BREAKING: Manchester Arena blast - Several dead after explosion at concert

[Destrius]

What do you expect when you allow people from countries bombed by the west to enter.

 

[Tiger Genie]

But Iman Tawhidi shook his head and launched into the reasons why he disagreed.

“We have a situation where a month doesn’t go by without a terrorist attack happening somewhere around the world,” he said.

“For 1400 years we have had a religion of war, that’s exactly what we have had. This is not something I’m imagining,” he said.

He added Islam had spread from the Middle East to other parts of the world through war.

“The Islamic scriptures are exactly the thing that’s pushing these people to behead the infidel,” he said.

But Dr Rifi was having none of it.

“There is nothing in Islam that justifies killing innocent people,” he said.

Imam Tawhidi accused Dr Rifi of lying to the Australian people.

“Our books teach the beheading of people,” he said adding the Manchester bomber would have believed he was going to heaven for what he did.

Dr Rifi insisted the Manchester suicide bomber was going straight to hell because he has killed innocent people.

“Nothing in our religion supports killing innocent people, full stop,” he said.

This wouldn’t be the first time the South Australian Imam has caused waves within the Muslim community.

 

[mike2000 is back]

I agree with most of what you're saying but "adopt the Syrian model"? Are you serious?

Yes I am. The Syrian model is the least damaging model we can adopt. i.e don't get directly involved in removing brutal tyrants from power, but limit our involvement and in case there's an uprising/revolution like it happened in Egypt. Tunisia, Yemen and Syria against these tyrants we should take a step back and watch how things unfold, and support those fighting on the ground without getting involved directly with our own troops.

Anyway, what policy do you think would have been best for us to adopt in Syria. You wanted our parliament to vote for airstrikes against Assad? Note as I said before that :WE ARE DAMNED IF WE GET INVOLVED(imperialism) AND DAMNED IF WE DON'T(they are turning a blind eye to brutal dictators mercilessly killing their own people because they don't care about muslims lives etc etc.lol).

So if you were P.M what action will you take to avoid being criticised and chastised by both sides? Lol

 

[mercurydancer]

Sad as it may be the UK cannot completely protect itself from these types of attacks - it can only minimise them.

Almost certainly these attacks would never have happened if the UK did not get itself involved in immoral wars in the ME over the last 20 years.

The politicians who caused these wars care more for their political careers than say 50 UK citizens blown up every decade or so.

I take a wider view... we can all minimise the potential. That takes cooperation between nations. Less dead people in Pakistan, Bangladesh and UK. We all benefit.

As to your comments about immoral wars, I am a little more vocal, those wars were illegal. Of course that piece of vermin Mr Blair benefited from supporting the great war on terror. So did many others. Sadly they evade prosecution.

Not-so-silent Muslims

• Syed Raiyan Nuri Reza
• Published at 06:39 PM May 27, 2017
• Last updated at 07:21 PM May 27, 2017

The world stands united in its condemnation of terror. REUTERS

We need to be rational and valiant in the face of terror
Born a Muslim and practicing the religion of Islam, I did not find myself in the least offended at Piers Morgan’s comments in his Good Morning Britain interview on the tragic Manchester terror attack, nor his words in the subsequent article he wrote for the Daily Mail in its defense.

The crux of his argument being that we, Muslims, ought to step up our game in rooting out the evil of terrorism.

Far from being offensive, I merely found his words naïve at best.

Though it is not hard to see where such sentiments are coming from. Like him, and any other human possessing a shred of human decency, I too find myself in a mess of emotions contemplating the death of the eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos, who was among the victims of this senseless act of carnage seen in Manchester.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the tragedy, as hollow and empty my words may sound. Given such emotions, I do understand the need to jump to conclusions.

But like my fellow Muslims — generously called “moderate” (thank you broad-minded and unbiased media, I guess?), to distinguish us from the extremist lot — I feel it’s hard to justify such sentiments. Because the God under whose name such horrendous acts are being carried out shares nothing with the God my brothers and sisters in faith and I worship save for the name: Allah.

The vocal minority
Let it be known that we are not passive in our feeling of solidarity. Our condemnation is loud and unambiguous. Or so demonstrated Heraa Hashimi, a 19-year-old American Muslim student, as she compiled a 712-page list of Muslims speaking out against extremism.

Now, her original Google spreadsheet takes the form of an interactive website that goes by the name of muslimcondemn.com. Also, it’s worth to remember how 120 prominent Muslim scholars from across the globe have already released and signed an 18-page open letter, in Arabic at that, steeped heavily in the nitty-gritties of Islamic theology to expose the madness of ideologues, to denounce Daesh back in 2014 (I refuse to call them Islamic State for they neither are Islamic nor a state, and to call them such would only further embolden their agenda).

What of Zeeshan ul-hassan Usmani, the prominent Muslim scientist who dedicated the resources of his big data company PredictifyMe to run information analyses to revel trends and patterns among the typical Daesh recruit to help counter-terrorism efforts?

And what about Mohammed Saeed, the very imam at the local mosque which the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi attended, who at a sermon chastising terror and murder under guise of Islamic motives or political causes?

Yet Piers Morgan claimed, in his own words: “I can’t do that. No young impressionable Muslim is going to give a stuff what I, a middle-class, middle-aged white guy, has to say about their religion.

But they might care what fellow Muslims who live around them say about Islam if an alternative view is expressed with enough conviction.”

Clearly someone has not been keeping up with all that’s been going around.

What we ought to be, after the anger has passed, having wiped away our tears and whispered our prayers, is to be the precise antithesis to the cowardly terrorist scum

Raised flags, lowered expectations
Elsewhere Morgan claims: “But I refuse to believe this disgusting excuse for a human being never gave a single clue to anyone around him that he was becoming radicalised.”

Except the community did report, on five separate occasions at least, as per a Telegraph article, to authorities on the Manchester bomber’s troubling behaviour and the home secretary of UK conceded that the young man was known to intelligent services.

With investigations still being carried out, exactly why the authorities did not act on the red flags raised is still to be made clear. The truth is, the remarkable way the Muslim community acted on Salman Abedi’s act of terror cannot be hailed as an example of how Muslim community should act. It is rare for prospective terrorists to exhibit the telltale signs of radicalisation anyway.

You do not have to take it from me, biased as I might be. But do take note of the MI5. In a sophisticated analysis based on hundreds of case studies in regards to British terror activities, they conclude that there is no single pathway to violent extremism, nor do British terrorists fit any remarkable demographic profile and are indeed a collection of diverse individuals.

So what are we to report on? Raising an alarm on account of any disturbing behaviour will surely raise false flags more often than not, and to say nothing of the mindset of paranoia that it will induce in communities.

Hence, Piers Morgan, and those of similar views do not come out as begotten or racist in the least, just outright lazy, naïve, and impractical. Piers does conclude his piece and says: “Be very … angry.”

Are we to conclude that anger alone will suffice? Will it invoke the dead back to life? Heal the traumatised survivors and their loved ones? Halt the reprehensible perverts and their disgusting acts of violence?
No.
What we ought to be, after the anger has passed, having wiped away our tears and whispered our prayers, is to be the precise antithesis to the cowardly terrorist scum, hating and deluded as they are.
We have to be: Valiant. Loving. Rational.

Syed Raiyan Nuri Reza is a freelance contributor. He writes from Tehran.

http://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/2017/05/27/not-silent-muslims/

Many wise words said there. Unfortunately none from Piers Morgan. I'm a middle class white Englishman. It is a strange concept that I am excluded from anything because of who I am. I have close ties with Muslims in my area, it is normal for me to get coffee, sit and just talk with my muslim friends. Absolutely normal. I dont want an overpaid idiot such as Morgan telling me how to live my life.

The wisest words are valiant, loving, rational.

Putin: New World Order Are In Final Stages Of Their European Masterplan

May 25, 2017 Baxter Dmitry News, World 57

As European nations mourn their dead and prepare for the next wave of “imminent” terror attacks, President Putin warns that the New World Order are in the final stages of their “70 year master plan for Europe“, and the process will only speed up from here.

“The New World Order put hornet nests in your countries,” Putin told a Kremlin tour group. “And now they are poking them.”

With France in a state of emergency, the United Kingdom under martial law with thousands of troops patrolling the streets, and Germany and Sweden suffering migrant-related breakdowns of law and order, it is hard to argue with Putin.

The New World Order’s plan to fill Western nations with radical Islamic immigrants – against the will of the citizens of these countries – and then unleash hell on earth by “poking them“, has been achieved.

Putin believes that the open border policies forced on European nations must be rejected if the continent is to have any chance of a peaceful future.

“My European brothers and sisters must reject the globalist open border policies being pushed onto them by the elite.”

There is no place for sovereign nations in the globalists’ vision of the future, according to Putin. And the Russian president pointed the finger of blame directly at the Rothschilds and their cabal of international elites.

“The Rothschild-cabal have infiltrated your government, your media, your banking institutions. They are no longer content with committing atrocities in the Middle East, they are now doing it on their own soil, desperate to complete the plan for a one world government, world army, complete with a world central bank.

“They think they can do this by terrorising you into submission. Scaring you into accepting whatever new laws they will put in place to protect you.”

Putin issued a call to arms, urging Europeans to reject the siren call of the globalists and their death cult.
“They [Europeans] must rise up against their masters, who have long since stopped serving the people, and demand their voices are heard.

“The governments of the west are no longer hiding their true intentions. You can see the horror that lies beneath their mask. Keep your eyes on them. Don’t fall for their tricks.

“Russia will not stand by and allow its European cousins to be slaughtered and dehumanised like this. The battle is over. The war has begun. Truth and justice will prevail.
http://yournewswire.com/putin-new-world-order-final-masterplan/

The UK is not under martial law.

 

[mike2000 is back]

The UK is not under martial law

Lol what do you expect from a conspiracy theory news media? That's their speciality.

Many wise words said there. Unfortunately none from Piers Morgan. I'm a middle class white Englishman. It is a strange concept that I am excluded from anything because of who I am. I have close ties with Muslims in my area, it is normal for me to get coffee, sit and just talk with my muslim friends. Absolutely normal. I dont want an overpaid idiot such as Morgan telling me how to live my life.

The wisest words are valiant, loving, rational

True talk. I will outline RATIONAL. That's the key word. We can't let some random attacks change who we are or those of our friends we interact with.

I take a wider view... we can all minimise the potential. That takes cooperation between nations. Less dead people in Pakistan, Bangladesh and UK. We all benefit.

As to your comments about immoral wars, I am a little more vocal, those wars were illegal. Of course that piece of vermin Mr Blair benefited from supporting the great war on terror. So did many others. Sadly they evade prosecution.

Something I find hard to understand is how our government allowed the leader of a known jihadist group to prosecute our former home secretary, over MI6 involvement in his and wife's rendition to Libya in 2004 after Tony Blair signed a controversial(for the leftist .lol) agreement with Gaddafi and launched a crackdown on this islamic extremist group. I know we are a country ruled by law, but still sometimes i wonder how far we must go in this regard.

 

[waz]

There needs to be a full withdrawal from the UN convention on refugees immediately. Many who claim persecution in their home countries are actually being persecuted for a very good reason. If Salman's father and the rest of the "Libyan Islamic Fighting Group" had been allowed to "disappear" in one of Gadaffi's secret prisons it would have saved a lot of trouble. I believe John McCain's friend Belhaj is actually running large parts of Tripoli at the moment with money from Qatar.

Gaddafi kept these volatile and crazed elements in check. It was just a matter of time events such as this happened with his passing.

 

[Götterdämmerung]

THE MANCHESTER-LIBYA CONNECTION IN FIVE MINUTES
by Pepe Escobar

Let’s focus on Ramadan, father of the Manchester “martyr” Salman Obeidi; now that’s a nasty piece of work.

He hails from the al-Obeidi tribe, from al Gubbah in eastern Libya. Under Gaddafi he was a Sgt. Major, very pious and Islamist-connected. He left Libya in 1991 and settled down in the Saudi Wahhabi paradise where – crucially – he trained mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan against the Najibullah government, after the Soviet retreat.

In 1992 the mujahideen enter Kabul, as in bomb it to death, including the recently “normalized” Hekmatyar. Ramadan goes to London and then Manchester, joining the Libyan Islamist diaspora that coalesces around the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
Ramadan connects with none other that Abu Anas Al-Libbi – who also lives in Manchester – and will become the brains behind the al-Qaeda attacks on Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Ramadan also connects with the infamous Abdelhakim Belhaj – former mujahid in Afghanistan and VERY close to… Osama Bin Laden. Belhaj convinces Ramadan to go back to Libya.

After the Cameron/Sarkozy/NATO “liberation” of Libya, Ramadan joins the Al Umma party, whose leader is Sami al Saadi, one of the LIFG’s top commanders, and gets very close to the Grand Mufti Sadeq al-Ghariani, the spiritual guide of hardcore Islamist militias linked to Belhaj.

Three years ago Ramadan was part of the Islamist militia raid that re-conquered Tripoli’s airport; son Salman flew from Manchester for this one, was shot, and treated in Turkey.

Ramadan was also part of the Benghazi Defense Brigades; a mish mash of Islamists from Katiba 17 (financed by Qatar and instrumental in the Benghazi revolt against Gaddafi) and Ansar al Sharia. You all remember what happened on 9/11, 2012; it was Ansar al Sharia operatives who attacked the US consulate in Benghazi.

Arguably the key point in all this mess is that Ramadan profited from the MI5 rat line transporting Libyans back to the home country to fight Gaddafi. The minister in charge of authorizing this “policy”? Theresa May.

MI5 and the British government always knew, all along, what Ramadan was all about. He was certainly an asset; the Brits were heavily involved in eastern Libya from the start. He has not been arrested; he’s now under protection, Mafia-style. His “arrest” took place – how lovely! - just as a shadow flight carrying US Special Forces landed in Misrata.

The only missing link is why son Salman “betrayed” his al-Qaeda Dad by converting to Daesh.

This is just an ultra-concise summary of the whole stinking-to-high-heavens scam. But you get the drift.

 

[Divergent]

Salman Abedi lived in an ISIS controlled area in Libya, his Father took him there to be radicalised and belonged to anti-Gaddafi rebel group. He was meant to do attacks 2years ago but was afraid and scared..so they took him back for 'further training'.

He was reported FIVE times to authorities and his friends tipped him off too. The local Masjid banned him from entering, the fact that he was afraid but 'Faith and Manhood' were used to 'prepare' since he wasn't 'proven to be brave child of a warrior' and taken back for 'two years' is so sad and goes to show his addiction to drugs was just an escape route as well as seriously brainwashed. He genuinely was in need of help.

Reported by friends.
Reported by certain family members.
Reported by Imam.

How and why did the authorities not have him under the radar?

He was groomed. Financed. Used.

The People of Greater Manchester - they know and they won't turn against fellow Muslims, but Government.

This incident has affected many of us..

Call it fate, but me and a friend were undecided whether we should attend Atif Aslam's concert or Ariana Grande's.

We went for Atif Aslam's.

 

[Banglar Bir]

BRITISH INTELLIGENCE WARNED TONY BLAIR OF MANCHESTER-LIKE TERRORISM IF THE WEST INVADED IRAQ
Jon Schwarz
May 24 2017, 2:58 a.m.

FORMER BRITISH PRIME Minister Tony Blair has yet to say anything about Monday’s heinous, nihilistic suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. According to current reporting, the attack has been claimed by ISIS and was carried out by a 22-year-old man born in Manchester to Libyan refugees.

But when Blair does speak, we can be certain he won’t mention one key fact: Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the U.S. and U.K., he was forcefully and repeatedly warned by Britain’s intelligence services that it would lead toexactly this type of terrorist attack — and he concealed these warnings from the British people, instead claiming the war would reduce the risk of terrorism.

We know this because of the Chilcot Report, the seven-year-long British investigation of the Iraq War released in 2016. The report declassifies numerous internal government documents that illustrate the yawning chasm between what Blair was being told in private and his claims in public as he pushed for war.

On February 10, 2003, one month before the war began, the U.K.’s Joint Intelligence Committee — the key advisory body for the British Prime Minister on intelligence matters — issued a white paper titled “International Terrorism: War With Iraq.”

It began:
The threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. They will target Coalition forces and other Western interests in the Middle East. Attacks against Western interests elsewhere are also likely, especially in the US and UK, for maximum impact. The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly.
And it concluded much the same way:

Al Qaida and associated groups will continue to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat will be heightened by military action against Iraq. The broader threat from Islamist terrorists will also increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West. [emphasis added in both cases]

The same report concluded that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq “would aspire to conduct terrorist attacks against Coalition interests” only in the event of an invasion. Moreover, “authoritative reporting suggests that Iraqi Intelligence (DGI) has little reach or [terrorism] capability outside Iraq.”

Specifically regarding WMD terrorism, the JIC elsewhere judged that Iraq “would be unlikely to undertake or sponsor such terrorist attacks,” that the threat of it if Iraq were not invaded was “slight,” and that there was no “credible evidence of covert transfers of WMD-related technology and expertise to terrorist groups.”

Tony Blair’s case for war, as most clearly expressed in his March 18, 2003 remarks in the House of Commons, essentially turned all of this on its head. The possibility, Blair said, of terrorist groups obtaining WMD from a state like Iraq was “a real and present danger to Britain and its national security.”

“The real problem,” Blair proclaimed, “is that, underneath, people dispute that Iraq is a threat, dispute the link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and dispute, in other words, the whole basis of our assertion that the two together constitute a fundamental assault on our way of life.” Blair did not mention that the people disputing this included his own intelligence services.

Then Tam Dalyell, a Labor MP from Scotland, asked Blair this key question:“What could be more calculated to act as a recruiting sergeant for a young generation throughout the Islamic and Arab world than putting 600 cruise missiles — or whatever it is — on to Baghdad and Iraq?”

Blair did not reveal the explicit warnings from the JIC that exactly this would happen. No, he told Dalyell, “Unless we take action against [Al Qaeda], they will grow. That is why we should act.” Terrorist organizations wouldn’t be motivated, as the JIC had told him, by an invasion of Iraq, because their true motivation was that “they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life.”

Blair’s stunningly fraudulent case for war carried the day, 412-149. The current British Prime Minister Theresa May, then a Conservative front bencher, voted for it. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn voted against.

Then exactly what the JIC had predicted occurred. Fifty-two people were killed in July 2005 when four suicide bombers — three of whom were British-born — carried out attacks on the subway and a bus in London. One of the killers taped himself stating that they were killing their fellow citizens because Western governments “continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world.” In a separate tape another said, “What have you witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Two months ago, a British-born Muslim convert murdered four people with a car on Westminster Bridge, then got out and stabbed a policeman to death. Just minutes before his killing spree he declared via WhatsApp that he was acting in revenge against Western wars in the Mideast.

Emergency response vehicles are parked at the scene of a suspected terrorist attack during a pop concert by Ariana Grande in Manchester, England on May 23, 2017.
Photo: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

And now we have the slaughter in Manchester. ISIS has declared that the attack was carried out “in order to terrorize the polytheists, and in response to their transgressions against the homes of the Muslims.”
In her testimony before the Chilcot inquiry, Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5 at the time of the Iraq invasion, explained all of this:
Our involvement in Iraq radicalized, for want of a better word … a few among a generation … [who] saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.

An increasing number of British-born individuals … were attracted to the ideology of Usama Bin Laden and saw the West’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their fellow religionists and the Muslim world.

If British officials had read the JIC’s warnings, Manningham-Buller said, they could “have had no doubt” that this was likely to happen.
So did Blair read the intelligence, specifically the February 2003 paper on international terrorism?

He absolutely was aware of it, Blair told the inquiry, “but I took the view then and take the same view now that to have backed down because of the threat of terrorism would be completely wrong.”
But of course this was just another brazen misrepresentation by Blair. He had not taken “the view then,” at least in public, that invading Iraq would increase the risk that Britons would die in terrorist attacks, but it would be somehow worth it. Instead he had claimed that they would be at greater risk without a war, because if left alone Saddam Hussein would enable WMD-armed terrorism.

Asked how she saw this perspective, Manningham-Buller told the inquiry that “It is a hypothetical theory. It certainly wasn’t of concern in either the short-term or the medium-term to my colleagues and myself.”

In the end, the most plausible explanation of Blair’s motivation is simply that he was willing to sacrifice the lives of British citizens so that the U.S. could continue running the world with the U.K. holding its coat. Richard Shultz, a professor of international politics at Tufts who’s long been a key national security state intellectual, wrote in 2004 that “A very senior [Special Operations Forces] officer who had served on the Joint Staff in the 1990s told me that more than once he heard terrorist strikes characterized as ‘a small price to pay for being a superpower.’”

The victims of the Manchester bombing, among them an 8-year-old girl, are that small price.

https://theintercept.com/2017/05/23...ster-like-terrorism-if-the-west-invaded-iraq/

 

[mercurydancer]

There is a concert in Manchester for the people of Manchester. Its a good thing. Well, Justin Beiber is playing and I thought, haven't the people of Manchester suffered enough?

 

[Junoonay]

Yes I am. The Syrian model is the least damaging model we can adopt. i.e don't get directly involved in removing brutal tyrants from power, but limit our involvement and in case there's an uprising/revolution like it happened in Egypt. Tunisia, Yemen and Syria against these tyrants we should take a step back and watch how things unfold, and support those fighting on the ground without getting involved directly with our own troops.

Anyway, what policy do you think would have been best for us to adopt in Syria. You wanted our parliament to vote for airstrikes against Assad? Note as I said before that :WE ARE DAMNED IF WE GET INVOLVED(imperialism) AND DAMNED IF WE DON'T(they are turning a blind eye to brutal dictators mercilessly killing their own people because they don't care about muslims lives etc etc.lol).

So if you were P.M what action will you take to avoid being criticised and chastised by both sides? Lol

To play devil's advocate:

You'd do what Donald Trump is doing; steer away from exacerbating the situation while keeping a lid on the amount of refugees you can allow from these countries. Its very clear, that UK and USA are nemesis with Russia and it's sidekick, Iran. Therefore, I think what DJT is doing is wise and appropriate. I only wish he would flex his sanctions harder on all terrorist supporting regimes, including Saudi Arabia to better the interests of USA locally and globally.