Portside

OSPAAAL Closes - and reports on the left from Israel, UK, India, Australia, Zambia, Singapore, Albania, and Russia

The attack in Manchester was likely by Sunni radicals (ISIL has claimed it), and came two days after President Trump blamed all terrorism on Shiite Iran at a speech in Saudi Arabia, the proponent of a form of extreme Sunni supremacism. In 1996, Manchester had also been victimized by a bomb at a civillian center; in that instance left by the Provisional IRA. The question is: can anything be learned from looking at 1996 and 2017 in the same historical frame?