While the UK turns its eyes internationally towards the latest terrorist outrages, two events in Northern Ireland have had very little news coverage.
Within the space of 24 hours a bomb was discovered under a railway bridge in County Armagh followed by the discovery of an explosive device inside a car at Belfast International airport.
Fortunately neither device detonated and police are investigating. Both incidents are thought to be the work of dissident republicans.
Although this is not the Real IRA operating on the mainland, which I wrote about earlier, it is a reminder that republican terrorism is still active within the United Kingdom although thankfully on a less spectacular scale to Islamic extremism.
Ecrivain Man
Sunday, 31 October 2010
From Yemen with Love
Once again we have had a narrow escape. Two bombs, hidden in UPS cargo were – latest reports indicate – primed to explode. In these early stages of investigation, it seems that thanks should be directed towards Saudi, British and US intelligence units.
David Cameron – speaking about the bomb discovered at East Midlands Airport – claimed that because the flight containing the package took off from Yemen, landed Germany and the UK with the US as its final destination, this demonstrated how united we have to be to defeat terrorism. Well yes, this is an obvious statement but I am more concerned about the fact that the device was not detected in any of the first two countries and only found in the UK after a tip off.
Cargo planes have been identified for some time as the Achilles heal of aviation transport. Less than 5% of freight is scanned by x-ray machines and questions constantly persist about the reliability of airside staff. It appears that terrorists have found a new method of attack, proving that they continue to explore new avenues of attack.
One of the bomb components – PETN – as well as the origin of the device, indicates that the driving force behind these latest incidents is likely to be Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP). Yemen is the birthplace of Al-Qaeda, ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and AQAP is widely recognised as the terrorist organisation’s best franchise.
We can not win in the fight against terrorism by intervening at the very last minute as we will not succeed every time. We need a multi-layered approach of physical security right through to good intelligence obtained on the ground and electronically – the fight has to be taken to the front line whether that is Saana, Somalia or Saltford.
But as a final note, I’d like to mention two men who both made public statements this week – one illustrated brilliant timing and the other quite the opposite; Sir John Sawers became the first head of MI6 (the UK’s international intelligence arm) ever to speak publicly. One of the things he mentioned was that Yemen now posed a particular threat to our security. The second was Sir Martin Broughton, the British Airways chairman (better known for his handling of the recent Liverpool FC sale). He chose this week to criticize airport security measures as being too stringent.
I choose to listen to MI6 thank you.
Ecrivain Man
David Cameron – speaking about the bomb discovered at East Midlands Airport – claimed that because the flight containing the package took off from Yemen, landed Germany and the UK with the US as its final destination, this demonstrated how united we have to be to defeat terrorism. Well yes, this is an obvious statement but I am more concerned about the fact that the device was not detected in any of the first two countries and only found in the UK after a tip off.
Cargo planes have been identified for some time as the Achilles heal of aviation transport. Less than 5% of freight is scanned by x-ray machines and questions constantly persist about the reliability of airside staff. It appears that terrorists have found a new method of attack, proving that they continue to explore new avenues of attack.
One of the bomb components – PETN – as well as the origin of the device, indicates that the driving force behind these latest incidents is likely to be Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP). Yemen is the birthplace of Al-Qaeda, ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and AQAP is widely recognised as the terrorist organisation’s best franchise.
We can not win in the fight against terrorism by intervening at the very last minute as we will not succeed every time. We need a multi-layered approach of physical security right through to good intelligence obtained on the ground and electronically – the fight has to be taken to the front line whether that is Saana, Somalia or Saltford.
But as a final note, I’d like to mention two men who both made public statements this week – one illustrated brilliant timing and the other quite the opposite; Sir John Sawers became the first head of MI6 (the UK’s international intelligence arm) ever to speak publicly. One of the things he mentioned was that Yemen now posed a particular threat to our security. The second was Sir Martin Broughton, the British Airways chairman (better known for his handling of the recent Liverpool FC sale). He chose this week to criticize airport security measures as being too stringent.
I choose to listen to MI6 thank you.
Ecrivain Man
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Terrorists? They don’t make them like they used to!
A rant from me…
Back in the day, when I was a lad, when men were men, etc., there was an assumption that to be a terrorist you generally had to have been through the mill somewhat. A real terrorist couldn’t just step up to the mark, make a video, strap on a vest then…bang. Oh no, back in the day there was due process to being a terrorist.
To start with, the majority of those willing to risk all for the cause – whether it was IRA, Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers, FARC, Black September, etc., - had one thing in common - they would rough it a bit; go out and live off the land, make crap videos pretending they know kung fu and fire an AK47 into the air for a promotional cine film (or later video). They would be willing to go and rough it in the cold Andes, in the scorched deserts, in the sub continental jungles, in the Irish bogs(!) in order to learn their trade. In those heady days, it was necessary to painstakingly learn how to make a bomb and hope that you survived to do it a second time. Those badly choreographed karate moves for the cine camera actually hurt (especially if your partner was some handy sensei from the east). It was necessary to learn how to survive and eat worm omelettes with raw badger kebabs.
Now don’t misunderstand me; I detest all forms of terrorism and deplore the use of force to make people follow some warped sense of how things should be. I hate the fact that invariably, the majority of terrorist victims end up being innocent children, women and men who just want to live their lives in peace. But since time in memorial there have been terrorists kicking around, giving it large and gobbing off – that won’t change.
And for the most part they were working class at best and in many instances from fully impoverished backgrounds. Injustices were experienced and not just read about or imagined. They had generation after terrorist generation to live up to and not a small number of them were very intelligent. But today - well, today’s would be batch of terrorists have never had it so good. They just don’t know they are born, do this lot. Not like in days of yore.
Gone is the necessity to attend boot camps, designed to make a terrorist out of you. No more does a potential hijacker have to lie up for months at a time in the mountains/deserts/jungles/bogs(!). And as for the crap kung-fu propaganda film – not a necessity for today’s heroic freedom fighter.
And worst of all, unlike in days gone bye, today’s generation of terrorists don’t even have to be born into the cause, to have lived through the conditions they feel they are fighting for, nor to have even met anyone who has lived like this.
And why not? Because of the Internet!
That multi-layered and inexhaustible internet backbone of ISPs and the TCP/IP Protocol blah blah information net, somewhere invisible in the ether, makes life easy for any would be terrorist. Today, any young or middle aged trendy who suddenly decides that life in the suburbs of Surrey is boring can log on to ‘How to be a terrorist without doing any hard work dot com'. He (and it always seems to be a male) grows his hair, visits extremist chat-rooms (quite obviously too socially inept to visit a ‘meet a fit chick dot com’ chat-room), adopts a ridiculous accent and falls for all of the rubbish he hears. Then not content with that, he learns how to make a bomb from the internet on ‘How you, a pathetic and sad want-to-be terrorist, can make a bomb dot com’ and tries to blow himself up - after posting a suicide video on 'We accept all suicide bomber videos here dot com' - in order to take as many innocent lives as he possibly can (yeh! that’ll teach them).
But then he doesn’t even get that right; his shoe/underpants/shampoo bottle/smart 4x4 fails (thankfully) to go bang.
So a message to those snotty little prats who think the world is unfair and so they want to be a terrorist - be a man, go out there and do it like they used to, mix it with the really bad people face to face not in behind a computer screen.
But of course you won’t!
Ecrivain Man
Back in the day, when I was a lad, when men were men, etc., there was an assumption that to be a terrorist you generally had to have been through the mill somewhat. A real terrorist couldn’t just step up to the mark, make a video, strap on a vest then…bang. Oh no, back in the day there was due process to being a terrorist.
To start with, the majority of those willing to risk all for the cause – whether it was IRA, Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers, FARC, Black September, etc., - had one thing in common - they would rough it a bit; go out and live off the land, make crap videos pretending they know kung fu and fire an AK47 into the air for a promotional cine film (or later video). They would be willing to go and rough it in the cold Andes, in the scorched deserts, in the sub continental jungles, in the Irish bogs(!) in order to learn their trade. In those heady days, it was necessary to painstakingly learn how to make a bomb and hope that you survived to do it a second time. Those badly choreographed karate moves for the cine camera actually hurt (especially if your partner was some handy sensei from the east). It was necessary to learn how to survive and eat worm omelettes with raw badger kebabs.
Now don’t misunderstand me; I detest all forms of terrorism and deplore the use of force to make people follow some warped sense of how things should be. I hate the fact that invariably, the majority of terrorist victims end up being innocent children, women and men who just want to live their lives in peace. But since time in memorial there have been terrorists kicking around, giving it large and gobbing off – that won’t change.
And for the most part they were working class at best and in many instances from fully impoverished backgrounds. Injustices were experienced and not just read about or imagined. They had generation after terrorist generation to live up to and not a small number of them were very intelligent. But today - well, today’s would be batch of terrorists have never had it so good. They just don’t know they are born, do this lot. Not like in days of yore.
Gone is the necessity to attend boot camps, designed to make a terrorist out of you. No more does a potential hijacker have to lie up for months at a time in the mountains/deserts/jungles/bogs(!). And as for the crap kung-fu propaganda film – not a necessity for today’s heroic freedom fighter.
And worst of all, unlike in days gone bye, today’s generation of terrorists don’t even have to be born into the cause, to have lived through the conditions they feel they are fighting for, nor to have even met anyone who has lived like this.
And why not? Because of the Internet!
That multi-layered and inexhaustible internet backbone of ISPs and the TCP/IP Protocol blah blah information net, somewhere invisible in the ether, makes life easy for any would be terrorist. Today, any young or middle aged trendy who suddenly decides that life in the suburbs of Surrey is boring can log on to ‘How to be a terrorist without doing any hard work dot com'. He (and it always seems to be a male) grows his hair, visits extremist chat-rooms (quite obviously too socially inept to visit a ‘meet a fit chick dot com’ chat-room), adopts a ridiculous accent and falls for all of the rubbish he hears. Then not content with that, he learns how to make a bomb from the internet on ‘How you, a pathetic and sad want-to-be terrorist, can make a bomb dot com’ and tries to blow himself up - after posting a suicide video on 'We accept all suicide bomber videos here dot com' - in order to take as many innocent lives as he possibly can (yeh! that’ll teach them).
But then he doesn’t even get that right; his shoe/underpants/shampoo bottle/smart 4x4 fails (thankfully) to go bang.
So a message to those snotty little prats who think the world is unfair and so they want to be a terrorist - be a man, go out there and do it like they used to, mix it with the really bad people face to face not in behind a computer screen.
But of course you won’t!
Ecrivain Man
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Strategic Defence Review - Two Parties, One and a Half Leaders , One Outcome
At last we faced the first real battle between the Conservative/LibDem coalition and Her Majesty's Opposition in the House of Commons today as the government announced the results of the Strategic Defence Review. This offered the opposition some ammunition (OK, bad pun) with which to hit the nervous government.
In the blue corner we had wealthy, dashing, confident, former Etonian and current Premier - Blue Dave. And opposite, the young and self appointed 'new generation' of leader for the opposition - Red Ed...in the - errrrr - red corner.
Round one started. Standing at the dispatch box, immaculately dressed, an erudite and confident Prime Minister stared (or maybe even glared) at the Labour front bench which, in true leftist fashion, looked collectively nervous (all animals are made equal but Red Ed was wishing he was Snowball and not Napoleon at this point). They expected a high tempo opening round and they got it. Blue Dave laid into what he regards as Labour mismanagement in both the economy and defence spending. He sounded exasperated as he spoke of the £38 billion defence spending deficit left by the previous government. A good start Mr Prime Minister - pre-emptive action ahead of hard announcements - nice uppercut.
He emphasized the continuing commitment to our troops in Afghanistan, stressing that no cuts - only minutes away from being announced - would affect our forces in Afghanistan as they are funded separately by the Treasury's special reserve. Another sound jab in the face of opposition benches - our boys/girls have been ring fenced. How could Red Ed object to this? Another round to the ConLibCo
And then a swift combination - Britain would still meet its NATO spending commitment of 2% of GDP (something our European partners are falling well short of) and maintain the fourth largest military machine in the world, still able to punch above our weight... ouch! A stumble from the opposition - knees almost buckle. A standing count but Red Ed may still have a say to save face - he looked around...where was his brother when he needed him?
The middle of the fight saw a change - Blue Dave spent most of the time punching and missing, dropping disappointment after (not wholly unexpected) disappointment - scrap the Harrier fleet, cancel the Nimrod spy plane, reduce by 17,000 the number in forces personnel.
He dodged a possible right hook when Trident surfaced(!) announcing a reduction in size of the much talked of replacement nuclear deterrent and more importantly delayed the decision until after the next election (very canny - yes at last Yellow/Blue Nick could smile because a unilateral nuclear strike meant he had saved face - how ironic).
He rallied in later rounds - 25,000 MOD civil servant posts to be axed (the previous government had allowed the numbers to rise to more than the number of Naval and RAF personnel combined) - bang! The procurement of a fleet of hunter killer Astute class submarines would go ahead as would the completion of the six Type 45 destroyers - wallop!
Then the strangest announcement to be made - the building of two aircraft carriers would still go ahead because contracts had already been signed by the previous incumbents. It would - stressed Blue Dave trying hard to punch his way out of the corner - be more expensive to cancel them than to continue with the order! Now, I'm no boxing coach but it seems to me that investing in a boxing gym because my predecessor had committed to it, even though I don't want it, seems strange. What about the running costs Blue Dave? What about the fact that the gym could be doing nothing for years because there is no equipment (ie aircraft) for it? The Americans would no doubt have called this collateral budget damage.
He went back to the ropes, ready for the onslaught. Red Ed moved forward, scratched, shuffled papers, avoided eye contact with his opposite number and.........missed a jab- then an uppercut - a right hook - he tripped - he fell onto the ropes - Red Ed floundered. As he stuttered/paused/restarted/contradicted/mixed words/stumbled over words/searched for words/gasped for words (lost for words), his front bench colleagues could barely disguise their look of horror. An opportunity missed, a chance to assert some credibility after a drawn out and hugely damaging leadership contest which saw - with the luck of a union sucker punch - the favourite and heavy weight contender - Purple (with rage) David - knocked out by his lightweight brother Red Ed.
Huge spending cuts are on their way - fact. Most of them are necessary but in times of austerity it is vital to have a strong opposition ready and capable of challenging and questioning at every opportunity. They must make sure every cut is examined in the tiniest detail. The ConLibCo must not be given an easy ride.
On today's performance the current opposition - the leader in particular - is not yet ready for this battle. How long before Red Ed's team throw his towel in for him and go in search for their hiding heavyweight - still the first choice of the Parliamentary Labour Party as well as Labour's rank and file members?
I will be posting more specifically on the Strategic Defence and Security Review soon.
Ecrivain Man
In the blue corner we had wealthy, dashing, confident, former Etonian and current Premier - Blue Dave. And opposite, the young and self appointed 'new generation' of leader for the opposition - Red Ed...in the - errrrr - red corner.
Round one started. Standing at the dispatch box, immaculately dressed, an erudite and confident Prime Minister stared (or maybe even glared) at the Labour front bench which, in true leftist fashion, looked collectively nervous (all animals are made equal but Red Ed was wishing he was Snowball and not Napoleon at this point). They expected a high tempo opening round and they got it. Blue Dave laid into what he regards as Labour mismanagement in both the economy and defence spending. He sounded exasperated as he spoke of the £38 billion defence spending deficit left by the previous government. A good start Mr Prime Minister - pre-emptive action ahead of hard announcements - nice uppercut.
He emphasized the continuing commitment to our troops in Afghanistan, stressing that no cuts - only minutes away from being announced - would affect our forces in Afghanistan as they are funded separately by the Treasury's special reserve. Another sound jab in the face of opposition benches - our boys/girls have been ring fenced. How could Red Ed object to this? Another round to the ConLibCo
And then a swift combination - Britain would still meet its NATO spending commitment of 2% of GDP (something our European partners are falling well short of) and maintain the fourth largest military machine in the world, still able to punch above our weight... ouch! A stumble from the opposition - knees almost buckle. A standing count but Red Ed may still have a say to save face - he looked around...where was his brother when he needed him?
The middle of the fight saw a change - Blue Dave spent most of the time punching and missing, dropping disappointment after (not wholly unexpected) disappointment - scrap the Harrier fleet, cancel the Nimrod spy plane, reduce by 17,000 the number in forces personnel.
He dodged a possible right hook when Trident surfaced(!) announcing a reduction in size of the much talked of replacement nuclear deterrent and more importantly delayed the decision until after the next election (very canny - yes at last Yellow/Blue Nick could smile because a unilateral nuclear strike meant he had saved face - how ironic).
He rallied in later rounds - 25,000 MOD civil servant posts to be axed (the previous government had allowed the numbers to rise to more than the number of Naval and RAF personnel combined) - bang! The procurement of a fleet of hunter killer Astute class submarines would go ahead as would the completion of the six Type 45 destroyers - wallop!
Then the strangest announcement to be made - the building of two aircraft carriers would still go ahead because contracts had already been signed by the previous incumbents. It would - stressed Blue Dave trying hard to punch his way out of the corner - be more expensive to cancel them than to continue with the order! Now, I'm no boxing coach but it seems to me that investing in a boxing gym because my predecessor had committed to it, even though I don't want it, seems strange. What about the running costs Blue Dave? What about the fact that the gym could be doing nothing for years because there is no equipment (ie aircraft) for it? The Americans would no doubt have called this collateral budget damage.
He went back to the ropes, ready for the onslaught. Red Ed moved forward, scratched, shuffled papers, avoided eye contact with his opposite number and.........missed a jab- then an uppercut - a right hook - he tripped - he fell onto the ropes - Red Ed floundered. As he stuttered/paused/restarted/contradicted/mixed words/stumbled over words/searched for words/gasped for words (lost for words), his front bench colleagues could barely disguise their look of horror. An opportunity missed, a chance to assert some credibility after a drawn out and hugely damaging leadership contest which saw - with the luck of a union sucker punch - the favourite and heavy weight contender - Purple (with rage) David - knocked out by his lightweight brother Red Ed.
Huge spending cuts are on their way - fact. Most of them are necessary but in times of austerity it is vital to have a strong opposition ready and capable of challenging and questioning at every opportunity. They must make sure every cut is examined in the tiniest detail. The ConLibCo must not be given an easy ride.
On today's performance the current opposition - the leader in particular - is not yet ready for this battle. How long before Red Ed's team throw his towel in for him and go in search for their hiding heavyweight - still the first choice of the Parliamentary Labour Party as well as Labour's rank and file members?
I will be posting more specifically on the Strategic Defence and Security Review soon.
Ecrivain Man
Saturday, 9 October 2010
The Real IRA on the mainland
Someone asked me a question on one of my earlier posts as to what my thoughts were on the Northern Ireland situation concerning concerning the Real IRA (RIRA)so I have put a few thoughts together.
First of all, let us start with labels; although we now refer to the RIRA and other republican terror groups as dissidents, they don’t like this label. They see themselves as loyal to the cause of a united Ireland and senior republican figures such as Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness – in the eyes of the RIRA - are the dissidents by virtue of the fact they appear to have given up on achieving the ultimate goal of uniting the north and the south.
The recent raising of the alert state leads to the assumption that something directly associated with the RIRA could happen in the near future. Even though this Irish dissident alert remains lower than the risk of an Islamic attack, the fact that it was made public (for the first time) is puzzling.
How ready is the Real IRA to launch any significant attack outside of Northern Ireland? They have proved that they can maintain a low level and relatively low impact campaign within the six northern counties but a switch to the mainland is something else.
So what is their capability?
Whatever intelligence the government received to raise the alert state, I feel it is unlikely that the Real IRA possess the means to have anywhere near the same effect as republicans did during the time of the troubles.
However, they must now have a critical mass large enough to be classed as an organisation and this in itself raises the risk significantly. They probably also have a quantity of Semtex as well as a willingness to hit the mainland and a belief that they can succeed. If they have learned anything from the Provisional IRA, they will realise that the most successful Republican terrorist bombings in Britain have been against financial targets as opposed to just aiming to kill people. I believe that this is their more likely type of target.
Whatever the reason for the rise in the alert state, one thing is certain, Republicans are getting restless. As the island’s troubled history becomes more a thing of the past their cause becomes increasingly difficult. On both sides of the divide, the people of Northern Ireland are seeing their children living in peace for the first time in decades. Why would they want to return to the days of violence and intimidation. And for this reason, the Real IRA can see the prospects of a united Ireland moving further away. They feel they must up their game if they are to turn this around.
Ecrivain Man
First of all, let us start with labels; although we now refer to the RIRA and other republican terror groups as dissidents, they don’t like this label. They see themselves as loyal to the cause of a united Ireland and senior republican figures such as Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness – in the eyes of the RIRA - are the dissidents by virtue of the fact they appear to have given up on achieving the ultimate goal of uniting the north and the south.
The recent raising of the alert state leads to the assumption that something directly associated with the RIRA could happen in the near future. Even though this Irish dissident alert remains lower than the risk of an Islamic attack, the fact that it was made public (for the first time) is puzzling.
How ready is the Real IRA to launch any significant attack outside of Northern Ireland? They have proved that they can maintain a low level and relatively low impact campaign within the six northern counties but a switch to the mainland is something else.
So what is their capability?
Whatever intelligence the government received to raise the alert state, I feel it is unlikely that the Real IRA possess the means to have anywhere near the same effect as republicans did during the time of the troubles.
However, they must now have a critical mass large enough to be classed as an organisation and this in itself raises the risk significantly. They probably also have a quantity of Semtex as well as a willingness to hit the mainland and a belief that they can succeed. If they have learned anything from the Provisional IRA, they will realise that the most successful Republican terrorist bombings in Britain have been against financial targets as opposed to just aiming to kill people. I believe that this is their more likely type of target.
Whatever the reason for the rise in the alert state, one thing is certain, Republicans are getting restless. As the island’s troubled history becomes more a thing of the past their cause becomes increasingly difficult. On both sides of the divide, the people of Northern Ireland are seeing their children living in peace for the first time in decades. Why would they want to return to the days of violence and intimidation. And for this reason, the Real IRA can see the prospects of a united Ireland moving further away. They feel they must up their game if they are to turn this around.
Ecrivain Man
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