Explosion at MEN Arena/Victoria Station

[Xiphos]

if for one second you believe throwing out of the country or locking British Citizens up for being on a watch list is the answer then i'm sorry for you.

The backlash to such a policy would not be worth thinking about and the issue we face right now with extremist terrorists, magnified by an unimaginable amount.

We have to believe and put trust and faith in our security services to do their jobs as they are doing now and hope that their magnificent record so far in stopping attacks like the one Monday night continues and those responsible dealt with.

There might have been a backlash seconds before 10-33pm on Monday evening, i doubt there would be one now apart from the usual suspects, what certain people have not grasped or they refuse to believe is that the whole demographic has now changed as from 10-33pm Monday evening, i'v noticed a change in some of my more gormless neighbours since Monday, a dose of reality can hit you like a well aimed sledgehammer

 

[chedlee]

I hardly ever read long posts because I can't be arsed, but I read all of that and found it extremely interesting and enlightening: Thanks for taking the time to post it.

But let me ask you this: Since we in the west rarely, if ever these days, carry out acts of terrorism in the name of Christianity, we've clearly grown out of and away from the literal interpretations in the Bible. It seems pretty logical to me (as a 100% devout atheist) that this should have come to pass because with every advance in technology and our understanding of the earth and indeed the universe, it becomes more compellingly clear that the ancient writings in the Bible are a load of old cobblers. Mumbo jumbo from an ancient time that serves no purpose in a modern scientific era. We've been told porkies for centuries, and been gullible enough to believe it. But now, believing that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days, is the view only of loonies few and far between. Thankfully also, loonies not motivated to use violence to further their views.

So how do we over time, persuade people that these literal interpretations of the Quran are similarly flawed? It would seem to me that Isis and others are not much different to how we were 500 years ago, and that enlightenment will occur naturally in time. The question is, how do we accelerate the process?

The tone of this thread has been on the whole just right but atrocities such as the one on Monday are bound to open up the debate in an attempt to examine what might have caused this and what might be done to prevent it happening again.

The part of your post that I have highlighted is, IMHO, one of the prime motivators for young radicalised Muslim men and women to act in the way that the bomber did on Monday.

You are correct that the enlightenment in the 17th century did, through scientific reason and philosophical thought and debate, compel people, over time, to question certain religious certainties that had prevailed for many centuries as the dominant idea of how things came about and how society should be structured. The most significant outcome of this is what we might now term Western Global Capitalism (WGC).

The reformation and enlightenment rejected a lot of religious authority, however it did not reject it all and gave rise to a number of things we now take for granted all of which are based in a reformed view of Christianity. An example is the protestant work ethic - the idea that a good life is spent working hard and providing for your family etc. Of course through this the worker benefits to some extent (never enough) but the real beneficiaries are those who own the factories or the mills or the call centres and it is the interests of those few that are ultimately being met.

What WGC need is resources that can be capitalised (raw materials, labour etc.) and these need to be obtained at the lowest possible cost to make the most profit. With the raw material this is relatively easy but with labour not so. This is where WGC is so very clever though because it basically promises you what you want (happiness, contentment, fulfillment etc....) but only gives you what you need (shelter, food, security etc...) and it is the promise that keeps everyone engaged with work that does nothing to provide what people really want.

The other thing about WGC is that it uses up resources or they become to expensive. However this is no barrier as it will just move the market to where if can find the cheapest or most plentiful supply. Hence for the last 3-400 years we have been subjugating our own citizens as well as populations all over the globe in the name of 'progress' and 'democracy' (nice ideas that again never fully materialise). What we are seeing on the streets of European cities is a response to that. It is not new in the sense that there have been many attempts over the centuries to halt the tide of WGC or to make the system fairer (revolution) which have resulted in some tweaks to the model (universal suffrage) in some cases and suppression (totalitarianism) in others but most often scapegoating (fascism) where the blame for the failure of the system to deliver what we want is laid at the door of the 'other' (immigrant, Jew, Muslim etc.).

Sorry for the longevity of this but there are no simple solutions and we need to rethink things a lot.

 

[Manchester_lalala]

The Government is not responsible for your cowardice.

Who said I'm scared?

 

[Thaksinssoldier]

Not really. Like many on this thread, you're scared and angry. And in your fear you're turning to division as an attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible.

It's no different from 9/11 conspiracies.

We don't like disorder as a species. The human brain will always pick patterns out of chaos and always create order even if none really exists. It's why constellations exist, why astrology is a popular pursuit and the millions of miracle cures will always find somebody to buy.

You create a "them" because it makes you feel better. There's no them. Your "we must hunt them down" is batshit insane, and to be honest if I were to question you to actually explain in logistic terms what you mean by that, I'm pretty sure you'd know that it's batshit insane.

You do realise that to these scumbags(and I am talking about extremists in general and not muslims), we are "them".

You don't have spout some sanctimonious shite lad.

 

[domalino]

I will not let them attend a venue in the future which could now be considered a staging post for more attacks.

Stupid, most probably. But it's one less location I can change the way we go about our everyday lives.

I am too choked.

Don't think you can live your life like that. I know it's the first instinct, I've got tickets to gigs at the MEN in a few months and it's the first thing I thought of, but it has no significance other than being a place where thousands of people congregated.

We can't protect ourselves or the ones we love by not going, or stopping them going, to any event that involves any large crowd - whether it's a football stadium, Theatre, festival, or indoor stadium - just like we can't protect them from being run off the road by a drunk driver by stopping them ever getting into a car.

We need to root out the causes of extremism and confront to stop this, but we can't live like hermits in the meanwhile.

 

[foetus]

Not directly related but it brought to mind an interview i saw years ago with a retired American intellegence officer in relation to 9/11.

He said something along the lines of whenever an attack like this happens the information is usually found to have been available. He said usually there are triggers, little bits of information that in hindsight when looking back can all be found and linked together. The skill in the intellegence agencies is to see these links which to be fair they tend to be very good at, especially in the UK.

This is what happens when you hear the phrase " Known to the police", it doesn't mean that there was a direct threat.

The guy who held hostage and killed people at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney a couple of years back had an extensive criminal record for some serious shit (rape, armed robbery, attempted murder, hate speech etc if i remember correctly). He should have been locked up, not on bail. How much evidence should be needed for someone to be a direct threat?

In this day and age, anyone supporting isis should be locked up and have the key thrown away. Who gives a fuck if it offends the PC brigade.

 

[johnny on the spot]

What's the likelihood we'll see another attack, so soon after a first and while we're on Critical alert and have troops on the streets of the capital?

Who stands to gain the most from the implementation of these measures?

 

[Xiphos]

There you go fella.

Embarrassing toe curling claptrap, ISIS will be quaking in their boots, ooohhh look, a gritty Northern poet spouting crap, we had better stay away from Manchester their poets are better than our propaganda

 

[SWP's back]

But what is it about this particular ideology that makes it not only hateful but violently hateful?

I couldn't tell you.

I've posted before that I work with Qataris that believe that I'll burn in hell fire for eternity and the like. We have a bit of a joke about it. They know I'm "pagan" (atheism is a capital offence out here and I couldn't bring myself to put Christian down on my forms). But they are lovely, warm, hospitable people.

I don't think they'd want to see harm done to me. I've been given the odd "introduction to the Quoran" book as a gift. But there are senior individuals in my country that finance IS. So much so that half my work nowadays is tied up with anti-money laundering red tape.

The world head quarters of the Taliban is in the building next to mine in the Diplomatic Area. It's all very strange and I don't have a single answer to most of the questions being raised on how we combat violent Islamic extremism.

 

[Manchester_lalala]

The guy who held hostage and killed people at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney a couple of years back had an extensive criminal record for some serious shit (rape, armed robbery, attempted murder, hate speech etc if i remember correctly). He should have been locked up, not on bail. How much evidence should be needed for someone to be a direct threat?

In this day and age, anyone supporting isis should be locked up and have the key thrown away. Who gives a fuck if it offends the PC brigade.

Some people will be reading this post and trying to come up with an arguement against it, starting to get annoyed when reading some of the shit on this thread. You're right, they should be locked up without an release date.