Explosion at Ariana Grande concert in Manchester May 2017 (Also London Bridge/Borough Market attack)

Continued from Ariana Grande concert in Manchester May 2017

...

i really do hate that this keeps happening at live music events. live music has been one of the most important things in my life.

― call all destroyer, Monday, 22 May 2017 21:03 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

two victims named so far, one was 18, one was only 8

flat raided on carlton road in whalley range, my old flat was two minutes away and there's no getting away from the strangeness of seeing this occur in such familiar settings. it's a fairly quiet, leafy corner of manchester, and it's obviously jarring to imagine someone making a nail bomb there (nothing confirmed yet of course). they're releasing photographs of victims now and it's overwhelmingly sad

gonna hug my kids tonight :(

I have been that guy standing outside, waiting for A&A to come out so we could go home in the car.

Obviously, nothing like this happened.

Seeing all the pics going round of the missing kids/siblings/friends, you know, etc.

flat raided on carlton road in whalley range, my old flat was two minutes away and there's no getting away from the strangeness of seeing this occur in such familiar settings. it's a fairly quiet, leafy corner of manchester, and it's obviously jarring to imagine someone making a nail bomb there (nothing confirmed yet of course). they're releasing photographs of victims now and it's overwhelmingly sad

― ogmor, Tuesday, May 23, 2017 1:25 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes i'm half a mile away, loads of sirens not too long ago. helicopter been over twice. working from home today because victoria is on my tram commute to bury. looking out the window on a beautiful warm spring day. and all that misery and lives ruined. sickening.

controlled explosion in Fallowfield

looking at the bbc ticker reading 'trump condemns attackers as evil losers' is inspiring real get-me-off-this-planet feelings

The Superbowl is the metaphor that keeps giving..

god even when Trump is doing something so benign as offering condolences he can't manage to not be deeply off-putting.

I have dealt with 50+ journos online today. Two found my mobile number. This cunt found my house. I still don't know if my brother is alive. pic.twitter.com/NYbLzBsVH0

— Dan Hett (@danhett) May 23, 2017

fucking hell

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/westandtogethermanchester

Re: the Hett family pestered by journalists - fuck that's horrible

"Let me have exclusive access to your suffering "

I can't read this article because my computer's too old to load some websites. Can someone tell me if it covers anything useful? I'm interested in looking at the response to the attacks, which this about, but for obvious reasons don't want to do my own research

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/the-simple-problems-with-the-rights-response-to-the-manchester-attack?utm_source=vicefbuk&utm_campaign=global

cardamon this is a pastebin of that vice article https://pastebin.com/EB2MDC6D

Cheers

yw

A 22-year-old from Manchester has been named by police as the attacker.

this is really sad and scary RIP

"evil losers in life" is pretty fucking otm if you ask me, fuck them

"evil losers in life" is pretty fucking otm if you ask me, fuck them

― flappy bird, Tuesday, May 23, 2017 7:42 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just watched the clip of the speech and was going to post pretty much the same thing. much as i abhor trump and what he stands for, that kind of unstatesmanlike talk seemed to hit a spot. not exactly diplomacy but sometimes saying it like it is, works. and yes i know a stopped clock etc.

If the Manchester attacker was Palestinian and the victims Israeli, the terrorist's family would receive a stipend from Mahmoud Abbas. pic.twitter.com/gmTqzYwZwY

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) May 23, 2017

^ real

If my daddy's not my daddy but my daddy doesn't know etc

This whole thing seems like an attack on the idea of female empowerment as much as anything else. An audience of mainly teenage girls attending a show on the Dangerous Woman tour - I mean, how could it not be? Just some of the toxic voices we're hearing from now e.g. Hatekins and @prisondipshit remember who they're aligning themselves with when they write their next fucking misogynistic anti-feminist screed.

Very much my thoughts. It feels to me like a very calculated both to attack children and young people in particular, and to attack women in particular, to attack a very female space - a more targeted thing than just a general attack on people who like to drink and enjoy themselves.

*a very calculated thing

(drink/dance/whatever)

do y'all really think there is that level of artist-specific or audience-specific calculation going on though? i'm genuinely curious because to me it just seems purely random. the last big concert attack was Eagles of Death Metal, which is pretty much as far from an Ariana Grande crowd as you can get.

two different forms of idolatry

I think they'll have been looking for a big gathering of people first and foremost

Whether it mattered that it was Ariana Grande and that there'd be lots of girls and young women there - it just feels as though the attacker will have been aware of that. Grande is well-known, talked about a lot, etc, so what 'Ariana Grande' is culturally, symbolically, is not an elusive thing to get?

There is a really good 2-part doc on Arte right now (in French) called Terrorisme, Raison d'Etat, by Ilan Ziv
http://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/064376-000-A/terrorisme-raison-d-etat-1-2

Ziv made another doc about 10 years ago specifically about suicide bombers, how they're recruited, by whom, etc
http://icarusfilms.com/new2002/hw.html

ISIS have claimed responsibility but I don't know how much that means yet. It may have been mostly this one man's invention, or may have had more or less to do with them. Either way, ISIS are definitely culturally literate (members post memes on social media) enough to do artist-specific targeting, and no reason the bomber if acting mostly alone couldn't have been. I have no proof for any of this of course

ISIS is interesting because some random turd can go ahead and do something like this and then ISIS can be like 'oh, ya, that was ummm us, FYI'

Yeah, and the link, the membership, could just be something like a subscription to a video stream

It seems this sort of bomb is not easy to make and operate without specialist help

xp I think it's very important to remember this, by the way, in order to maintain perspective. Even if this particular attack turns out to have been a 'classic' terrorist attack, i.e. made by a concrete organisation with concrete demands and special pin badges to prove membership, still a lot of contemporary attacks are done by individuals whose only contact with such an organisation is online.

Although cf what Tracer Hand says, yes that's a good point. We'll see what emerges I suppose.

that's an important point, and it certainly complicates any narrative you'd want to impose on ISIS-branded attacks. it certainly works in their favor though because even if there was some kind of pattern being orchestrated from above, the lone-wolf factor essentially eradicates that and only makes the whole spectre of terrorism more frighteningly random.

in the online social media materials distributed by isis and the like there is often info regarding bomb making etc.

xp Yeah there's the random factor - but someone acting on their own will struggle to knock out two security guards, or whatever - there are useful limits to how much a lone wolf can do, I guess.

though the perpetrator in this bombing had spent time in Libya so i'd imagine it's not possible to rule out that there's been some irl link. also police were looking for his brother iirc? so maybe not acting totally alone etc. etc. we'll know in due time

for whatever reason this bombing has saddened me more than most - i deliberately don't get emotionally invested in atrocities and disasters if i can help it, buti suspect it's how young so many of the victims and witnesses must have been that has got to me. felt like crying when i read about it yesterday

No problem with that? Your post shows you can separate your inevitable emotions from your take on 'policy'.

This is a well-sourced article about what's currently known

https://www.ft.com/content/93d616a6-3f97-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2

UK terror threat level raised to 'critical'. Troops could be deployed. More or less a state of emergency, in other words.

xp Could you c+p that, it's paywalled?

(xp) Yet we're still supposed to have a General Election on June 8.

It's all so senseless. The terrorists who do this sort of thing don't even have a clearly stated achievable goal, just death and destruction.

They have goals. Goal #1 is heighten the antagonism between the Islamic world and the West. The ultimate goal is for their version of Islam to squeeze out all others. They want to build societies based on a literalist reading of sharia law.

ISIS is an organization of dumbass psychopaths but they nevertheless have an ideology and an agenda.

I have an idea the ultimate goal of ISIS might be more banal, beneath the stated aim of a global caliphate - more like claiming a chunk of territory from syria, turkey and iraq and holding it for themselves.

But yes, antagonism between a 'west' and an 'islam' (and also building them two concepts and trying to make them concrete) is a big part of it.

But then I think Josh also has a point about the weakness in terms of definable concrete objectives in these attacks.

xp Could you c+p that, it's paywalled?

― Never changed username before (cardamon), Tuesday, May 23, 2017 1:56 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HFGnAUgCJvEJ:https://www.ft.com/content/93d616a6-3f97-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

or

https://pastebin.com/tDTBaXJJ

Great stuff, thanks again

why i support an anti-war agenda. Western foreign policy for the last 10+ years has only fed into this. we need to stop bombing. we need to stop droning. we need to stop arming. violence begets violence. we always find a convenient scapegoat, someone else to blame and say is worse, never taking time to seriously consider the consequences for those not so geographically privileged (Atlantic and Pacific ocean we love you). the Iraq War and War on Terror are things that happened, are still happening, and have consequences down the line, and will for decades. the US left needs to step up in regards to the anti-war effort. we need to course correct and then some.

so true adam

adam otm, which is also why seeing this current administration is so disheartening, it is almost guaranteed the situation will only get worst down the next 20 years.

At a slightly faster rate than it would have under Clinton, tbf.

This is probably not the best place to discuss it, but it seems ISIS goal is ... isolationist? They want their own country/land/laws, and no outside intrusion. But is that really achievable in today's world? Would anyone be cool with a draconian authoritarian region? A bunch of North Koreas? And would ISIS even be satisfied achieving its amorphous goals and stopping there? It doesn't seem feasible, or morally tenable. It's a total conundrum, really. The west is to blame for plenty of the mess, but there is every indication it would be a mess without our meddling.

That said, given population, poverty, countless years of malicious or misbegotten policy etc., any course correction would take decades. Which might not be a realistic goal, either. Is there any indication that a religious cult bent on mass destruction and/or world domination can change direction? It took centuries for the Christians and Muslims to chill out the first time around.

I don't gather that ISIS is isolationist - my understanding is that they want a clash of civilizations as much as Steve Bannon (and that's a major part of the problem - 'leaving well enough alone' isn't an option any more)

oh good Morrissey's shown up.

was actually waiting for that

cheers and big love btw to those who said supportive things on this thread last night.

a sombre night in the centre of town by all accounts; but thousands out and about; busier even than normal for a warm sunny evening.
Simple Minds did a big 'thing' at their gig tonight; Jim Kerr said some nice things etc. i wasn't there but the footage is on Twitter. i've never been their biggest fan but i bet it was a good gig to be at considering.

a sombre night *tonight* i should say.

I'm pretty sure ISIS strategy is to make me hate everyone and their dumb opinion in my local pub then fuck yeah you win, can we stop now.

(and that's a major part of the problem - 'leaving well enough alone' isn't an option any more)

should say it's not an easy option anymore - even if we stop bombing and interfering and propping up the Saudis and other regional autocrats, ISIS/etc. are still going to be trying to attack Europeans and Americans, which makes it harder to sell non-intervention

as long as Iran, Saudis and EUA do not to step up and use their petrodollars to finance peace in one way or another, ISIS and something similar will happen.

never taking time to seriously consider the consequences for those not so geographically privileged

Seriously wtf does "geographically privileged" mean? Major lols

some territories are better than others. pretty much the only way to explain history most influential movements without being racist, afaic.

So, to say Afghanistan is a 'shithole', that makes one a racist?

Nah I think that's totally fine

ISIS/etc. are still going to be trying to attack Europeans and Americans, which makes it harder to sell non-intervention

The guy who carried this out is from Manchester. That's in Europe.

He didn't seem to like it that much though.

van smack your mouth is a shithole

Seriously wtf does "geographically privileged" mean? Major lols

He means US is privileged by having ocean between it and the rest of the world? So can intervene but locals in the area will suffer more from reprisals than US will

He didn't seem to like it that much though.

No doubt, but this idea that there's thing out there, that we must destroy, separate from us, somewhere over there in the Middle East, and it's called da-da-da-da-da-da-DAHHHH ISIS is simple-minded.

Go over to Syria, get rid of these ISIS dudes, job done.

There isn't a simple solution to this.

I think most recent american interventions, especially with drones but also with aiding saudi arabia's proxy wars and things like that, are immoral on its own terms but i don't think stopping that stuff would make isis and al qaeda disappear.

And like, there are people fighting these groups -- fighting for a decent society. What is our responsibility to them? To the Iraqi army retaking Mosul, to the Kurds? Especially now that American actions created the vaccuums that allowed Isis and others to thrive, can we just cut our losses now, at this point?

i believe extreme poverty and massive inequality in the middle east is the root cause. not unlike how the great depression was one of the major factors in developing fascism in europe.

van smack your mouth is a shithole

― the late great,

Personal attack, congrats.

No doubt, but this idea that there's thing out there, that we must destroy, separate from us, somewhere over there in the Middle East, and it's called da-da-da-da-da-da-DAHHHH ISIS is simple-minded.

Oh geez.. It's that time again, between 24 tot 48 hours after an attack, when everyone's an expert. Didn't think it'd become this basic and lame on ilx, but here we are. The trrrists won.

Come on guys

Some people cope with trying to find solutions, it is very irrational and not to be taken seriously.

van snack i personally attack your mom on the nightly

also go fuck yourself

racist classist piece of garbage

I'm so sick of this shit. I've been here for 16 years and watch this place gradually turn more more into a haven for assholes. Why do I have to come on this board after a long day at work and listen to people insult my career or insult the part of the world I'm from. And then you get all self-righteous and huffy and act like I'm the asshole for getting offended.

Seriously the worst fucking people have come to dominate this board.

lol keep crying late great

mah feels

Shut up van smack

lol who are you? fuck outta here.

saying "mah feels" on ilx, my god get back to the rest of the internet where you belong you basic pos

Get lost fucko

Threadban nau

vahid all us usual assholes are still here too. Fuck that guy

Rattled by the alerts of an "imminent attack" and raising the national threat level to Critical. The more I think about it the more my blood boils and I wish we could just fucking gather every ISIS leader, affiliate, associate into one spot in the desert and just turn them into a sheet of glass once and for all. They build NOTHING, they give the world NOTHING, and all they believe in is chaos, destruction, and death. FUCK YOU

If the Manchester attacker was Palestinian and the victims Israeli, the terrorist's family would receive a stipend from Mahmoud Abbas.

If my granny had wheels, she'd be an omnibus.

So many young, beautiful, innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers in life. I won't call them monsters, because they would like that term. They would think that's a great name. I will call them, from now on - losers, because that's what they are, they're losers. And we'll have more of them, but they're losers, just remember that. Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people, and in today's attack, it was mostly innocent children. The terrorists and extremists and those who give them aid and comfort must be driven out from our society forever. This wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated. Innocent life must be protected. All innocent lives. Life must be protected. All civilized nations must join together to protect human life and the sacred right of our citizens to live in safety and in peace.

he's had two or three broken clock moments, this is one of them. other major one being the O'Reilly Super Bowl interview - "what? you think we're so innocent?"

This wicked ideology must be obliterated

you can obliterate people, or objects, but ideologies? it makes no rational sense. they are mental constructs. even if you eliminate all the people or objects that embody an ideology, those ideas cannot be stopped from arising again independently.

xp

22 people die at a concert, let's load up the boxcars and drive them out.

if yall can be middle east experts on ilx, i'm going to be a manchester expert: imagine what it's like to live in the uk as a second generation arab kid in 2017, hearing the drumbeat of racism, having your religion called an evil ideology, and a rightwing government pushing austerity programs, cutting your country off from the rest of the world, and your own government throwing your parents' homeland into chaos. venturing into trenchant social commentary here: the only "wicked ideology" is the one that governs the united kingdom, who profit from suffering in their own country and joined in the murder of millions and the destabilization of the entire world for their own gain.

how do you obliterate an ideology? who are you driving out? throw a couple imams in jail, deport them? round up some libyan kids that listen to al-baghdadi trap house?

yeah this isn't really a middle eastern problem, these killers live among us, go to school with us, work with us. and then they snap. there are a lot of stories about why but let's not "other" them in other ways, these are brits and french and belgians and so on.

... but they're not Americans, so don't expect much insight on ILX.

boy this thread sure went to shit overnight huh

still seems to be a siren every few minutes, international news vans still in albert square

canny move to commit your murderous cries for attention in the home of the BBC's rolling news service

that thought had occurred to me too, sadly

I know people need to deal with grief and fear in different ways but I cannot abide the sound of journalists - radio is what I engage with - striving for some kind of award with their strained, faux-sombre phrase-making, the portentous imagery of "this is my time to shine". to me, at least, there's a disrespectful tackiness about so much of these semi think-pieces that a plain reporting of the facts would avoid.

nick robinson is the worst for that

There was one yesterday morning on Radio 4 about a regular guy offering lifts to strangers that was completely The Day Today in delivery: " "I'm not a taxi driver", he said, "but I'll get you where you need to go"."

NV so otm, I was thinking exactly the same thing last night watching Emily Maitlis on Newsnight last night. Tell me the facts, stop trying manufacture what you consider to be approriate responses to them in the viewer..

So ... about to embark tomorrow on a long-planned two-week family trip to the U.K., with stops in London, Manchester and Edinburgh. Any notion about what the elevated threat level etc portend for ye olde Yank tourists? (Probably not much I guess. If we were of something other than European heritage it might be a different story.)

It is basically meaningless. You might see a few extra police about and have your bag checked going into tourist sites but that's about it.

under normal circumstances it's unusual to see armed police in Britain, so you might see more of them, but I guess that will be unremarkable for someone from the US

rest assured tipsy that any hostility you face in the uk will be coming purely from the traditional reflexive unpleasantness of the british

I know people need to deal with grief and fear in different ways but I cannot abide the sound of journalists - radio is what I engage with - striving for some kind of award with their strained, faux-sombre phrase-making, the portentous imagery of "this is my time to shine". to me, at least, there's a disrespectful tackiness about so much of these semi think-pieces that a plain reporting of the facts would avoid

funnily enough my colleagues and i, many of whom are ex-journalists, were talking about our revulsion to this earlier this morning

it's one of the many fucking horrible side-effects of 24-hour news, where the need to just keep talking no matter how little info you have is paramount, and it's infected every aspect of broadcast journalism

yeah, I forgot to add that bit but it's total a product of the stupidity of rolling news

i might not mind it quite so much if the grandstanding actually sparked debate or made any decent points but it's not like anyone ever has the courage to step out of 'oh the humanity!' mode

but does a rolling news channel need to be like that? run a range of quality contemporary reportage, World Service style, keep regular news bulletins, interrupt when there's something relevant to report.

that all costs money - ron burgundy emoting to camera over endlessly repeating shaky cameraphone footage is basically free

obv this would cost more money than giving somebody a mic and following them round Manchester city centre for hours while they stream of consciousness a bunch of Facebook memes

lol snap

i just saw the bbc ticker running what looked like the url of an instagram account of one of the victims which seemed like a new low

they also managed to fuck up the address so that it just read 'instagram/name' without a '.com'

Diana was pre-rolling news, and that's where this mode of thinking they have to 'reflect the national mood' kicked in, of course they don't know any actual plebs, so they've got to guess what they're thinking and then act it out in front of them.

there was this barely hidden glee in the voice of one reporter yesterday when she announced that names had started to be released, it was like "now the real human interest angle can begin"

thinking they have to 'reflect the national mood'

This used to be reserved for stuff like the Coronation or Winston Churchill's funeral, afaict.

yeah, the slow drip-feed of names and pictures and biographical details is manna from heaven for 24-hour news

i mean i'm not a journalist but let me take a swing at the national mood:

'fuck this is tragic, i feel terrible for the families'

now if only i could stretch that sentiment out over say 96 hours i could make it as a rolling news reporter

for his sick-making contribution to 'reflect the national mood' that's another one for the charge-sheet on Blair, when he gets arrested.

i mean i'm not sure that's actually on the statute books per se but i'm broadly supportive nonetheless

Yeah, Blair/Diana, the perfect storm of "I think speak for all of us when..." and "There can be no-one who has not been deeply affected by..." blah blah blafuckoff, bad enough telling us what to think without telling us what to feel.

Remember, it's rare

Don't forget - terrible things are on the news because they are rare and do not happen very often.

Although people are spending a lot of time talking about it, it is still very unlikely that events like this will affect you or your family.

The most important thing is that if you are feeling upset, don't keep what's troubling you about the news to yourself.

Talking to an adult about what in the news is worrying you can help you to understand what is upsetting you, and help those feelings of sadness, anger or confusion to go away.

CBBC: Advice if you're upset by the news

I genuinely think the above is a great piece, aimed at children who worry now.

But this text really should be read aloud and shoved into the faces of the many columnists and journalists tumbling over each other with grotesque, hardmanning, hate-filled pieces imho.

The US still appears to be leaking intel to the press. NBC is reporting WH officials have told them the bomber's family had reported him to the police as potentially dangerous.

The US is a leaky old vessel these days.

http://www.politico.eu/article/french-interior-minister-salman-abedi-had-proven-links-with-islamic-state/

xp France weighing in as well.

Radio 1 has been pretty good on this as well - knowing that this strikes right at the heart of their audience there have been a lot of reassuring sounds being made.

Remember when the government blatantly indicated they would use their intel prowess as leverage in Brexit negotiations with the EU?

Critical alert = Radio 1 digging out the Sabres Of Paradise iirc

Glad we've swung round to talking about the media coverage again, because I've been thinking about this overnight

http://i.imgur.com/66cjSfd.jpg

And clicking on the comments there's loads of stuff like this

http://i.imgur.com/OjHhbsY.jpg

Making me even more glad that I never tried to go into journalism if this is the state of things. Who harasses the recently bereaved? Who makes the effort to hector the bereaved people when they complain about the harassment, in the name of "public interest" as if that was some great over-riding moral imperative?

doorstepping is a time-honoured journalistic tradition tbh, albeit an unpleasant one - the only difference in the modern era is that those in a position of being doorstepped can broadcast the details for themselves on social media

obv hectoring the bereaved in response is a modern invention too, hurrah for progress

Gather and report news. One of the ways that was done was by hacking dead kids voicemail.

And if anything were going to change, it would have changed when we found out. But it didn't, and it won't.

I can't imagine how angry I'd be if this happened to me, the sense of entitlement is so odious, the personal details are none of our business

Death knocks have been a thing forever (and often end up with the journalist being invited in and talked to for ages). This feels like a new level of intrusiveness though - largely driven by social media and the Insatiable Content Machine.

that is a very tasteful calling card tbf

'lots of women take it as a compliment' / 'that's crass of course, but as long as it's done respectfully...'

Also, the entitled anger at the guy who's fearing for his brother's life daring to block some cunt lecturing him on the role of the press. Whatever your opinions on that just be fucking human and accept he doesn't have to debate you in a time of grief.

on my lunch we walked past police, fire dept & army guys as they were finishing raiding a place. some of our brave servicemen with scarves over their faces then blazed through a red light in a black van and flicked us a V, which can surely only be taken as a gesture of solidarity and defiance

For the absence of doubt I think that death knocks are reprehensible regardless of the situation but technology has magnified the whole thing and turned it into a feeding frenzy.

How did I miss this story? These girls are heroes. Fuck the S*n pic.twitter.com/ZDQPHIHVW4

— Harry Stopes (@HarryStopes) May 24, 2017

i think there's a case for reporters local papers offering to help grieving families get their story out -- and there's really no other way to be certain this happens than doorstepping -- but there's something p repulsive abt hacks from the tabs helping themselves to this argument

^^ there definitely is. Dealt with that myself covering the death of a soldier in Afghanistan, who was from my local area. But all on the family's terms. The national media is a circus that travels around doing this, preying on today's story, never to be seen again in said community after. There's no accountability, which is *very* different for local media, who are part of the community.

it's so easy to get in touch with the media now if and when people are ready, there is no good reason for hurrying them

lbi and mark s v much otm

ogmor otm

it is weird that the BBC pop music stations - 1, 2, 6, 1X, Asian - are the ones covering this with class. Both in DJ links and in the news reporting.

Manchester - A Fat Old Fool's Viewpoint....

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/23/morrissey-attacks-politicians-and-the-queen-over-manchester-terrorism-response

Have people heard the performance poet on Radio 4? They were making a big deal out of him on Today. Afraid I found it a bit trite.

Troops on Downing Street is nonsensical cringeworthy shit and think it counts as 'campaigning' tbh

fuck me, morrissey's gone full trump

Morrissey cited government immigration policy among his complaints saying the prime minister would never change her immigration policy in the light of the attacks. It is believed that the bomber named by police, Salman Abedi, was British-born and from Manchester.

Morrissey also appeared to suggest that politicians were afraid to refer to Abedi as an Islamist extremist.

The claim that politically correct leaders routinely refuse to mention Islam when referring to terror attacks carried out by people holding a violent interpretation of the religion is common on the far-right. In recent years, many politicians have acknowledged the role of such an ideology once it has been confirmed, while also stressing that it is alien to the vast majority of the religion’s adherents.

Troops on Downing Street is nonsensical cringeworthy shit and think it counts as 'campaigning' tbh

^^^
absolutely, that is pure fucking campaigning and TM should be lambasted for it.

this will probably be the thing that makes them tighten up the airbnb rules

Dan Hett's brother, I am sorry to say, has been confirmed dead.

Solid work the Guardian in underlining with every paragraph that Morrissey's talking complete shite.

Meanwhile, at the Terrograph, Why Oh Why meets Will This Do is the order of the day. Every day.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/24/left-has-lost-plot-thinks-manchester-attack-tory-conspiracy/

Was about to say that Tom Harris has fought off a lot of stiff competition to be indisputably the vilest Telegraph columnist when I found out, until the last election, he was a Labour MP.

when people say Blairite is a weak description and lacks nuance, just call all cunts like TH tory scum then, to keep it simple.

He replaced Dan Hodges as a commentator for The Daily Telegraph.

He is a Christian,[25] and enjoys astronomy and badminton. He is a prominent fan[26] of Doctor Who and friend[27] of the show's showrunner Steven Moffat. He contributed to the collection of celebrity fan memories, Behind The Sofa[28] published by Gollancz in 2013. He also claims to have owned every issue[29] of Doctor Who Magazine.

says he's pals with moff yet very thoughtlessly uses the phrase losing the plot

Probably not the thread for it but I briefly knew that Harry Stopes person that Mark quoted earlier - a proud Mancunian, I actually thought of him independently earlier, wonder if he's OK

Friend saw the Weekend here last night, said security was like nothing she'd ever seen. Dogs, military guns, armored cars ...

hahahahahaha actual everyone else gets tae use her video except them

fuck the sun pic.twitter.com/nZ4i12TQ2g

— Butt Sea (@Butsay_) May 23, 2017

^they'll get hold of it anyway - she agreed Sky could have it and the Sun will screenshot 'courtesy Sky'. Bastards!

hey NV:

http://bbc.in/2rhE7CC

better not take our own sandwiches then, maybe wear my best boxers

(i understand there will be people who want the reassurance, just hope this isn't stupidly heavy)

best thing about tom harris is: during the last election he realised quite early on he was about to get gubbed so at one point he took to posting on twitter a video of him dragging his dog round the living room while it was attached to his hoover

https://www.thecanary.co/2017/05/24/manchester-set-become-second-city-ban-sun-appalling-response-concert-bombing-tweets/

part of what got the sun in trouble:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAgFv_9XcAAwsXP.jpg

Well tbf they were referring to IRA victims. Ban them anyway of course.

I wouldn't be sad to see the back of the Sun. Moz can fuck off, stirring up stupid shit. All the twats are out in force on facebook saying PC is to blame whereas, it seems more like a lack of PCs due to police funding cuts. Ariana Grande better than Moz.

Walked past a mosque earlier, one I walk past every day, apparently it's the one the attacker attended. The Imam and his own family had reported him to the police AFAIK?

Every bar and restaurant and cafe is now sporting a blackboard offering 10% off for NHS staff and emergency services hashtag love hashtag heart bee sad face.

Previously I seen Tony Walsh (the poet at the vigil) around a bit. He's made people feel better and isn't Morrisey so scores points for that

I am feeling a bit out of sorts with so many people taking to social media to say how it's an attack on all of us and we will be resilient because of our great Mancunian spirit. My thoughts on that are, well, I'm not a little girl that's been killed or a parent whose child has been killed, I feel that victims may be erased in all this civic I Heart MCR hashtag business. I mean, great, you've taken to facebook to list your favourite things about Manchester such as Oasis and Almost Famous burger bar but maybe some could think on

^ The usual Cardamon Caveat applies, this ilx poster has been known to misjudge

Am in no state to elaborate, but you are 100% on the mark Cardamon. No misjudgement whatsoever. (social) media always the worst in the aftermath of something as terrible as this tbh; it amplifies cliches and silences much needed nuances. Glad you can express those here. I feel you and am wishing you the very best.

the safety check on FB is a great tool, to be fair.

oh are we sharing canary links on ilx now?

fair dos like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9HxlA1dm7c

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sorted-mi5-how-uk-government-sent-british-libyans-fight-gaddafi-1219906488

also fair

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/266206224/preorder-shut-up-morrissey-cotton-tote

xp Thanks Bateau. I haven't been directly affected although I know some people who work at the arena, who obvs have been. I am, shall we say, keenly aware of my non-victim-hood at this present moment.

I mean, not only have I not been a victim, but my chances are also much less in the first place. As a currently very plain looking white man, I really don't have the big 'target' sign above my head when I'm bumbling down the street, which others do. I'm way low on the list of people terrorists would like to blow up; none of the armed police or soldiers currently on maneuvers are going to make a too-quick judgment about me, and if I offer condolences to someone, no-one's going to say I'm a liar, as is being said (by idiots but still being said) about Muslims offering condolences.

Ariana Grande announces ‘One Love Manchester’ benefit with Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and more

Genuinely amazed she's back so fast, with a host of other artists too. Well done.

bless her

I wonder what the security is going to be like for this

lineup has a ton of big names but would it kill them to get people actually from manchester? not like there's a dearth of talented musicians in the area... (this is a shitty nit to pick but this is the internet)

i would not want to hear any of that lot live, but i think its an amazing line up.
fair play to her.

Excellent. Well done Ariana!

Fans who attended Grande’s May 22 concert can attend the benefit show for free.

double excellent.

Shitty nitpick indeed and a bad turn of phrase

Xxxp

i think the way AG has dealt with this has been rather wonderful.

Class act.

http://johnpilger.com/articles/terror-in-britain-what-did-the-prime-minister-know

manchester concert to be broadcast live across tv and radio - http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/bbc-one-bbc-music-announces-one-love-manchester-broadcast-plans

Various people are reporting some kind of incident/attack at London Bridge.

Yeah apparently driver ran some people over and then went on a stabbing spear

Driving a B&Q van acc to twitter?

oh for fuck sake :(

shout out to all london ilxors, hope you're all safe

No confirmation yet of what actually happened.

Hard to keep dealing with these.

Met saying there was an incident at Borough market as well

As well as #LondonBridge officers have also responsed to an incident in #BoroughMarket. We have armed police at the scenes.

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) June 3, 2017

info so far from london bridge -- via bbc and the guardian (both stories largely via the same on-the-spot bbc reporter) -- is that a van driving abt 50mph hit several people on pavement, and that at least four were seriously injured; a man ("with his shirt off") has apparently been arrested

also widespread disruption to transport: london and southwark bridges closed, no one allowed on or off at london bridge and monument stations, and i think other was well

borough market is how far from london bridge? quarter of a mile or something?

If that

50-100 yards, some bits of it less

Charing Cross and Cannon St also closed, it's a pretty wide lockdown area

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/live-updates-police-incident-petrol-13134357

Robberies and drug gang stuff aren't uncommon in cheetham hill iirc, could well be something non-terror related

still a bit wary of just sharing things i'm reading but the guardian report of the borough market part of the incident suggests there was a stabling -- or possibly more than one -- outside a pub just off the market (there are several)

and also that police are hunting for three suspects (in addition to the one arrested? not clear): hence perhaps the breadth of the shutdown (canon street and charing cross are both only one railway stop away from london bridge) (i think that's right)

3rd incident in Vauxhall

(stabbing not stabling: london is a victorian city but no horses were involved to my knowledge)

no detail yet what the vauxhall incident is -- or if it's just the police being super-cautious investigating a possible report (they're advising ppl to stay away)

police have confirmed "more than one fatality" :(

where the van actually crashed is just feet away from where i often catch the bus home after being in the pub near london bridge or in borough area -- it looks as if it swerved across the central reservation (or similar) at some point

best wishes to all London (& Manchester, & other...) ilxors, stay safe

Vauxhall clear.

Service has resumed and there is a good service to all destinations.

— Northern line (@northernline) June 3, 2017

^^^correct londoner response here is "well, that's a first"

still hoping that the confirmation re fatalities is wrong tbh, the met feed hasn't mentioned it: apparently it was police manning a cordon saying it, not an official approved comment

Phone footage broadcast on BBC including someone saying "cunt" (apparently a PC?)
BBC apologise for the broadcast of that word
Numerous tweets highlighting this absurdity

Police: 'More than one fatality'. Three men stabbing people, a witness says.

what the fuc

that police "more than one fatality" isn't an official police statement, it's coppers at a cordon where they're probably trying to get rubberneckers to leave the area

(may turn out to be true but fingers x-ed not)

Phone footage broadcast on BBC including someone saying "cunt" (apparently a PC?)
BBC apologise for the broadcast of that word
Numerous tweets highlighting this absurdity

Sky apologized for playing the video with "cunt" in it ... and then played it again, uncut (anag.)

Christ this is grim - hope everyone is okay.

The incident at #Vauxhall is a stabbing and is not connect to the incidents at #LondonBridge & #BoroughMarket

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) June 3, 2017

rainy knifecrime island is rainy knifecrime island :[

met have declared the london bridge/borough incident event a terrorist incident

actually as terrorist incidentS but that's probably not a significant distinction

I assume that's just "we don't know enough to say that they're connected" - it'd be very odd if they weren't, since they are as you say right next to each other. I was thinking about the previous vehicle-on-bridge incident three months ago, when there was a lot of reports of that as separate incidents (though not by the police as far as I remember).

WaPo:

Six people were killed, and at least 20 others injured, in terrorist attacks on the London Bridge and at a nearby market. Officials said the three attackers had been shot dead by police.

Christ

since Nice i've just accepted that this will be a monthly occurrence.

I just don't know what the endgame is here. I cycle between thinking there must be a finite number of these suicidal maniacs, and thinking that they're ultimately going to get what they want, ie provoke an already islamaphobic-leaning govt/country/"west" into actions that punish the innocent majority for crimes by an infinitesimal minority related to 'Islam' only by skin-tone, origin or their own sick interpretation of the text.

still one of the best articles I've read about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

All so draining/frustrating/disgusting.

(Might be worth editing the thread title to include this attack?)

News saying London might have to assess street furniture and bollards to stop ye fuckers driving so fast into people everywhere. We so british, fucking bollards.

don't know why i'm more upset by last night's attack rather than the one in westminster, which happened about five minutes walk from the office i was sitting in at the time. i guess the violence of it feels even more wild and erratic. i don't know what we can do about these attacks, or how we can ever stop them.

it's a small and stupid thing to say in the context but i am fatigued and frustrated by some of the responses to terrorist attacks. like it is not an act of defiance to leave our house, or go to work, or do what we would normally do.

a group wading into pubs and restaurants with knives on a saturday night in an area i and people i know go out in is upsetting. and also yes, the way suddenly everything is forced to become a statement about the event.

decision to cancel the marr show in favour of rolling news is a really poor one and i'm ambivalent about central campaigning being suspended. on the one hand it's difficult to know what can be productively said in the way of campaigning in the direct aftermath of an attack, on the other, we're four days out from a democratic election.

there isn't anything we can do - though i do think from other events in a small way that resourcing mental health care better wouldn't hurt. it also regularly seems the case that attackers have been involved in non-terrorist crime before

ultimately tho, you put a ring of steel round a place, it's harder for people to go about their business, you create choke points and the attack takes place outside a protected area. fuckin iron bollards everywhere are not an answer!

I had a fairly unusual reaction to this waking up this morning, as it was unfolding. For the first time ever I've felt that violence might be the solution. If caught in a situation like this could I be the one to stand, fight and try and disarm one of these people? Should I study self defence? This is strange and quite unlike me.

Of course I don't think I have it in me, I think I would run for safety and in hope I would get away like everyone else. This seems so up close and personal though, what would happen if faced with it?

french cities are full of pretty little bollards and barriers mainly because the sidewalks are so tiny, can't see how it'd hurt

i hear you Ed

yep

Of all the weekends for my mother to visit. ..

Of all the weeks to hold a general election...

yes, that's fair, tracer. i think it's the larger anti-terrorist stuff that's appeared around buckingham palace/constitution hill and whitehall that feels too much (and also not enough if a person is really determined).

the ability to attack using basic tools of life makes it hard to feel there's any structural response (whether street furniture or administrative) that would be both effective and not incredibly limiting to everyday life.

yes, "what would i do?" feeling is v strong. esp because those sorts of evenings in those sorts of places people are out with loved ones and friends.

Sorry that i was kinda joking, its still an abhorrent attack. I just found it perverse and absurd to wake up that being the news talking point

I had a fairly unusual reaction to this waking up this morning, as it was unfolding. For the first time ever I've felt that violence might be the solution. If caught in a situation like this could I be the one to stand, fight and try and disarm one of these people? Should I study self defence? This is strange and quite unlike me.

According to some reports, diners in one of the restaurants that was attacked threw bottles and chairs at the attacker - I think I could manage to throw a bottle or two.

... provided there were plenty of bottles to hand and plenty of other bottle throwers.

Already many major streets have plenty of bollards and other very solid street furniture. You couldn't mount the pavement with a vehicle between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, for example (I was considering this as I shopped there a few weeks ago).

very strange reading the reports, something freshly horrifying about the familiarity of the landscape. No matter how many times I've passed over westminster bridge and its environs it has never psychically shifted into a real space for me, it is imagined London, remote and touristed. But Borough high street, so many friends and people I know have worked in the market and pubs around there. Felt much realer than ever before. In the way that violence on the news is subject to so many distancing prisms that make violence "here" feel realer than "there." No wonder so many can feel so easy about lobbing bombs into Syria. "A wedding in Raqq has been bombed" "A funeral in Aleppo." So little you hear about the collateral victims. Those attending, those lives cut short. Its deeply miserable, and part I think of the ingraining of the terrible coldness described in the killers actions. Because we all do this. Not murder people. But we all allow ourselves not to think about the terrible human cost, the almost unreal daily tragedies. "They hate our freedom and our way of life." The terrible disconnect we understand, always, between "us and them."

I think Corbyn is right about ungovernable spaces in Libya, conduits for funding and arming militias. But its more, its about extreme inequality, the monetisation of the criminal-justice system, cuts-to mental health services, cuts to youth-work, housing policies that inflame rather than promote community cohesion because, and I know there are no facts yet, but I suspect this is home-grown terrorism that is linked to international groups mainly through its symbols and names. The disconnect is something here, right on our doorstep, and the measures and safeguards that might contain it and detect it earlier have been so chipped away at through defunding. Through failure to provide evidence of efficacy. Through massive cuts to local government.

Oh, here we go, Theresa May, it's the internet ...

Our society is too tolerant of extremism and we have to have some embarrassing conversations?

... some other weird comment about the public sector too?

Best to all of you guys, glad you are safe.

"There is “far too much tolerance of extremism in our country”, she says."

What does this even mean?!

also,

"We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed... That is what the internet provides"

that was a campaign speech by other means imo. the met haven't said anything about the planning or organisational structure behind this attack. presumably because no one knows.

Can't trust those Muslims. And Corbyn. (xp)

can't bear her mic drop speech endings where she has to suddenly turn and march back into number 10

maybe it is an inappropriate thought, but in the campaign pauses after these attacks it always feels like May is doing some not very subtle politicking.

Not inappropriate, accurate.

We went through London Bridge on the way home from somewhere else about an hour and a half before the attack happened - at one point we were debating whether to have another drink or go home, and decided to go home. It's extremely grim to think that decision could easily have been the difference between caught up in the mayhem or not. Not even thinking about personal safety here, I just can't even contemplate how I would cope with witnessing something like that.

The reaction of the police and ambulance services appears to have been very fast, well-drilled and decisive and probably saved a lot of lives, the whole thing seems to have been over in eight or nine minutes. The stories coming from witnesses in Borough Market are utterly horrifying - it would have been absolutely full of people at 10pm on a warm summer's evening. For those who don't know it - it's a very mazy and quite confusing area underneath a lot of railway lines, the potential for something even more horrific to have occurred was huge.

The timing of this, the weekend before the election, is probably not a coincidence. I remember being extremely relieved that nothing major happened in France during the campaign there.

that was a campaign speech by other means imo

this probably makes me hopelessly naive, but I was surprised by quite how shameless this was

"this government has...." quite a few times

In contrast, Emily Thornberry absolutely refusing to make any comments that could be construed as political, despite prompting from the interviewer.

cosign plax long post

also cosign matt: some of why the story last night seemed strangely impalpable at the time and -- i was hoping -- wrong, abt fatalities and such, is that we were actually getting the story of what happened on the bridge endlessly updated, bcz it was straight-forward to gaze across and judge what could be seen, but the part of it on the bridge was just the start, and most of it was occurring not-yet-reported in the market, which is a warren, much of it underneath the railway arches and in adjacent alleys and such: i've walked thru it many times, full and empty, but have always found its actual physical geography very hard to visualise

May talks some drivel - so is there a cabal of potential terrorism in the public sector? better wear a stab vest next time I need to go to the Town Hall.

She is: Conservatives have initiated both of these campaign suspensions and have been shading their political opponents during the aftermath.

I am pretty sure that I'd pick up a barstool and chuck it at a guy with a knife, if I was in that setting and I was sure I wouldn't miss.

I wonder if this gets bigger play outside the Indy: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/home-office-terrorist-funding-report-saudia-arabia-focus-not-publish-conservatives-government-a7766381.html?amp

Think she means schools aren't interrogating enough of their Muslim pupils and police aren't going into enough mosques to have embarrassing conversations xp

Fuck her, she's been looking for ways to hollow out our civil rights ever since she started at the Home Office. I hope when campaigning resumes later, she gets the polite contempt she deserves.

I hope her grasping opportunism completely blows up in her face, any reasonable person can see through her gaming - apart from the bbc, who of course love it.

Reprehensible bullshit when you consider that warnings about the Manchester bomber, from people within his own community, were ignored.

Haven't seen TM's response, may avoid it.

I share the feeling of others that - as it happens, contingently, for me - this is closer to home. Not far from where ILB FAP happens, among many other things.

I admire the quick and effective police response. And I imagine they took action they had to. But - couldn't it be a good thing if with one of these attacks, a perpetrator was taken alive, so they could be interrogated about background, contacts, motives? Surely that would be good for 'intelligence'. Every terrorist nowadays seems to die on the spot.

Agreed, but reportedly they were wearing fake suicide vests.So understandable that they made the call that key thing to do was prevent further loss of life.

While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is - to be frank - far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.

So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society.

That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.

Why mention the public sector? What is she suggesting?

That whole sequence is 0_o

this is too depressing to think about very much today but i will pause to question the current state of May's mental health and move on

Con pundits: apologize for mentioning the PM's health !!

[this is what they say to Paul Mason
He laughs: No, I'm NOT going to apologize, you call MY leader a terrorist]

The more i think about it, the grimmer I feel. I have a friend who works at borough market, who i'm glad is ok. Like plaxico said, its so very close and real.

And yet it really isn't still. My whole life I have heard of attacks all around the globe, by monsters and lunatics. My sis was sat at the other side of the train that blew up at edgware road on 7/7, she had to walk past the screams of dying people to get out. This has always been a grime part of reality, somehow. For my life and this strain of extremism, it was the ira for my parents, for americans its whiteys with gun obsessions, etc. Etc. Shits always seemingly happening and has for decades. There is no logic or pattern, murderous lunacy rarely makes sense. So why should I let it take real and lasting effect on me? I feel quite numb and blase about it.

Of course that is not the same as talking about the politics or motivations, which should be discussed etc.

Old-school ILX lost a dear friend and poster in 7/7.

This is a day I'll be wandering over to Liz's bench in Queen Square for a think and a sit-down.

/2 May's statement was political, and maybe necessarily so. "Review anti-terror strategy": correct - its not working well enough...

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) June 4, 2017

I think she just has embarrassing conversations on the brain due to brexit negotiations tbh

I think P Mason is talking garbage, again.

the "anti-terror strategy" for attacks like last's nights are what? Benign police state or something? May's politicking is in dreadful taste are not necessary at all.

Succession of ex-policemen appearing on Sky News giving Theresa May a kicking.

I was thinking myself, if this attack happened in Birmingham or Leeds say, then the resources for such a rapid response simply would not be there.

Obviously the police never get on with Home Secretaries just like teachers never get on with Health Ministers or teachers with Education Ministers. (xp)

But they really don't get on with one who presided over 20,000 job cuts and another 5000 jobs gone throughout security agencies.

not to start a fight w/calz about this, but i think mason's approach is actually smarter than the hurry-for-cover centrist piety we've all got so used to: instead of "oh noes, the prime minister is politicising a terrible event, let us instead all retreat to the nothingy nostrums we can all agree on" (which wd not shut may up but wd somewhat hobble her political critics) he's basically saying (or at least i'm reading him as saying) "the prime minister claims she's not politicising this -- well actually she is and actually she's right to; but of course her politics are actual garbage, so all her perspective and decisions are bad -- our by contrast are good, vote the absolute boy corbyn"

i.e. he has to cede her right to be political -- albeit incompetently and malevolently poltical -- to create space for criticism to be voiced ahd heard and agreed with (so it's an anti-neolib move, if you like -- tho calling it that publicly wd help no one)

I just don't see how you can prevent attacks of this nature (people with will to cause mayhem and death get a ford Transit and knives) without an erosion of civil liberties. What type of anti-terror strategy would have prevented such an attack? Maybe it's my paucity of imagination, but I can't think of any "strategy" that won't be bad news for everybody, but especially bad news for non-white Muslim folks. And good news for people that admire the work "our boys" have done abroad and those quite comfortable with the erosion of human rights "cos they've got nothing to hide" etc.

as I recall, Mason gives, in his other tweets, some specific ideas. Whether they are good, another matter.

I quite like Mark S's point but I spose it's about who has power to frame things, and I don't think people are going to get power to frame TM as 'talking politically'.

'the absolute boy' - whence comes this phrase? I saw Owen Jones say it about Clive Lewis and thought it was OTT but at least in a way fitted CL (who is a jack the lad character in a way), but does not fit JC.

This person who I think is Mark S's friend also uses it about JC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-WqYEA1ql0

Mark & calzino's posts are the first things I've read this morning and I love ILX.

https://media.tenor.com/images/abc836baf52b3ac38b3496b54243a95d/tenor.gif

i like it bcz it annoys the right ppl on twitter, it's very silly

(aaron b is not actually "my friend" in the sense that he knows i exist)

Trump classy as ever though.

Trump is a cockfarmer. I feel happier for typing that.

Maybe our Prime Minister will phone him to express her disappointment with his remarks.

when I reconcile the phrase "the absolute boy" my mind thinks of the cartoon version of Karl Pilkington

https://m0.joe.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/karl2.jpg

just read the rest of mason's tweet-thread abt "things we can do" -- his practical suggestions -- and it is in fact mostly p terrible, as calzino said it was

i still think the response "no, let's politicise this, the PM is right about that (even if she says she's not doing so)" is absolutely the correct rhetorical tactic tho

former Met officer on police cuts

Former Met officer Peter Kirkham is absolutely damning about the government's police cuts: pic.twitter.com/jr1ulEurX1

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 4, 2017

he says: response good in London, but police coverage 'threadbare elsewhere in the country'

he says government lying about police numbers.

This is why this debate needs to happen now - there are only three days of campaigning left and if a respectful hush is left to hold for too long it will be too late.

It might be sensible for Labour to hold off and let other voices like the one above fill the gap though.

Emily Thornberry has called out May's campaigning and has said Labour will begin theirs again this evening

And Nicola Sturgeon skilfully dodged the BBC's attempt to get her to agree with Theresa May's nonsense statement.

This has also shaken me up more than the Manchester or Westminster attacks, maybe because I've been out round London Bridge many times, maybe because the timing of it is so horrible, I'm already nervous enough with the election coming up.

While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is - to be frank - far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.

It really is sad and draining to hear May coming out with this tired schtick. I've typed out about five different incisions of her comment here but it just seems pointless to engage with this idea of this terrorism tolerance that's apparently going on, and is 'embarrassing', and we need to start 'being frank' about it. Or what 'extremism' means.

She surely doesn't actually believe this line, right? It's just the line. Just how politicians sculpt a horrible event to get the voters in. She's just putting her hours in.

Oh yeah and bring in 'the public sector' as an afterthought, got to tar them somehow. It's the bloody public sector who responded to the emergency, in their ambulances and police cars!

"Tolerance" and "Facebook" are about all you can blame when, er, security was your job for seven years.

Don't get the swipe at the public sector *at all*. Preemptive because she knows the cops will blame her, as they're now queueing up to do?

idk what kind of chutzpah it takes to blame 'tolerance for extremism' when the Manchester bomber's mother seems to have told the police he was dangerous but the government appears to have turned a blind eye to him joining a friendly Islamist militia at the age of sixteen.

The swipe seems to be that the public sector seems to be too tolerant of extremism - more so than the rest of society, it seems - I still don't know what that means though.

I work in the public sector, so I'm probably more to blame than the person who has been Home Secretary for six years - fine, I'll take it on the chin.

perhaps she means MI5

but seriously, it's sickening and she shouldn't be allowed to raise any of these points in public without being shouted down and torn apart

absolutely, the bbc have been disgraceful today, again.

I can't get past it being 8 minutes from first phone call to all of the perpetrators shot, it seems bizarrely swift.

Does it? For central London at a time when there's less traffic?

It's the efficiency of the public sector!

This comment above is so OTM:

--- It's the bloody public sector who responded to the emergency, in their ambulances and police cars!

Had my first real scare last night: friend's bf said he was in Vauxhall when she texted him about the initial news of attacks, then was incommunicado for ages as we frantically reloaded news sites to figure out what was going on there. Thankfully he was just hanging with friends and not paying attention to his mobile.

Had a friend from Porto over as well, went to see Moodyman. East London nightlife going on as usual, really strange feeling of wondering how many ppl didn't know what happened.

Guardian live updates of Theresa May's speech I think paraphrased her as saying islamic extremists needed to be convinced "western values are better", good to see reading the transcript that it wasn't quite that deranged (speech still horrible obv).

The police are never talked of as being apart of the public sector - I assume because right wingers approve of them. And prison officers. And the armed forces.

Guardian live updates of Theresa May's speech I think paraphrased her as saying islamic extremists needed to be convinced "western values are better", good to see reading the transcript that it wasn't quite that deranged (speech still horrible obv).

She kind of did say that.

She made a clear distinction between Islamic extremism and Islam as a whole, and suggested "British values" (I know, lol) are compatible with the latter. So standard tory as opposed to full-on Trump as the paraphrase read to me.

can someone pls point out to theresa may that she's a public sector worker too

If this insipid troll stays on as PM for five years then it will be confirmed: the postwar boomers are the worst generation of English-speaking white people that ever existed.

Including the ones that owned and traded slaves? Really?

Ok fine nevermind. Progress!

Take it as a misspoken reference to public sphere tbph

Yeah, I assumed that she'd said the wrong word.

Regardless, it wasn't very dignified, was it?

The, er, mother and father of Freudian slips then.

Hmm but then she also says 'society'

The, er, mother and father of Freudian slips then.

Hard to top IDS from the other day - "what we're trying to get away with in our manifesto..."

LOOOL saw that!

In other news, C4 News just interviewed Ginger Steve, a spacey homeless guy who used to hang out with the couriers at the pub under Ed's flat, and he is apparently due praise for tending to a wounded young woman hit by the van at London Bridge last night. Good on you, Steve.

it seems easy to build a picture of how may thinks about things, in a way i wasn't with say, cameron or whatever. i think because she represents a certain type of civil servant i've dealt with almost exactly - the fear of the internet and transparency, the desire for small, private, opaque government, and the contempt for the public, the idea that government is something that should go on far away from them. it's quite reprehensible.

Good post

i prob mentioned before but when trump got elected an edict came down from on high that anyone in the civil service, literally anyone, should not criticise donald trump on social media, to avoid "besmirching the office of the us president" - people prob would have been annoyed except that it was so ludicrous.

Theresa got the memo though.

LOOOL saw that!

In other news, C4 News just interviewed Ginger Steve, a spacey homeless guy who used to hang out with the couriers at the pub under Ed's flat, and he is apparently due praise for tending to a wounded young woman hit by the van at London Bridge last night. Good on you, Steve.

I have been to this pub!!!!

Yes! Along with most of ILX Britisher old school (and a few lucky Americans). It's called The Clerk and Well now and the couriers have mostly gone (along with the table football, snooker and the occasional glimpse of Boris Johnson on both).

This made me cry

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=NDJlPG_M600

I don't even know who Ariana is but what a class act.

Our family vacation has turned out to be educational for my kids in ways I didn't anticipate. We were in Manchester for the one-week memorial for the attack, we went down and saw the square full of balloons and flowers. We're in London this week, so when they woke up this morning I had to tell them what happened overnight. They were dismayed and sad, but not scared. I think terrorism to them is just one of those things that happens, like earthquakes and floods.

Solely judging on some youtube clips of One Love Manchester: What a woman. What a huge, loving heart.

I'm impressed. She didn't have to do anything, and if she did, there were a dozen right things she could have done. That she did this one, and also did it right, warms the heart.

I confess that a fat tear rolled down my cheek during Over the Rainbow.

Yeah, Ari was fantastic. Also really touching to see Miley helping her through it all like a big sister

One of the London Bridge terror attackers was carrying an ID card issued in Ireland when he was shot dead, security sources in the Republic have confirmed.

The Prime Minister has called for barriers to be installed between the pavement and the road on all bridges as a basic safety measure.

Oh wait no she's not done that she's called for a magical regulated Internet to totally prevent maniacs from learning how to drive and stab.

Asim Oddin, 39, who lived near the suspect in Barking said: “He used to park outside the flats which isn’t allowed and blocked everybody. We had an altercation when I told him not to park here. He said “not to follow the system” he was quite rude.”

wake up, sheeple.

an inconsiderate road-user and and murderer? not having that, sorry

we need to crack down on parking offences.

one of the bombers allegedly had an irish id, the irish papers are saying.

There's a suggestion he was a Moroccan living in Dublin - as recently as last year.

Ireland seems to have a relatively large Moroccan community iirc, though that might just be anecdotal.

i have a friend whose family GP when young was harold shipman: asked how she remembers him she doesn't have much more than "he was rude and dismissive of my concerns, me, an impossibly sulky teen with acne" -- but it's not as if she was in the position to say "i remember corpses stacked three deep in the waiting room, i warned everyone but they ignored me"

so this guy's "he was an arsehole and everyone hated him" is almost bound to end up being about small neighbourly infractions -- if he knew worse (and didn't warn the authorities long ago) he obviously puts himself in a terrible position

I don't even know who Ariana is but what a class act.

― Whooremeister (jed_), Sunday, June 4, 2017 6:49 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Safe to say, this clears her for the donut incident.

Asim Oddin, 39, who lived near the suspect in Barking said: “He used to park outside the flats which isn’t allowed and blocked everybody. We had an altercation when I told him not to park here. He said “not to follow the system” he was quite rude.”

If true, speaks volumes

Scotland Yard has named two of the attackers as Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane, who are both from Barking in east London.

Khuram Butt, one of the London attackers, appeared in the Channel 4 documentary the Jihadis Next Door last year.

Fuck me, talk about hiding in plain sight

Some serious repercussions to come out of that surely?

Whoever was Home Secretary at the time might have serious questions to answer... oh, hold on.

calls for police to get special permission to monitor broadcast communications

Sounds like some TVs to watch Channel 4 documentaries on jihadis might be more useful.

that's the joke

Too clever for me and Theresa.

jesus

There are reports, quoting neighbours of one of the attackers, that he was driving the van very fast down the wrong lane of a street near where they all lived last Friday. People were freaking out because there were kids playing nearby and so forth. Makes sense now.

Like the Manchester bomber these guys had been reported to the authorities more than once. This is a massive fuck-up and several people deserve to lose their jobs for this, what's the point of requesting ever-more-intrusive surveillance powers when you can't even adequately monitor a guy who's *in a fucking documentary about jihadism*?

Fuck's sake. I mean that's it right? Shows how deep the cuts have gone if they can't catch someone who's been on TV?

There are reports, quoting neighbours of one of the attackers, that he was driving the van very fast down the wrong lane of a street near where they all lived last Friday. People were freaking out because there were kids playing nearby and so forth. Makes sense now.

why would he be doing this in advance of the attack?

.....practice?

or mental preparation

cause he's fuckin kokooroo

Reports that a van has driven into a crowd of people leaving a mosque in Finsbury Park.

Reports of fatalities after a man knocked over many pedestrians near Finsbury Park mosque pic.twitter.com/V6JVNbBR4y

— Shulem Stern (@ShulemStern) June 19, 2017

Feels like it's time for a rolling thread tbh London Rolling

god fucking dammit