This is easily going to be the stupidest post in this thread. I don’t see any way to top it.
You know, this sort of reasoning is something that’s bugged me about Western news coverage of attacks/shootings: Insisting that if something is tragic or cruel, that it must be “senseless” or have no good explanation. Terrorist attacks and school shootings are ***not ***senseless or illogical; on the contrary, there is plenty of cold-blooded logic, thought, coherent motive, and rational reason that went into such attacks.
A few years ago there was a French jihadist that shot up a Jewish school and killed some kids (details here)
A couple of years ago, some Al-Shabaab gunmen shot up a college in Kenya too. They killed many, but they were adults.
There was also the Boko Haram attack on Chibok of Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls fame, but in that case the goal was kidnapping, not slaughter, so it’s not really in the same category.
I suspect this terrorist chose the concert over a school playground primarily for the body count he was able to achieve. It’s easier to kill lots of people with a bomb if they’re packed tightly together, like when exiting the concert, as opposed to spread out all over a school playground.
ETA: my point is that terrorists definitely do NOT hold schools sacrosanct. They (collectively) appear to have no problem shooting / blowing them up. As for why they do not do it more often … I don’t really have any insight into the minds of terrorists’ and their target selection, so IDK.
OK, this is getting ridiculous. The New York Times has their hands on actual crime-scene photos of the remnants of the explosive device. The British Home Secretary said this morning that the earlier leaks were “irritating” (translation: she’s fucking livid) and she’d made it clear that intelligence passed on was not to be distributed widely. I can only imagine her current mood.
This is a shocking way to treat a close ally, deeply unprofessional of whichever agency is doing the leaking, and highly damaging to the close working relationships the UK and US intelligence services have long enjoyed.
Starting to look like another oddball/misfit and loner on the fringes of groups. The main concern is whether he was bright enough to concoct the bomb itself. I can’t see that he’d reach out to ISIS or anyone in the UK and for it nt to be picked up, I don’t think he was smart enough. Hope I’m right.
It might be time to close of the USA. This is too important to have rank amateurs in the network.
I wished you were (right), but I don’t think that’s the case.
Looks like French officials are getting in on the data leaks now too.
The Mans (City and United) are pledging a mil according yo the BBC. Seems like peanuts considering their summer transfer budget. They should do better.
Seems fine to me. Well done to both football clubs of Manchester
And the consequences have started to play:
The UK has stopped sharing intel with the US due to this leak. I don’t know when was the last time something of the sort happened, but definitely not within the past 50 years at least, as far as I am aware. I know that for quite some time the US was not sharing with the UK certain things, because they were not fully confident that the UK intelligence services were free of Soviet moles (and the “Cambridge Five” affair didn’t help things). But, the UK not sharing with the US…? I don’t remember that happening in any relatively recent times.
Theresa May apparently is going to have words with Donald Trump this coming Thursday during the NATO summit in Brussels.
According to the BBC, they’re only not sharing intel related to this investigation - other intel is being passed as normal.
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Man United paid 100 mil for a mediocre MF named Paul Pogba. They could afford to chip in much more but sometimes it us the thought that counts.
Abedi appears to be something of an oddity for recent years: an actual trained terrorist, with direct links to ISIS. The norm in recent years seems to have been people that were inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki or other extremist material they’d encountered online and then planning and executing their own terrorist attacks. In fact, ISIS seems to have been urging this mode of ISIS-inspired but self-taught and self-supported terrorism recently.
In slightly more positive news, Ariana Grande is returning to Manchester this Sunday 4th June to play a benefit concert at Old Trafford Cricket Ground. She’s bringing along some friends: Justin Beiber, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Usher and a One Directioner, amongst others. For the demographic that was at the Arena gig, that’s an absolutely stellar lineup. Arena attendees get in free.
Good on her and her team for getting that organised so quickly.
That’s a rather understated way of saying “British authorities were repeatedly warned about this guy but sat around with their thumbs up their arses”.