UKC

Seems like the bomber has been identified and was known to the police. Born in Manchester to Libyan refugees. Maybe it is time to consider tagging/interning/expelling suspects. I am aware of the civil liberty dangers but in the face of an existential threat that we haven't faced since the nazis maybe this should be considered. If it had been in place before this atrocity maybe all those kids would be alive and safe now.

In reply to Pekkie:

I heard the previous head of something called what sounded like Global Counter Terrorism, commenting that the approach used since 9/11 can be seen to not be working, with terror attacks continuing, and that more needs to be done to address the root causes, and to try and engage with the communities (where they exist I guess) who might be able to notice before somebody does something terrible.

Not knowing anything about combating terrorism, I wouldn't be able to elaborate on this...

In reply to Pekkie:


Existential threat!? What are you talking about? 22 killed 60 million not killed. I'd say our continuing existence is pretty unaffected.

In reply to Pekkie:

It is only an existential threat if we allow it to change who we are - our very existence as a civilised society. Terrorism - whilst abhorrent - doesn't come anywhere close to being a threat to our entire existence.

However, if we suspend civil liberties, we take a step towards changing who we are as a civilised society (we become that bit less civil).

In reply to Pekkie:


Why do you think that? Islamic terrorists have a huge impact on us emotionally, I f*cking cried when my radio alarm clock woke me up this morning, but it's not a big threat, let alone an existential one. What is the likelihood of being killed or even knowing someone who has been killed by Islamic terrorists? Essentially zero. Our lives are threatened in other ways every minute of every day, and we just accept the risks and get on with our day. It only becomes an existential threat if they make us change our society and our freedoms, which we must absolutely not do.

In reply to Pekkie:

No, as MG says, attacks are rare, and of limited impact when compared to the worst of the Irish troubles, and certainly when compared to events like the Blitz.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/many-people-killed-terrorist-attacks-uk/

Our approach at a national level seems fairly effective, we dont need to be more aggresive.
We do need to limit the risks of isolation and radicalistaion.

In reply to Pekkie:


Nope. And it's brutally, if unconsciously, ironic that you should name the nazis whilst advocating we consider tactics they used.

So, no.

T.

In reply to Timmd:


I couldn't agree more. The arms trade and foreign policy would be a good place to start looking for the root causes of radicalisation.

In reply to Timmd:


If you assume the alternative to the situation we have now is no terrorist attacks then yes , its not working but I think more realistically the alternative is a lot more attacks so I would argue its been very effective. At the time of the 9/11 attacks when people woke up to the threat posed by islamic fundamentalism (which had actually been around for quite a long time) the view seemed to be that we were in for a lot more of the same. That the reality since then has been much better than expected is not down simply to good luck.

In reply to MG:


I was referring to the nature of the threat rather than its scale. The Soviet Union, for instance, could be negotiated with and was eg the START treaties. Similarly, the IRA agreed to power sharing. ISIS want to destroy/enslave us - like the nazis.

In reply to pec:
I dunno whether you're right or not, I couldn't claim to know better than the previous head of Global Counter Terrorism.

(No snide or sarcastic tone intended)

In reply to Pekkie:

One new measure I would like to see would be some mass demonstrations by Muslims along the lines of "not in our name".
The last time we saw Muslim protests of any scale was when Midnight's Children was published.

If I were Muslim I'd find it a damn sight more offensive to find my religion being used to justify murdering children than just having the prophet depicted in a novel.

In reply to Pekkie:


Yeah, but do you actually think they can? They're just people who are obsessed with causing death and mayhem in the name of their religion. They can commit atrocities that kill a handful of people in the West. That's what they are, they're not an actual state with an actual army that can go to war with us - that's just what they say, it isn't true for god's sake!

In reply to Pekkie:


"Terrorists can kill and maim. But they do not pose an existential threat to our nation, and it would be a mistake to elevate their importance as if they did".

From an editorial in The (Manchester) Guardian.

The Guardian view on reacting to terror: be Manchester

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/23/the-guardian-view-on-...

T.

In reply to Pekkie:

The IRA saw internment without trial as one of their greatest recruiting tools.
I think there are even suggestions that they brutally murdered three teenage soldiers to try to force the government into internment.
I'm horrified by what happened, but not sure that internment, which would increase feelings of isolation and perceived victimhood, is the way to go.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:


Not unconscious. I did say in the original post that I was aware of the civil liberty issues. If someone comes to the attention of the authorities by e.g. Supporting IS on social media then maybe their activities require more control/attention than at present.

In reply to Stichtplate:

That's not really a measure, is it?

I'm not holding my breath for "demonstrations" - would a demonstration be an appropriate response to an IS-endorsed atrocity. You normally demonstrate when you want the government to do something, like not go to war in Iraq, or ban a book or a drawing that hurts your feelings. I wouldn't expect demonstrations, but I would expect representatives of the Muslim community to very publicly and promptly condemn the act...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3628055/manchester-arena-bombing-muslim-counc...

In reply to stevieb:


That is true and internment without trial would be close to the most extreme measure that might be taken. Maybe a more acceptable form of control/surveillance

In reply to Pursued by a bear:


True. I'm a Guardian reader. But terrorists posed an existential threat to the victims of this bombing. In the exact meaning of the word 'existential'.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

For once I disagree with you. People demonstrate, parade or just gather in support, condemnation or just celebration of all kinds of things.
If militant atheists started blowing up places of worship, I'd certainly be out there making it very clear that I was against it.

In reply to Pekkie:

Before we get the 'lock 'em up, before they blow us up', calls, can I suggest some research?
They tried that in Iraq, have a search for Camp Bucca.

The US locked up various terrorist factions, low level thugs, criminals and assorted jihadis.
The prisoners organized, swapped tactics and formed isis. One memorable quote says that they wrote phone numbers on the elastic in their pants. Once released, they simply made a few phone calls and they had a ready made, well organized terrorist network.

There are no easy answers. Anyone who suggests otherwise, probably doesn't understand the problem.

In reply to dread-i:


Not sure that your example is valid for us. Where would the US get their info on suspects? From the notoriously corrupt and tribal Iraqi authorities? One of the reasons for their capitulation to ISIS was that that they sacked army officers from the wrong side of the Shia/Sunni divide and put in place incompetent political appointees.

In reply to Pekkie:


I think that argument hinges on when 'potential' becomes 'actual'; however, it's not a discussion I wish to have online so recently after the events of yesterday evening. Happy to have it in the pub over a pint should the opportunity arise sometime.

T.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:


Agreed that it is too close to the event for a rational discussion. It just struck me that in all these recent incidents the perpetrator was 'known to the authorities' but went on to commit the atrocity.

In reply to Pekkie:

The existential threat we face lies in the solution you propose, not a tiny cadre of sociopathic inadequates. Let's not lose perspective here however angry we are today.
Jk

In reply to Jon Stewart:


How many muslims actually feel that the Muslim Council of Britian speaks for them? I don't know, does anyone?
What I do know is that various surveys have revealed that some quite disturbing attitudes are widely held within the muslim community including sympathy for Islamist terrorism.
'We' cannot change these attitudes from the outside alone, only when muslims are willing to speak out, frequently and loudly and hold other muslims to account for these attitudes will things start to change (in the same way that brave people stood up to challenge attitudes to race, gender and sexuality).
As long as the majority of the muslim community continue hide behind a few statements issued on their behalf, however genuinely they are meant, nothing much will change.

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/c4-survey-and-documentary-reveals-w...

Here's a few examples:

Only 34% would inform the police if they thought somebody they knew was getting involved with people who support terrorism in Syria i.e. 66% would not.

4% sympathise with people who take part in suicide bombings, that's over 100,000 people.

23% support the introduction of Sharia Law.

32% refuse to condemn those who take part in violence against those who mock the Prophet

66% completely condemn those people who take part in stoning those who commit adultery. That means 34% don't

In reply to Pekkie:


But then everything is an existential threat. "Existential Threat" has a specific meaning in academic international relations and security studies, it comes from deterrence theory and means a threat to the continuation of the nation state - in the modern era most notably via nuclear weapons.

What happened last night is a horrific tragedy but most of us got up this morning and went about our daily business - terrorism is not an existential threat to the UK. Saying that though should not be seen as in anyway belittling the grief and suffering of those there last night and of the families and friends of the injured and killed.

In reply to pec:
I don't really understand what you're saying about ordinary Muslims.

In what sense are they "hiding behind a few statements..."? It sounds like you're trying to spread or share some guilt for terrorism amongst the Muslim population. Is that fair?

I agree that there are a load of things that a sizable minority of Muslims believe that I don't like. But I don't see how they equate to support for (or a share of guilt for) terrorism.

In reply to Stichtplate:


Where did you protest 'not in my name' last time one of our laser guided bombs flattened a hospital or a shelter full of kids? And the time before that? And before that?

Or the last time someone identifiably like you in some arbitrary way did something dreadful?

My guess... You didn't because it's not your fault when these things happen. Why the fuc* should ordinary decent people pander to your prejudice because they bow before the same God as some murderous asshole?
Jk

In reply to Stichtplate:


I wouldn't. I'd be sat at home thinking "what the f*ck are those guys doing?". I don't take on guilt or responsibility for what other members of my race, (lack of) faith, sexual orientation, or other in-group do.

In reply to jkarran:


IS deliberately position their 'assets' close to hospitals and schools. But you knew that didn't you? If you didn't you should.

In reply to jkarran:


The guilt for our horrendous foreign policies is spread amongst the 65 million citizens who live in this country.

If terrorists were murdering people in the name of a much smaller demographic to which I belonged then the corresponding guilt and outrage I felt would amp up to a much higher degree. I'm not being prejudiced, I'm being honest.

In reply to Pekkie:


I think it's important to acknowledge that Western military action kills innocent civilians, and that it's not OK.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Really? Then I'd suggest your quite unusual. Ever heard the terms "white guilt", "post colonial guilt"?
The demands that white people and former colonial powers claim ownership of past wrongs have been gaining considerable traction over the last 30 years.

Or is societal guilt a one way street that only applies if you're white and live in a post colonial country?

In reply to Stichtplate:

But I don't support the idea of white or colonial guilt. It's important to acknowledge the past and in some circs it might be helpful for some leader or other to make a symbolic gesture, but I don't feel guilty or responsible for stuff I didn't do.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Of course it's not OK. But faced with a ruthless enemy who deliberately engineers and seeks the killing of innocents to further their aims what do you do?

In reply to Stichtplate:
If you had been at the vigil at Albert Square tonight, you would have seen hundreds of Muslims.

In reply to Pekkie:


We're talking about Western military action (including drone strikes) in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc? I don't think we should be there doing any of it. It isn't defense, we're over here, and they're over there. And the idea that we're spending all that money out of the goodness of our hearts to protect their civilian populations from the baddies is total and utter garbage, and anyone who believes it is a fool.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Fair enough. You don't support it. But as a concept it's well established. And in the context of the Muslim ummah that was on the streets and very vocal worldwide ,about their displeasure over Midnight's Children or the Danish cartoons for that matter, I find it odd that no similar anger has been stoked by recent terrorist outrages.

In reply to The New NickB:


Really glad to hear it and I was very heartened to hear of all the help provided by Muslim taxi drivers last night. I'd just like to see the terrorists disabused of the notion that they have any sort of support in the wider community.

In reply to Pekkie:
>Where would the US get their info on suspects?

You seem to be getting bogged down in the merits of the US regime in Iraq. The point I was making is that by locking up all of the bad guys together, they ended up with something that was worse than what they started with.

If we lock up a jihadi fan boy, with a battle hardened fighter returned to the uk, what will happen? The fighter will have an acolyte and the fan boy will have a leader. Two lone wolves are now a team.

In reply to Stichtplate:

I can't really get my head around anyone would protest about blasphemy stuff - anyone who does so is trying to undermine freedom of speech and they should just be ignored or ridiculed in my view. But they're protest is saying "it is terrible that the policies allow this blasphemy to occur" - it's a protest *against* one policy (freedom of speech) and *for* a change to a different one (censorship pandering to religious idiots).

If someone commits an atrocity you might attend a gathering such as a vigil (which according to NNB, many Muslims did). But you don't protest or demonstrate against the policy of allowing mass murder: it's not an issue that the authorities can do something about, make a change from one policy to a different one.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


IS fund and provide material for terrorist attacks in the west (the bomb used in the latest atrocity seems unlikely to be home made) Stopping that is defence. Admittedly, unthought through attempted regime change is wrong - and some of the drone strikes in eg Afghanistan seem over the top - but you are not a fool if you want to stop IS killing kids in Manchester. They are open about it.

In reply to dread-i:

Not if they're hanging by their thumbs in individual cells

In reply to Jon Stewart:

These homegrown terrorists didn't form their sick beliefs in total isolation, and I doubt very much that a couple of hours on an Isis website did the trick. I'm not blaming the totally decent and innocent wider Muslim community, I'm suggesting that the more potential terrorists are exposed to moderate voices, the less likely they are to become radicalised.

In reply to Pekkie:

You are a fool if you think our bombs in the ME help stop the killing of kids in Manchester. They do the opposite, and this is incredibly obvious.

In reply to dread-i:


Yes. Internment in groups most likely wouldn't work and would be counter-productive. Maybe some form of house arrest/ restriction on movement?

In reply to Stichtplate:


Yes, and that's sensible and might be true. Tbh, I despair really when I think of what we can do to "address the root causes". What power, honestly, does the UK govt have in changing people's whole world view, ideology, cultural indoctrination, blah blah. At that philosophical level, I would never listen to anything that came from the authorities: the govt - or more broadly the establishment - , over and over show themselves to be full of shit. Liars, insincere, venal, self-serving, etc, etc. I'm not going to have my world view influenced by any government strategy, or church, or frankly anything that can be controlled. Why do we think that we can change the minds of radical Muslims?

It's totally fair and sensible to say that we should somehow try to encourage and amplify the moderate, reforming Muslim voices, so much as they're out there as an influence. But realistically, who is going to drown out the sound of all the nutters? I know it's depressing, but I just don't see solutions.

In reply to Pekkie:

Is an event every 10 years killing about 20-30 people an "existential threat"?

Really?

It needs combating, but we really need to keep things in perspective. By those terms, the roads pose an existential threat, as around 40 were killed on the roads per week on average in 2016.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Well, the pushing back of IS in Iraq has deprived them of much of their revenue from smuggled oil and has saved the Yazidis from mass rape and execution. I think that would be incredibly obvious to the average Yazidi who, unlike you, has had to live with the threat. Or the Kurdish or Iraqi foot soldier who has to fight IS. It's easy to call someone a fool on here when you disagree with them. More difficult to check the facts and rethink your entrenched views.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


I'm agreeing with Stichtplate that I'd like to see large muslim demonstrations of a 'not in my name' nature condemning islamic terrorism. I sense that many law abiding muslims would rather do nothing about it and hope it all just goes away. That's entirely understandable if they aren't the ones causing the problems. The problem is however, that it isn't just going to go away. Issuing a few statements after atrocities is fine but it doesn't make any difference. Until large numbers of muslims are willing to attack the cancer within their society it isn't going to go away. Governments can do all sorts of things to protect us but its just containing the problem, they can't solve it.


The guilt lies with those who commit the acts. What I'm saying though is that it doesn't come out of nowhere. If 66% of muslims wouldn't report someone to the police then they part of the problem if hundreds then go to Syria and come back has hardened trained terrorists. If 4% (i.e. over 100,000 people) sympathise with suicide bombings then its not a surprise that some end up on the slippery slope towards becoming one, you don't need many of that 100,000 to go down that route before one of them actually succeeds.

Terrorists and law abiding, peaceful muslims don't exist in isolation, they are end points of a spectrum, fortunately there are more of the latter. But when there are too many with seriously worrying attitudes, even if most never actually do anything, its not a surprise that a small percentage of them do drift into terrorism. A small percetage of a large number makes for a worse problem than a small percentage of a small number.

In reply to Neil Williams:


Please read through the debate. My point is not that the threat from IS is an existential threat in scale but in intention. IS do not have the resources to destroy this country but they would if they could.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

To summarise for you, The Establishment are full of shit!


I don't think we can change the minds of radical Muslims, but I think the Muslim community should, when they notice any of their members being radicalised (if that is something noticeable), they should go all out to bring them back to sense. I can't really see them taking too kindly to us whities interfering in their business, their powers at be need to be more active at eliminating this extremism.

In reply to Jon Stewart:
Glad to find myself back in full agreement with you. I'm a little discombobulated today and find that I'm maybe somewhat prey to my own nutterish tendencies, truth be told.

In reply to Pekkie:


Perhaps they would, but in practice if they don't have the resources to do so and aren't likely to have said resources, I'm not too worried, it just needs monitoring.

They may *want* to pose an existential threat, but that doesn't mean they *do* pose one.

In reply to MG:

Say that to the parents of the 22 killed!

In reply to Pekkie:

You're responding to a point you'd like to respond to, not the one I made.

I didn't say that our military action didn't benefit groups persecuted by ISIS - which seems to be the point you're responding to.

I said that our military action does not help avoid atrocities such as today's. I said earlier that our motivation for military action is dishonest: it is not motivated by the protection of civilian populations of the countries we've gone into (even though, as you point out, some civilians do benefit). The motives are far more strategic and shady.

If you want to respond, please respond to these points, not ones that I never made.

In reply to Neil Williams:


Well maybe the word 'existential' is the wrong one. What about 'unacceptable'? I live close to Manchester. Close relatives work in close proximity to the site of the bombing. The perpetrator was known to the police. Could he not have been more closely monitored without reverting to police state methods?

In reply to pec:


You seem to think that it's within the gift of ordinary Muslims to stop radicalisation and terrorism. I doubt it is. Does the 20 year old ISIS fanboy listen to the moderate, westernised, integrated Muslim doctors and teachers and accountants? Or does ISIS fanboy see them as essentially "white"? I dunno. I just think turning to ordinary Muslims and saying "you should be doing x,y and z to stop this" is well, just a way of directing blame, because well, someone's got to be able to do something about it...

In reply to Pekkie:


Probably but it would be really expensive. I expect we spend a lot more to save an additional life from terrorists than we do to save lives on the NHS.

I think the best way to think about this is in terms of risk to you and your family, friends etc. The risk is tiny. Do you want to lock innocent people up to reduce that risk? Do you want to spend money that could be on the NHS to reduce that risk? Personally, I don't.

In reply to Pekkie:


You could do a lot of things with 20/20 hindsight.

In reply to Pekkie:

Terrorism is unacceptable as a thing, but I think my odds are good, to be honest. And that's even given that I've been caught up in two of the IRA's "finest".

I'm at more risk climbing trad. A lot more. And I choose to do that.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


OK. You say that our military action does not help to avoid atrocities such as today's. But I said that the pushing back of IS in Iraq has deprived them of much of their revenue from smuggled oil. Less cash means less ability to fund terrorist actions. You say that our motivation is not to protect civilian populations but something more strategic and shady. Like going into Iraq was to control its oil? But who control's Iraq's oil now? Iraq. The motivation is more to promote stability in the region. Well that went wrong with Iraq didn't it? It's all murky but not everything that happens in the ME is a CIA plot.

In reply to Neil Williams:




When I was a student at Birmingham University I popped into a city centre pub for a drink with my girlfriend. Guess what happened the next night.

In reply to Pekkie:


And you think that those funds are or would be directed into terror attacks in the UK? Which are done by homegrown terrorists. You've got to balance the positive effect of reducing their oil funds against the negative effects of bombing civilians and fueling anti-western hatred that strengthens the ISIS ideology. I don't believe for a fraction of a second that on balance, our military action has a net positive impact on the amount of terrorism we face in the UK. I think that our military action feeds into, or provides "evidence" for the bullshit "war between Islam and the West" narrative that ISIS need their followers to believe.


You introduced CIA plot, not me. It's about where sympathetic regimes and enemy regimes lie in the ME. We don't choose who's an ally and who's an enemy on how nice they are to their people. The Saudis are f*cking scum that make the Iranian Grand Ayatollahs look like the f*cking Green Party, yet apparently one lot are evil and the others are our bezzie mates that we sell weapons to to kill Yemeni children with. As I said, if you honestly think we have noble humanitarian aims in the ME, then you're a fool.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Actually the proposal to stop arms supplies to the Saudis in Labour's manifesto is one I agree with. And what's with the 'fool'? I want to be seen as something like an 'evil psycopathic bxstard' or a 'mad, evil cxnt', not a fool.

In reply to Pekkie:

I'm not just calling you a fool as personal insult - I'm saying if you believe that we have noble humanitarian aims in ME then you're a fool. Let's be honest, it's very clear from the way we choose who we bomb and who we sell bombs to that it's not all Jesus sandals.

In reply to Pekkie:

This is scary;


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-40012208

In reply to Pekkie:

I was in Manchester in 1996 (never seen a plate glass window just next to me move about a foot before, fortunately it didn't break or I might not be here posting this) and got caught up in the fallout[1] from the Aintree non-bomb as I was travelling through at the time.

[1] Old Roan station, my old local station for years and normally pretty quiet, was rather like Bank in the evening rush hour, they'd been telling people just to go home on the train for free and come back for cars etc the next day.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Of course I don't believe that we act in the ME from 'noble humanitarian aims' though that is often a factor driven by emotional media coverage. From the creation of Iraq with illogical borders in colonial times to the CIA plotted overthrow of a democratic government in Iran the history of western involvement in the ME has been self-serving in its aims but often downright disastrous in its results.

In reply to Big Ger:


It would appear the BBC have employed Tom Clancy to write their Home Affairs coverage.

In reply to Jon Stewart:
The reality is that 60 million of us (minus 22) watch and digest the news of this atrocity and all of us make and form our own opinion on what, why, how it happened and how it should be dealt with. It's telling that one of the first things the police say is that they will come down hard on any hate crimes and encourage anyone in any minority to come forward if they are feeling threatened. This is because, as humans, 60 million of us (minus 22) the majority are not what the Chinese call "Baizuo's". I suspect a large % of the UK population harbour a bit more suspicion, a bit more miss trust, a bit more anger at a religious group that does seem very different to the 95% of the rest of the population.

Some will say this is exactly what ISIS want. Is it? Have they said so? Or is that just a baizuo stock answer to try and quell a natural human instinct to lash out. Maybe ISIS just like killing Westerners and themselves for fun? I don't know, i'm not a fanatical muslim.

Either way, we can pontificate on here all day about what a tiny % of the muslim population want to kill us, how most of them are lovely and enrich our diverse society...but I reckon we are in the minority and the govt are shitting themselves, not out of a fear of more victims from more terrorist attacks...but on keeping a lid on social cohesion and keeping their jobs when minority parties start playing the race card which will become easier and easier with each attack. The roots of this were seen in Brexit, were seen in the 4m votes for UKIP, the large gains for Front Nationale and other examples across Europe. The sigh of relief when Macron won could be heard on Mars, but was that just a bump in the road that is leading rightwards?

A bit of a rambling post but just my thoughts from my commute this morning. Happy to be told i'm wrong (I hope I am)


edited to provide link to baizuo definition

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=baizuo

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


Yes.

It is a recruitment tool to get Muslims to join IS in Syria and Iraq to help provoke the army of "Rome", as described in the Koran (IS think this is the US) into a final battle at Dabiq, Syria which will bring about the countdown to the apocalypse.

If you have some time (it's a long article), I highly recommend reading this: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants...

In reply to Pekkie:


Do you actually believe this tosh ? After living through the IRA attrocities and Cuban Missile Crisis ?

In reply to GrahamD:


Please follow the debate before calling something 'tosh'. The term 'existential' did not refer to the scale of the threat but to its intention - our destruction. The IRA and the Soviet Union could be reasoned with.

In reply to Pekkie:

You'd have to work out whether Internment succeeded last time it was used in the 70s

In reply to Pekkie:
Your point about being able to reason with people is so relevant.
All attempts to apply logic when dealing with such people is a waste of time.

In reply to Pekkie:

Meanwhile, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-civil-war-bomb-at...


Are you Katie Hopkins?

In reply to wercat:


I've accepted that internment would be counter-productive. What's coming out is that the perpetrator was known to the police but at a low level of threat. Obviously, it would be difficult and counter-productive to take further action than at present with everyone who posed a low level of threat. So what do we do? Post armed guards at all pop concerts and suchlike? Try and beef up intelligence gathering? I'm truly at a loss to suggest any action which wouldn't be counter-productive and risk us becoming a police state.

In reply to krikoman:

>Are you Katie Hopkins?

Idiot. Follow the debate. I've accepted that everything she suggests such as internment would be counter-productive.

In reply to Pekkie:

Public vigilance?

One thing that really sickens me is the BBC and ITV presenters gaining glamour and bigging themselves up by feeding on the news and endlessly pursuing every opportunity to stir up emotion - turning questioning of eyewitnesses towards whether they could describe what injuries they had seen....

The likes of the BBC feed parasitically on terrorist atrocities and the terrorists need that attention and know that the media will provide it, ...... endlessly, by way of reward

In reply to Pekkie:


As it turned out. Didn't seem that way at the time, though. McCarthey and co didn't believe that the Reds could be talked to.

As to intention, would you have put it past USSR not to roll all over Europe if it thought it could do ? Russia manged to destroy a sizeable chunk of Europe before the uneasy standoff emerged.

What we have here is nowhere near as organised as a state. What we have are a very low number of dissatisfied fruitcases - like we always had. You make it sound like there is a whole army out there.

In reply to Pekkie:


You basically have your answer.

Ask the public to remain calm but vigilant, have a sensible level of security checks at high-risk events, allow the security services a proportionate amount of investigative powers, devote resources to preventing people becoming radicalised in the first place, but understand that a lone actor determined to cause harm is a very difficult thing to prevent and we would be wise not to cause division, hatred and remove our own hard-won freedoms just so we can try and pretend that we can make ourselves immune.

The consensus here seems to be that 'existential threat' means 'we all get killed'. It's obvious that we're not all going to be killed by terrorist attacks, and statistically provable that the chances of being a victim of one are vanishingly small.

I'm surprised to find myself in a minority of one, because I have a very different conception of 'existential threat'. I think there certainly is an existential threat, but what's under threat is western culture, western democracy and western liberal values. These values include free speech, freedom of thought, freedom of inquiry, freedom of religion, equality under the law, the equality of women, and controls on government. Those more learned than I can add other equally important values, I'm sure.

Killing people is a tool to effect political and cultural change, not an end, and it has proven highly effective:

1) There's now a seemingly endless supply of baizuos (thank you, Mr Sumarhus in the west.

2) Senior politicians up to and including presidents and Prime Ministers have felt obliged after every atrocity to lecture us on Islam being a 'religion of peace' and wax lyrical about their favourite passages in the Koran - which they've probably never read.

3) 'Islamophobia' has become a powerful meme and a hammer to stifle debate. Criticism of Islam is often perceived and described as racism. It has also recently been enshrined in law: 'Islamophobia' is now illegal in Canada.

4) By and large, the western media tiptoe with painfully exaggerated respect around Islam, having a fully justified fear that anything which can be perceived as critical or disrespectful will get them murdered.

5) Stand-up comedians can silence a warmed up laughing crowd just by saying 'Muslims' or 'Islam'. People are worried, and with good reason.

Many of the beliefs, rights and values upon which western democracy is built are incompatible with Islam, and completely at odds with the Islamist version of it.

The threat is not, "we're going to killed". The threat is, "our culture and civilization is going to be wiped out and replaced with a harsh and violent theocracy". It's not going to happen soon, this is a long game - but the game has already started and we in the west are losing the ideological war.

In reply to GrahamD:


Was the Soviet Union an evil empire bent on our destruction? Or was it following the centuries-old paranoia about securing its western borders from invasion? And acutely aware of falling behind the west economically? They found it hard enough controlling Eastern Europe with major rebellions in each Warsaw Pact country. Even supposing that they could have overcome NATO they could hardly have relished trying to control Western Europe. In the Cuban missile crisis Krushchev got on the blower to Kennedy and they concocted a deal that was face-saving for both sides - involving the US removing missiles from Turkey. While accepting that the Soviet Union was brutal and ruthless - they executed the leaders of the Hungarian rebellion - if you look at it from their perspective you get a different view of the Cold War.

In reply to wercat:
I like the BBC, but the rolling coverage on BBC1 was unnecessary - almost terrorist voyeurism and doing nothing to quell fear. Everyone has the BBC News Channel now if they want it. Beyond that they should have stuck to regular programming interspersed with newsflashes as and when new information came to light.

In reply to Neil Williams:

I was driving home yesterday at lunchtime and heard the beginning of a "You and Yours" special on terrorism - I thought that was an unnecessary joining in.

Oh for the days of factual reporting

In reply to Pekkie:

I think that view closer to the truth than the one we were all sold, possibly honestly, by the paranoid US and US influenced nations. In our case the US assertion would have been backed up by the fact that Winston Churchill's memorable speech in 1945" “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” was still in the country's recent memory so we would have been more than willing to accept it.

Not that NATO hasn't been a good thing on the whole.

In reply to wercat:


And the 'how do you feel about that?' question. 'You've just seen your entire family wiped out before your eyes - how do you feel about that?' You've got to have the sensitivity of two short recycled railway sleepers to ask a question like that.

In reply to Pekkie:


Mr. Idiot to you!

In reply to Thrudge:

"The threat is not, "we're going to killed". The threat is, "our culture and civilization is going to be wiped out and replaced with a harsh and violent theocracy". It's not going to happen soon, this is a long game - but the game has already started and we in the west are losing the ideological war."

We will lose through demography. White non islamic Westerners do not breed enough. There are examples like the fall of Ataturks secular Turkey to the hard line Islamists.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-...

In reply to GrahamD:


But there is a whole army out there. It's how they have held on to a sizeable chunk of the ME for the last few years.

In reply to Neil Williams:


I said this after the Westminster Bridge killings, I was awake a 3am on Tuesday, they kept repeating a 3 minute segment of, mobile phone footage, pictures of ambulances an interview with a girl who had escaped. When I switch the telly on 6 hours later they were still doing the same thing, interspersed with reporters on the scene reporting absolutely nothing.

Saw a report last night of some poor woman who's child was missing, and after the "oh I'm sorry and it must be terrible for you" from the reporter her next question, "What are you thinking has happened to you daughter?"

Grrr!!! What the f*ck!! Had me shouting at the telly, I know they can't hear me but WTF!!

It's as if they say, "something bad's happened, we need to get some stuff, any stuff"

In reply to Thrudge:


This is a very good point and one i was thinking about the other day whilst watching my favourite comedy, Family Guy. For those that dont watch it, it is an adult cartoon comedy based around a dysfunctional US family and their talking dog.

It covers a whole range of subjects and is one big piss-take and seemingly nothing is off limits with much getting very close to the bone. It can be very, very funny. The show regularly covers race, class, sex, politics, drugs, homosexuality, sexism, paedophilia, disability, violence and much more.

There is also a lot of coverage of religion with several of the main protagonists being openly athiest, jewish, catholic and christian. They regularly take the mickey out of each of these religions, especially Mort, the Jewish pharmacist. Jesus and god are regularly lampooned and and are often seen as drawn characters showing less than flattering traits.

I have seen pretty much every episode and whilst there has been some reference to Islam, they have never drawn Mohammed, taken the piss out of the Koran and acted in a way similar to the way that they do with other faiths.

There is not one single piss take that I can think of and so, for a show which prides itself on leaving nothing off limits, I would argue that they are concerned with the backlash from the muslim nutjobs, the threatening of staff and property and the fatwa issued against the producers. Think the Danish and French cartoons and Salman Rushdie.

I think it is time that we stood up to the Islamic community, including moderates. Those of us that dont believe in any kind of god, me included, find their insistence for being offended at anything said about their religion extremely distasteful and quite frankly, ludicrous. Why do we offer them special privilege and conditions because we risk hurting their feelings (or worse) if we dont. Halal meat is one such nonsense which should be outlawed in an instant due to unnecessary suffering of the animal. If they want to practice their silly nonsense behind closed doors then fine but I dont think we should be threatened into cow towing any more.*

*Before anyone accuses me of being anti-Islam, I would like to state that I am anti-religion, I just find the islamic flavour particularly abhorrent.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

Isn't halal slaughter without stunning first (thus making it functionally equivalent to non-halal slaughter) already illegal in the UK?

In reply to krikoman:


Yah boo! I bet my dad can fight your dad!

In reply to Pekkie:

Given that ISIS is so massively religiously-based is it possible to prove the religion 'wrong' and people will simply stop believing in it?

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


Au contraire, Blackadder...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turban_Cowboy

In reply to Neil Williams:


That isnt my understanding but I would like to be corrected if I am wrong.

In reply to Stichtplate:


A small army (if you want to legitimise IS as a coordinated state), not actually showing any inclination to mount an invasion force on the UK.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

I agree. I think the correct response to 'you hurt our feelings' should be 'get used to it, because we going to do it again - and if you can't handle it, leave'. There is no legal or moral right not to be offended and the imposition of such rights leads directly to a totalitarian state.

BTW, the word you were looking for is kowtowing, which is a fine description of what far too many in the west are doing. Cow towing is transporting bovines in a trailer. Let's leave the farmers out of this one, it's not their fault

In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:


I did see that episode and whilst it take a poor shot at terrorism and links between Islam and terrorism, it doesn't directly depict mohammed, doesnt take the mickey out of the female headwear/clothing and doesnt ridicule the religion in the same way that it does with other religions.

In reply to Pekkie:
As a side-issue, I'd be interested to know if any representatives of Manchester's large orthodox Jewish community were present at the Town Hall yesterday. They live in almost complete isolation and so far, in the UK at least, haven't been attacked on a large scale by Islamists.

Disaffection is a problem that the mosques have to address; I read an article about a young Englishman who converted to Islam. He was badly disappointed at the content of the Friday sermons; instead of giving guidance on the role of muslims in modern Britain the mullahs harped on about the length of the beard and how much ankle a woman was allowed to show. I have raised this with Sudanese friends but they don't seem capable of taking a broad view of their religion and how it can fit with a modern lifestyle; they just repeat the old mantras.

In reply to Thrudge:
>BTW, the word you were looking for is kowtowing, which is a fine description of what far too many in the west are doing. Cow towing is transporting bovines in a trailer. Let's leave the farmers out of this one, it's not their fault

Thanks for the correction. I didnt think it looked right when I typed it but couldnt for the life of me remember the correct word for it. Good to see the pendants alive and well in the UKC ranks. Have a like.

In reply to Pekkie:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". Benjamin Franklin

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

Just doing our job, sir

In reply to Toerag:

That really is an interesting question. The obvious answer seems to be 'no'. The devoutly religious (whatever their religion) are mostly not susceptible to reason, rationality, argument or education when it comes to matters of the faith. Some are, of course, and deconversions happen all the time, but I suspect the numbers are very low.

There is a brighter side, though. Dawkin's "God Delusion" has no official Arabic translation, but there is an illegal Arabic version floating around the net in pdf form which has been downloaded over a million times. I find this encouraging.

In reply to JJ Krammerhead III:

" It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
..But I do think it is worth remembering what he was actually trying to say because the actual context is much more sensitive to the problems of real governance than the flip quotation's use is, often. And Franklin was dealing with a genuine security emergency. There were raids on these frontier towns. And he regarded the ability of a community to defend itself as the essential liberty that it would be contemptible to trade. So I don't really have a problem with people misusing the quotation, but I also think it's worth remembering what it was really about."

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety...

In reply to Thrudge:
I think anyone who is prone to think things into "right" or "wrong" is intrinsically capable of being remodelled, given the right conditioning. That applies to most of us, as I think it's an inherent human trait, but some people, particularly those who don't feel very fortunate in an unfair world, have far fewer mental and habitual defences against being remodelled.


I have an old friend who was involved in lots of dust-ups in places as far afield as Aden, Borneo, the South Atlantic and various other trouble spots who told me, to paraphrase, "The most dangerous man you can face is the man who has nothing or who has already lost everything, as all he wants to do is kill you, more than saving his own skin".

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be more careful in future. It's worth saying as a misquote it's a useful one although perhaps rather lazy.

In reply to Pekkie:

If we do what you suggest they start winning. No ta

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


I was just being a smartarse as I take your general point. In reality I think we'd find it's the networks rather than the writers/producers of specific programmes who are imposing the censorship. Have you seen South Park '201'? All celebrities are trying to hold of Mohammed, so they can get some of his magic goo which will make them immune to criticism and ridicule, but in the end they realise that the goo doesn't exist. It got censored and bleeped to the point of being almost unwatchable by Comedy Central, as they'd ruled after the Danish cartoons that no depictions of Mohammed would be shown on the network.

The final speech is classic South Park: youtube.com/watch?v=muPJc0JOfXI&

In reply to Neil Williams:


Sadly, in the last decade, the BBC has become obsessed with everything as 'drama'.

Science is Drama
History is Drama
Natural history is Drama
News is Drama

All they're doing is playing the Drama card again, repeatedly looping any 'dramatic' coverage, asking for obvious emotional reaction, repeating Tweets from random 'celebrities' who have no obvious association with the incident. I don't need the thoughts of 'celebrities' to tell me how to feel; I know how I feel already, thanks.

I'd prefer them to present the news, when they have something substantive, not just have a continuous loop of social feeds and twittering. There are plenty of things going on in the world to report; stop having one story dominate the news for days on end, when there's actually no additional information to report.

In reply to Thrudge:


If anything is likely to happen, I think it's likely that the biggest threat 'to our way of life' is the impositions of restrictions to our freedoms that are being argued as a response to the threat of terrorist acts like this.

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


The title of this thread was 'Manchester bombing: Time for new measures?' Note the question mark. The end result of the debate seems to be 'No, we don't want a police state, but beef up what we are already doing'.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


It seems you are actually right. Disappointed, I must admit.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/halal-and-kosher-slaughter

In reply to Pekkie:

And my post was a clear response to your question.

In reply to Pekkie:


If we 'beef up' what we're already doing every time there's an attack, we *will* end up in a police state. If we're all in agreement that there is no level of security acceptable to us that will be 100% effective in preventing terrorist attacks, then we have to look coolly and dispassionately about what is acceptable to us in proportion to the threat that we face.

Since 2000, terrorists have killed less than 120 people in the UK. Our government can monitor our communications at nearly every level and are currently pushing to put a back-door in end-to-end encryption that would probably make us less safe not more; we have to be bodily searched before getting on planes and we're not allowed to carry on more than 100ml of liquids; we have anti-terrorism legislation routinely misused by authorities at every level (local councils spying on parents re school catchment areas, anyone?); government whistle-blowers are treated as terrorists; and I'm sure more that I can't currently think of. Do we want to beef this up? Or do we spend more money reducing pollution, heart-disease, obesity, and increasing the effectiveness of our national health service and day-to-day support services?

As a not entirely unrelated side note, we just agreed a few billions' worth of arms deals with our buddies in Saudi Arabia, who definitely, absolutely have nothing to do with funding IS and al-qaeda. *wink*

In reply to Pekkie:

The UKIP geniuses have found the solution

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/24/ex-ukip-mep-calls-for-death-penalty-for-suici...

In reply to Pekkie:

We should look at what the Israelis do. They found out how to deal with hijacking aroplanes- armed guards, closed cockpits, airport security. They have managed with suicide bombings, attacks on security personnel, truck attacks on pedestrians before these came to Europe.. Their basic approach is to say 'we will find out who you are, where you live, and we will come and kill you'. Sounds good to me.

In reply to Mr Lopez:


That's actually a grossly misleading piece because if you read the article she calls for the death penalty for 'terrorist offences' which is quite different from what the headline suggests.

In reply to MikeTS:

'Their basic approach is to say 'we will find out who you are, where you live, and we will come and kill you'.

Er pardon me, but how does that work as a deterrent against suicide bombers, exactly?

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that potential suicide bombers see glory, validation, martyrdom or similar bullshit in blowing themselves up along with random innocents. Bit harder for them to get all excited at the prospect of men in balaclavas shooting them dead in their beds.

In reply to Stichtplate:

But if they are, as you said on the other thread, 'nihilistic, social inadequates', will it make much difference? They get their dramatic ending either way.

In reply to Stichtplate:

Are you advocating per-emptively killing people based on some kind of Pre-Crime bullshit (like in Minority Report)?

In reply to MikeTS:

Because that has obviously worked in Israel hasn't it!! FFS!!

In reply to Graeme Alderson:


Yes, that's exactly what I said. I tend to base all my opinions on crap Tom Cruise films.

In reply to Stichtplate:

So, to be absolutely crystal clear, you are suggesting that we should kill people based on a suspicion that they might do something (really) bad?

In reply to Shani:


I'm not advocating such actions. But being shot dead in their sleep would hardly be the dramatic final curtain these sad inadequates seem to be looking for.

In reply to Graeme Alderson:


Are you a bit thick or has the concept of irony completely passed you by?

In reply to Stichtplate:

Maybe you aren't quite as obviously ironic as you think you are.

In reply to Stichtplate:

If they are killed the their capacity as 'combatants', from a theological position i'd imagine they still achieve martyrdom.

Let's hope there really is an all-loving and just god....

In reply to Graeme Alderson:


Try reading my post at 23:20 again.

In reply to Stichtplate:

I already did.

In reply to Shani:

I find it hard to believe any suicide bomber could spend much time studying Muslim theology and still do what they do.

Let's hope there really is an all-loving and just god....

I don't think the belief in an all-loving and just god is compatible with actual reality.

In reply to Shani:

If they are killed the their capacity as 'combatants', from a theological position i'd imagine they still achieve martyrdom.

Yes, but they would factor much lower on the all important 'Virgin Shagging' section of the martyrometer and probably end up with Doris from accounts as opposed to the voluptuous maidens of their promised dreams...

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

“The mistake we made, was we gave people a kind of cultural exemption from normal, reasonable, decent behaviour.”

Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

In reply to Stichtplate:


There are branches of Islam whose scholars disagree wuth you.


Indeed. My hope was that these bombers would meet such a god who would then promptly show them the error of their ways....in the hotter parts of the afterlife.

In reply to Shani:


Whole branches of Islam that justify suicide bombing? And what branches would they be?
Because to my recollection we've had nearly 20 years of every leading Muslim spokesperson and every major media outlet ramming the exact opposite point of view down our throats, day in day out.

In reply to Big Ger:

Any chance that in future you could give some context to your posts. You know, something like a link so we could see what (for example) Trevor Phillips was actually talking about. Because otherwise your posts are just bollocks.

In reply to Graeme Alderson:


Oh don't be so tetchy sweetheart.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11479761/We-must-listen-...

In reply to Big Ger:

Don't be such a dick dickhead

In reply to pec:


Correct, but let's not overplay this lady's intelligence:

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:


They are the people that organize and finance the terrorists

In reply to Graeme Alderson:


Israel is safer than the Europe right now, although much closer to the sources of Islamic terror

In reply to Pekkie:
Maybe just time to do the basics.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/24/security-services-missed-five-op...

This is quite extraordinary really, what are they doing ? The guy apparently had been reported several times by his own community and own family to the terrorist hotline, he was even expelled of his mosque because of his views, him and his family had known links with IS linked groups... what else do you need really ?

We've seen for example cases in Europe of people being on terrorists watch list committing terror acts, but in this case it seems to be a whole new different level of utter failure.

In reply to RomTheBear:


I think what is missing is a sense of scale. How many people are on their watch list? 6000 allegedly. There are 300+ brits in the UK who have been to Syria figting for IS and returned. How many phone calls and tips do they process etc.. It is sadly inevitable that one or two are going to slip through every year.

In reply to summo:

I know exactly what you mean hence why I made the distinction.
There is a difference between being on a watch list (basically if you just know or cross a terrorist you're probably on it) and someone where the whole community says, we are extremely concerned about this person, and that person also happen to have well documented links with IS.

In reply to summo:


Exactly this. The resources to track one person 24/7 and check his/her contacts and activities etc.... are extraordinary.

As was said of the IRA, the security services need to be lucky every time. The IRA need to be lucky once.

In reply to Shani:

I agree, it takes about 20 people for 24/7 surveillance on someone. So it's doable for a few hundreds people only.
However in this case the evidence and the warnings seem to have be so overwhelming it's really difficult to see why he wouldn't have been at the top of the lists. Unless we have thousands of such cases but frankly I don't believe we have thousands of people in the UK with known links to IS where friends and family are saying "we are extremely concerned about this person".

In reply to MikeTS:


Sounds prehistorically horrible to me. It hasn't exactly made lots of friends for Israel, or won over the Palestinians.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Good point. The system failed. We need to ensure that changes are made so that it doesn't fail in future and that the people responsible for the failure are held to account. In the end the buck has to stop with the politicians on whose watch the failures happened and who ignored warnings. I would support a thorough-going public inquiry. We owe it to the victims and their families.

In reply to Pekkie:
Agree with your comments but, without turning us into a nation of snoopers, I feel that our communities need to be more actively involved.
While reporting a suspect to the authorites is admirable, if nothing is done then do we just carry on and ignore the suspect or do we become the extra bodies that the security services need to monitor these suspects?
In our street you can't move without the neighbours knowing your business. It's neighbourhood watch on steroids.
While this sounds odd it does also mean that people look out for and help each other.
If there was a suspected terrorist living nearby he/she would be monitored 24 hours a day.

In reply to Pekkie:

A system that never fails does not exist. I doubt it ever will.

I can't name a single person let alone a system that never makes mistakes.

In reply to elsewhere:

No but in this case it seems the system failed miserably to pick up what seem to have been a very low hanging fruit.

Not saying the system is broken, I have no idea, but there was evidently a massive failure in this particular case, again that's assuming the telegraph story is true, which it may not be, given it's the torygraph.

In reply to RomTheBear:


What we don't know is how many other low-hanging fruits there were, or how thinly stretched the available resources were. For all we know, there might be hundreds of surveillance operations going on, using everyone available.

In reply to RomTheBear:
Almost every terrorist has been 'on the radar'. I regard that as an indication of success.

It also suggests that making the haystack larger won't make us safer or make finding the needle any easier.

In reply to Graeme Alderson:


You got a quote, google broken in Sheffield today?

In reply to elsewhere:


Of course, but a professional security service has a duty to be just that, professional. Just as when you vote in a politician you expect them to do everything in their power to protect you, the public. It's no more than I would expect of myself, or indeed you, if we had that responsobility. That's why I would suggest that a quick public inquiry, led by someone politically neutral, should be carried out. Mistakes are understandable, dereliction of duty isn't.

In reply to Pekkie:


We review what happened or didn't that meant he slipped through the net. We patch any obvious holes we find in the process. We also objectively evaluate whether a finer security net would be more or less effective on balance and whether there are effective risk mitigation tools aside from monitoring/infiltration that we're not exploiting to the full. We also have to accept the price we pay for the free and open society we seek to protect is that occasionally someone intent on doing harm will succeed. We grieve, we learn, we carry on.

We accept orders of magnitude more harm in exchange for the benefit we derive from our roads but risk is a hard thing for people to understand intellectually especially as most tend to only really consider it while they're emotional.
jk

In reply to MikeTS:


Israel is on a semi permanent war footing and is one of the last places on earth I'd want to emmulate in terms of foreign policy.

The source of terrorism in the case of this attrocity was Manchester, which ASFIK is nowhere near Israel

In reply to winhill:


Have you tried googling that quote? All the hits are from BG posting it on UKC several times and a load more times in a different forum under a different user name.

In reply to Pekkie:

Existential threat? If you mean reacting in the way you describe reflecting the destruction of the values of our society (thus achieving the bomber's aims) Then you are onto something.

In reply to elsewhere:


True, but in this particular case he clearly should have been in the small haystack of people we look at very closely.
We are not in a situation where the person was on some watch list and then commited a terror act out of the blue.
We're talking about someone where family and friends were calling the police saying "we are very worried about this person" and links to IS are known, and no action is taken.

In reply to MikeTS:

Bollocks, I go there quite often, I can tell you it doesn't feel safe, army everywhere, you need to go through the metal detector to enter the shopping mall ffs, this kind of ultra security doesn't even seem feasible in the UK. Anyway it probably wouldn't make much difference.

In reply to Pekkie:


Couldn't you have thought of that, before opening up this thread in the way you did?

It's pretty obvious if you think about it for more than 3 seconds.

In reply to RomTheBear:

There are three major approaches to the kind of consistent terrorist attacks being experienced by Europe now
1. Talk to the terrorists, see if you can change your policy so they will not attack
2. Defense. From security checks to locking up suspects.
3. Attack your enemies to deter them and disable them.
The caveat is that whichever you adopt needs to be done intelligently. And also that none are 100 per cent effective.
Which do you want?

In reply to MikeTS:


Safer for who, it's not very safe for Palestinians.

In reply to MikeTS:

We already do 2) and 3) and 1) seems pointless.
But that's not the question, I was simply pointing out, that, according to the telegraph story, there has been a massive failure in the systems that we have, which are otherwise pretty effective.

It doesn't seem h reasonable to ask why something which the system is normally designed to pick up wasn't picked up.

In reply to krikoman:


I thought about it for a lot longer than three seconds. We need to consider all possible measures to deal with the threat. Measured, rational debate rather than knee-jerk reactions.

In reply to RomTheBear:

Reasonable to ask, but it to some extent comes down to "we have to win every time, they need only win once".

In reply to krikoman:

Because the Palestinians are the major source of terror. 7 percent of their national budget goes to killers in jails and to their families. As a result they cannot pay for electricity, or medicine for their hospitals. Make peace, sign the two state agreement they have walked away from many times, and terror disappears from the region. Easy.

In reply to RomTheBear:

That I agree with. Remember, I said you have to do it intelligently. But in my opinion, number 3 approach is not done precisely enough by Britain.

In reply to MikeTS:

I think that might depend upon which side of the fence you're on. You might send the last sentence to Bibi, since he's refusing to have talks and is meanwhile encouraging more and more settlements, which are hardly conducive to peace.

Since Israel bombed their power station, and is preventing parts being allowed in to repair it, it's a bit difficult for them to have electricity paid for or otherwise.

In reply to Pekkie:

Try this if you want to clam down from knee jerk reactions

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158654465215364&set=gm.135000...

In reply to MikeTS:

In reference to number one, is that a joke? Show again brain cell!

In reply to RomTheBear:


I think you're putting a lot of faith in an article in a newspaper to state there's been a 'massive failure'.

Apparently there are some 3,000 people regarded as significant threats by the security services. Abadi may or may not have been on that list in the past, but he clearly wasn't at present.

Apparently the 'overwhelming evidence' that Abadi should have been in that 3,000 is:

1. He had dodgy relatives abroad.
2. Someone phoned up a hotline a few years ago to say he approved of suicide bombing.

There must be at least 10,000 inadequate, gobby muslim lads in the UK who fit that profile. There is absolutely no way we have the resources to closely monitor those sorts of numbers.

Perhaps there have been massive failures, but without confirmation it's just a journo stirring shit to sell headlines. If there have been failures then surely heads will roll and the gaps will be closed.

It doesn't matter how robust your systems are, someone will always get through. How many unguarded childrens wards, kindergartens and primary schools are there in the UK? Given the media attention to this 'spectacular' I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before something like this happens again, although maybe not as sophisticated an attack.

In reply to elsewhere:


Hello!

In reply to Pekkie:

The one thing that I would like to see is more risk profiling of individuals for security checks at airports and the like. I think it is time that we said it really is a complete waste of precious resources to search grannies , children, middle aged white men, etc at airports for example to tick an equality box somewhere in the political food chain.

Its also time for the Immans and Trustees at the mosques to really engage- their PR in this area is shocking.I know that this is partly down to the fractured stucture as the way the religion works ( unlike the CofE and RC where there is a formal head). As an outsider to me each Mosque appears to be a close knit community. they really need to step up their game here.

Shovel more money to Prevent. A few months ago there was a brilliant piece in the Times about it, questionning it and then pulling it all together and pointing out its successes.

In reply to neilh:


How do you think you would react to being treated like a terrorist and possibly even strip-searched every time you passed through an airport or a public building, when most people were allowed to sail straight through, simply because of the colour of your skin?

In reply to neilh:
I listened to the debate about terrorism and Prevent on Question Time last night.
My 80 year old mother was also listening.
At the end she wondered how, in her lifetime, the UK had changed so much.
In some ways for the better but at the same time for the worse.
I was going to answer her with my amazingly incisive political and social analysis but then I remembered that her father was killed in Libya during WW2.
She grew up without a dad. And here's some offspring of Libyan parents blowing people up because he's disaffected or whatever.
Her dad might as well have stayed at home for all the good he did.
Apologies for the rambling post but I feel better for having vented.

In reply to neilh:


I can't think of anything dafter unless your aim is specifically to erode the effectiveness of security screening AND alienate those who fall into the group being targeted for extra checks. Airport security works well these days and it's failings are not for want of more time searching young brown men. It simply isn't a problem that needs solving and you really can't stand waiting in a queue vs a shop you can pay your way to the front of it anyway.


Like having open days and community engagement programs? Have you actually looked to see what they do, I know my local mosque does this and it seems to go down well with the few that actually visit.


Whether it's prevent or something that builds on it this approach of engagement with the disaffected in parallel with effective monitoring and law enforcement will work but we do have to accept that an practical and functioning risk mitigation strategy does not mean there will be no more attacks.
jk

In reply to john arran:

Do you really think in all honesty the existing system is actually productive in any shape?

I also already believe this happens. Well just about on every US flight I have been on and noticed it.

Its just plain crazy to continue with the existing farce and making sure that it is seen as correct.

In reply to jkarran:

So their open days etc are clearly not working. Most RE classes visit Mosques as part of that subject.

Interstingly of the Immans I have seen on the news over the past few days, there was two diferent types. One I classify as tub thumping( the one from the Didsbury mosque)and one as listening. I know which one instantly earned my respect.

I agree on your observation that even with all this it does not mean there will be no more attacks.

In reply to baron:


That's sadly true for a lot of dads (and mums) who've been ordered abroad in the last 20 years - something that Jeremy Corbyn is no doubt about to make himself very unpopular for saying today.

In reply to neilh:

I agree that profiling already happens, and for much the reasons you allude to. On one level it makes some sense. But how much profile targeting of UK citizens do you think you'll be able to introduce before irritated individuals become disaffected individuals and ultimately potentially radicalised individuals? I would have no confidence that your proposed approach, while sounding superficially like common sense and resource-efficient, would not substantially increase security threats overall in the longer term, rather than reducing them.

In reply to john arran:

Those individuals have already gone past the stage of being irritated.

And nobody points out the other side of the coin- you create bad feeling amongst those who clearly are nowhere in this category ( the grannies etc)- and it makes them ambivalent to that community.

it would be better PR for the Muslim community to turn round and say we understand why you are doing this and we get it.They wouldwin loads of brownie points if they did this.

In reply to neilh:

It's really not.

In particular, if these people are nasty enough to target a bomb at a gig aimed at children, they are nasty enough to use a child to carry one.

I vastly prefer the UK's "treat everyone the same" approach to airport security than profiling.

In reply to neilh:

When was the last attack on a plane originating from the UK? Certainly not recent - was it Lockerbie? That would suggest to me that it is working.


The US system *does* rely on knowing who each passenger is, that's why they require ID at the checkpoint, and they do "profile" to some extent (trusted traveler scheme, SSSS (Google it) etc). The UK system doesn't, that's why they don't require ID at the checkpoint. They are two different systems. I personally think the UK one is superior.

In reply to neilh:


In what way aren't they working? Because you didn't know they have open days? Because they haven't convinced the rest of the population that despite what they read in the papers British muslims are just ordinary people with ordinary lives and issues? Most people just don't much care one way or the other, they just get on with their own lives, prejudices intact and unassailable behind a wall of indifference.
jk

In reply to neilh:


I'm not following your logic. You're proposing to substantially increase the irritant, and you're not worried about alienating more people in our society because there are a few people who have already been alienated even under existing rules?


Again, I'm struggling with this. You think grannies may be becoming anti-Muslim because they see young Muslims being treated in the same way as themselves in airports?


Equal opportunity is clearly not high on your list of priorities, I see. If there were found to be a higher rate of shoplifting among black kids than white, do you think community leaders should support restrictions on black kids entering shops that didn't apply to white kids?

In reply to john arran:
People are becoming (even) more anti muslim because they see themselves being treated the same as muslims who, the moment, are perceived to be more likely to commit a terrorist act.
We're not being stopped and searched because we are a threat but because the authorities don't want to upset a certain section of the community.
Stand in the queues at manchester airport and listennto some of the comments if you need evidence.
If black children are shoplifting more than white children then why wouldn't you ban them?

In reply to neilh:


Airport security, screening the flying public? Yes, it is now very effective. 15 years ago it was largely theater. It's obviously not impenetrable but there's a very real chance of getting caught and in combination with locked cockpits and other measures it's working well against the threat level we face today and the security net adapts as the threat evolves.

The easiest way to damage or hijack an airliner is no longer and hasn't been for a long time to smuggle something on as a passenger. That said, there are still big holes in airliner security, that they aren't exploited says more about how few individuals there are out there with the right (wrong) mix of knowledge, capability, resources, motive and moral framework to succeed in what is mass murder. When they come together to pool skills/resources they get caught.


So we start waving white folk through with barely a glance and start grilling brown folk especially the young males... Ignoring entirely the social consequences of that for now all you've done is pick a gaping hole in your security net. Want to get something nasty or illegal through security? Have a white woman carry it unwittingly or for money, tell her it's drugs or cash to get round any moral qualms about killing. You shoot yourself in both feet by damaging the very thing you seek to bolster and community cohesion which is in itself a safeguard.
jk

In reply to baron:

Because they are decent law abiding citizens. Because how their society treats them as kids will shape how they treat their society as adults. The sort of overt discrimination you're proposing would have made the early nazis blush. Think!
jk

In reply to Ridge:
There must be at least 10,000 inadequate, gobby muslim lads in the UK who fit that profile. There is absolutely no way we have the resources to closely monitor those sorts of numbers.

Its a caricature - plenty of medical students, engineering students and pharmacists - pillars of the community and not what we deem to be 'inadequate' hold the same views.

Actually as well as the hippy dippy appeasers there's a fifth column of islamists infecting every arm of the state in the U.K.

D

In reply to jkarran:

You are the ones who keeps mentioning brown folk- not me. I am only too aware that there are white Muslims( it clearly looks to me as though you do not know this)...and there was the well known white muslim shoe bomber.All I mentioned was better risk profiling and you jump to conclusions which I have not made about colour.

The OP was asking for ideas..and I am thowing some in the melting pot... take it or leave it.

In reply to jkarran:
John said black children were shoplifting.
I said ban them.
You call that discrimination.
I call it looking after your shop.

In reply to Stichtplate:
.
.
Whilst it's a vanishingly small proportion of muslims, there are those who hang on every word of Ma'alim fil-Tariq. Add a little Al-Wahhab, some good old geo-politics and the beleif that the West (including Russia) is truely the Jahiliyyah then you've got every reason to put on a bomb vest.

Basically, there are those adherents to a highly extreme interpretation of the Quran, of Islam and of politics for whom the only answer is jihad.

But

It is not representative of the overall umma. It's a highly polarised, focused group, that is able to draw in many disaffected, dislocated youths, punching way above it's actual weight. It also sees mainstream muslims (and i hate to use that phrase as it's intensely patronising) as much as the enemy as non-muslim, in fact worse as they, in their eyes, are failing to adhere to their faith.

So yeah, it's all about f*cknuggets who have managed to wholly misinterpret the Quran

Edit; Spelling.

In reply to baron:


Are you for real? How would you like your liberties to be restricted compared to all of your friends, simply because people you've never met but who might bear some physical resemblance to you, have been identified more often than average as petty criminals?

BTW I think this analogy has already been pushed too far as repetition is beginning to make it sound like my hypothetical illustrative example may actually have been based on fact, which wasn't the case.

In reply to baron:


Because, without any due respect whatsoever because none *is* due to that kind of statement, that would make you a filthy racist.

In reply to baron:


Firstly I said nothing of the sort. I simply raised a hypothetical example to illustrate the wider implications of a daft and damaging suggestion.

But with attitudes like that you'd fit in very well in parts of the US. Alabama, perhaps, or Mississippi.

In reply to john arran:
I didn't say that all black children should be banned and didn't think that this is what you were suggesting.

In reply to Neil Williams:
I'll refrain from entering into a slanging match with you but would ask you to re read what I posted.

In reply to john arran:
It doesn't matter if it's hypothetical or not.
You gave an example that stated that black children were shoplifting and should they be banned. I agreed
Maybe you should have said some black children are shoplifting so let's ban all black children. Then I would have disagreed.
Strange that in an attempt to call me a racist you stereotype people from the US.
Which is, I think, what you accused me of regarding black children.

In reply to baron:
I quoted what you posted, and it is racist and utterly unacceptable.

If you actually did operate such a policy (no black people/children) in a shop, you would soon find yourself prosecuted, and rightly so.

If you meant "ban all people who shoplift once permanently from your shop, having reported them to the Police for shoplifting", without reference to race, that would be more than acceptable, and is very common practice. Why did you bring (or keep) race into it?

In reply to baron:


Banning the children that steal would be one approach to looking after the shop, the one you'd take if you don't believe people can be rehabilitated. Banning all black children because some that steal are black would make you a stupid racist arse and a poor shopkeeper. I call it discrimination because it is the textbook definition of racist discrimination. Sorry, I like you despite the fact we disagree a fair bit but are making a prize tit of yourself with this one!
jk

In reply to Nevis-the-cat:
Good post.

is there anything in the comments that these sects grew from a group as a rejection of American values from the 1920's and 1930's.

In reply to Neil Williams:
The colour of the shoplifting children was used by John.
In an attempt, I presume, to demonstrate that the actions of a few people should not be an excuse to punish all people.
He could have used white children for an example but because we were discussing profiling based around muslims it probably made sense to use children from a minority group.
It would have been difficult to respond to John without reference to the black children although I could have said that the same should apply to children of any colour.
I feel, but obviously don't know, that you haven't read what I posted - 'no black children in a shop' isn't something I posted.

In reply to neilh:


I emphasise how such a policy would be perceived. You can't tell a person's religious beliefs or lack of them by looking at them unless they choose to show you and I'd be dead against a database of state assigned religious affiliation being used. I'm well aware there are Caucasian muslims, I have at least one as a friend.


Fair enough but I'll leave it if it's all the same
jk

In reply to baron:


You don't think things have changed in 70 + years, and that the things he fought for are still relevant?

What did she thing of the IRA and the bombings they did? Was that a waste of time her Dad went to Lybia?

You're taking one incident and condemning a whole nation, worse still negating the reason so many British people died because of this one man.

You've given him and his "cause" a lot of power if you're allowing him to influence your attitude to a whole nation.

In reply to jkarran:
At the risk of continuing to make a tit of myself I never suggested banning all black children.
' If black children are shoplifting more than white children then why wouldn't you ban them' is what I wrote.
It seems that some people have inferred something else.

In reply to neilh:


And what do you do when the terrorists realise you using profiling and start using light skinned women as terrorist bombers. Or do you think they'd never work out such a cunning plan?

In reply to baron:

You're putting in a fine attempt at pretending you hadn't realised what my hypothetical example was saying. But I didn't mention racial minorities for nothing, and I'm sure you knew that.

And, for the record, my reference to the US was, as I'm sure you also knew, to point out that such racist attitudes are well known to have been extremely common in many Southern states, and there are strong indications that similar attitudes are still quite common there today. There was no implication, as you apparently tried to infer, that all Americans should be seen as racist. Sadly, I think that attitudes towards racism in the UK are regressing at the moment, which can only be damaging in the long term.

In reply to baron:


Then how would you stop them stealing, you said it makes sense "why wouldn't you ban them"

Banning means excluding them doesn't it, whether it's with a sign or you telling them to f*ck off. A ban is a ban, maybe you could explain this a bit better if your suggesting it not what you meant.

In reply to baron:


So what you meant by that was, if any child of any race is shoplifting then ban them? Yes, clearly that's what you really meant, honest.

Time to put the shovel away?

In reply to krikoman:

Out of interest have you ever been to Israel. Try telling that to my wife who on flights to and from was dragged aside for interrogation as white females travelling alone to Israel are.The full lot by the way.

Its not uncommon.

In reply to Ridge:
Not one phone call, several, several people called the counter terrorism hotline to say they were extremely worried about this person. This included a family member.
His local mosque even banned him because of it.

So basically we have an individual where the whole community says, this guy is dangerous, and nothing is done.

Sorry but that sounds like a massive failure to me. This is not the same as someone on some watch list doing something without anyone noticing.

In reply to john arran:

Have you ever been in places like TN- its even now unbelievably rife, most outrageously racist place I have ever been in-- apart from Japan and Russia.

In reply to RomTheBear:

On the part of the Mosque or the intelligence services?

In reply to neilh:

What do you think ? If you call the counter terrorist hotline to report someone telling you they wouldn't mind blowing themselves up, and that person has known links to IS, and has been banned by his mosque because of extremist views, and the intelligence services don't follow up, I'm sorry but someone somewhere has f*cked up.

In reply to john arran:
I'm being even thicker than usual today because I'm not sure what point, if any, you're trying to make.
I'll guess that the reference to a shovel is a dig (see what I did there) at me in an attempt to cover up your inability to post in a clear and concise manner and to accuse me of back tracking
Just so you and any other interested parties, if there are any, can be sure, I stand by post that children stealing from a shop should be banned.
You will, of course, now attempt to make this into a call by me to ban all blacks.

In reply to krikoman:
Why is my desire to ban black children who steal from entering a shop being seen as a desire to ban all black children?

I must add, or risk further upsetting some people, that you can replace 'black' with any colour you want.

In reply to RomTheBear:
From 5 years ago?

If the Mosque had banned him , was that recent and had they contacted the services.

Too many unanswered questions, to be looked at later.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Perhaps.

But if you look at the number of people they are tracking, how do you prioritise? There will always be some risk. If they have allegedly stopped 5 potential incidents in the past 8 weeks, how do we know they haven't saved 100s of lives and these 22 (as sad as it is) are the thin end of a potential wedge that they were struggling to cover?

Without all the information, to say the security services are failing is just passing the blame away from the group's of people who are organising these attacks.

In reply to baron:


Fair enough but if by 'them' you didn't mean 'all black children' can I suggest in future you are much more precise with your words and clearer with your clarifications.
jk

In reply to summo:

I'm not saying they are generally failing, in fact they seen to be pretty good at what they do, I'm saying that in this specific instance, if the information we got from the telegraph is accurate, it can only be described as a massive cock up, it is not simply a case of one of those attacks that are statistically unavoidable.

It seems only fair that if any failures occurred they are properly investigated in due course.

In reply to jkarran:
OK - but only if other people promise to read what I wrote and not what they think I wrote.

In reply to baron:


May be your English isn't that good, the original sentence was "If black children are shoplifting more than white children then why wouldn't you ban them?"

If you agree with this it suggests you are content with banning (all) black children because there are more black child thieves than white child thieves.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, that you might mean, "ban the black children who steal" which is something very different.

Better still ban ALL children who steal, white or black, surely theft is theft or does it only concern you if it's black children.

In reply to RomTheBear:

It can only described as a cock up if you know about everything they are doing successfully and unsuccessfully. I think they are probably so maxed out now, with such a massive amount of new people and data to process in the previous few days, weeks, months it would blow a fuse in many a competent analyst's brain. How you grade and prioritise information must be a nightmare and really pray on the conscience of quite rational people.

Even if you tripled their budget and manpower, you can't guarantee you'd stop every single attack.

In reply to neilh:


But your image of a Mosque isn't always what you might think it is, a Muslim lad on the radio, who knew the bomber, said many so called radical Mosques can be as big as someone's front room. Which paints a very different picture, other than a hot bed of thousands of people listening to so ranting loony, it might be the same ranting loony, but with an audience of 10.

In reply to summo:
It take 30 coppers for 24 hours surveillance on just one suspect, so a copper on the radio was saying.

Which seems a lot to me but, that's what he said.

In reply to john arran:

Who knows? Maybe he'd react by reflecting that his religion has funked things up on a grand scale all over the world and maybe it isn't such a great idea after all.

In reply to neilh:


What are you talking about?

I was saying just this!!! Profiling, and therefore, ignoring huge sections of travellers because of their skin colour, wouldn't work.

In reply to krikoman:
My English is fine thank you.
The problem lies with people who read something into a sentence that isn't there.
Posting on the internet is often open to misinterpretation for a variety of reasons but it doesn't help when people start throwing insults around before clarifying a person's point of view.

In reply to krikoman:

I agree, and as I said to many unanswered questions.

In reply to Pekkie:


TBH I think what I'd like is a properly funded police force and border agency, a bit like we had in 2010, with ooooh maybe 20,0000 more cops, looking for scumbags. Let's give that a whirl before we start dismantling civil liberties that have taken thousands of years to accrue.

In reply to baron:


I'll explain why what you wrote came across to *me* as being overtly racist. Others may have read it differently but my interpretation does not appear to have been unique. If you're happy to write ambiguously so people can misunderstand you in this way then fine but I don't believe you are. You wrote:


Your sentence divides children into two groups. You could logically divide them into those that steal and those that don't when discussing theft but instead you divide them by colour then you identify one of your groups as stealing more than the other. You then propose banning 'them' to prevent theft but the only identifiable 'them' in this sentence is the two groups, black and white because the theft has only been discussed in the context of the groups, not their individuals.

I'm happy take you at face value when you say that isn't what you meant but your English is not fine here, it is easily open to different interpretations and personally I did not have to try to misunderstand you because I wanted to, I was disappointed to read what you wrote.
jk

In reply to krikoman:


You cant follow one person discreetly with the same person. So say 4 people, 12 hr shift, 4 days on/off, plus leave and sickness. A leader who doesn't go on the street etc.. Perhaps a car or two and a couple of drivers. 20-30 would seem a reasonable figure.

In reply to baron:

Well you've just had the opportunity, to say what you meant, by answering any of the questions in my post. You chose not to. I also disagree with you, in that the original sentence clearly states something, that you don't appear to think is there.

The original sentence was vague, and as you say open to misinterpretation, if you knew this why not state exactly what you mean?

It almost feels like you don't want to, to be honest.

In reply to krikoman:
I'm trying not to drag another poster on this thread into the discussion about ambiguity because that would be unfair and an attempt to place blame.
If that makes me appear vague and dishonest then so be it.
I feel I've stated exactly what I meant in replies to several different posters.

In reply to jkarran:
While what you say is true it should be taken in the context that I was replying to another poster.
The decision to divide people by colour wasn't mine but was integral to the profiling issue being discussed.

In reply to Dauphin:


Abadis profile is more gobby disaffected yoof than the others you've mentioned, which is why I used that caricature, but I don't dispute your assertion that there will be other, more sophisticated, terrorists and sympathisers out there.

My point is that if Rom or the daily telegraph think an individual being reported to Prevent is somehow incredibly unusual then they are sadly mistaken.

In reply to baron:


I understand you were responding to a question but you took no care to step away from the idea of racial/religious profiling, indeed what you wrote including about the black children *appeared* to be in support of it.

Substitute gender, sexuality, religion, weight etc for skin colour and the injustice and counter-productivity of simple profiling remains. I'm still not sure you actually agree with that statement though I believe you aren't being deliberately racist.
jk

In reply to summo:

Sorry mate, I don't buy it, if you get calls from the whole community that a person says they wouldn't mind blowing themselves up, and that person shows up on your file as being linked to IS, you don't have to be a genius to realise this is very very high priority.

I actually don't think the intelligence services are stupid enough to ignore such strong signals, hence why it seems there must have been a cock up somewhere.

In reply to jkarran:
But we use profiling for many purposes, hopefully all of them with good intentions.
We were debating profiling muslims which had a hypothetical example based on colour.
It isn't possible to discuss the profiling issue without mentioning colour, race, etc
If you're asking me am I in favour of profiling in an attempt to limit the success of terrorists then, given limited resources, the answer is yes.
Given unlimited resources then probably not.
It isn't, for me, a race, colour, creed or gender issue.
If there's an identifiable group who commit offences at a far greater rate than the general population then why wouldn't you target your resources at them?
Resources doesn't have to be the police.
You also don't ignore those who are offending but outside the target group.

In reply to baron:

Because long term it is divisive and ultimately will prove counterproductive. If a minority group feels persecuted by the authorities not just the criminal element but the group as a whole becomes resentful, mistrustful and insular. This poses a serious social problem and one for effective policing.
jk

In reply to jkarran:
There are as you point out major problems with profiling.
There has to be the weighing up of the pros and cons and then there can be those unforeseen consequences that have a habit of popping up.

In reply to Ridge:


It's in the Torygraph.

It's critical of the effectiveness of the security services, run over the period of interest by the Tories, with the Home Office, in particular (being responsible for the police, security services and national security), being run during that period of interest by one Theresa May, currently leading the Tory party in a general election campaign.

Now, do you think that the Torygraph would put aside its huge pro-Tory bias for a moment, just to sell a few more papers with a 'sensationalist' headline that is implicitly critical of the Tories and Theresa May? I very much doubt that it would. Therefore, I am prepared to believe there is truth behind their claims, true enough that even the Torygraph decided they had to publish what they had uncovered.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Or the scary thought that maybe the security services are dealing with 100s of cases or people like this? There are 300 former british IS fighters living in the uk, plus all the radicals that haven't left the UK.. . I think they are simply maxed out with hundreds of people just like this guy. Sadly he isn't that unique or stand out?

In reply to summo:

The excellent Charles Arthur on the subject...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/26/theresa-may-online-ex...

In reply to summo:

If we have a 100 like this actually a fairly manageable number. We have more than enough the capacity monitor the movements of 100 people.
In this particular instance it doesn't seem to be the case that capacity is the issue.

In reply to neilh:

"Out of interest have you ever been to Israel. Try telling that to my wife who on flights to and from was dragged aside for interrogation as white females travelling alone to Israel are.The full lot by the way."

I was just reading that ISIS have not attacked Israel, in fact...last time they did, it was an amistake and they apologised!

http://www.newsweek.com/isis-fighters-regret-attacking-israel-apologize-def...

Maybe we should take more notice of MikeTS further up the thread and take a leaf out of Israels more "robust" approach

In reply to RomTheBear:


I don't think mi5 is big enough to track 100 people like this and deal with everything else.

In reply to captain paranoia:


Or alternatively, it's sources at the security services making a pitch for more money. Unless we the public know the numbers involved (under surveillance and doing the surveillance), it's all guess work, and frankly, I suspect it's not information that would (or should?) be forthcoming.

In reply to summo:
"But if you look at the number of people they are tracking, how do you prioritise? There will always be some risk. If they have allegedly stopped 5 potential incidents in the past 8 weeks, how do we know they haven't saved 100s of lives and these 22 (as sad as it is) are the thin end of a potential wedge that they were struggling to cover?"

And it's perverse that we become so enraged at the problem within our borders after a successful attack, and far less so when we hear of multiple successes by the security services.(13 attacks stopped since 2013 according to BBC and 500 live counter terrorist operations at any one time!)* Because if you think about it , just think about those numbers... they are the really scary and important numbers, most relevant to the safety of us and our children

*http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39176110

In reply to john arran:

My father is nearly 80 and had both knees replaced . He tells security this every time , and every time they piss him about when he sets the alarm off.
.... security refusing to profile leads to ridiculous crap like this.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Israel and ISIS aren't mutually hostile when Hizbollah/Assad/Iran are the greater enemy.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/yaalon-syrian-rebels-keeping-druze-safe-in-exc...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315347/Watch-heart-pounding-moment...

In reply to Stichtplate:


What makes you think it's due to security refusing to profile?

And if they profiled even more than the do already, why wouldn't those willing to do us harm simply go out of their way to pose as, or take advantage of, those not profiled?

I completely hate airport security too, believe me - makes my blood boil at times how absurdly they can be blind to simple common sense. But an overtly strong profiling policy is not the answer.

In reply to Nevis-the-cat:
You've basically expanded ( and explained much better) the point I was groping towards.
If you'd spent any time studying Muslim theology and still decided to blow up a load of innocents, then you'd be ignoring most of what you had learnt.

In reply to john arran:


Good luck posing as an 80 year old white male with stainless steel knees.

In reply to Stichtplate:


Have you had specialist training in missing the point? Because you're very good at it.

In reply to john arran:


You wrote "why wouldn't those willing to do us harm simply go out of their way to pose as,or take advantage of, those not profiled" in reference to my aged father and his replacement knees.

I replied "good luck posing as an 80 year old white male with stainless steel knees"

Directly addressing the point you raised.

In reply to Stichtplate:



If you say so. The training seems to have paid off.

In reply to john arran:

If by training you mean reading.

Edit: I'm not an advocate of giving every young Muslim male the 3rd degree every time they go through security. I'd just like to see the application of common sense, and I don't believe that will , necessarily, open loopholes.

In reply to baron:



Because if you ban one black child, you will be called a racist by the virtue signallers, if you ban one Muslim kid, you will be called an Islamophobe, if you ban a hundred white children, no one will care.

In reply to baron:


This is what you said. If that's not clear enough on it's own (which it is), you said in the context of arguing for profiling of muslims for security checks or stop and search. I can't see any other interpretation than that you're saying that if black children tend to shoplift more, why not ban all black children.

In reply to Big Ger:

Read what he actually said and the context of the discussion. He was saying that if black children are more likely to shop lift, why not ban all black children. I get you're points of PCness going way to far - that's not what this is.

In reply to people discussing profiling:

Sam Harris is pro profiling and had a debate with a security expert on this - the security expert isn't for it on grounds that it doesn't actually work. I'm against it anyway - I think if we're going to inconvenience innocent people we should inconvenience innocent people regardless of race - but I wasn't sure who was right on the practical question of its effectiveness. I suspect the security guy.