Manchester bleeds

Such have occurred before 9/11. Putting a plane into a steep dive is just as effective as a reinforced door for keeping people in the cabin out of the cockpit.

Except when the enemy not knowing what you know provides an advantage.

 

CNN provides this extra bit of detail: "On Wednesday, The New York Times posted photos that show what it said could be the detonator, a battery, nuts and screws for shrapnel, and fragments of a backpack used in the attack. The paper, without specifying the source, said British authorities provided access to photos of materials found at the scene."

Someone is not being truthful.

 

Yes, Brit intelligence to US intelligence. The leak to media is not yet known.

 

stupid ones are already dead@21. Not all of them.

 

I was thinking the same, Bob.

Condolences to our British friends.

 

Thanks for the nice thoughts. It is another terrible event.

But here's a thing....

2017 Melbourne car attack - Wikipedia

On 20 January 2017, around 1:30 pm AEDT, a car was driven into pedestrians in the CBD of Melbourne, Australia. Six people were killed and at least thirty others wounded, three of whom sustained critical injuries.[2][3] Police have alleged that the victims were intentionally hit, and have charged the driver of the vehicle, Dimitrious Gargasoulas, with six counts of murder.​

This was mentioned for about half an hour in the global news. I don't know whether you'd have even picked it up in the US, as it happened during your night, and it was no longer a story by the time you'd have woken up.

This attack on the other hand - 2017 Westminster attack - Wikipedia - killed far fewer people, but attracted constant rolling news coverage for ages. And this weekend's attack killed one more non-perpetrator than the Melbourne attack, and has brought news coverage and sympathy from around the world.

What's the difference? Two words. Dimitrious Gargasoulas. It's a Greek name! Phew! Because he's not a Muslim, it's not a terrorist attack. So it deserves a good five to ten minutes of coverage in Australian news, and hardly anything overseas.

Gargasoulas was a f---ed up, murderous nutcase. A lot like the Westminster idiot and the three Borough Market idiots.

But we give those people - and people who want to be like them - coverage and glamour and everything they could ever have dreamed of. That helps them succeed in their aim of spreading terror, and it helps ensure that other people are attracted to the cause. Treating them like we treated Gargasoulas - as a murderer with serious mental problems - would not do this.

 

I agree 100%+!

By the way, that story did make my news feed on my Flipbook app. But it was not a very big blip on radar here. Don't let anyone tell you that the news media doesn't filter the news.

I wonder what would happen if the people who do these things for the perverted fame were never named in the news and were chucked in the ocean and never heard of again. The radical muslim terrorists are brainwashed into thinking they will automatically go to paradise for their evil actions. But would they still think that if they were buried wrapped in bacon? Somehow, we have to remove the incentives.

 

I agree with you except for that second-last sentence. As Trollbait's excellent cartoon says, these people should be seen as "some a--holes" and nothing else. Your second-last sentence panders to the people who want this to be seen as a religious war. And I'm not sure how it would have stopped the some a--hole in Portland last week.

 

This is exactly as it should be.

 

Yes, I agree with this wholeheartedly. The death penalty means we achieve their goal of martyrdom for them. A lifetime in prison - ideally in solitary - seems a far worse punishment.

It would be nice if we treated the Greek a--hole in the same way that we treat the surviving "terrorist" a--holes. But we won't, because we've bought into the exact narrative al-Qaeda and Da'esh want us to buy into.

 

I certainly didn't pick it up. Your explanation may be applicable to most of the planet, but I'd suggest stepping down another rung regarding the U.S.

Considering that much of the so-called 'news' (a.k.a. infotainment) here in the U.S. has generally abysmal coverage of what happens beyond our borders, and that we were gearing up for a YUGE! and historic internal event, I think this one would have received little coverage here even if it had been a Muslin terrorist attack. Our national attention span isn't big enough to cover both.

The same applies to mass shootings here. Many of them are later found to have been taken in by the massive publicity of previous events. Before the advent of nonstop live video coverage from the scene, potential offenders had easier access to the means of these attacks, but far less inspiration and potential for fame or notoriety. There is a substantial copycat effect.

Splashy coverage of suicides is also known to produce a similar effect. Toning down the coverage reduces the copycats.

 

I agree on all fronts, except one.

You're absolutely right on the suicide thing. I don't know what the situation is in America, but in Australia there re very specific codes of practice on news coverage of suicides: the method of death is given minimal prominence, and any suicide story - even a celebrity one - is followed immediately by contact details for helplines.

But I don't think your not having picked up the Melbourne story is because of sensationalism and stuff, or because it was foreign. I think it wasn't reported much in America (nothing that you saw; not much on @jerrymildred saw) purely because it wasn't terrorism.

The number of non-attacker deaths were roughly the same in the Westminster Attack, the Borough Market attack and the Melbourne attack. But Westminster and Borough Market were, as I understand it, covered extensively in US media, whereas Melbourne wasn't at all. Both London and Melbourne are large, wealthy, English-speaking cities with strong ties to America, so the reason isn't the (extremely depressing) one that Melbourne contained the wrong kind of foreigner (see the lack of coverage of attacks in Mosul and Kabul this week for examples of that reason).

It's just because it doesn't feed into the terrorism-is-scary-and-we-should-all-be-scared narrative.

Look at this!

I had absolutely no idea that this had happened until I read @bwilson4web 's post. Nothing. And I'm an international news junkie.

I'd be interested in knowing whether the Americans on this thread with no ties to Oklahoma knew about this. Did it make national news? @fuzzy1 , @jerrymildred , @Trollbait , did this make your news? And if so, for how long? Certainly it was not reported on any Australian or British news that I saw or heard.

And again, we're looking at roughly the same sort of numbers as Melbourne, Westminster Bridge and Borough Market, but, like Melbourne, she didn't claim to be Muslim, so it's OK. It doesn't need to be reported beyond a bit of local news. But Stockholm - with just one more death - did need to be reported globally, because it was done by someone who claimed to be Muslim, so it was terrorism and THAT MAKES IT SCARY.

And all of that reporting makes each of the non-"terrorist" attackers a nobody. But it makes each of the allegedly-"terrorist" attackers a hero and a martyr. And that makes stupid people think they are worth copying.

 

But when sh*t happens, the publicity for similar events can be vastly different. E.g. shoot up a jewish day care with a semi-auto pistol, injuring five there and killing one nearby, and we have a very big story with another national outcry for more gun control. But do effectively same with a Cadillac, intentionally running down kids on a daycare playground for misplaced revenge, injuring five and killing two, and it is a far smaller story. Never mind that these crimes happened just three months and thirty miles apart.

 

Most U.S. news outlets have similar guidelines, voluntary and internal (i.e. not imposed by government, and not binding), for reporting suicides.

They seem to have nothing similar for murders. From materials gathered from homes of subsequent perpetrators, it is clear that the very extensive Columbine massacre coverage inspired and/or helped drive obsessions that resulted in numerous later tragedies.

I can't disagree that this was an important factor. But it was also competing with a very major homeland event, the Inauguration of Trump. Big internal U.S. news commonly crowds other major world events. E.g. the Québec City mosque massacre in January didn't get anywhere near the attention it should have had down here.

I believe it did, but only briefly. Along the same lines as my previous reply, I believe it would have received much more coverage if it had been committed with a gun than with a car.