Sure, we’ll help you interrogate the suspect. You want us to be good cop, or bad cop?
The military in London’s bustling nightclub and theater district on Friday defused a bomb that could have killed hundreds after an FV513 crew spotted smoke coming from a Mercedes filled with a lethal mix of gasoline, propane and nails, authorities said.
The bomb near Piccadilly Circus was powerful enough to have caused “significant injury or loss of life” - possibly killing hundreds, British anti-terror General Peter Clarke said.
Still not a law enforcement issue, though.
(Actually, for people like Malkin, Schlussel, and LGFers, it is: Let’s get law enforcement to round up every Muslim within our borders.)
Pre-publishing Update: Also, it occurs to me to wonder whether there was a massive anti-Irish backlash during the eighties, when an incident like that would be assumed to be IRA rather than al Qaeda. Anyone?
51 Responses to “The right tools for the job”
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“We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”
I was no fan of John Kerry, but in this, he was absolutely right, and he was crucified for saying it.
Also, it occurs to me to wonder whether there was a massive anti-Irish backlash during the eighties, when an incident like that would be assumed to be IRA rather than al Qaeda. Anyone?
Oh, absolutely there was. Lots of people would only drink 10 green beers on St. Patrick’s Day, and Notre Dame’s football team wasn’t nearly as popular as many other teams.
It was pretty bad.
No because they are white and Christian afterall. Nor was there any great call for them to round up and prosecute those Americans who were giving money to Sinn Fean.
But these brown barbarians, that’s another matter … they are so scary and their issues and logic can never be understood so we need the hammer of the military
In Southie (that’s South Boston for the uninitiated) they were raising funds for the IRA.
wonder whether there was a massive anti-Irish backlash during the eighties, when an incident like that would be assumed to be IRA rather than al Qaeda. Anyone?
Anecdotal evidence (from relatives in England at that time) suggests not, in large degree.
Of course, to a certain extent it depended on who and where you were and what you were doing, and there was - and still exists today in certain areas of British life - a degree of initial suspicion of anyone obviously Irish - with obviously Irish surnames, and obvious accents, for example.
But the Anglo-Irish relationship has long since been a rather tangled incestuous mess, and on the English mainland if not in Nor’n Ireland itself the police and the security services seem to have acted with, if not restraint, then a certain amount of discrimination (in the best sense of the word).
I meant to add to my last comment that the present response to terror attacks in Britain, with the exception of the higher visibility of individuals in the British Muslim community (brainless thugs couldn’t beat up Irish for being Irish if they didn’t already know about their Irishness, but headscarves and other visual markers eliminate the dubious protection of anonymity), appears to be fairly similar.
A general sense of ‘beware of suspicious packages, but life goes on, and the police will deal with it.’
Also, it occurs to me to wonder whether there was a massive anti-Irish backlash during the eighties, when an incident like that would be assumed to be IRA rather than al Qaeda. Anyone?
They set up police watchpoints so they could pull over any cars that looked suspicious, in order to look for IRA bombers. A (white) cab driver one day remarked to me that he saw the cops pull people over all the time. “I never knew there were so many black people in the iRA,” he said.
So yea, there was this huge anti-Irish backlash - against black people.
That’s satire, right? Anyone? Can I see a show of hands?
bunny it. Just for the terms used.
By the way, don’t watch that video all the way through. Seriously. For what he does to Muse, if for nothing else.
I can’t believe Ibod left out the one about towels/rags and heads.
But seriously folks…
I’m thinking of Paul Brady’s “Nothing But the Same Old Story,” a fine song I think. One of the verses:
Came down to their city
Where I worked for many’s the year
Built a hundred houses
Must’ve pulled half a million pints of beer
Living under suspicion
Putting up with the hatred and fear in their eyes
You can see that you’re nothing but a murderer
In their eyes, we’re nothing but a bunch of murderers
Of course, that’s England and not the U.S. I imagine pro- and anti-Irish sentiment depends on geography–you won’t get much backlash in the northeast or Chicago which has historically tended to be the bank of the IRA, Sinn Fein, etc. Growing up in KY, although it wasn’t a much-discussed topic, I felt our allegiances were automatically supposed to be with the Brits and northern Irish. I think it probably had to do with an undercurrent of anti-Catholicism. And the fact that petrol bombs tend to be less acceptable as weapons than tanks.
Avedon — haven’t you ever heard of the Black Irish?
Depends on where you were.
Some of it lingers. I have a lot of friends in the British Army. They hate the Irish.
I have one who will never go to a film in which Liam Neeson has a part (thus sparing him the pain of the second set of Star Wars films) because he played Michael Collins, and didn’t having portrayed as a slavering traitor.
But the relationship between the Irish and the English is twisted, and tortured.
In the main, it was a nuisance. A thing one dealt with, but not something which changed one’s life (unless one had been walking the streets of Ulster, in a uniform).
Has there been an end to anti-Irish backlash in England?
I love the fact that the second bomb was towed for a parking violation. Gitmo’s got nothing on London parking cops.
In Southie (that’s South Boston for the uninitiated) they were raising funds for the IRA.
My husband’s math classes a couple years back had two sets of kids of jailed gun-runners who had to be kept separate at all times - one set was the kids and nephews of guys who went to jail when the other set’s kids ratted.
Also, it occurs to me to wonder whether there was a massive anti-Irish backlash during the eighties, when an incident like that would be assumed to be IRA rather than al Qaeda. Anyone?
Yeah, there was a lot of it for any Irish person living in England. Plus as the guy above pointed out, they sent many of the worst racists right into Northern Ireland and gave them guns. Even in the mid nineties there was that kind of stuff around as the backlash against the IRA’s Manchester bombs.
Yes and no. Not an enormous ‘backlash’ from the public. Unless you are particularly sensitive about Irish jokes.
There was a lot of integration with the Irish community back then in the ’70s and ’80s, in part helped by the massive influx of migrant workers from the South, often in the construction trade. However, the police were prone to hassle the Irish and sometimes fit them up. There were injustices. And on the other side of the coin I knew pubs in Islington where collections were regularly taken ‘for the boys’.
Anti-Irish racism was bigger in the ’50s and ’60s. That was a time when landladies would put out signs on rental accommodations that would say ‘No blacks, No dogs, No Irish’.
If we British had applied American rules to the situation, we would have launched Vulcan bomber raids on Boston and certain parts of New York.
There’s a lot of truth to that anecdote.
I’d say so. I’ve no doubt the police are continuing intelligence ops, but it’s all low-level stuff.
True, and more difficult to separate than many Americans suppose. Anyone making the fatuous claim that the situation would be resolved by the English leaving Ulster needs to be slapped upside the head with a fat history book.
A look at the loyalist Irish exposes the depth of the problem. Not all Unionists are bellicose Orangemen. And their origins are not all as Scots and English colonists. Go back over the past 400 years and you will also find unionists who come from the Anglo-Irish, the client clans, the converts from Catholicism. These are people with a deep-seated loyalty to the Union and they are currently a majority in the province. The fate of Ulstermen and the mainland British are deeply intertwined.
Hogwash. There was some suspicion, which occasionally led to miscarriages of justice. But there was hardly ‘a lot of it’.
My favourite Irish joke:
An Irishman applies for a job on a building site. The English foreman asks him: “What’s the difference between a girder and a joist?”
Paddy thinks for a moment and replies: “Wheeeel, Joist wrote Ulysses and Girder wrote Faust!”
Well, you know, all the headlines about terror in London? Bullshit. London parking cops though - SCARY. I can’t begin to tell you how dumb it is to prepare a car bomb and park it in violation of the parking laws in London. My, these people are stupid.
As for the serious part: yes, there is a lot of anti-Muslim racism in England. I doubt the kind of Daily Mail readers who mostly exercise it waited 9/11 for it, though. And yes, there is a lot of rounding up the usual suspects, which does not make things better in any way.
However, if you ask the Brits what should be done about it, a solid majority would tell you “Get the fuck out of Iraq, for a start”.
This struck me as interesting, from the linked news article:
No terrorist link? From something they say is a car bomb intended to kill hundreds?
I suppose they mean “no link to terrorists we oppose” in contrast to the good, godly terrorists who leave bombs at women’s health clinics.
If they’re right that this is some sort of bomb intended to kill hundreds, then it is some sort of terror-related crime.
As others over this side of the pond have noted, given that one of the cars was near a gay nightclub and a location near this weekend’s pride march, the list of potential suspects broadens beyond fundamentalist Islamists. (cf the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in Old Compton Street some years ago.) Which is not to say that the attack is not linked to Islamic terrorism, but that at this point in time it is not the sole explanation.
Furthermore, I understand the so-called ‘bomb’ to comprise petrol and a gas cylinder, surrounded by nails and other shrapnel. Given that gas cylinders are designed to rupture, rather than explode (though sometimes they do explode), and that it takes a LOT of time and heat to get one to rupture, this smacks of being a strictly amateur-hour operation. Going from the information released so far, this is basically a jury-rigged incendiary device rather than a well-made bomb.
Kali: I didn’t say they sent many of the worst racists right into Northern Ireland and gave them guns.
I said people who were doing patrols in N. Ireland, at the height of the troubles, came to have a jaded, jaundiced and downright misguided view of the Irish.
Is it right? No. It’s understandable. Soldiers are not, ispo facto rascists. They aren’t even bad people (though, being a soldier, perhaps my bias makes it impossible for me to see that I’m just deluded on the subject).
They are, qu’elle surprise people, and when they’ve been shot at, spat on, bombed, and generally made miserable, terrified, injured and seen the same, as well as death, served out to their friends and comrades, they tend to paint with broad strokes.
Sort of like those who, in other discussions, call those who disagree with them cracker, and idiots; who paint conservatives, as a class, as evil; intending to cause harm, perpetuate racism, etc.; from evil (instead of deluded, ignorant or misguided) motives.
Given the long period of, armed; violent, conflict between the Irish and the British, it’s no surprise to me that some reactionary response on the part of those who’ve been at the sharp end (because I know some N. Irish [and Southies, who have the same opinions, in reverse. The Southies without the stimulus of, you know, actually being oppressed, or shot at, by the British] with similar opinions).
It’s, as said, a terribly complex situation.
Neither side has clean hands.
WEll, this job was attempted by amateurs. It wouldn’t have exploded. No oxidizer, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/29/more_fear_biscuits_please/
there’s been an attack at Glascow Airport
However, if you ask the Brits what should be done about it, a solid majority would tell you “Get the fuck out of Iraq, for a start�.
Though it seems, “Intelligence officials were examining a post to an Islamist Web site — hours before the cars were found — that suggested Britain would be attacked for awarding a knighthood to the novelist Salman Rushdie and for intervening in Muslim countries.”
Maybe the Brits should just hand Rushdie over to Iran and be done with it. That’ll stop the attacks, I’m sure.
Darleen, a burning car and another impossible-to-function bomb. The driver and passenger were burned, no one else even injured. Don’t like to see it but I doubt Glaswegians are shaking in their boots.
Remind me, is Iraq a Muslim country? Thanks for demonstrating the right-wing propensity for refusing to read words that contradict your point.
Spell it like that again and you’re likely to get a Glasgow kiss.
17 years passed since the Satanic Verses was published before Britain was bombed by Islamists. So I think we can safely say that Rushdie probably had little to do with that, as well as today’s attack.
‘Cuz, A, withdrawing from Iraq did a lot of good for Spain, now, didn’t it?
Sure, withdrawing from Muslim countries will make the West as safe from attack as handing over Rushdie, or the Danish cartoonists, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or …
What is it about jihadists that you don’t take them or their constant threats seriously?
17 years passed since the Satanic Verses was published before Britain was bombed by Islamists
Hmmm … “7/7″ sure seems to have passed by you … as well as the volume of “offended outrage” by Rushdie’s recent knighthood.
naw … they don’t really mean it. Not at all. It’s just a lark…kinda like TP’ing the neighbor’s house, just a little warmer.
Oh, goody, the pants wetting brigade is here.
Somebody wake me when Darleen has something useful or interesting to say.
But far be it from little o’me, with no background in explosives, to be accused of ‘fear mongering’ because a car bomb didn’t go off, let’s hear from some experts, shall we?
Now, let’s remember, too, that the first Mercedes was parked outside Tiger Tiger nightclub, on its highly popular Ladies’ Night, when it would have been filled to its 1700 person capacity with all those immoral, unveiled, unchaperoned women drinking.Gotta have been those offended British Baptists, right?
Darleen, you seem to confuse not freaking the fuck out with not taking an issue seriously. Do try to grow up.
Um, can you count, Darleen? The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Add 17 years and you get 2005, the year in which 7/7 took place.
17 years is a long time to wait for payback. Furthermore, the fatwah for the Satanic Verses is against the person of Rushdie and his publishers. If we assume that the attackers are Islamist, the targeting of the Haymarket and Glasgow devices seems somewhat awry for it to be aimed at Sir Salman.
The notion of an attack taking place in the week that a new Prime Minister is appointed following Tony Blair’s resignation is hardly a surprise. If the perpetrators are found to be Muslim I believe we would discover that Iraq figured far larger in their motivations than a knighthood.
Well, clearly it did, as Spain hasn’t been attacked by Islamic terrorists since 3/11.
Darleen, have you ever actually been to London? Or Spain?
“Well, clearly it did, as Spain hasn’t been attacked by Islamic terrorists since 3/11. ”
So, when terrorists bomb your public transportation facilities, the appropriate response is to change your foreign policy. How is that supposed to reduce terrorism? You tell them that it works?
What happens when, in ten years, Spain’s legislature refuses to impose Sharia law, and major highways are bombed. Should they then reconsider?
What happens in 20 years when Spain refuses to order female “circumcision,” and then shoppers are mowed down in shopping centers. Should Spain order that girls have their genitals mutilated, in order to avoid further attacks?
What happens when Spain tries to prosecute “honor killings” by outraged Muslim males who kill a sister who had sex before marriage, and then faces attacks during soccer games? Should Spain refuse to prosecute “honor killings” to avoid further attacks?
What happens when Spain allows same-sex marriages, and then faces attacks on its court system? Should it reverse its position? What should it do in the face that gays should be executed? Should it go along to avoid further attacks?
I live just two minutes walk from the gates of the Wimbledon lawn tennis championships, where they have just increased security. I am in a supposed target zone, and I have to confess that a terror attack is somewhere at the bottom of my priority list at the moment, well below the irritancy level of the tennis tourists, and my weekly grocery shop.
I’m sorry to disappoint Darleen that I’m not running about with my hair on fire in a flat panic or anything else that a terrorised person is supposed to do.
Watergate, it reduces terrorism by reaching an accommodation on the areas on which both sides can agree. In this instance on the the Iraq occupation.
In the case of Northern Ireland intransigence was getting people nowhere. It took a Conservative Prime Minister to issue an olive branch and begin negotiations. Sometimes, concessions are necessary to de-escalate. In Ireland concessions did not suddenly result in more bombing and more demands. Instead it led to less.
Similarly, it is a fact that Islamic terrorists have not bombed Spain since the Spanish withdrawal from Iraq. It is also a fact that Muslim terrorists have not made bomb threats, demanded Sharia law or any of the other nonsense you listed. I believe that speaks volumes about the terrorists’ objectives and the limits of their power. They convinced a country that was largely against the Iraq war to vote out a government that supported it. That does not mean they have the ability to influence anything beyond that.
Indeed, I suspect that the removal of a perceived injustice (Spanish occupation forces) has robbed the terrorists of support for any more actions against Spain. That’s another way you defeat terrorism–not just by smashing networks and imprisoning terrorists, but by pulling the rug of support out from beneath them. Address the root issues and injustices and you do much to defeat the enemy.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t a small cadre of Islamic nutters out there willing to commit more atrocities. But that without the Grand Cause of Spanish involvement in Iraq, the likelihood is that they are isolated and can be dealt with.
watergate, do you need diapers to control all that bed wetting?
Watergate,
There is a huge difference in changing FP so as not to interfere with a countries soverignty and appeasement.
If they attack you because of what you do in your own country, yes you have solid ground for counter-attack. When they attack you because of what your military is doing in THEIR country, then you must consider changing your policy.
Notice they did not have an issue with us when we had no Middle-East involvement. We freed their countries from Colonial rule, and with the exception of their radical minorities, they left us alone. Their radicals couldn’t drum support against us because we didn’t involve ourselves with how they ruled their countries. It wasn’t until we started interfering did anti-US setiments gain support in those countries.
Read history, you might learn something.
Darleeen, Watergate: Why don’t we freak out and wet our pants?
I will continue to maintain that I am at greater risk of dying everyday by dealing with Boston drivers than I am by being killed by radical Islamist terrorists.
You’re quite correct MAJeff, but I suspect Darleen and Watergate will parse your words as meaning “I’m not taking the terrorists seriously” or “I like to hug a jihadi”. The discourse is so coarse now that anything other than complete agreement means that we are in bed with the enemy.
That’s the sad thing, Lee. There is a problem with certain groups using specific techniques to terrorize populations. That’s really nothing new, as you English are surely aware. I had a German student this summer who could remember the Bader Meinhoff. For the overwhelming majority of us, there are far greater risks to our lives on a daily basis because the risk of being caught in a terrorist attack are pretty much random.
There are, of course, certain places that raise that level above random. Ports, for instance. Chemical plants, for another. That’s why targeted security programs like inspections, rather than mass freaking out about brown people is more likely to provide safety to our populations.
But hey, there’s contries to be invaded!
So. Fucking. Jealous. To see Federer at that tournament, well that would rival hearing Mahler’s first at the Concertgebouw (which was actually the best part of the best day of my life).
You know what? In all the years I’ve lived here I’ve never once been to the championships.
Can’t stand tennis.
There absolutely was an anti-Irish backlash in the UK at the height of the Provisional IRA military campaign; look up the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. Apart from those miscarriages of justice, there was general cultural bias against the Irish. Sure, there were folk in the UK (concentrated in certain areas) who did support a united Irish republic and who even supported the PIRA, but that was all happening alongside blatant prejudice from others.
Do one has denied there was a ‘backlash’ (for want of a better term). There was profiling, there were miscarriages of injustice in which the authorities put innocents into jail. What I would refute is the magnitude of the backlash. As the risk of accusations about rose-coloured glasses, I don’t recall it being anything like as bad as the hysteria we currently see over Muslims in America.
Just a minor detail about 3/11 influencing the Spanish elections. The voters were about evenly split, but the ruling Popular Party (PM Aznar’s party) were slightly ahead in the polls. Aznar, who was Bush’s buddy, of course supported the Iraq invasion. The majority of Spanish were hostile or indifferent to it, but the Socialists couldn’t quite get the numbers.
Where Aznar screwed up was not in first blaming ETA for the railroad bombings. A lot of people did too, at first. But the evidence against (general M.O.) ETA involvement began to outweigh the evidence for (maybe their kind of explosive). It started to be a political issue, of PP’s competence, but probably not a show-stopper for them. Where it went wrong was when it somehow got out that the PP honchos privately stopped blaming ETA but publicly continued to do so.
That was too much for the opposition, and younger opposition voters got on their mobile phones to rally a much larger turnout than usual. *That* got the Socialists in. The same method of organization (flashmobbing) got kids out on town squares to celebrate the victory, which was announced quickly.
Of course, the US media called the Spanish a bunch of cowards, even though troop withdrawal had been a Socialist campaign promise.
So, no, the Spanish didn’t appease the terrorists. They just wanted out of George and Dick’s Execrable Adventure.
I can’t take two duds and a flaming punchup very seriously either. Thank god nobody got hurt, but damn that Glasgow incident was funny in retrospect.
For Darleen’s benefit, here’s another bomb expert on the subject. This piece is by an ex-bomb disposal man experienced in defusing IRA and animal liberation bombs:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/02/terror_idiocy_outbreak/
He adds: