Let us assume for a moment that the parcel bombs sent to Jewish targets in Chicago were viable devices and this was a real attack by anti-Jewish, and probably Islamic, terrorists. There are other possible explanations, but it is not improbable this was a real attempted attack.
We are looking at low level, workaday terrorism. Parcel bombs were not infrequent in the UK in my youth, and the Unabomber caused extraordinary levels of alarm in the United States. Any loss of life is deplorable, but the scale of this threat appears to have been small.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE69S37420101030?pageNumber=1
It is hard to believe that a parcel bomb would have killed more than a couple of people – there have been a large number of parcel bombs used over decades, and they do not cause mass casualties. Now two or three dead or injured people is too many, but the worldwide media coverage is completely disproportionate to the threat – if they covered every two or three actually, not potentially, dead Afghans in this depth, they would never cover anything else.
It is of course possible that the media coverage was the aim rather than two or three unfortunate people in Chicago. The easy and extremely detailed tip off from the Saudi security services is very interesting. If publicity rather than death was the aim, that rather widens the field of people who might have been behind it.
Clark,
Too early to tell on this specific attack. But of course if those answers aren’t automatically provided within 48 hours of the crime, it must be a conspiracy. And even if they are, it must be a conspiracy.
Study up on the politics of Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
You can start by reading The Looming Tower. And then branch off into a better understanding of Yemen.
Whoever it is, They’re going to relentlessly keep setting fire to their speedos and posting refurbished office supplies until we submit to Their Will
And remember, anyone who capabile of repacking a toner cartridge is just months away from being able to fabricate a dirty nuke
Compared to such awesome and chilling capabilies a trillion dollars a year in defence spending is going to hardly prove adequate
Larry from St. Louis is banned from this board for persistent flogging of dead replica watches.
Good-ish Any Questions (on r4 now) with Tariq Ali.
It’s encouraging to see that most people here are in larky good humour this morning. I don’t think that’s what was intended. But you gotta laugh, intcha? The most inept and transparent false-flag incident since…well, the last one.
Apparently OBL was online tracking the parcel’s progress on the UPS website. Later he was heard to say “Damn and blast, next time I’ll use Fedex!”
A jokey tone is, of course, highly inappropriate and exactly what the Terrorists want.
The last thing They’d want is for everyone to poo their pants, over-react, dismantle age old freedoms and start slaughtering a few million innocent people
They’d never expect that
There is a point here that people who promote endless arguments about Joooos vs. Moooslims like to overlook
It doesn’t matter all that much who is behind these pathetic Nonabomber antics, or even the genuinely lethal attacks
The question we should all be asking ourselves, and our governments, is why are we allowing the Terrorists, whoever they may be, to alter our way of life and principes that are supposedly the cornerstone of that way of life?
I’d repeat that Jefferson quote about sacrificing liberty for temporary safety but everyone’s already familiar with that, aren’t they?
Clark,
This is why, a prelude[*], we now witness mass publicity of the ‘tooooner-bomber’ in all the main media/new media and again it was I believe (from a number of sources) hatched by Saudi intelligence. Yemen is next to Saudi, receives aid from Iran – all makes sense to our elite crowd, but we are small compared to the ‘innocents’ who see a justified attack on Yemen by the CIA.
[*]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/cia-yemen-predator-drones_n_694981.html
But.. Larry is right – a follow-up must happen in 48 hrs – which means beating-up (torture) some doods in the ‘terrorist bank’ to admit procuring toooner cartridges (in similar fashion to the liquid eye wash bombers);admit to a scam conceived to get publicity. But of course the seed is now sown and thoroughly watered in the public domain.
“I’d repeat that Jefferson quote about sacrificing liberty for temporary safety but everyone’s already familiar with that, aren’t they?”
Indeed. Some of us are also familiar with the fact that it was Benjamin Franklin, not Jefferson.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety, and ultimately will have neither”.
“some doods in the ‘terrorist bank’ to admit procuring toooner cartridges”
Nope. Just recently, both the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber cooperated without any form of coercion.
Who are you suggesting was recently tortured for a confession?
Technicolour, hello! Thanks for the Radio 4 alert.
Larry; the IRA issued code words and claimed responsibility for each individual bomb. Often, more than one group would claim responsibility; both the IRA and the British authorities understood the importance of the code words. Without such communication, a bomb could have come from anyone, and is thus *pointless* as an act of “terrorism”.
You repeatedly recommend that book – do you have some connection with it or its author?
/ pwned
Clark, what does the IRA have to do with Muslim extremists? They have different tactics. For instance, the IRA never used suicide bombers.
I’ll grant to you that the Yemeni terrorists might not use the most effective tactics for their terrorist cause.
Not sure if the rush to downplay the terrorist attacks is sad, pathetic or funny. Impossible that there are some Muslims out there that want to do bad things to innocent civilians. But then again, the Jews aren’t innocent. Just ask Mel Gibson and his dad and most of the posters on here.
I bet Alan Campbell approves of the attack on the Mavi Marmara and the murder of nine people aboard, along with the stealing of their possessions – and the subsequent sale of some of their laptops by IDF members.
Larry; the IRA had tactics. I don’t see how any tactics can be ascribed to anonymous (attempted) bombing. You may as well speculate about a bird’s intention when it shat on your car.
And what is it with you and that book?
The USA introduced the concept of suicide bombing to the anti-Soviet Afghan Resistance during the late 1980s in Afghanistan. At first, the ‘Mujaheddin’ were horrified, as suicide is deemed to be against the tenets of Islam. Somewhat later, of course, they changed their views. The most famous suicide bombers of yore were the ‘Tamil Tigers’ – Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by them in that way.
Yemen was persecuted by the USA during the 1990s for daring to not join the ‘coalition’ against Iraq following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. At that time, Yemen, its long-running civil war finally over and re-unification achieved, had been doing quite well, does anyone remember? The US threatened Yemen with dire consequences. Yemen never recovered.
The policies of the major powers cause the problems and then the major powers find the need for ever-more-grandiose military interventions in order to ‘sort-out’ the problems which they have caused.
It’s all about sowing chaos in order to achieve and perpetuate domination (obviously).
You’ve just lost your bet.
But back to the latest Islamist attempted attacks. Once again we can be thankful that these religious nut-jobs are so thick that they invariably cock things up, but it’s just a question of time before some of these brain-deads do get through. I fully expect a Mumbai-style attack in the West in the next couple of years. Let’s have a bet on that.
“The Looming Tower” is a superb book. Shame that so many of the posters here are unaware of it.
‘the rush to downplay the terrorist attacks’
the person who posted this is obviously a sad fantasist who has never lived in Northern Ireland and does not understand that an ‘attack’ is where an explosion or similar *happens* and a couple of crappy – sorry, professional – explosive devices that fail to go off are hardly worth mentioning, even in passing.
But since he’s laughably slurring ‘most of the posters’ here as anti-semitic, why not?
Hello, Alan, how are you? Tell me something, how is that someone with such sensible and humane views on domestic economic/ industrial/social policy can have such militaristic, arguably imperialist/ liberal imperialist, views on foreign policy? Are you a supporter of the ruling wing of the Labour Party, by any chance? Please do take this opportunity to tell us something substantial about your views. I’m not being sarcastic. I’m asking you a genuine question. Thank you.
Mmm Larry (not from St Louis) what branch of law do you specialize in? Here is a list to help you. I have been asking you for months.
The List:
Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice Air, Sea & Space Law
Antitrust Law
Banking Law
Bankruptcy Law
Business Law
Children’s Advocacy & Law
Civil Rights Law
Cyberspace Law
Disability Law
Drug Law
e-Commerce Law
Elder Law
Employee Benefits Law
Entertainment & Sports Law Environmental Law
Family Law
Gaming Law
Health Law
Immigration Law
Insurance Law
Intellectual Property Law
Judicial Law
Litigation
National Security Law
Personal Injury Law
Privacy Law
Public Defense
Real Estate & Property Law
Securities Law
Tax Law
I would take guess at real estate & Property because you seem to have a lot of ‘idle’ time.
“Not sure if the rush to downplay the terrorist attacks is sad, pathetic or funny”.
You missed out the fourth option: sane.
Technicolour – pedantic in the extreme. Grew up in Ireland actually. Live in Colombia now. I suspect I know a lot more about terrorist attacks than someone from the part of Islington you probably come from.
Suhayl – Well, I’m certainly not a member of the Labour Party or any party. I’m of the old-fashioned working class left who tend to be deeply suspicious of religion. And I particularly don’t like religion that tries to tell me what to do or how to act, be it Jerry Falwell or Bibi Netanyahu’s dad. And to me the Wahabi Islam of AQ and its many affiliates is just the absolute aggressive extreme example of superstitious claptrap trying to impose on others, especially women.
If you follow the Telegraph blog of Con Coughlin, it is possible that you may gain an apprehension – through a glass, darkly – of precisely what, at a particular juncture, the spooks are feeding to the public. It’s almost like a barbershop quartet, or a call-and-response gospel song.
It’s because I’m old fashioned left that I’m surprised that so many posters on here – who probably consider themselves progressive – seem to be unable to bring themselves to condemn attempted terrorist outrages planned by religious extremists. I can therefore only assume that a goodly proportion of you are actually quite supportive of blowing up some old rabbi in Chicago.
‘he’s laughably slurring ‘most of the posters’ here as anti-semitic’
He’s taking the Murdoch approach: Criticism of Israeli policies or behaviour is just “dressed up” anti-semitism.
“I suspect I know a lot more about terrorist attacks than someone from the part of Islington you probably come from …”
Did you live or grow up in Northern Ireland, Alan? Or was it in the South?
Grew up in Ireland: would hazard a guess it wasn’t Belfast or Derry then (‘Northern’ Ireland). Because people there would be shrugging at this.
Wonder why you assume Islington: is it that you think only rich people can punctuate?
MJ – you shoot, you score.