Nou zijn ze toch wel wat gewend met terroristen in Londen. Maar blijkbaar gaat ook het immer boelkloedige Groot Brittannië mee in de hele terrorisme-hype. Althans, als je wat nadere analyses van de incidenten met de auto”bom” op Piccadilly Circus en op Glasgow Airport leest, is het meer een hype dan een serieuze dreiging. Zo noemt The Register het een “Beavis en Butthead bom”:
The device consisted of petrol, propane gas cylinders, and nails. The car containing it had been abandoned after its driver was observed piloting it erratically, crashing it, then running off, like a true professional.
(…)
And what an incident. “It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life”, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke intoned gravely.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 terrorist wannabe clown who built it left out a crucial element: an oxidiser. The device was pure pre-teen boy fantasy.
(…)
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.
In een tweede artikel gaat een voormalig medewerker van de Britse explosieven opruimingsdienst nog wat door over het maken van bommen, en vooral het verschil tussen een mooi vuurbal-effect en iets echt dodelijks. Wat dat betreft is er weinig vooruitgang:
If these guys at the weekend really were anything to do with al-Qaeda, all one can really say is that it looks as though the War on Terror is won. This whole hoo-ha kicked off, remember, with 9/11: an extremely effective attack. Then we had the Bali and Madrid bombings, not by any measure as shocking and bloody but still nasty stuff. Then we had London 7/7, a further significant drop in bodycount but still competently planned and executed (Not too many groups would have been able to mix up that much peroxide-based explosive first try without an own goal).
Now we have this; one terror-clown badly burnt and nobody else hurt at all. An event about as significant as the teenagers burning cars down my way - and don’t I wish those little sods got as much police attention and jail time.
Bent u nog bang?
(dank aan Kimberly voor de link)
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Well, I suppose that if somebody is trying to kill you, there are two extreme reactions possible. Or you go all histeric and scared, or you try to make fun of the killer-to-be. I grant you something: the “make fun” reaction is by far and large nicer. But both are extreme, and silly.
I don’t think that the relevant question is to be scared or not. The question is what are you/we going to do about the killers that are at large. To believe that they are becoming more clumsy, so their risk is going to dissapear, is to be in denial. I don’t know, but my idea of clumsy does not fit with the succesful neurosurgeon now in jail as suspected ringleader… nor my idea of clown fits with somebody willing to douse himself in petrol and light it, in order to make gas canisters explode.
As much as we shouldn’t break in panic, we shouldn’t banalize the danger neither.