Ariana Grande concert explosions leave scores dead and injured. Manchester police: 'terrorist incident'

I think first because we’re getting numb to violence in society - not just on TV, but in the real world. Second, because it brings up uncomfortable questions about health care, especially mental health care and it’s a white guy committing the crime, so it’s downplayed in favor of events that conform to the narrative of where the real danger in society lies - with scary brown people, not American born white guys.

There is a whole ideology underpinning how we talk about crime and violence in America, that unfortunately, wants us to ignore who is in power and how they’ve historically kept power, here in the US and how they expanded it abroad. The media is utterly complicit in this, which is why they tend to ignore or downplay stories that do not fit the current narrative that gives us a reason for waging war in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

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18 posts were split to a new topic: Democracy and Terrorism in the Middle East

Not new. Both the IRA and the PLO regularly targeted schools, and just a few years ago in Norway a right-wing terrorist killed 69 kids.

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First off, to clear up some details, he was Hispanic - so brown, not white. And while he had mental health issues, the PCP in his weed didn’t help. One would think the media would have latched onto that, but I dunno.

I don’t know if the Media is complicit to spin a narrative, or if they just go with what will cause the most outrage and eyeballs. There have been several examples of whites with mental problems making the news due to violence. Conversely, there was a guy in Hesston, KS who shot up his work place last year, killing 4 and wounding 14, that didn’t make national news. I don’t know if his race as the reason (black), or reason/cause (looks like domestic violence sparked it), or because he was in middle of nowhere Kansas (Find Hesston on the map, win a prize!)

The cynic in me connects the dots that the media doesn’t want to focus too much on minorities when violence happens to avoid demonizing them and perpetuating stereotypes - except it is acceptable with Islamic terrorism. Honestly, the former sort of make sense, as too often people will twist statistics and anecdotal evidence to push an agenda or ideology. The latter shows in spades the damage that can be done.

I just wish we could live in a world where we can condemn certain people when bad things happen, and even certain groups in some situations, but not let it bleed into placing the blame on larger groups, whole religions, or countries or cultures.

Sadly True. And the tactic is used by ISIS as well, where they have killed every male older than ~12 in a village. :frowning: And there are even more historical examples.

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Shaking my damn head in exasperation and disgust.

@Mindysan33, @IronEdithKidd;

It’s me, Melz; and I’m having technical difficulties at the moment; hence the new account.

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Former Tory MP Zac Goldsmith did, when he was standing against a Muslim, Labour party candidate for London Mayor.

A simple “Get the hell out of here, this is neither a photo opportunity nor a campaign venue, and if you want to help create well-paid jobs for health workers, including but not limited to doctor positions!” might be tempting.

But all in all, no-one should do this. Neither your version nor mine. As fucking wrong as coming to a hospital as a politician in the first place.

Yes, but not in the case.

Good point, but google doesn’t show anything happening on Feb 25, 2016. But really, it’s just flyover country, why bother? :wink:

I don’t really “tune” into anything, per se. When something big like this happens I hit various websites, even major news org I am not super keen on, just to try to get an amalgamate of what happened. It’s sad and ironic that some of the infotainment shows are actually better at presenting honest and relatable information than the news shows. I imagine many in the media are getting tired of it too.

I thought the U.K had the NHK for that ? I guess they don’t provide psy help ¿

IIRC she was referring to the Time Square event in the US.

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What @Mister44 said…

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& @Mister44

I see, i know what happened, i skipped over those comments (i was broswing on other tabs too)

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Today, in a show on French national radio, there’s been a nice hommage to the Manchester victims. It’s a comedy show about news, and they didn’t want to go the usual one minute of silence, replacing it with one minute of music, an excerpt from Whatever by Oasis. I found it unexpectedly effective.

You’ve got that backwards, the Falklands war was setup by the military dictatorship that was in charge of Argentina at the time as a distraction from the civil unrest caused by the awful economic situation the country was in. The Falklands War was entirely justified from the British point-of-view in terms of international law, and the right of self determination, for a territory that Argentina had no legal, historical or natural right to, it just happened to be close by.

Carrington resigned because he realised he was at fault (along with the Defence Secretary), ignoring the warnings from the Navy and the Governor about Argentina’s intentions. Remember, never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence.

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What could be more important than killing people to control a rock on the other side of the world.

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So the only response to violence is indifference? Presumably you believe ISIS should be just allowed to have their caliphate as well? It’s only a desert in the middle east, who cares about the people who live there?

The IRA did not regularly target schools, they once bombed an elite boarding school (Harrow), but didn’t place the bomb in a position to cause fatalities and gave a warning, no-one was injured. I’m not aware of any other attacks (and certainly not one where there were any fatalities). I’m not sure about the PLO, though I wouldn’t have thought that was true of them either.

Not denying the IRA were scum, but the current crop of Islamist extremists are on a whole other level to them.

One of the neat things about the UK is a rather phlegmatic response to things going badly wrong. After the initial running around and screaming they just knuckle down to organising things and helping. When overseas observers looked at the bystander response to the Kegworth Air Disaster, they asked whether UK residents are trained to respond to disasters as a public health measure. :slight_smile: (They aren’t.)

When I was a kid PLO attacks on children were in the news all the time. From memory, some of the worst were Scorpion Pass, Avivim School Bus, Kiryat Shmona, and the Netiv Meir Elementary School.

As the IRA considered themselves soldiers, not terrorists, they favored targeted attacks instead of blowing up schoolbuses and malls, but over 600 civilians - many children - got caught in the crossfire. It’s hard to give them a pass here.

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The NHS has been underfunded for decades now, and psychiatric care funds tends to get get diverted to treat more media friendly conditions.

I know one of the psychiatrists who came up with Care in the Community, as a way to treat milder mental illnesses in outpatient clinics. Then Maggie got her hands on it and cut the outpatient funding which resulted in people not getting treatment. It should go without saying that he is not a fan of the Conservatives.

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