME of those people were probably thinking of doing bad things to us!)

I am horrified at the people that would take opportunities like this to strip away the rights of the individual. I am horrified at the people that allow themselves to give up their own rights and elect incompetent strong-men for the promise of "safety" (which, no matter how many rights are given up, seems to always be elusive). And I am disgusted at the peoples and nations that take these opportunities to turn inward and embrace tribalism mixed with a "fuck the others" mentality.

As for the dickheads prompting all this - I can't understand them at all. Their depraved level of nihilistic rage is unfathomable to me. These are, literally, people that want the world to burn. They can't possibly think that if they use just one more truck to run down just a few more tourists people will say "You know what? We were totally wrong about these guys. They seems OK!" or fly just a few more airplanes into a few more office buildings the world will say "Well shoot. I think we've totally misunderstood these guys. Let's take a fresh look at their grievances." I can't wrap my head around how anyone, of any religion or cultural background, can somehow convince themselves that their cause is so just, so worthwhile, so justified that they will choose to kill themselves while killing smiling, laughing, joyful people. How they can say "Yes, YES! Look at these monsters! They are so low, so evil, so depraved that I am willing to kill myself just so long as I know that I'll be killing them too! It will be TOTALLY WORTH IT, because they will be dead and their governments will be more restrictive and my remaining friends and family member's lives will be made more miserable! Everyone I see, and everyone I know, will be made more miserable or dead from the action I am about to take!" To these dickheads all I can say is "Fuck you. We're still here."

[DzM]

Reading about the Italian-Moroccan dead suspect though, who based on news reports I have read, may no secret of his desire to fight for ISIS, why would the UK allow him in the country? I know guys who were barred from entering Canada for fishing trips and Hockey games, due to years old Drunk Driving convictions!

I understand the urge to look at this and say "how could he get into the country?" But at the same time - what's the alternative? A multiple-week waiting period for all border crossings? For foreign and domestic travelers? Who can say what is suspicious and what isn't?

A friend of mine in San Francisco has a just-out-of-his-teens son. This kid wears a hat with slogan-pins ("badges" to you brits) on it. One of them says "Fuck The Police". He recently traveled to Egypt, then Turkey. Is that travel pattern and pin combination suspicious enough that he should have been refused re-entry into the country? If not, why not?

But OK. This Italian guy. UK law enforcement was warned about him by Italian law enforcement. What was the nature of the warning (I honestly have no idea)? Did the Brits look at it and say "well, OK, this is circumstantial. Nothing actionable. He said 'Fuck the Five-Oh' and tried to travel to Syria, but was turned away. Seems unsavory, but we can't arrest him for that. We'll check on him every now and again, budget permitting, but there's nothing actionable right now."

Or are you advocating for a national (or international) database that every country keeps (or shares) with a five year dossier (or longer) for every person on Earth? Something where they can say "got three community warnings on this guy in 2017" and "was late for social studies in the 9th grade on Oct 10, 1988" and "traveled to India five times between 2002 and 2007" and "traveled to Russia in 2011" and "the police in Turkey said this guy hates the government and he should be considered dangerous" that can/should be consulted at each and every border crossing? Which is to say that that old canard from grade school - "This is going to go on your permanent record!" - might actually be something to fear.

It boils down to "how much liberty are you willing to give up for the specter of safety?" Despite helping to build the technology that creates this panopticon, I am deeply mistrustful of letting governments and employers that have vast ability to alter my life have that much insight into my personal life. My inclination is to say "none of your business" and to take the "safety" risks that accompany that opacity. I choose to accept the risk and retain my privacy. This is a deeply held belief for me.

[Low D]

Once I get out of the micro-view of these disasters (the innocents killed and wounded, the dickheads that thought it was justified, etc) and start looking at the macro-view, this is what gets me the most depressed. It's like there are two giant horrible forces racing each other to see who can come up with the most horrible way to build a world for all of us to live in. On the one side you have these nihilistic dickheads that think killing innocent people is a valid way to express themselves, or authoritarian dickheads that are ready to through individual liberty out the window in response.

This reminds me of Art Spiegelman's brilliant book "In The Shadow Of No Towers" (which you should all read if you have not), specifically this piece:

I am sadly resigned that random attacks and violence are going to happen in our world. It's terrifying, and infuriating, but there's not a lot I can do about it other than keep living my life.

Which is of course what those lovely Brits are doing.

One thing to add, though, regarding Christine Archibald, the Canadian killed in the London Bridge attack. Her family have asked those who wish to honour her to volunteer at a homeless shelter, as she used to, or otherwise get involved and make their community a better place. The hashtag #ChrissySentMe has begun trending,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... -1.4146510
and indeed herein lies a bit of the solution.

As we've been discussing, there is at the end of the day, very little we can do about determined killers with knives or trucks, the best we can do is to change minds. Let's all advocate for our cities and countries to be better, to have everybody housed, living in diverse communities not ghettos, covered by medical care, and feeling less the oppressive boot of racisim and religious bigotry, and that is probably the best way we can contribute to make an end to these attacks, many of which are carried out by folks born here at home, but clearly alienated from their own state.

[DzM]

I am sadly resigned that random attacks and violence are going to happen in our world. It's terrifying, and infuriating, but there's not a lot I can do about it other than keep living my life. I try to comfort myself by saying that other parts of the world have it much, much worse than I do and even in those places the odds of dying or being maimed in a intentional terrorist attack are lower than being hit be a car (or in many parts of the world, of dying from a lack of clean water or a steady supply of nutritious food). I refuse to let myself be paralyzed with fear over what a small handful of nihilistic dickheads do. I hate that I am resigned to the fact that these kinds of events happen and will go on happening, but that's the world I live in.

Something I had meant to include in this post:

Terror Attacks in 2015: https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2015/257526.htm
Worldwide: 11,774 attacks, 28,328 deaths, 35,320 injuries

In perspective:
2014 gun deaths in the USA: 33,599, Suicide: 21,334, Homicide: 15,809 (Huh. Strange that the two of these add up to more than the total.) ( http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states , but sourced from CDC)
2015 deaths by motor vehicle: 35,092 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... S._by_year )
Annual Alcohol related deaths in the USA: ~88,000 ( https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-healt ... statistics , http://bit.ly/2qWBh5H )
Etc.

Or put another way - there are many ways, and many people, that die every year in the USA. Any of which method/cause outpaces the annual international toll of terrorist attacks. It helps to keep this in perspective.