Be Excellent To Each Other

Stunned by what's happened in Manchester. 19 confirmed dead. Some of them are bound to be children.

The wife is due to go to the Take That concert in Liverpool tonight. Concerned isn't the word

There will be mega-tight security. Directly after an incident is when it is likely to be safest. I'm sure that won't stop you from worrying though. Xxx

What a horrific act.

Security will be tight, as GJ says

What Jazzy said. I went to the ATP Tour Finals at the O2 the day after the Paris attack and security was mega tight. Don't let the terrorists win.

Pretty sure that ship sailed with Brexit and Trump.

I just feel completely dismayed and disheartened right now. Been reading lots of well-meant stuff from lovely people on twitter all about how people will carry on, all pull together and live their lives and not let the terrorists win etc. but when I look around that isn't what it actually feels like. Not really. Of course these Holy fuckwits will not ultimately win their idiotic, doomed crusade but it isn't a zero sum game and it just feels like everyone is losing.

My heart sank this morning when Daisy overheard Mrs Z and I talking about the explosion at the concert, she said some of her school friends had been really excited about going. Don't know if they were effected, must be absolutely terrifying for anyone who was there.

Yep. Every time we bomb them they bomb us back. And now they're targeting children's entertainers.

No one wins.

I really don;t know what the answer is.

Stop killing people.

Well the only answer is a reasoned response. But it's understandably hard to sell that to a lot of folks at times like these because when a load of children have just been murdered then anger is a natural response, people want to see some action.

I was listening to a great analogy of terrorists as being like a fly a china shop that wants to see the whole thing smashed to pieces. On their own they cannot even dislodge a single plate but fortunately for them there is also a bull standing there which if annoyed will lash out and do all their work for them. And obligingly we do it seems. Time and time again.

That sentence has made me think: when these types of attacks happens, is there ever actually a concrete motive or demand? Thinking of something like the IRA's bombing attacks these were 'in service of' an actual agenda and they made clear what they actually wanted. With ISIS et al, have they ever come out and said, "This is what the west would need to do to satisfy us and get us to fuck off?" Not that I'm saying we should/would even if they had, I'm just wondering aloud if they even think they're advancing a cause at this point or if it's really just terror for terror's sake.

Apologies if the above comes across as mystifyingly naive or somehow offensive.

New thread, please mods.

Nope, they just want to drive a wedge between the 'West' and peaceful muslims. So every time they perform an atrocity like this, more westerners say "enough, time to get them out of our country" which in turn pushes formerly peaceful muslims into radicalism.

And it's working.

This article is a couple of years old now and I don't honestly know how accurate it is:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ts/384980/

But I don't think they have an agenda that could ever be resolved by sitting around a table.

There's also the distinction between organised attacks and lone nutters, and we shouldn't give the latter the posthumous ego boost they seek. It's always frustrating that they usually cowardly kill themselves rather than get dragged through the courts, shown to be pathetic, and forced to waste away in prison.

Regarding the news, I listened to the main bulletin when I got up but am trying to avoid following it just because it's so depressing.

Just noticed that flags at work are at half-mast today.

There was a call at work this morning with our CEO on some results.

I didn't attend but he said somebody from our company had been killed or injured in the attack

So quite possible somebody I know

Terrible news that has me more depressed than most terrorist shit does.

To brighten the page up, here's some dinosaurs.

Nice pic but terrible news.

I have to be honest, it does make me worry about going places and especially if my girls want to go places when they're older. I know these attacks are extremely rare but I can't help it. I know my wife feels very strongly about this and struggles with the fear of it all.

I can't imagine what those families affected are going through.

A girl I used to babysit was at the gig. Her and her friends made it out totally fine, but obviously a bit shaken up.

Friend of a friend on fb had surgery to remove shrapnel from the bomb.

So awful.

Staying with Mrs JC Sr ATM because Mrs JC is in Cuba. Surprised I didn't catch this last night, sure I checked the news and so on before I went to bed (around 1am). Any way, Mrs JC Sr has had her best mate here all week from Manchester. She left to go home this morning. Not sure if she will be late or what not. Apparently they have closed parts of Manchester off.

Mad. Just utterly mad. I figured in this day and age it was mandatory for concerts etc to have sniffer dogs? but then I did grow up in Brixton and my whole childhood was spent pretty much staring around train carriages and buses looking for unattended bags etc.

And kids and teenagers. Fucking disgusting.

Well there was no reason to start...

Not sure how a sniffer dog will stop a suicide bomber, once detected, they can pull the trigger.

Also, he wasn't in the concert. He was outside the security

Oh I see. Well it was par for the course at any major event I ever went to in London any way, regardless.

Arndale Centre has just been evacuated. Hopefully just a false alarm

Nothing's come of it. False alarm. Panicky public.

That article's a really good--albeit terrifying--read. Assuming it's all true it paints a bleak picture because the kind of violent expansionist nonsense ISIS gets up to isn't just something they want to do; they're actually forced into it by their reading of the Koran. Anyone who doesn't actively support that agenda, including their current supreme leader, would have to be killed by everyone else. There's literally no argument you could come up with that would stop them.

A couple of interesting take-aways from it:

- One reason for the recent escalation is that ISIS managed to tick off all the criteria for the establishment of a kaliphate in Syria. The very establishment of a kaliphate apparently activates a whole load of Sharia laws that until then lay dormant.
- Another rule that activates along with the establishment of a kaliphate is that all Muslim's must do everything in their power to travel to that kaliphate so they can live there. The general agenda of violence and murder is focussed on other Muslim's who don't adhere to the various rules they believe in rather than non-Muslims. However, currently western countries are stopping known activists from travelling to Syria so there's a theory that a lot of the attacks in Europe are being carried out by people frustrated by their inability to obey this directive. While ISIS are obviously happy with the result of these attacks they're not actually organising or mandating them directly because they'd prefer everyone came to Syria. If that's true, it's a really shitty side-effect of us quite rightly trying to stop locals bolstering ISIS's troops in person.

I had just assumed that people were travelling en masse to join ISIS because they'd reached some kind of critical mass; I didn't realise this kaliphate idea was even a thing, never mind the massive impact it apparently has.

Fuck, yes.

I agree, but ISIS will not sit down with anyone. This is the main problem.

ISIS isn't the problem. ISIS have no reach over here. The problem is young muslims feeling like outsiders in their own countries. These are the people we can help. Our people. Hate and violence only breed more hate and violence.

ISIS attacks breed more far right lunatics and more far right lunatics breed more radicalised Muslim youths.

23 year old man arrested in Morrisons car park in Chorlton in connection with the attack, about 90 mins ago. Mrs. W texted at 12.20 to say she could hear a lot of police car sirens and that the police helicopter was overhead in Chorlton.

Take That's Liverpool and Manchester gigs have been postponed.

Well right now Victoria Stn is closed, so god knows where Mrs JC Sr's friend will end up. She'll have to get her son to collect her I guess.

Already the news is comparing this to 7/7. This is far, far worse IMO. At least 7/7 did not deliberately target an event that the attacker/s knew full well it was going to be crammed to the hilt with children, young girls and teenagers.

About as sick and depraved as possible. Thing is this doesn't scare me, it just undermines any point they may have been trying to make and makes me feel disgusted and just more hate.

A positive post in all the depressing news this morning

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40011977

Yeah cab drivers were all working for free taking people home.

Still sinking in tbh.

While it is awful for all involved in this tragedy, don't get sucked into the thinking that terrorism is getting worse in Europe. A graph from the last 45 years. Statistically speaking it's the safest we've been for a long time.

Terrorism isn't getting worse. Terrorism is terrorism. What's obviously changing is the dynamics, and who is being seen as possible targets.

Just like when I was 15 you fought with your fists and maybe, if you were a real asshole, used a stick or something. Now 15 year olds are stabbing one another to death. That's now the norm and you are abnormal if you don't carry a knife.

What's going to be the next easy target? infant schools? baby sitting centres?

It's not abnormal to not carry a knife? Where did you get that nonsense from?

I carry a knife!

And a fork and spoon. You never know.

(I also have a Leatherman with 3 inch blade in my work bag)

I meant kids in crappy parts of the city. Not every one. Should've pointed that out.

I'm not sure about that. That graph misses off the last couple of years and also presumably most of those terrorist murders through the 70s and 80s were the work of ETA and the IRA and weren't generally speaking so indiscriminately targeted at civilians and were geographically more confined. So although the chances of being killed by terrorists is still very small I'd have to say that statistically speaking most people in most places in Europe were probably safer back then.

You mean like the IRA bombing of the Manchester Arndale Centre 20 years ago.

Here's a more up to date graph.

Well yes, they did it early in the morning and gave warnings. It's still a fucking miracle that nobody was killed but if that had been their specific intent then the death toll would have been huge.

Always a silver lining.

Typically the IRA didn't seek to kill. Although Omaha, Stockport, enniskillen and Brighton have questions they would like to raise. That noted the potential victims were nearly always civilians with the notable exception of Brighton, so in response to the earlier comment of the targets changing, I'd argue they haven't, only they're now intended targets, rather than collateral damage.

When you say they didn't typically intend to kill I think you're thinking mostly of the mainland bombing campaign. I'm sure that most of the murders in those figures up there committed by the IRA took place in Ireland and were very much intentional. There were some accidents where other people got killed but it was really nothing like the indiscriminate terrorism of these latest lot of fucking nutters where the only goal is to kill as many innocent people as possible.

UK terror threat level been raised to critical. I think we should all just work from home tomorrow.