Toothpaste terrorists
In light of the recent terrorist attempts yesterday, I am a little angry. Not because I'm worried about getting dehydrated from not being able to bring my water on to the plane or because I'll get dry skin from not being able to bring my moisturizer, but the fact that in reporting these events the dumbass reporters are telling us how to make bombs! All you have to do, says Mr I'm an Important Scientist from an Unimportant University, is add some powdered nitroglycerin (conveniently hidden in your travel-sized toothpaste) to a bottle of water, detonate it with the signal from your cell phone and BAM! You're good to go! You can not only blow up all the people on your plane but hey, if you're above a big city like New York or LA well then even better, you'll kill many more people! Essentially, I'm fine with people being a little paranoid if it will help limit terrorist activity, and do agree that these are scary times, but think they are even scarier when people tell us how to make bombs on the local news. Then Mr Political Scientist says, and the problem now will be that because of worldwide media this high tech knowledge will become widespread and there may be a copycat attempt in months to come ... well no shit! Maybe you should stop telling us all about it then! I'm not saying the world should be kept in the dark about terrorist attempts, just that the bomb-making seminars should be kept to a bare minimum.
posted by WMJenner at 11:01 a.m.
5 Comments:
What bugs me about this is that in one sense, the "plot" succeeded brilliantly (and that's not even assuming that it was a plot by people in the British and / or American government to drum up flagging support for the "war on terror"). If I was going to conduct psychological warfare against my opponents, now I know that I could throw the worldwide air travel system into chaos and get people all freaked out without having to go to all the fuss and bother of killing thousands of innocent civilians.
I suppose there's a real enough risk here -- maybe nitroglycerin bombs have the same low-tech quality as using box cutters to hijack planes, albeit that they seem slightly more elaborate, and on the face of it sound kind of wacky. Like with Richard Reid -- to paraphrase Austin Powers, "I mean, come on, who sets fire to a SHOE?"
The arrest of the people in Ontario the other month was a bit like that. Apparently while playing paintball they came up with a plan to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange, seize the CBC building and take over the airwaves, and storm Parliament, where they would take MPs hostage and behead the Prime Minister. Sure, I wouldn't have been laughing if it'd happened. But I mean, if I say to a friend that I'm planning to make a device that will cause all muscle cars to explode when either the engine or the bass on the sound system reaches a particular volume, does that make me a fiendish mastermind of a mass-murder plot? If I write about it on someone's blog, is that evidence of my nefarious plans? Or would that just make me a harmless nutter? It couldn't be that the authorities would ever elevate the ranting of some cranks into a "serious, credible threat" for their own political purposes, could it?
12:05 p.m.
"The arrest of the people in Ontario the other month was a bit like that. Apparently while playing paintball they came up with a plan to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange, seize the CBC building and take over the airwaves, and storm Parliament, where they would take MPs hostage and behead the Prime Minister."
You make it sound as though this all they did. They did not go paintballing and make up a plan to storm parliament and behead the Prime Minister. They bought machine guns, went out to a farm in southern Ontario and practised drills on how to storm parliament and hold off attempts to retake the buildings from the terrorists. They were caught in the act of buying tons of fertiliser to be used for explosives, after previously purchasing a number of tonnes of said material as well as detonators.
There is a difference between discussion and implementation. They were not arrested sitting around talking, they were arrested while purchasing materials to carry out their goals.
7:32 p.m.
Now now friends, let's not squabble. Actually, I take that back - it's fun watching you squabble. Plus you're both pretty smart, and seem to know what you're talking about. Although that doesn't mean that you're not nutters. Smart nutters, but still nutters.
1:03 p.m.
We are the nutters?
You are the one who watched "Hostel" and actually expected it to be a good movie. Come on...
9:54 p.m.
Yes, you are the nutters. It's not my fault I watched a terrible movie - I was misinformed.
12:53 p.m.
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