The Manchester bombing: a symptom of the dangerous sickness of this system

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
24 May 2017

Obviously, one can only be horrified by Monday's Manchester Arena carnage, which killed 22 people and injured 59 more.
    What could be the point of killing or injuring these concert-going youth?  To prove or achieve what?  What could possibly have prompted the 22-year old attacker to turn murderer?  And to choose to die in the process without any chance of achieving anything with his life?
    If there is an explanation, in any case, it has nothing to do with the comments by the media's professional migrant-baiters who point out that the attacker's family came from Libya.  After all, wasn't he born and bred in Britain, just like the 2005 London bombers, in fact?  But then, if British society produces such sick behaviour, surely, it must bear some of the responsibility!

Hypocritical blame game

Of course, the politicians of this world all have their own convenient explanations.  Trump immediately put his oar in.  Today, Blair has yet to do the same - but 12 years ago, after the London tube bombing, he  denounced the "threat" which Islam posed to "western values".  As if these "western values" were not responsible for the atrocities of the Iraq war caused by his and George Bush's power games?  And which has now caused the entire region to be taken over by militias who are  enforcing their terrorist rule there, every day and everywhere!  
    Trump, for his part, used a speech he was delivering in Saudi Arabia, on the very same day as the Manchester attack, to denounce Iran as the centre of world terrorism!  Never mind that he was speaking to an assembly of dictators, including the Saudi royals, among whom are notorious backers of the Isis terrorists and responsible for the terrorist bombing of the population of Yemen.  But then it is "worth" turning a blind eye to these crimes, since the Saudi's billions help to boost the huge profits of US and British arms manufacturers!
    As to May, her hypocritical call to suspend the election campaign as a tribute to the Manchester victims, hardly conceals how she is trying to make political capital out of it.  Having been forced to backpedal in a rush over her manifesto policy on social care, she rose to the occasion in an attempt to make a belated show of what she calls her "strong and stable leadership".  In one dramatic statement, she declared that the terrorist threat was no longer just "severe", but "critical" and needed soldiers on the streets.  As if soldiers on the street could have prevented a nondescript 22-year old from exploding himself with a DIY bomb, in the foyer of the Manchester Arena!
    If this is not plain electioneering, on May's part, what is?  Just like the whole shenanigans around "reinforcing her hand" in the Brexit horse-trading, for that matter.  For these politicians, anything goes, as long as it bolsters their careers!

A rotting system we can't afford

Political figures like May and Trump will do everything and use every lie, to cling to power and divert attention from the role of their capitalist masters in dragging society into the mess it is today.
    Terrorism aims at spreading fear among the populations.  But this is precisely what the rich countries, with their "western democratic values" have been doing, for over a century.  What were the two world wars, with their massive bombings and gassing of conscripts and civilians, if not acts of terrorism carried out on an industrial scale by the richest capitalist classes, and for their sole benefit?
    And, since World War II, there's been no respite from the state terrorism of the richest countries' governments.  Every decade has seen a major war, from Korea to Algeria to Vietnam to Iraq.
    But over the past 4 decades, these wars have been expanding fast, always to protect the profits of the same small number of big multinationals which control the world economy.  
    And while spreading the terror of wars and famine across the poor countries of Africa and the Middle-East, this crisis-ridden capitalist system has been generating deprivation within the industrial heartlands themselves.  Indeed, what is this constant deterioration of the living and working conditions of the working class majority, if not the economic terrorism of the increasingly rich capitalist minority which owns everything in this society?
    So, yes, it is shocking and horrifying to think that a young student may consider that exploding himself with a bomb and killing 22 kids may be some kind of achievement.  But the horror of Monday night's bloodshed here, is the daily experience of millions living in war zones  across the world.  It is the horror of a capitalist system which has become so rotten that it can only taint everything it touches.  And it is our responsibility, as workers who produce all the wealth in this society, to free the world of this dangerous, decaying system, once and for all!