Manchester attacks and what are your thoughts?

Hey everyone,

this topic is not intended to offend anyone who may have friends or relatives involved in the Manchester attacks.

I couldn't believe it when I heard it on the radio the other day. Right now I'm totally speechless, like, literally I don't know how much more horrific this can be.

I don't know what to say. Like I said: "Speechless".

Thousands of innocent people died that night.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

Here's few things to consider:

• Why would someone want to do this
• Conspiracy theories
• And finally your opinion.

RIP for those poor, innocent people.

Thousands? I thought the final death count was 22.

How do I feel? Sickened, angered, and a bit resigned. It's an ongoing war with these vermin.

I pretty much agree with the sentiments in the discussion between Gavin and Crowder in the discussion I have linked below

@MirkoS77: Yeah you are right by saying 22 but I got a little carried away with the plot. Nothin major.

I cant stand it when the news say that there British born. So stopping them coming in as refugees wouldn't do anything. If they hadn't let them in the first place then it wouldn't have happened. I no I keep saying this but its ok for them too to advertise ISLAM on side of buses but in my local town we had to take Merry Christmas sign down as it was offending Muslims. As said my mum was there the night be for watching Take That concert and had a lot of police and other security there. When she got home she said something going to happen as too many police are about. She and many others had there bags checked and they go let this bomber in.greee.

Thousands vs 22 is a huge difference... Anyway, I think this kind of attack against civilians is disgusting. But we have to look into what is causing this. To say that these people are just evil is wrong and dangerous. The solution of targeting people based on colour or creed is no solution.

We have to look at our selves and our enemies. Take a look at the number of civilians that died in the Iraq war, and we all know the farce that was. How can we justify that to those victims of the terror we caused? How will they have sympathy for our civilians when we keep electing governments that to their eyes are just as much terrorists as they are to us. In a way our votes, our inactions, carry some guilt, even if we choose to ignore it.

Who's targeting people based on color? And what if the creed is evil and dangerous?

"Thousands of innocent people died that night."

While I understand it's meant as an hyperbole it really does nothing for other people's attempt to approach this as a serious discussion. It just comes off as sensationalist more than anything else.

As for my thoughts...same thing I think every time something like this happens...it's disgusting and utterly inhuman...both the sick people who commit these acts and kill innocents and the people who them use these events as leverage to spread fear and hatred against a much broader group of people than the ones who committed said acts.

2nd and 3rd generations Muslim immigrants keep becoming radicalized and attacking what it is ostensibly their home countries.

Europe might wanna look into proper techniques and methods of assimilation and integration of immigrants into society.

"My son is innocent, says father of alleged Manchester bomber".

They always are.

They say to be vigilant but how can you be with out been racist?.

As a European who was just forced to go through the naturalisation process in order to become a Dutch citizen I can agree that the whole journey is absolute crap...obviously it's immensely worse for non-Europeans.

When you say "crap", do you mean it is nonsense? As in easy?

Or do you mean it is an ordeal? As in too much, too much trouble, they ask too much?

Genuine question.

To add something, I had a friend (an American, Californian to be specific) that married a Norwegian. To immigrate to that country and become a citizen, they encouraged him to learn the language, take classes, learn the culture, and find a job. It was tough for him; he'd been out of school for a while, learning a new language was tough for him (his wife spoke English), and this was during a recession when the EU was having some issues so they were not exactly hiring foreigners (even white American males).

While I won't say they forced him to do any of that (not sure what the conditions of naturalization are), they pretty much put him in the pipeline to become, more or less, a Norwegian. I think that is OK. I think anyone wishing to become a citizen of any country should be OK with that. You don't need to abandon everything about your old country, but you are moving to a new place, you need to change for it.

I don't know what the hell is going on as far as these attacks are concerned. I certainly don't think pissed off immigrants are killing people in their host countries simply because they don't like living there. That's way too easy, way too easy to sell and buy.

I'm very angry and sad. Such a loss of life.But these will Happen again, and again. I may sound Harsh but i see no change in UK, life moves on from them till next attack.

@strongparkour:

I'm glad it didn't happen here. Trump and his posse of supporters would've had a field day.

@mrbojangles25: I meant that it's poorly thought-out and most times it feels like an afterthought or something of little importance to the country. When I moved here the first thing I checked was what I needed to do further down the line if I wanted citizenship (you can never start planning these things too early). So I was directed to a government site with a video briefing (in Dutch, which is ridiculous if it is to be your first contact with a country you just moved into) about all the things I needed to do.

What it boiled down to was that I needed to take care of everything myself and that the government's job was only to test me and either accept me or throw me out on my butt (in my case they wouldn't be able to since I'm a European citizen, but they could deny me nationality which would bring several other problems)

So basically you have to learn the language, find a place and a job and within a certain time period complete the naturalisation process. There is a form you can fill to ask for a loan to do these things but the questions are so muddy and complicated I would have trouble filling out that form and I've been living here for 5 years now.

Even if you manage to get as far as the exams they are poorly thought out, seem to be designed to make you as uncomfortable and unwanted as possible by always portraying situations where foreigners are making mistakes or generally failing to assimilate; the wording is also quite unfriendly like asking you things about "your own country" (as in, not this one...you don't belong here)...the exams themselves (on the computer) are buggy and sometimes outright don't work (you have about 30 seconds to answer each question even if the whole thing works flawlessly) and yoou're supposed to answer questions about ethics, government, laws, politics and economics; the computers there were still running win98...it was great...

Not to mention the questions themselves are often trick questions or so vague that my own wife couldn't even answer all of the demo test ones correctly because she couldn't understand what they were asking, and she's Dutch.

During the exams there were people crying, praying and whatnot....to me failing those exams meant having to spend a whole bunch of money again but to most other people there it meant being kicked out of the country. Still waiting for the results of some of the exams but from the 3 I got the results back I had a 10, 10 and 9 (10 being the max) so by all measure I aced it and I still left the place wondering if I was making a huge mistake in staying...can only imagine the people for whom the exams didn't go as well.

Just sickened by the attack. Just at a loss now, no idea how to combat these evil doers. We can bomb/root them out in their homelands but sympathisers are all over the world hiding. No idea how each country will be able to defend within against these people. As cities become protected, i'll assume targets will move outside where smaller towns don't have the funds nor equipment to keep events safe.

Maybe not. The point of these attacks is fear and media coverage. Small towns just won't get the same coverage.

@korvus: that sounds pretty terrible, but fairly similar to what my friend went through (though he had better support, like they sort-of wanted him there...maybe since he married a Norwegian?).

hopefully you have adjusted better.

@mrbojangles25: Well, I'm married to a Dutch citizen as well, didn't make much of a difference.

As for adjusting I'm not having much problem except maybe when I speak Portuguese to my son in public. If people can't recognise the language I must be from "one of those dangerous countries"...

rofl how does Portuguese sound anything AT ALL like a language from "one of those dangerous countries" lol?

ahhhh this is the world we live now smh

@KHAndAnime: I'll not try to challenge your believes about Islam, since challenging believes is kinda pointless. But what do you think the perception of a radicalized person about us is? Maybe evil too, no? That's the whole point of them being radicalized, right?

So there's two ways to look at this IMO or we find an intelligent way to unwrap this or we go by brute force and then all is fair game.

Sick and tired of attacks happening pretty much on a regular basis now and one religion is at the center of every attack a religion that is incompatible with anything it comes in contact with. The way I see it Islam has a reformation or it gets utterly destroyed along with the sjw/feminist sympathizers.

Absolutely repugnant. However if you give into terror then the terrorists win, to many people don't realise that.

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

You're wrong on every account. Terrorist attacks in the UK are no longer a regular thing and it isn't always the same religion doing it.

@toast_burner: Wasn't talking about just the UK. It has not been that long since the Westminster attack and all the attacks last year in other European countries like Paris and Germany. It feels every couple of months I wake to hear more terrorist attacks have happened. Just to add I'm sick of the speeches and vigils too everyone wants to act like going about the same as always is going to stop it.

First we need to talk about this stuff without being labelled as islamaphobes and get the ex muslims to speak out but many are afraid to because they will be targeted by extremists and ostracized from friends and family

It makes very little sense to lump all terror attacks in different countries together.

Terrorism is political, different countries have different politics. You also haven't provided evidence that it's becoming more common world wide either anyway.

Just because you hear about it more, that doesn't mean it's happening more.

This attack just reinforces my belief that the secular world needs to unite and eradicate organized religion.

This is the result of modern imperialism in the middle east and a backwards religion.

I like it how they stopped you commenting on it on MSN. There scared of freedom of speech.

Could you at least go back into your original post and edit that?

Yes... people need to realise this and admit it. The religion itself needs to reform, from within. Not all Muslims are terrorists or condone what these extremists are doing by any means, but there is a fundamental ideological problem with the religion itself... very evident in Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia (look at how they treat women and homosexuals for example).

People need to stop making excuses for the religion itself and we need to accept the fact that the religion needs to reform. But that can only happen from within the religion itself and people within the religion who want to make the changes need to be given a voice, especially in our Western societies, without the fear of getting their heads cut off.

TBH I think you might be looking at this back to front.

The problem isn't, IMO, that they failed to integrate into society. If that was the case we'd see whole generations (or massive sections of entire generations) becoming radicalised. The issue has to be more personal: that society failed them in some personal way.

What do you typically get whenever some form of terrorism happens (whether it's a white shooter in the US or a brown bomber in the UK) Answer: Stories of people who are socially ostracised, didn't get the social/mental help they needed etc; Have you ever heard a story of something like this occurring and the person is entirely of sound mind and rationale motive? It simply doesn't happen.

People in these unstable, vulnerable states are looking for belonging, and can easily be indoctrinated, especially when someone is actively keeping an eye out to do so. It just so happens that for them one of the most relatable sources of belonging is radicalised Islamists because i. they have a shared belief in something quite deep (or feel they do) and ii. the media/society have made put them in a position where the them vs us rhetoric that radical Islam pushes is all too real and convincing to them.

We see society failing in the exact same way with young white men who feel ostracised and disempowered as well. The difference is there isn't an international weaponised organisation actively scouting them so their antics get as far as far-right groups without the network or means to act on the same scale.

Also the fact that it's very rare for actual 1st-generation Muslim immigrants to get radicalized. The radicalized ones are usually 2nd/3rd generation kids who were born and raised in the West, but very rarely actual immigrants who were born and raised in Muslim-majority countries.

In addition, the number of converts who get radicalized is disproportionately high. People who were raised as non-Muslims, and then convert to Islam, are more likely to get radicalized than people who were born and raised as Muslims.

This is why the anti-immigration arguments are nonsensical. Immigration is not the issue here. The issue is with kids born and raised in the West, being brainwashed by an extremist ideology on the internet.

I don't think the immigration argument is nonsensical, it has it's merits, but you're right - if the solution was as simple as stopping Muslims coming into the country, I'd be all for it, but ideologies can spread in many different ways, not just directly from one person to another.

Lets not forget that many people close to the Manchester bomber, including family members, have been arrested. It's not only the attackers themselves who are the problem, it's Muslims who let them happen. Just read up on Muslim attitudes towards extremism - Obviously it's "#notallMuslims" who support terror, but the results of the studies done on this subject show a level of support or indifference that is well above what I'd call acceptable.

7 out of the last 10 incidents listed are motivated by Islam/Islam extremists. 10 incidents take us back 12 years to 2005.

The Manchester bomber's college classmates and even his own mum reported him to the authorities. He was known to the intelligence services, yet they did nothing about it. This is an all too common pattern, of the intelligence knowing about terrorists yet failing to stop them.

As for Muslim attitudes towards extremism, polls show that Christian American attitudes towards extremism are worse. Gallup and Pew polls have shown that Christian Americans are more likely than Muslims to support the indiscriminate murder of civilians.

Erm, it's a completely legitimate point. The driving point of those looking to curb the influx of refugees is that it leads to terrorism, and they might want to use an attack like this as justification for that... but if the person was British born it defeats that logic since curbing the number of people coming to Britain wouldn't have stopped the attack.

What you seem to be saying (that first and second generation people's from certain minorities should not be allowed into the country) is i. entirely impractical unless you have a time machine and ii. wouldn't have worked anyway since the first and second generation minorities were not linked to any perpetuation of terrorism (where are all the radical Islam attacks in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s? Care to explain that?).

In fact, it's almost like these attacks didn't start happening until the West starting marching into muslim majority nations and blowing them up (or arming people to do it on their behalf)... Maybe, just maybe, the foreign policies of the West are a major factor here in fostering resentment overseas, and not Islam?

Britain has a moral and legal obligation to take in refugees, you can't just 'stop'. That's simply not acceptable by any ethical measure, not when Britain is responsible for stoking the conflicts that have made them refugees in the first place (besides, the first and second generation minorities that came to Britain after the war were largely immigrants, not refugees).

It's also contentious, because you're implying that millions of law abiding peaceful people in certain minority groups have less legitimate reasons to be here based on what is happening today, rather than what was happening when their parents entered the country (after having fought and died in wars for British colonial interests or coming in because their skills were needed).

But the family members *didn't* let it happen. They took the necessary steps to alert the authorities, and the authorities didn't act. Besides, lets be honest, the 'family' never get blamed when it's a secular white person who goes on a gun-totting spree. Heck, what about any case of pre-mediated violent crime, murder and so on. Nothing. Only when it is a muslim group is it implied that somehow and someway the community is at fault.

I also would love to see these surveys as many of them ask one thing and when they are reported the things people are saying are twisted completely out of context. Did you see the actual report and ask muslims on why they filled on thing out over the other? Or did you read the interpretation that was foisted upon the report findings by a second-hand report?

For example, one I saw said that a large number of muslims would want to attack and kill British people (implying on the street) because many of them sided with the humanitarian causes of victims in warzones who Britain is attacking. Their reasons for wanting to help the other side are moral and compassionate, but because Britain is in the wrong side of things their want to fight (to help people) becomes twisted as i. fighting British interests and ii. attacking Britain domestically. In essence their transnational sense of morality is being twisted into a lack of morality aimed at Britain (which incidentally, frees Britain up from having to take flak at home for how it conducts itself abroad).

Likewise, I've seen many people use the 'xx% of muslims want Sharia Law', being used to doomsay an impending theocratic dictatorship or some shit like that, when Sharia Law is simply not a law at all, but a personal code of conduct (Sharia Code, might be more appropriate).

The fact that the number sits at around 60% actually shows that fundamental following of Islam is considerably lower than what many assume, which contradicts the popular narrative that followers of Islam don't follow casually (when as many as 40% seem to based on survey results). Further, the survey fails to identify what Sharia Code means to the individual in question (we can safely assume even then it isn't a 100% following of the Quran, because we simply don't see that happening in practice by any significant measure).

@Articuno76: No what I am saying is if they didn't let the 1st generation in the first place.

What does a radicalized person's perception of non-radicalized person have to do with anything?

The Unibomber too thought he was justified in what he did. Many serial killers, murderers, pedophiles, etc. feel justified in their crimes. Just because they feel justified doesn't mean they're right.

Are you proposing that if someone thinks someone else is evil, and brutally kills them for it, it's okay because they thought that person was evil? No offense dude but I truly think the concept of morality is going a bit over your head here. There's nothing justified in someone suicide bombing a group of young innocent teens and the fact you're even giving the slightest room for ambiguity on that spells "****ed up" to me.

This whole "maybe we're the evil ones" platitude isn't intelligent. There's not one intelligent thing about it. It's 100% stupid and 100% ignorant and really offensive to be honest.

What are you talking about? The family was linked to ISIS and have been arrested.

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi apparently wasn't the only member of his family to harbor extremist views, as Libyan officials arrested the suicide bomber's father and two brothers and uncovered what investigators called a plot for a new attack.

A giant portion of Muslims (30%-50% depending on region) SUPPORT these acts of terrorism. Why the hell would people who support these acts report them to prevent them from happening?

I don't think you've given any thought to the seriousness of this situation. Maybe you just don't know anything about Islam and it's hard for me to fault you for that because it's something that takes effort to search out and research. Nobodies picking on them because they're brown or purely on the basis that it's a different religion.

People are picking on Islam because the religion itself preaches hatred and death for all that oppose it, and of course we have the stats to show that followers of the religion are disproportionately linked to crime and terrorism. There's no bigotry here. If all these people became Buddhists by tomorrow, this problem would vanish over night. Diversity of religion is GREAT. But the fact of the matter is that, like all things in life, not all religions are equal. I believe people around here have been misled to think all religions have the same values and preach peace and love, and I really hope they look more into it before sticking to such a simplistic worldview. Islam isn't just a religion, but an ideology, with a strict system of brutal, sexist laws (which punishes infidels) at the core of it.

Wow. Seriously? We're talking about kids in England!!!

The Manchester bomber's college classmates and even his own mum reported him to the British authorities. That's how the British intelligence knew about him, yet they did nothing about it. As for his family members in Libya, they've been arrested as suspects over there, but haven't been convicted yet (assuming they even get a fair trial in Libya), so it's still too early to tell.

Those percentages are completely false. Pew polls show the percentage of Muslims saying attacks against civilians are justified to be mostly in the 1-15% range, with only several Muslim-majority countries in the 20-40% range. In comparison, a Gallup poll has shown the percentage of Christian Americans supporting murder against civilians to be astonishingly high, ranging from 58% (Catholics & Protestants) to 64% (Mormons).

It says now that his sister said he wanted revenge on US air strikes in Syria.

I read in the newspaper that this muslim was considered normal and friendly in his local neighborhood. It really does show that any muslim could be a ticking time bomb. And we're supposed to just get used to it according to the media and the left. It's a perfectly natural occurance now to have bombs blowing up people. One of the many benefits to multiculturalism.

Saving the NHS probably the biggest one.

It's gotten so bad, Manchester police REFUSES to share bombing info with the US now.

I was thinking about mentioning the NHS... The main reason the NHS survived past the '60s was because of immigrant doctors from India and Pakistan. And to this day, the NHS still relies heavily on immigrant doctors and nurses (from places like India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Africa, and Eastern Europe). It's no wonder the right-wing want to scrap the NHS and make the working-classes suffer for it, since that would drastically reduce immigration.

The irony is that the health minister who promoted the mass-immigration of Indians and Pakistanis in the first place, in order to save the NHS in the early '60s, was Enoch Powell. He later turned far-right and gave the infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech in '68, paving the way for the white-power skinhead movement (from the late '60s to the '80s), and today's equivalent far-right movement. It's also worth noting that the "Paki-bashing" of skinheads back then and the "Muslim-bashing" of today's far-right are strikingly similar.

I'll add some thoughts on this... As a Norwegian. Learning the language, I am not saying you need to sound like a Norwegian, but being understood and understanding us. It helps immensely. It opens a door/removes a barrier, whatever you wish to call it. On a social level and work level. You're putting some effort into trying to fit in. It's appreciated.

I don't know what else you have to go through, though I assume there is a test about the Norwegian society and history. I have no idea how they are made or worded like. Hopefully not as terrible as the ones @korvus had to go through.

Actually I could condense the first paragraph I wrote down to: Norway works best for Norwegians. :P

"Norway works best for Norwegians" That can be said for any country; just showing that you are trying to adapt and learn the language and customs is a huge step. In Portugal if you're a tourist it doesn't really matter how much of the language you know, if you say "Obrigado" (thank you) people will love you for it and treat you that much better.

Same principle here in the Netherlands; thing is, I have friends living for 10+ years in the "tourist cities", who know probably 10 Dutch words (mostly food :p) and nobody cares because places like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the likes are packed full of foreigners, but the more south you go the less and less people are willing to give foreigners the benefit of the doubt. I've been refused service several times when my Dutch was still broken, even got told not to touch anything "just in case" when I went to a postcard store (guess I was supposed to use my x-ray vision to choose a card) and even now that my Dutch is quite good I still get the side eye when I speak Portuguese.

People are just generally rough on foreigners here in the south; I was living here for 2 weeks and people were already complaining that my Dutch was still not good enough, telling me I needed to try harder and telling me bragging stories about how they visited France, picked up a bunch of newspapers and learned French overnight. Others would give me the "I know your type, you just want to live off the government and never learn the language or find a job" speech which is ridiculous, because as a non-citizen I still have to pay taxes but am not eligible for most government support. Of course that when I'd tell them I had opened my own company the complaint would change to "You're stealing our jobs!!". I think the most serious situation was either when a woman purposefully rammed her motorcycle against my child's stroller or when I had to grab my kid and run away from a mob at a supermarket...

Even when it's not against me I still see instances of hatred for foreigners everywhere. I've been stopped from going into Moroccan restaurants by random people on the street that'd tell me things like "Don't go in there, you can't give those people money. They'll just bring their entire family over". So basically you can't have a job but you also can't get anything from the government. I even feel guilty when people assume I'm Moroccan (god know why) and when I tell them I'm Portuguese they reply with "Oh, that's less bad then"...so since I'm from a country you hate less you'll treat me slightly better? What a relief... =/

@korvus: I think a certain degree of xenophobia/superiority over non-nationals is, for better or worse, natural in a society.

The problem right now is you have a lot of "leadership countries" (the US, UK, Germany, etc) showing incredibly conservative, regressive qualities which a lot of people take as a sign to act on these impulses. I think things are just dipping into the bad side, the world is more or less going through a rough patch of social behavior. People that would otherwise keep their mouth shut and go home and yell at their wife are now yelling at immigrants in the middle of the store because they think their country or the world somehow says it is OK to do that.

We see that in the US now with Hispanics; it's nothing new, a lot of folks view them as less than Americans for various reasons. But they never really acted against them that much or thought of them as sub-human, but now I am literally witnessing people yelling at Hispanics for no good reason in the middle of crowded places just because they're holding up a line, or they can't speak English, or some other trivial thing any other person could do. I've lived with Hispanics my whole life and have never seen this mistreatment to this degree until this year.

I'm just kind of assuming that must be what is going on with you, or with non-nationals (or whatever we call them? People not from a country they're living in in Europe. I mean they're all part of the EU and that's legit but they're still moving to a new country).

Hopefully it swings back to more moderate values, or even liberal values if they can be sensible.