UK Bombings

[tweak]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1842669.htm
Does anybody want to speculate as to what is going on here?
A device in a parcel could well be anything, but a letter..?

[Chopper]

Not quite sure what you mean by "speculate as to what is going on here", there's been a number of these recently, as the article you linked to mentions. The BBC website goes into rather more detail that the ABCs summary. It's (I believe) clearly a pissed off motorist, who has probably been pinged for travelling a small number of miles over the limit, or just some total nut-job, as tends to be the case with those that mail explosive devices.

As to what it could have been in the letter, absolutely anything. I've seen a video with a business-letter sized envelope containing enough detsheet I think it was, to decapitate a dummy sittting at the desk and severly trash a pc monitor in the immediate vicinity.

Clearly, these attacks weren't as severe as the example I saw but, nonetheless to make a device such as these is really a trivial affair. The reason they have worked thus far can be put entirely down to the human factor. As you state, a parcel could be well, anything. This is precisely the subconcious assumption that has injured these poor people. "It's only a letter, there's been no anthrax hoaxes for ages, surely, there's nothing untoward contained within."

With the injuries being unspecified as far as I can tell, it could have been any number of different nasties and initiating systems within said envelope. Although the mention of the patient being stable and having non life-threatening injuries does lead me to suspect that there were high-explosives of one type or another involved.

Look at the plastic party-poppers, they're just a piece of string wrapped up with a chlorate based comp in some paper. Pull the string and presto! Similarly, look at the cardboard strip assembly inside christmas bon-bons. They're packed 'full' of silver fulminate goodness. These are both very slim, unobtrusive objects.

Similarly unobtrusive are the myriad of different silver-oxide/lithium batteries that are available now. These come in very small packages. Watch lights will operate at a yellowish to white heat from a source of just 1.5v, at very little current.

You may recall an incident a while ago where a plane was bombed somewhere in the vicinity of the Phillipines. In this particular incident, it is believed the main charge was Nitroglycerine. This was smuggled on-board inside a saline-solution bottle designed to hold the fluid used to cleanse contact lenses. In this case, the detonator was a specially modified Casio wristwatch. A watch that it would appear, for all intensive purposes, was a normal, functioning watch (though who knows which parts of the story may have been drummed up to solicit fear amongst the masses)

In any case, all the initiator of a detonator has to do is initiate a primary explosive via heat or mechanical shock/impact/friction. Anyone of the things I have mentioned would be capable of providing a sufficient impulse to several different types of explosive. Look at the stuff used by the suicide shit-heads in Palestine and Israel, nothing exotic - just plenty of it. 1 gram of anything detonating in your hands is the start to a very bad day.

The hard part is being screwy enough to have actually carried out such a revenge fantasy. Or in the case of those less pysiologically lucky as some of us, the hard part would be avoiding retribution on a daily basis against those deemed to have deserved it.

It would be equally pointless, though in my mind far more understandable if the idiot just went back and blew up the camera that captured the image used to issue the fine in the first place. I mean, for christ's sake - they're just some poor fuckers doing a job in paperwork. They've got no discression to excercise. They can't decide not to issue a fine like a parking inspector can. The fine's been issued already, it simply needs processing. Whether they do the job or somebody else does, it's after and seperate to the act of issuing the fine in the first place.

I know of a combo speed/red-light camera in my area that has been both broken with rocks and targetted with a shot-gun. Frightening to think we share the roads with these fuckers, but more understandable than mailing a letter-bomb to the fines office. If you weren't such a shit driver in the first place you wouldn't have been pinged. I've been driving for in excess of 10 years and can't think of the last time in about 5 years that I drove at less than a substantial margin over the prescribed speed limit. Every day I could have lost my licence or had it cancelled. I've got one traffic infringement on my record. Even had a laugh about it with the issuing officer - well hey, I was going to be walking/taking the bus for 6 months, I may as well have a bit of a laugh before it really hit home and I really lost my sense of humour over it. Besides, 1 fine in all that time - it was funny. Especially as compared to the people that drive slower, and drive less often.

All I can say, is that I hope (if/when) they catch the fucker and that s/he ends up in a prison that just so happens to house the spouse of one of the people injured in the spree. Now, THAT would be justice. Just the type of justice this fuck-up seems to believe in, apparently.

Well that's my 2c or $2 worth anyway.

[nbk2000]

When the government is corrupt and oppressive, there's no such thing as an 'innocent' flunky of the State. Were the functionaries of the gulags of the USSR 'innocent'? How 'bout the guards of the Nazi camps?

Even the lowly county clerk who processes the paperwork that deprives a man of his property at the behest of the corrupt courts isn't an 'innocent', but a vital (if anonymous) cog of the State.

And cogs of oppressive machines get SMASHED!

[Chopper]

I was going to post this last night, but in my state of tiredness thought it prudent to re-read and reconsider it after sleeping. Of course that makes me twice as much of a jack-ass if my argument is fundamentally flawed - I accept that.

Fair point with regards to officers of the USSR gulags and nazi camp officers.

Absolutely, a person helping a corrupt and oppressive govt perform their dirty work is not just an 'innocent' doing their 9-5. They're just doing the dirty work in the safety of their crappy little cubicles, rather than on the front-line, as it were. They're cowards and dirty-fuckers..

HOWEVER,

It's not as though a terribly large number of people would argue that there should be no penalty for travelling at double the speed limit, or even 20kmh over it. The masses just seem to get shitty at penalties being doled out over a trivial number of kmh / mph above it. Understandable, but over is over. Nothing is nothing however, a bit always becomes a bit more.

I apporached this issue from the perspective that speed-limits have long been in effect. This has not been debated nor disputed. What I percieve as being the rub in the UK, as has been the case here in Aus, is that with advances in technology, we're being 'blessed' with the chance to enforce theses speed-limits more and more, and in places where the monitoring of our adherence to them is no longer as obvious as it was in the days of a cop sitting on the side of the road with a radar-gun hanging out the window.

I have presumed, although quite wrongly admittedly, that the individual is of the group that believe it is unreasonable to be fined for exceeding the speed limit by an often trivial amount.

For a long, long time here it was known that there was a tolerance of 10% of the speed limit. In a 60 you could do 66 and be fine; 110 in a 100 was similarly an 'oversight' which may be disregarded.

Now however, we no longer have percentage-based tolerances. We have a blanket system of 3km over = chance of being booked. There is no longer any tolerance. After the 2km/h is subtracted from the detected speed, one may expect a fine if the resultant number is equal to or more than 1kmh over the limit.

There was an outcry over this, of course. Understandable, though not particularly valid, imho. Around the same time, the speed camera duties were sub-contracted out to a third party, Tennex (sp?).

Although having a 10% margin had the effect of giving us a de-facto law that said you must not travel at more than 10% above the speed limit, the law was and still is that you must not exceed the prescribed limit. This has not changed. What has, as I mentioned, is the ability to reliably detect the speed of a vehicle. Laser-based radar guns are certifiably accurate to within 2km/h, whereas radar-based systems were often no better than the 10%.

Don't get me wrong, I think a fine for doing 103 in a 100 should be far smaller than that imposed for travelling 43 in a 40. Yet without a blanket margin, the system is not necessarily wrong - it's just more open to abuse.

Saying something offensive/indecent in a public place is no more illegal if there's a 1000 people that hear it than if only 3 people hear it. It has more impact, certainly. But in both cases, indecent/offensive language has been used. I'm of a similar mind with regards to speeding.

[Gerbil]

Apparently, the parcels had the names of prominent animal-rights activists on them :rolleyes: . But then again, why would the DVLA be a target for animal rights? It's always possible that someone's trying to give a false lead.

It seems that the only real link between the targets is that they're government-linked institutions. Someone with a grudge?
Personally, I think that's it's probably some nutcase with a tub of sodium chlorate and too much spare time.

Btw, nbk, just out of interest, what would be your idea of a perfect society?