Manchester Gig Attack

They are cowardly scum. There should be no trials for any captured, live ones.
There is no negotiating with any terrorist group/individual. They do not attack the source; innocent men, women and children, are not their enemy. They are cowards, and will not fight the real enemy, whoever they might be. Nothing can ever justify this type of behaviour. They should be put down, like any rabid animal.

2 Likes

I realise that it isn’t the IRA but I don’t agree that there’s nothing to try and talk through. I’m far from satisfied that the issues arising from the Middle East as well as Pakistan & Afghanistan have been addressed properly for over 50 years perhaps longer. Only this week seeing Trump’s ME tour including the agreement of arms deals worth hundreds of Billions of Dollars with a state like Saudi Arabia reinforces the depressing truth that these problems will persist long after we’ve all gone. Sadly the situation is utterly fucked up and fuelled by greed as much as any wrongly interpreted ideology.

1 Like

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being so simplistic as to suggest there is nothing to talk about with regard to improving relations with the Middle East, but ISIL is not for negotiating.

There will be people in the ME who have influence with IS but they need to be persuaded to exert that influence.

These people are not fighting a war. They have no Geneva convention rights, nor any others, as far as I am concerned.
You can try and negotiate with a recognised government, or leader legally representing a group, who participates in a system, where they have to give, as well as receive.
Terrorist groups are non of these.
They have access to a government, whether they like it or not. That is who you can talk to.
They have no respect for any system of control, or respect for human life.
They should not be treated as human. They are not humans, just because they inhabit the same form, as a human. They have no rights!

1 Like

They get funding, vehicles & armaments from somewhere.Somebody is helping to enable them & their cause. Of course it doesnt help that in Syria (for example) we inexplicably lend support to many of their allies & associates

We all know how much Manchester and Liverpool love each other, nice to hear that Liverpool cabbies dashed down the M62 to help stranded concert goers get home or to a place of safety, all free of charge. Nice one gentlemen.

8 Likes

It’s not exactly a secret,

And then, our politicians act all upset when IS blow a load of innocent children up.

Still I suppose they are no different really to the children that our munitions are blowing up in the Yemen.

1 Like

Phil Dick who seems like a very brave man from what I heard on Radio 4 said about people who might seek to exploit the atrocity:

It’s an absolutely terrible thing and I just pray to God that none of these extremists try and make political capital out of it because the last thing that anybody needs now is any more divisiveness.

That’s what terrorists want. What they want to do is they want to divide, they want to try and affect our way of life and, unfortunately, there are people on all parts of the political spectrum [who] want to use these kinds of incidents for their own political ends. And, if they do, they’re not much better than the bombers, I don’t think.

Pretty clear he is being broadly inclusive with his use of ‘extremists’. Nothing much to add to that really.

6 Likes

I think anyone looking to make political statements or push their agenda on the back of this today is a bit of a cunt.

6 Likes

That would be a journalist from the Telegraph and a piece of trash who spouts bile on Twitter and in the Daily Heil then for starters.

Politics is full of cunts

UK threat level has just been raised to Critical

Lots of police on the streets of Wigan tonight, and the police helicopter was hovering for a good while.

Apparently the US let the name of the bomber out before the UK police wanted it released, thereby possibly compromising an ongoing investigation.

Yea, it is. Seeing the difference isn’t that difficult.

I don’t agree. Bereaved & helpless parents will have the same feelings wherever they are. There will also be enraged compatriots seeking revenge somehow, with hardened resolve. This situation has been getting progressively worse for 50 years. Unless circumstances or policy change in the middle east, this type of response is inevitable. No amount of drone strikes or bombing will change it.


I just heard an R4 interview with some neighbours of the alleged bomber. They were asked if they’d seen anything odd but said they hadn’t seen much of him especially recently when he’d been away. There had been something a couple of years back when he’d been flying a black flag with Arabic writing on it from the roof of his house in Fallowfield…

I don’t see a difference from the victims’ perspective.

The perpetrators, well that’s more complex. Clearly in the case of a terror attack the intention is to kill the innocent. From us selling arms to the Saudis, what else will they be used for? We know that they have a terrible record in human rights in their own country, and actively support ISIS through financial and logistic means. Of course our government does not intend its weapons export to be used on innocents, but what needs to happen before we/they take a long hard look, and decide that the likelihood of “collateral damage” is so great that there is no real difference between us and the terrorists.

You could almost argue that the terrorists have the moral high ground, because they are doing it for what they fundamentally believe in, however misguided, whereas we sell arms to dodgy states simply for profit.

1 Like

Could this disagreement be at cross purposes ? Your argument, Guy, that the deaths of children wherever they happen are just as awful, and that the resulting anger in the wider society isn’t so different either, does hold water. But Bob’s argument that many other things, including the behaviour of extremist sympathisers on the two sides (gross oversimplification - good heavens, if only there were just ‘two’ sides in this mess …), are very different is also obviously true. Anti-Muslim nutters are not carrying out suicide bombings among crowds of children leaving mosques, although there have been arson attacks on the buildings.

To argue that the killing of children in Yemen would stop if only the west stopped selling bombs to the Saudis, which is presumably what the suicide bombers here are trying to achieve, is infantile given the complexities in Yemen Yemen: Why is the war there getting more violent? - BBC News.

You are right though when you say that no amount of drone strikes or bombing will change it. That includes suicide bombing of teenagers.

VB

Supplying armaments to Saudi Arabia is just one of a whole range of questionable foreign policy choices that the West has made regarding the Middle East over the past half century (or century). It might be argued that Russia’s involvement in Syria & support for Iran are also questionable and they also feel the backlash.

Let me be clear. There is no excuse or justification for this despicable act or for those that occurred in Paris, Nice, Stockholm, Berlin, New York or London. The perpetrators of those acts all believed they were furthering a cause. That cause is fuelled by a resentment towards mainly the Western world for what are rightly or wrongly perceived as injustices (and illegal wars) initiated against many people in the ME and beyond.

It won’t be a quick process (far from it) but it seems to me that the only way these sorts of atrocities can be halted might be to address the sources of these grievances by gradually changing policy in & affecting the region. (That would go directly against the economic interests of a good many people, companies and countries so it may be a pipe dream to consider it.)

Of course the vital work that already goes on here in attempting to prevent young people becoming radicalised would need to continue but in the longer term it’s the cause they are drawn to that needs to be addressed.

No but the resulting rubble & dead people after a misplaced bomb or drone strike cause exactly as much anguish.

3 Likes