Explosion at Manchester Arena, England - Ariana Grande Concert

[KiDisaster]

Mormont I'm glad you're daughter is safe and I hope she gets home quickly. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@mormont Glad to hear your daughter is safe! I'm sorry you guys are having to go through this.

 

[baxus]

Sorry to hear your family had to go through something like that, @mormont.

I'm glad to hear your daughter is safe.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Mormont, so glad your daughter is safe *hugs*  I can't even imagine the sick worry, knowing she was there when it happened.

[Guy Kilmore]

Mormont, I am glad that your daughter is safe.

[Maltaran]

4 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

There seem to be a lot of helpers on Manchester. 

The blood donor service has told people to stop coming to the donor centre because they've already had too many volunteers.

The bomber has been identified now - a 22 year old man born in Manchester, family of Libyan origin. IS have claimed responsibility, but they do that for everything these days.

[Werthead]

Glad to hear your daughter is safe, Mormont.

Quote

So, I'm aware that people are saying/posting inappropriate things on this topic all over the place. But one thing that interests me is the claim that there is a pattern to pre-election attacks... what would be the supposed particular aim of that? Destroy democracy? Stop people voting? Influence direction of votes? What?

Pretty much none of the above. There is no coherent political-military strategy at work here. Anyone who thinks the nation that outlasted Napoleon and Hitler and endured thousands of deaths at the hands of the IRA and hundreds of thousands at the hands of the Nazis will roll over should really know better than by now. The IRA, at the very least, had an identifiable and even practical thing they wanted and were forced into compromising for far less. These terrorists don't have any achievable goal at all. They're just lashing out.

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, Maltaran said:

IS have claimed responsibility, but they do that for everything these days.

I naively hoped that this might finally be the time the media realised that, much like the sun rising in the morning is not news, IS taking responsibility for these attacks is not news. I'm not saying people don't have a right to know who perpetrated this horrific attack, but until some recognisable connection is established, I wish we'd just fucking ignore them.

True @Werthead, even all the talk of dividing us and trying to disrupt our way of life and "letting the terrorists win" seems to give them too much credit. It makes the whole thing all the more tragic, that the ideology behind it is so flacid and weak and.....just plain stupid. It'd be a joke if it wasn't so tragic.

So so sorry to all those affected. Just unthinkably awful. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

57 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

It makes the whole thing all the more tragic, that the ideology behind it is so flacid and weak and.....just plain stupid. It'd be a joke if it wasn't so tragic.

So so sorry to all those affected. Just unthinkably awful. 

I don't think we can afford to view the ideology behind this act as being a joke at this point. I don't really see it as being weak or flaccid either. Not when it can inspire its' adherents to these sorts of acts. It's a scary ideology, IMHO. 

[ljkeane]

5 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I don't think we can afford to view the ideology behind this act as being a joke at this point. I don't really see it as being weak or flaccid either. Not when it can inspire its' adherents to these sorts of acts. It's a scary ideology, IMHO. 

They're doing this kind of thing because they're weak. There's absolutely no chance they're going to defeat Western militaries or culture, they can't even pull off attacks on significant government or military facilities or maintain a sustained and organised campaign like the IRA did. 

IS wasn't overly interested in things like this when they were conquering territory on the Middle East. Now they're in retreat they're desperate to claim responsibility for every terrorist attack to try and appear powerful.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

4 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

They're doing this kind of thing because they're weak. There's absolutely no chance they're going to defeat Western militaries or culture, they can't even pull off attacks on significant government or military facilities or maintain a sustained and organised campaign like the IRA did. 

IS wasn't overly interested in things like this when they were conquering territory on the Middle East. Now they're in retreat they're desperate to claim responsibility for every terrorist attack to try and appear powerful.

Yeah, I would agree that the act itself is weak, but I don't think the ideology that inspires it is. 

[Liver and Onions]

Glad that Mormont's daughter and Leap's friend are safe. I hope all of those injured make a fast recovery. 

[The Anti-Targ]

Best wishes to your daughter @mormont, and all the other concert goers and their families.

Tragically the govt only ever seems to raise the terror alert level to critical AFTER a critical terror attack happens.

I wonder if any govt really has a clue about what its doing / can do about this stuff. Even if they thwart 99 terror attacks out of 100, who actually gets to claim success. Is a 99% prevention rate success? Or is a 1% achievement rate success? For now, I would think the terrorist see 1% achievement rate as success. Which means no matter how our govts spin it, 99% prevention is failure. If it's even that high.

I see some Beber fans are calling for postponement / cancellation of his concert. IMO that's exactly what the terrorists want: disruption to ordinary people going about their ordinary lives. I hope the Beber concert goes ahead as planned, and that nothing bad happens (aside from concert goers being aesthetically assaulted by Justin Beber music).

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Glad to hear your daughter is safe, Mormont.

Pretty much none of the above. There is no coherent political-military strategy at work here. Anyone who thinks the nation that outlasted Napoleon and Hitler and endured thousands of deaths at the hands of the IRA and hundreds of thousands at the hands of the Nazis will roll over should really know better than by now. The IRA, at the very least, had an identifiable and even practical thing they wanted and were forced into compromising for far less. These terrorists don't have any achievable goal at all. They're just lashing out.

Not sure I go along with that. I think their (ISIS) goal is to bring racist, nationalistic, authoritarian governments to power across the free world in order to foment a global conflict in which Islam is the ultimate victor and Shariah law dominates. They are using disaffected Muslims who have no global strategic vision or investment in that goal who are just motivated to lash out. A big mistake is to think that those pulling the strings don't have a grand strategy in mind. While I might be wrong in what their grand strategy is, I am pretty sure they have one beyond simply blowing people up, because they are pissed off and because they can.

[Isis]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

@mormont

Tragically the govt only ever seems to raise the terror alert level to critical AFTER a critical terror attack happens.

I wonder if any govt really has a clue about what its doing / can do about this stuff. Even if they thwart 99 terror attacks out of 100, who actually gets to claim success. Is a 99% prevention rate success? Or is a 1% achievement rate success? For now, I would think the terrorist see 1% achievement rate as success. Which means no matter how our govts spin it, 99% prevention is failure. If it's even that high.

On the way into work this morning I was wondering how long it would be before the first one of these types of comments appeared.

The threat level has been raised because there is a possibility that Abedi was not working alone, meaning that there could be more attacks of this kind planned to take place in the near future (e.g, I personally wouldn't go anywhere near Wembley this weekend).

The problem is that the security services cannot 'claim success' because that is the secret nature of their work - they cannot disclose the details. So when they thwart an attack or the preparations of an attack the average person will not get to hear about it and that's just how it is. Nobody does that kind of work for the glory. There is no spin. It's just public servants working hard and doing their best to stop people getting hurt. So can we please point the blame in the direction it is deserved - the terrorists and not those working in CT.

[Hereward]

Well said.

[Which Tyler]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/home-secretary-us-intelligence-leaks-amber-rudd-irritating-donald-trump-russia-security-manchester-a7752511.html

Quote

Manchester Attack: Home Secretary Amber Rudd condemns US for leaks of shared British intelligence

Confidential details appeared in the US media apparently leaked by US intelligence

 

Dear the USA - if you want your allies to continue sharing confidential information with you - please still stop leaking to the press / foreign diplomats.
Sincerely
the UK / Israel (/Jordan?)

[SeanF]

I was reading in the Times today that some people have been posting the names of people at the Concert on social media, as dead or injured, when in fact they were unscathed.  The sheer sickness of such "humour" is hard to credit.

[baxus]

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Tragically the govt only ever seems to raise the terror alert level to critical AFTER a critical terror attack happens.

I wonder if any govt really has a clue about what its doing / can do about this stuff. Even if they thwart 99 terror attacks out of 100, who actually gets to claim success. Is a 99% prevention rate success? Or is a 1% achievement rate success? For now, I would think the terrorist see 1% achievement rate as success. Which means no matter how our govts spin it, 99% prevention is failure. If it's even that high.

Trust me, you don't want to live in a heightened terror alert state all the time.

In 2003, Serbian prime minister was assassinated and it caused a pretty big shitstorm, as you can imagine.

Bottom line is that we saw beat cops on every corner carrying AK-47s they were obviously not trained for, waving those things around like they're cotton candy. I have never felt as unsafe in my life, and I'd lived through my country being bombed to shit for two and a half months. Sure, they arrested lots of criminals but at the price of most law abiding people getting scared shitless by seeing guns wherever they turned. The worst thing was that the problem was not solved, and most of those arrested were freed (sometimes without even seeing court) and pretty soon it was business as usual.

[Lordsteve666]

47 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I was reading in the Times today that some people have been posting the names of people at the Concert on social media, as dead or injured, when in fact they were unscathed.  The sheer sickness of such "humour" is hard to credit.

It's even worse than that i'm afraid. Several people have noted that pictures of people supposedly missing in the attack are actually of past murder victims or of people totally unrelated to the situation.

The BBC has an article that shows that at least 2 murder victims, a Mexican journalist and a child model have all had their photos dropped into this by some sick bastards.

It's bad enough dealing with something like a terrorist attack is the world so far up it's on arse now that people get a kick out of creating fake missing persons for such events?!?!? I have no words.... 

[Wolfgirly]

This is horrible news. Rest in peace those poor innocent victims.