More that unites us

Some responses to the Manchester appalling and sad attack at the Ariana Grande concert. Not so much a polemic, nor is it particularly complete.

  1. Twenty-two people were killed in a bomb blast at the Manchester Arena on Monday night 22nd May, including an eight-year-old girl and an off-duty female police officer, moments after US singer Ariana Grande finished performing around 10:30pm. The concert attracted a large number of young women and children.
  2. The Community

  3. As we would hope, the community response was one of solidarity and compassion because there is more that unites us, than divides us.
  4. Corbyn speaks as does May.
  5. Manchester Attack: Jeremy Corbyn urges solidarity after "appalling act of violence"
  6. Crime fighting

  7. Disgracefully and unusually, details of the police enquiries leak from the US, twice which leads to the UK ceasing the intelligence sharing.
  8. Reporting the Story

  9. Tim Fenton writes about the black ops response by the mainstream media but the story rapidly moves from the unsustainable position that Corbyn & Labour had some form of culpability as argued by the Sun & Mail, towards Manchester adopting Liverpool's settled position of not buying the Sun and a look at Police resourcing, the responsibility of Theresa May for six of the last seven years.
  10. The results of the Police cuts, which have removed 20,000 police posts since May took over as Home Secretary are spoken of here, and the possible need for army personnel to cover for police shortages.
  11. Jon Snow challenges Michael "Bollocks" Fallon on police numbers, followed by Richard Murphy and Glyn Moody who comments on the effectiveness of the surveillance state's machine.
  12. Since 2010 UK police numbers have fallen by 19,000. Would we need armed forces on the streets if that wasn’t the case?
  13. perhaps MI5 lacked resources to keep an eye on him; perhaps there are too many false positives arising from UK's mass #surveillance...  https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/867343082114740225 
  14. Last February, the BBC reported on internal work by the police looking at the decline of community policing and it's consequent loss of intelligence
  15. And Simon Jenkins speaks for as al as he criticises Theresa May for her militarisation of the response, and her diminishing of the nobility and grief of the people of Manchester. He says,
  16. Above all, a tough response would point out that terrorism is aimed at our freedom to congregate. It is the price of that freedom. For all its horror, the risk of death from terrorist violence is minimal. True toughness would downplay it, avoid the grandstanding and empty rhetoric, the machismo of soldiers and gunships. It would avoid the easy slither into a bruised and weakened liberty that is now the most menacing threat.
  17. The threat is that we become like the USA, a flawed democracy.
  18. Anti-terrorism

  19. Colin Talbot writes at the Public Investigator and accuses the perpetrators of the Manchester attack of an apolitical nihilism.
  20. It's important to understand the often orthagonal roles of injustice and criminality in the incubation of Terrorism.
  21. It reminds me of Clutterbuck's writing in the 70's that dealing with political violence required a political & police response often because the violence was tacitly supported by many perceiving an injustice; dealing with Marcusian influenced terrorists who were attempting to get a repressive response required a police response but today I would add that in this case it is probably better to not exacerbate the oppressions that they claim to be fighting. I tend to agree that there is little negotiation to be done with ISIS, but we can avoid making the threat worse.
  22. Image Credit: Pablo Fernandez CC 2013 BY-ND-NC (cropped, cropping is not a derived work)