The London car bombs

I've had an email asking why I haven't written anything about the two car bombs which were found in London yesterday.

Well there's not a lot I can say at the moment. I don't know any more than anyone else. The government is keeping its cool and going through the usual processes that follow every terrorist incident. My feelings about London and its response to terrorism are pretty much the same as they were after the 7 July bombings.

When the police catch the perpetrators, as they almost certainly will, they will most likely be British-born Muslims of Pakistani descent. Whether they are just chancers or part of a more organised terrorist network, we probably won't know until they come to trial.

More predictable are the usual suspects telling us that none of this would have happened if we hadn't gone into Iraq, despite evidence  that some of these attacks have been planned since well before 2003. If they haven't already done so, some commentators will, no doubt, try to link the attempted bombing to Salman Rushdie's knighthood.

Beyond that, I'll leave the speculation to others until some more evidence emerges.

Update: This has to be the most ham-fisted terrorist attack in living memory. Even An Gof would be ashamed of that one.

Update 2: Laban Tall blames the British education system for the failure of the recent bombing attempts. If they'd been to decent schools, they'd know how to make a proper bomb.

Comments

[James G]

As I said on my own blog, the attack in Scotland will perhaps finally get the government to investigate the propensities of certain ethnic groups to marry first cousins.

[pommygranate]

Steve

I think you're right not to launch into anything just yet.

[Laban Tall]

"the New Wave Of British Jihad"

I like the sound of it.

[stuart]

"The government is keeping its cool and going through the usual processes that follow every terrorist incident."

By doing everything possible to avoid using the 'M' word......
Even while the Glasgow chief plod was relating the news of the attack, he was issuing dire warnings against anyone who might possibly blame 'certain sections' of the "community"

It was on the US cable news that I first heard a witness say that Krispy the Klown and his accomplice were Indian or Pakistani in appearance.....

[Haw Haw Harry]

"I've had an email asking why I haven't written anything about the two car bombs which were found in London yesterday"

oh dear, you should have stopped right there Stevie boy.

As Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke intoned gravely. "It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life",

Ah, if it had detonated. Yes, it could have been a real horror. Only, the device could not have detonated. Not under any circumstances. You see, the "terrorists" who built it left out a crucial element: an oxidiser. The device was pure pre-teen boy fantasy.

"We'll heat up these propane cylinders with burning petrol, and they'll go off like bombs", boys the world over have remarked with glee. They don't realise that air is a poor oxidiser, and the only "explosion" they will get is when gas pressure inside the cylinders is great enough to burst them. Then the propane will ignite, and a nice fireball will blossom. A fireball, not an explosion.

Oh, the Piccadilly fireball would have blown the car's windows out, and popped its doors open, and sent various bits like mirrors and so forth into the air at velocities possibly fatal to people nearby. It would have looked really cool, that's for sure. But an explosive event...a detonation? Not in a million years. Sorry lads: you failed car bombing 101; you did not attend a single lecture; you did not even open the textbook.

Some stupid people did a stupid thing. Yes, they might have injured or killed one or two passers-by, but any body count would have come in spite of them, not as a product of their efforts. You and I are more likely to have been killed accidentally by the lousy driver than intentionally by his Beavis and Butthead car bomb.

This should have been dismissed for what it is: an event on the level of some teenagers getting a tremendously foolish notion, and being drunk enough for it to appeal to them. But we're hearing whispers of terrorism instead (AND AL QAEDA NO LESS!)- much as we heard from the Americans when they foiled a "terrorist plot" to blow up fuel storage tanks at Kennedy International. It would have been devastating, prosecutors told us. Only that "plot" had the same hole in it: air makes a lousy oxidiser. If it had been carried out, it would certainly have made a bigger fireball than the one in London would have made. But that's about it.

So why is this such big news? Because clowns have got to be passed off as terrorists. Because our Israeli friendly state depends on muslim terrorists, real and imagined, to justify its existence. In return, it feeds us fear biscuits, which we are expected to accept with gratitude.

Roll over. Sit up and beg. See the bad man? Good boy; here's your bickie

[JuliaM]

"...our Israeli friendly state depends on muslim terrorists.."

Harry, can't you put your obligatory 'it's all the fault of the Jews!!!' sentence somewhere in the first paragraph of your comment, so I know the comment is from a swivel-eyed loon sooner?

Or perhaps names should go at the top of the comment list, to help us filter the idiots a bit better....

[Haw Haw Harry]

Not a problem, JuliaM...

Everything in this world that is bad is the fault of the Jews. No one else is to blame. That is the way it always has been and always will be...

I hope that satisfies you, JuliaM. I think that pretty much covers everything...

(Of course, we really know that that is all nonsense and nothing is the fault of the Jews, don't we Julia.)

[Steve]

Thanks for providing this morning's entertainment Harry.

[Haw Haw Harry]

Well, one good turn deserves another.

[Oriana]

Detonating hundreds of simultaneous explosions through cell phone and Internet

There is extreme concern among security services in the United States, Europe, the Far East and Israel, after the source of 350 multiple attacks in Bangladesh on Aug. 17, 2005, was traced to Tripoli, Lebanon

French counter-terror experts leading an international inquiry into the attacks discovered that a facility, set up there by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s late Iraq commander, had developed the new design which works through Internet messengers like Skype or MSN.

Network-connected mobile phones can remotely detonate over the Internet simultaneous explosions hundreds of miles apart, anywhere on the world. US forces located and killed Zarqawi on June 7, 2006.

This system, seen only in Bangladesh so far, is more complex than any used by al Qaeda before. A year ago, some 350 explosions in quick succession in 36 districts hit government facilities and hotels in Dhaka and 16 other Bangladeshi towns. One person was killed and 115 people injured.

The French team was led to Tripoli by a tip-off that al Qaeda operative Kaci Warab, seen at Bangladesh’s international Zia airport shortly after the multiple blasts and followed since, had turned up in the north Lebanese city. The materials found at the al Qaeda lab there were removed to forensic facilities in Paris and produced the following picture:

For its Bangladesh operation, al Qaeda had prepared 350 cell phones. Communications software was installed in each, together with a simple interface program designed in the Tripoli lab. Loaded onto the master computer in Tripoli linked to global Internet was the readily available Skype or MSN software. The cell phones were given 350 different usernames – or rather the same one with a different numeral, e.g. Tom1, Tom2, and so forth up to Tom350. The program was relayed to the mobile phones which then transmitted the operational signal to detonate the explosives.

The Bangladesh method would be hard to apply in the United States, Europe or Israel. Anti-terror security measures are more stringent there and would make it difficult to plant 350 hidden bombs without some being detected. On the other hand, setting off 20 or even 10 simultaneous explosions would have a disastrous effect if the bombs were planted, say, on express trains in different countries. So far, this has not happened, but it is possible that Al Qaeda’s hi-tech experts are working on improvements to the system, such as adapting it to satellite phone