Evidence Piles Up

[Magnus]

Thank you for that informative post phylo.

I came to think about the time when, as a kid, we tried to make black powder from sulfur, charcoal and fertiliser. First of all we had no clue in what ratio it should be mixed just tried different combos. I do believe we got it to fizzle a bit but nowhere close to a real black powder flash.

[Cott Tiger]

Phylo,

So just to clarify then.

Fertiliser bombs CAN be devastating, as I first noted, and my statement wasn’t a “contradiction in terms” as you claimed.

Regards,

Andre

PS:AS for SEEING 600kg of fertiliser, pictures of it have been in every UK paper over the last couple of days and there are six pictures of it alone on the web-link I provided!!

PPS: The recreation of the explosion was done as a ITN exclusive and wasn't screened until after the Judge and Jury had delivered their verdict. It wasn't done for the benefit of the Jury, Court, or Judge. Obviosuly experts testified that such a large amount of chemical fertiliser (as well as the aluminium powder) that was found COULD be used to make a lethal and DEVASTING bomb.

[pzrmeyer2]

Andre,

I'd be interested in your opinion of the following article:

A Rising Tide of Fury
By Tony Blankley

Whenever I refer to the threat of radical Islam, I am inundated with e-mails chastising me for unjustified alarmism (that is the polite description of the missives). This week, even the esteemed and often accurate British Economist accused me, by name, of overestimating the threat and being alarmist on the topic.

Not only do I hope they are right, but I regularly monitor the news for evidence of my error; for I have long taken to heart and applied to myself the advice that Oliver Cromwell gave to the Scottish Presbyterians: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Nonetheless, while Muslim attitudes across the world are dynamic, and subtle inflections of thought are not easily captured by polling, the news continues to be not encouraging.

Last week, the respected University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), released its most recent survey of Muslim attitudes on America, terrorism and related topics (see http://www.pipa.org). They surveyed attitudes in four representative Muslim countries: Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco.

On the question of America's influence in the world, from a low of 60 percent in Indonesia to a high of 89 percent in Egypt, they answered that most or nearly all of what happens in the world is controlled by the United States. And how do the world's Muslims see (what they believe to be) our all-powerful objectives?

From a low of 73 percent in Indonesia to a high of 92 percent in Egypt the Muslims believe that America's goal is "to weaken and divide the Islamic world." Fairly assuming that these four countries' populations represent worldwide Muslim views in Islamic countries, in other words, about 80 percent of the 1.4 billion Muslims or about a billion souls see America as hostile or an enemy to Islam.

Between 61 percent and 67 percent of the polled Muslims also thought that America's goal was to spread Christianity in the Middle East. Given that Islam teaches that Muslim converts to other religions must be executed, this purported American objective is probably not well received.

What do they think is our primary goal in the war on terror? Between 9 percent-23 percent believe it is to protect ourselves from terrorism. Between 53 percent-86 percent believe it is to weaken, divide and dominate the Islamic religion and people.

What percentage of the polled Muslims is in favor of terrorism attacks on civilians (and note the question doesn't say American civilians -- which presumably would be more popular than attacks on even Muslim civilians -- as the general form of the question suggests)?

To varying degrees, 27 percent of Moroccans, 21 percent of Egyptians, 13 percent of Pakistanis and 11 percent of Indonesians approve of terrorism attacks on civilians -- and not just American civilians. Extrapolating those percentages to the world Muslim population, roughly 250 million Muslims may approve, under some circumstances, of terrorism attacks on civilians generally. One might reasonably guess a somewhat larger number would favor it if limited to American victims.

Of course, as the study points out, "Large majorities (57 percent-84 percent) in all countries oppose attacks against civilians for political purposes and see them as contrary to Islam." We must be grateful for such mercies. But when, to fairly extrapolate these numbers, about a quarter of a billion Muslims are in favor of civilian terrorist attacks, I think prudent people are entitled to be alarmed at the magnitude of the threat.

It should be remembered that a majority of Germans never voted for Hitler. His high watermark was about four in 10 -- and that probably over stated his true level of support. Indeed, only a minority of American colonists supported our noble revolution.

Anytime a revolutionary cause -- and particularly one that is culturally and violently aggressive -- reaches a certain critical mass, its target runs the risk of losing the support of the majority who are not revolutionary, but are susceptible to being intimidated by the revolutionary minority.

Whether the radical percentages measured in this report constitute a critical mass or not is certainly conjectural (please see the full report online for other intriguing data that are generally in line with these samples).

Importantly, attitudes can shift either way over time. And most importantly, we have not had -- even remotely -- a national debate on what policies are best judged to reduce radical sentiment in the Muslim world, while also protecting us from potentially imminent terrorist attacks. Rather, we are still having a jolly old time deciding whom amongst us to skin for our past mistakes.

The president's critics are fond of pointing out that America's participation in World War II was shorter than the current Iraq struggle. Of course it is also true that given the longevity of our current finger pointing, if this were World War II, it would be 1946, and we would still be trying to figure out whom to fire over Pearl Harbor.

Let us, at least, now be resolved to not permit any candidate for president -- Republican or Democrat -- get away with merely criticizing past decisions and policies or offering simplistic slogans on the War on Terror (or whatever other term people prefer for the global jihad threat to the West). Let's insist that they each discuss in depth their understanding of the threat and their considered and detailed strategy for protecting us in the future.

Winston Churchill warned when he took over government in 1940: "If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future."

And, as an official alarmist, let me assert that the data, such as above, suggests that our future is quite losable if we persist in ignoring the regrettable realities pregnant within it.

[Cott Tiger]

PM2,

It appears to be an interesting and well-balanced article (although quite what relevance it has here is beyond me). Assuming that the study is valid and was properly conducted (I haven’t cross checked it) then its results confirm yet again that this is a critical and global issue.

So far as I am aware, nobody here is downplaying the threats and issues that exist in the alarming rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Most just don't see it relevant to Feldgrau.

Young British men, born, raised and educated in Britain with British parents are trying to buy rocket launchers to blow holiday makers out of the sky, rig bombs in nightclubs and shopping centres and blow themselves and others to smithereens on buses and trains.
It is happening, and we need to wake up to it and tackle it. However, we not only need to catch the lunatics planning and perpetrating such acts but we need to tackle why they are doing it - why they are becoming radicalised.

What doesn’t help is political propaganda and ridiculous assertions that media clowns like the champagne socialist George Galloway are in someway to blame or encouraging/supporting British Muslims strapping bombs to their backs and detonating themselves on the London Underground is farcical. Galloway is just cynically exploiting the disgruntled Muslim vote for his own means. RESPECT isn’t the epicentre of some mythical Leftist-Islamist coalition. See it for what it is - opportunism and self-promotion.

Regards,

Andre

[phylo_roadking]

Fertiliser bombs CAN be devastating

But rarely ARE. Note also the earlier terrorist trial this year where the defendants' explosive devices simply DIDN'T EXPLODE - and they were enrichened fertiliser devices.

Obviosuly experts testified that such a large amount of chemical fertiliser (as well as the aluminium powder) that was found COULD be used to make a lethal and DEVASTING bomb.

Note your CORRECT use of the word "COULD". I would of course hope that this was offered as a scientific opinion in the court and the jury directed accordingly.

P.S. you ARE of course aware that Aluminium Powder ISN'T used as an explosive, primer or in fact as ANY part of a fertiliser based device??? It has a completely different purpose.

I do believe we got it to fizzle a bit but nowhere close to a real black powder flash.

ammonium nitrate fertiliser doesn't actually contain as much nitrate per volume as good oldfashioned "nitre" or saltpetre. AND you may not have had the right fertiliser. If you look at a plastic bag of fertiliser as supplied to farmers - there are THREE percentages on it - one for ammonia one for nitrogen and a third. Its the percentage of Nitrogen thats important. The truly explosive stuff is only sold under strict licence, the weak UN-enrichenable stuff is vastly more common nowadays.

Also, "black powder" needs to not JUST be mixed in the right percentages - or else it fizzles - it needs to be "ground" together, in Ye Goode Olde Days by mortar and pestle, to ensure each individual grain is coated with the other ingredients for better combustion. This process improves its explosive power by 65%!!! BUT obviously...grinding?...pressure?....heat...boom! THAT'S why gunpowder production was originally dangerous.

And of course - it "bangs" better - like ALL explosives - when under compression for a moment. Lay a pile on a flat surface you get a fizzle..."tamp" it into a confined space and you get a bang!

[panzerschreck1]

BTW anyone with some advanced course in chemistry knows about the ingredients on nitroglycerine TNT etc...it's not that hard for a amateur chemist ...the hard part is those james bond like highly complicated trigger mechanisms that react on temperature changes...or light sensitive cells LOL

[panzerschreck1]

PS Phylo do the Grinding in your fridge at minus 18...LOL

[phylo_roadking]

PS Phylo do the Grinding in your fridge at minus 18...LOL

LOL sadly wasnt readily available in Western Europe in the Medieval/Early Renaissance Warm Interglacial!!!

[phylo_roadking]

anyone with some advanced course in chemistry knows about the ingredients on nitroglycerine

Yep, but its not knowing the contents thats SO difficult with "bathtub nitro", its the process for combining; it A/ gives off very toxic fumes, and B/ at several steps in the process is actually MORE reactive and sensitive than even the finished product!!!

It's a "recipe" for disaster! And has been. Why do you think there's an underground trade in stolen military ordnance and industrial explosive? Because even those who could mix it desperately don't want to!

[phylo_roadking]

the hard part is those james bond like highly complicated trigger mechanisms that react on temperature changes...or light sensitive cells

Nope! Go to your local Maplin's or Tandy superstore....or computer wholesale store! They sell little hobby kits for KIDS that have all these in them!!! Or how about those little kits for "parking radar"....so that a bomb explodes when a car drives past???

[panzerschreck1]

it A/ gives off very toxic fumes, and B/ at several steps in the process is actually MORE reactive and sensitive than even the finished product

So true! The glycerine and nitrate are the easy part 1:3 combination ,but the bunker and laboratory circumstances are usually not included in the whole do it yourself package...

[phylo_roadking]

...which is why on the odd occasion crims in the UK have attempted it the best place is actually an old farm, where a few days prepping and cleaning an old milking parlour or pipe work gives nice clinical conditions for it!

[lwd]

... THAT'S why gunpowder production was originally dangerous....

The word "originally" is I believe inaccurate here. There were several explosions in black powder produciton plants in the 20th century. I believe there was one in the 1970's. So still might be a better choice. Every decade or two we loose a fireworks factory for simlar reasons.

[panzerschreck1]

In Holland a similair accident happened but accredited to bad storage facilities of fireworks ...the storage responsibles were in serious

[Liam]

Europe's Islamist-Leftist Alliance
By Adrian Morgan
FamilySecurityMatters.org | May 1, 2007


In 2004, David Horowitz published Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, a seminal work based on the author's 50-year experience of the American Left. Since the book was written, the links between Islam and the left have become stronger, and not just in the United States. The global anti-war movements have naturally forged alliances between leftists and Islamists -- in short, a Black-Red Alliance.


One doesn’t need to look very hard to find evidence of this alliance; it permeates every aspect of European politics today. Scratch beneath the surface of any Leftist organization and you’re likely to find a radical Islamist movement scratching back. Behind every anti-war movement, you’ll find support for Palestinian terrorists and Islamic Jihad.

Take Britain’s Respect Party, for instance. This group, which was founded on January 25, 2004 from the ranks of the Stop the War Coalition, is headed by the notorious showman, George Galloway, its only elected member of parliament. Respect encourages its members to also belong to other political groups, namely the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain.

The SWP has always demonized Israel, and their involvement in Respect has led to the new party's official policy being staunchly anti-Israeli: "We support the call for a boycott of Israeli goods and services, of tourism to Israel, and of academic, sporting and cultural links with Israeli bodies." One of Respect's senior figures, Yvonne Ridley, told students at Imperial College in February 2006 that "if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists." She described Israel as "that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East."

Ridley, a convert to Islam, told Muslims in East London on June 7, 2006, that they should stop cooperating with police. Ridley's bizarre trajectory from Christian Sunday school teacher to Islamist will be discussed in a later article, but her website has a book list, which is compiled "n association with Maktabah, on a monthly basis." Maktabah, an Islamic bookstore, states on its home page: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are unable to process any online or telephone orders for approx. 28 days."

Why should Maktabah be unable to process orders? The Maktabah bookshop in Birmingham was recently raided by anti-terror police in connection with a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. In 1999, Maktabah published a book on Kashmiri jihad, "The Army of Madinah in Kashmir" written by Esa al-Hindi. Hindi is in fact Dhiren Barot, who on November 7, 2006, was sentenced to 40 years in jail for plots to attack targets in Britain and the USA.

These targets included the Prudential building in Newark, the Citigroup building in New York and others. In April 2001, Barot had taken video footage of the World Trade Center. As his camera focused on the towers, he turned the camera, so they lay horizontal in the frame of view. In another clip, he again turned the camera on its side when taking a video the World Trade Center, and he can be simultaneously heard making the sound of an explosion.

Yvonne Ridley is no stranger to terrorists. In 2004, she described Abu Hamza al-Masri, the hook-handed cleric, as "quite sweet really." This was before Hamza was jailed for seven years on February 7, 2006, for inciting murder of Jews, Hindus and non-Muslims.

Also, the first of Ridley's three husbands, Daoud Zaaroura, had been a colonel in the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

The Stop the War Coalition, from which the Respect Party grew, is dominated by leftists. Its "convener" is Lindsey German, who is on the central committee of the SWP and has stood a parliamentary candidate for the Respect Party. In July, 2004, she explained the Stop the War Coalition's approach to Muslims, claiming they were poor victims, who needed her condescending middle class protection: "It should be a badge of honour to those of us on the left that a group of people who face discrimination and victimisation should look to organisations like Stop the War Coalition to help defend them - and that the overwhelming majority of those so politicised do not turn to fundamentalist groups but to socialists, trade unionists and peace campaigners."

She complained then that the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) was under attack, along with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the "spiritual leader" of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has justified terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. MAB has strong links with the Muslim Brotherhood, being founded in 1997 by Kamal Tawfik el-Helbawy, a member of the Brotherhood. Mohammed Kassem Sawalha, a senior member of the MAB, is not only linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, but was also a former fundraiser for the terrorist group Hamas. In the West Bank, he was known as “Abu Abada.”

The Muslim Brotherhood has made deals with leftists in Egypt, the country where it was founded in 1928. In 1987 the Brotherhood forged an alliance with the Socialist Labour Party and the Liberal Socialist Party, called the Labour Islamic Alliance. The Alliance won 60 seats in the Egyptian elections that year, with 37 of these belonging to the Brotherhood's representatives.

The Muslim Association of Britain, with leaders such as Azzam al-Tamimi support terrorist operations in Israel, is happy to court the left to serve its own political ends. On February 16, the first major Stop the War march took place in London, organized with the help of the Muslim Association of Britain. Though the protesters were complaining about the impending Iraq invasion, which followed a month later, official banners at the march read: "No war on Iraq - freedom for Palestine."

The notion of Palestinian "victimhood" has been a keystone of leftist and Islamist ideology for more than three decades, coupled with a jealous contempt for America and Israel. The 2004 rally had influential leftists speaking, such as playwright Harold Pinter, who claimed America was "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics."

The Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party has made ridiculous gestures of solidarity with its Muslim affiliates, garnering scorn from Marxist members of the left. At one demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in London, a white female SWP organizer urged non-Muslim women to cover their heads with scarves, "to show respect" at a demonstration which was "mostly Muslim."

Three days before 9/11, the SWP published an article which claimed the Taliban made women remain secluded at home "as a means of protecting them. At an anti-war meeting in Birmingham, SWP members bowed down to the bigotry of Muslim members by banning an apostate from Islam from attending. At another anti-war rally at Trafalgar Square, the SWP encouraged segregation of secular men and women, in deference to the Muslims present. This behavior led Marxist Sean Mantegna to describe the SWP as "demoralised Guardian readers with headscarves."

The theme of the so-called "Black Red Alliance" was discussed by Douglas Davis in the Spectator (also available here). He noted that Spark, the journal of the Socialist Labour Party, run by former miner Arthur Scargill, had called Asif Hanif, a young Islamist from Britain's Al-Muhajiroun group, as a "hero of revolutionary youth." On April 30, 2003, Hanif killed three Israelis and wounded 60 others in a suicide attack on Mike's Bar on the Tel Aviv seafront.

Davis noted that in August 2002, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's deputy leader, had urged British Muslims to seek alliances among "any movement that opposes America, even atheists." Abu Hamza had said to his followers: "We say to anyone who hates the Americans and wants to throw the Jews out of Palestine - Ahlan wa Sahlan (welcome). The Prophet teaches that we could ally ourselves even with the atheists if it helps us destroy [the] enemy."

The union of Islam and the left is celebrated in France by Olivier Besançonneau, leader of the French Trotskyites. He said of Muslims: "Are these not the new slaves? Is it not natural they should unite with the working class to destroy the capitalist system?" The French Communist Party commissioned a study to examine the electoral potential of forging alliances with Muslim groups. Already, leftist French groups such as the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and Workers' Struggle (Lutte Ouvri ère) have allied themselves with Islamists to gain seats in the European Parliament.

The language of the proponents of the Black-Red Alliance is confrontational when dealing with valid criticisms of Islamists and Muslim extremists. The main term used to silence criticism is "Islamophobe." In Britain, a website has been in existence for more than a year, calling itself Islamophobia-watch. This site is run by two individuals. One is Eddie Truman, who is both a member of Britain's Communist Party and spokesman of the Scottish Socialist Party. The main writer, who describes critics of Islamist radicalism as "right-wing racists" and "Islamophobes," calls himself Martin Sullivan. His real identity is Bob Pitt, the formerly secretary of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

Pitt's ranting on this website praises leftists such as Ken Livingstone, who exemplifies the stance of the Black-Red Alliance. Livingstone's support for Yusuf al-Qaradawi is mirrored on Islamophobia-watch.

Individually, the parties within the Stop the War Coalition or Respect would stand little chance of getting elected. United, they actually wield political influence. They have also made common cause with Black-Red allies from other countries. In December 2002, before the March 19 invasion of Iraq, a meeting was convened in Egypt which brought international leftists and Islamists to the same table. The meeting resulted in the first Cairo declaration "against U.S. Hegemony and War on Iraq and In Solidarity with Palestine." The declaration included a proposal to send “human shields” to Iraq.

In December 2003, a second Cairo declaration was announced the Black-Red Alliance would continue the "pursuance of the struggle to support the unified international front against imperialism and capitalist globalization."

The naive arguments of these leftists would be risible, were it not for the fact that now, as the Iraq War shows no sign of an imminent conclusion, their views are increasingly being heard. The spokespeople of the Black-Red Alliance are edging further into the mainstream politics of both Europe and America.

I wouldn't worry too much about 'leftists' - most of them are Mi5 or Special Branch informers...