Some brief thoughts that sparked through my head after the “terror” attack on Glasgow Airport.
1. Glasgow, my home city. All of a sudden it’s close to home. Doubly so as I drive right past the runway every day on my way to work every day.
2. Glasgow, isn’t a capital city, why didn’t they hit Edinburgh?
3. If they HAD gotten the vehicle inside it would have been awful.. queues of people waiting to checkin would’ve been about 15 feet from the doorway the car hit.
4. Ummm the car was too wide for the doors?
5. Ummmm they only used one car, and were targetting one end of a long narrow building. Even if they HAD have gotten in… the building would probably still be usable…
6. Can we stop reporting that the terrorists are Asian? It’s wholly pointless really.
7. Who was the last white terrorist?
8. BBC News 24 is awful. The fact that “some ministers have been seen heading for No.10” is NOT news!
9. I seem to be de-sensitised to this already. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
So today I’ll watch the French Grand Prix, do a little work and try, again, to get my Wifi connection to play nicely with my Mac.
Just another Sunday really. Except it’s not, it’s now tainted with thoughts of car bombs and suspicion is creeping in… paranoia to follow?
For good or for ill, I was desensitised quite a while ago. This is what growing up in London with IRA bombs will do to you. First thing I thought of with both the Glasgow incident and the failed London bombs was how embarrassed the terrorists must have been to have fecked it up so spectacularly. Much better to be a dead terrorist than a rubbish one, I imagine; I bet they’re mortified.
“2. Glasgow, isn’t a capital city, why didn’t they hit Edinburgh?”
That would be because Glasgow Airport is the busiest airport in Scotland…not Edinburgh. Yesterday happens to have been one of the busiest days of the year for that airport…I’m sure you know that though since you hail from the area.;)
Yesterday I felt shocked and horrified but today, like you I feel removed from the situation despite the fact that I too live in the vacinity of Glasgow airport.
Just goes to show the effect of years of seeing similar and worse atrocities on the TV.
Last white terrorists would be those on either side of the conflict in N.Ireland and Timothy McVeigh – the Oklahoma City Bomber who caused the largest loss of life pre 9/11
Then there is good old George Dubyah who holds control of over 10,500 nuclear warheads – he could be the next one don’t ya thnk y’all?
I don’t have any more of a problem with them being described as ‘Asian’ as all the IRA bombers being described as Irish, or Catholic, or Irish Catholic. Which is, mixed feelings. It’s an inescapable fact, and, I believe, a relevant fact. But that does not provide an excuse for generalised hatred of Asians any more than it did for generalised hatred of Irish people particularly in the 70s but right through into the 90s.
Oh, ethnically, I’m partly Irish Catholic, and so many of my relatives and friends (especially back in the 70s and 80s)
OK OK. My post was a bit rushed and I didn’t think through the whole IRA thing etc etc.
We have spent some time laughing today though, mainly at the ineptitude of the ‘terrorists’. I think this is a good thing.
I read somewhere else…sorry I can’t remember where I’ve read so much about this today…that the drivers in London were equally stupid.
One of them crashed into some piece of road sign or something and another parked their bomb on a double yellow line…I think the only response is to have a laugh at how dumb they are and be thankful that they are that stupid. It does worry me somewhat that two of them were doctors though…I hope they were better doctors than they were terrorists.
It has all been done before. Flying planes into buildings was new, and rightly made everyone think differently about terrorism. We’ve been dealing with car bombs for quite a few years now…
Rumour is that they are an Al-Qaeda Tribute Band
“Rumour is that they are an Al-Qaeda Tribute Band”
😆
We were in Dublin on Saturday afternoon. We were in a pub (as required by Irish law for all tourists) and the telly was on in the background. It was a “what the hell is going on” sort of moment for us. I’m so glad nobody was killed this time.
Naturally you didn’t remember the IRA because they didn’t hit us in Scotland. The only other terrorist incident I can recall in this country is the Pan Am flight going down and although it was awful, it wasn’t actually directed at Scotland.
Thinking of the IRA, I remember when, clearly short of cash and ideas, they used a bicycle bomb to blow up a flower bed outside Woolies in Bognor Regis in 1994. I could hear the bang quite clearly from where I was, about four miles away. Nobody was hurt, but several Petunias gave their lives. (Contemporary news reports describe 15 shops as being "wrecked". In fact, a lot of glass was blown out from windows, but no building was actually wrecked, as I recall.)
If I was a terrorist, I’d give up on hard targets like airports and main railway stations. Provincial railway stations, electricity substations and telephone exchanges would be easier to hit and cause greater inconvenience – if you want to upset the British, aim for the economy, I reckon.
Al-Qaeda Tribute Band? I like that.
“We’re Sgt. Laden’s lonely Taliban
We hope you all enjoy the show
Sgt Laden’s one and only lonely Taliban
Sit back and let the evening blow
Sgt Laden’s lonely, Sgt Laden’s lonely, Sgt Laden’s lonely Taliban.”
Now where is my Guitar and Mad Mullah outfit? The shit-disco/bowling club tour beckons.
Also just remembered the Bader-Meinhof lot in the 60s, they were mostly blue eyed blondes – even the men!
As an individual, David Copeland was a white terrorist, convicted of nailbombing pubs in Soho and Brixton in 1999.
Robert Cottage and David Jackson were two BNP members arrested in Lancashire in October 2006 and charged with “possession of explosive substances for unlawful purposes” and are back in court at the moment after a mistrial in february.
Real IRA suspected of firebombs across Northern Ireland in October/November 2006.
Baader-Meinhof (or later the RAF (no, not that RAF, the other one)) was actually mainly in the 70s. I grew up with it being in the news, but only have a very vague memory of it as I was quite young back then. They also assassinated several businessmen in the late 80s and early 90s.
There’s been a huge debate in Germany recently if they should be released from prison now.
In 1980 there was a bomb attack on the Oktoberfest by a ne-nazi (13 dead).
Franz Fuchs sent letter bombs in Austria 93-97, apparently racially motivated (4 dead)
I also assume the ETA attacks on Spain are by whites.