In a first for the UK, bombmaker Naseer, a pharmacy graduate, planned to extract ammonium nitrate – used as a main explosive – from sports injury cold packs.
The mind boggles, it really does.
Sounds about as sensible a plan as extracting the americium from fire alarms to create a dirty bomb. With the added excitement that they would almost certainly blow themselves up trying to do the processing.
The stories we hear about these would be jihadis do show that they’re wholly unimaginative. There’s so many dangerous things already extant in an industrial society that could be used instead of 1960s style IRA derv and ammonium nitrate.
13 responses so far ↓
1 Interested // Feb 22, 2013 at 9:13 am
They’re fucking idiots, luckily.
They tried to increase their funds by playing the money markets, and lost.
But then they only need to be lucky once.
Meanwhile, on Today this morning an investigation into how relations between the police and ‘the Muslim community’ broke down to the extent that noone informed. Public spending cuts also to blame, apparently.
2 Oxonymous // Feb 22, 2013 at 9:34 am
Say, totally hypothetically, that you decided to blow up a certain parliamentary committee led by a certain tax avoiding child-molestation-overlooking cow, how would you do it?
Tim adds: I wouldn’t try to blow anyone up. That’s what I mean by being unimaginative. There’s all sorts of other things one could do/use as a terrorist. But obviously, for good reasons, I’m not going to detail them.
3 Widdershins // Feb 22, 2013 at 10:17 am
I’m surprised any terrorist bothers with bombs these days. Really unimaginative.
If what we’re told is true and mobile phone use can screw aircraft systems, then I’d get a few jihadi chums booked on a big jet and then we’d leave our Nokias on during take off.
Or just stick something on the track in front of a high speed train.
4 PW // Feb 22, 2013 at 10:35 am
“If what we’re told is true and mobile phone use can screw aircraft systems”.
Complete myth! It was all to do with not wanting lots of mobile phones all searching for multiple masts on the ground whilst travelling at a mile every 6 seconds!
I know it was tongue in cheek in any case!
5 Jim // Feb 22, 2013 at 10:57 am
There certainly does seem to be a distinct failure of imagination amongst would be terrorists. They seem obsessed with making loud bangs. Have they not read anything at all of the history of the UK and Ireland for the last 40 years? The IRA waged a considerably more organised bombing campaign for 30 years and last time I looked NI was still in the UK. Yes a few of the former hard men have been bought off with a bit of money and prestige, but the UK State is hardly eviscerated at the end of it all.
If I were plotting the downfall of the UK State, I’d be targeting economic warfare. Try to get maximum disruption of economic activity as often as possible. Disrupt travel of all kinds, try and create shortages of things – create panic buying of stuff. Target the electrical and gas distribution systems. Anything at all possible to slow economic activity and thus affect tax revenues. Starve the beast.
6 Pogo // Feb 22, 2013 at 1:05 pm
@Jim:
Disrupt travel of all kinds, try and create shortages of things
7 Pogo // Feb 22, 2013 at 1:06 pm
@Jim:
“Disrupt travel of all kinds, try and create shortages of things – create panic buying of stuff. Target the electrical and gas distribution systems.”
Does this mean that the government are terrorists? On your criteria it certainly seems that way!
8 Ian Reid // Feb 22, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Jim, your second paragraph is Government policy.
9 Ian B // Feb 22, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Just to bang my usual drum, let’s have a reminder about the Jihad’s motivation. Is it Palestine? Is it human rights? Is it hegemonic racist colonialist by “The West”? What are these “freedoms” of ours that the muzzies hate so much? Naseem tells us-
They’re puritans. That’s the beginning and end of the motivation.
10 SadButMadLad // Feb 22, 2013 at 2:02 pm
The perfect terrorists are those who steal cable stopping us travelling or those who occupy gas stations stopping us from getting our electricity to live or those who are wasting the tax payers money on spinning follies or those who go around banning everything and anything they think is bad.
11 polly twaddle's banham locks // Feb 22, 2013 at 3:15 pm
“bombmaker Naseer, a pharmacy graduate …”
What exactly do Pharmacists do?
They just seem to be glorified storemen/women.
Seriously, what do they do?
12 Ian B // Feb 22, 2013 at 5:43 pm
It’s the result of an old (and forgotten) power struggle between guilds; the barber surgeons, and the apothecaries. Each wanted state recognition. In the end, it resulted in a compromise; the barber surgeons would half listen to the patient and then prescribe the wrong drug, and the apothecaries would dispense the drug. Hence the division of professions.
13 JamesV // Feb 24, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Hospital pharmacy still involves some degree of responsibility, the high-street stuff is little more than dishing out the right packet nowadays.
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