You know, BA always hated flying- appropriate that he tried to blow up an airport. "I ain't falling for that drug shit again, Murdoch! You ain't putting me on no damn plane!"
A long time ago a prison psychiatrist told me that bank robbers do it primarily for the drama. Bank-robbery is very risky and not terribly lucrative (compared to burglary, for example) but for a moment you're in the big time. Burglars work in secret and don't get credit for their crimes, which pisses them off enough that some of them rat themselves out by bragging to the wrong person.
I loved that the second car-bomb had been ticketed and towed. Foiled by a meter-maid! That never happened to Batman villains.
I really do wonder what these people are trying to accomplish. It seems most like angry people wanting to make a big bang, rather than a considered campaign to spread terror.
You know, the DC-area sniper from a few years back was a really effective low-budget terrorist. I've always been puzzled why terrorism of this sort isn't more common. Who needs a dirty bomb when the technology for a high-powered rifle is easily accessible?
Yeah, what 4 and 5 said. If you want to scare people, go shooting at the mall. There's no need to get all gadgety.
I figure they're just a result of al-Qaeda's non-discriminatory policies towards the bloody idiotic.
Better tread lightly, FL -- we've got our eye on you.
8: Seriously. I feel weirdly guilty just having posted No. 5. I mean, after all, if this hasn't occurred to the evildoers already, what if they are reading unfogged? I don't wanna go to Gitmo !
If they're reading unfogged, they won't have any time to get any real work done, so.
If you're feeling guilty, pf, I could redact it. Hard to imagine that all the relevant people haven't had these thoughts already, but then again, cars and propane.
I've thought this a few times. I can think of several ways to cause mass terror and death armed with a few simple tools. It always amazes me that terrorists don't do the same.
Also, the interview (more or less immediately after it happened) with the Glaswegian passer-by who flattened one of the would-be fire-bombers is darkly amusing.
"When I knocked him down he was disoriented .. he was quite a big fella..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/uk/video/103000/bb/103476_16x9_bb.ram
Let's be sure to invite all our Islamofascist lurkers to the next Baluchistan meetup.
I know who to hate most: her first commenter! Then her! and then the other woman too!
Why is Kerry all of a sudden a "scumbag", after she voted for him? What did I miss? Did he come out and say all the swiftboat stuff was true?
This woman is like Pam Atlas, only (thank you god) without video.
15: Yeah. I found myself fascinated by what, exactly, she hates John Kerry so much for. And why she can't spell 'loathe', but that's a different issue.
Hard to know who to hate more in this matchup.
Are you kidding me? The woman with the sign sounded fine.
10: You're safe. Tom Clancy did mall shootings as terrorist tactic in his last and very,very, very,very bad novel a few years ago. It's not worth reading, BTW.
19: You'll understand when you have kids, FL.
I read an interview with a novelist recently where he said he'd come up with some terrorist spectacular for his novel, and then redacted it as he'd realised that it was quite feasible. The novelist wasn't the self-aggrandising Tom Clancy type either, so his concerns sounded believable.I'd imagine that happens quite often; that writers, journalists, etc self-censor.
That woman's column is in our local free weekly.
Which tells you all you need to know about the quality of our local free weekly. Sigh.
19: For that you hate someone? Heck, it's practically quoted from Churchill.
You'll understand when you have kids
If I had a dollar for every time I've said "Use your words," I would be covered by the FDIC.
I actually seldom say "use your words." I don't know where that particular phrase gained so much traction. I tend to say things like, "I don't understand what you want" or "what the hell is your problem?" or "all right, knock it off."
All of which amount to the same thing, admittedly.
I actually seldom say "use your words."
Your kid is pretty far past that stage, B. It's mostly for dealing with 2-year-olds.
This expression is new to me, but the occasion to say some such thing isn't, of course.
No, I maintain that "use your words" is a stupid thing to write on your car when preceded by "No War."
use your words
You guys don't just do the thing where you put your hand on your child's forehead and keep your arm straight so that they keep swinging at empty air? Things have changed since I was little.
Heh. I spend a lot more time thinking "Newt, please, for the love of all that is decent and holy, stop using your words so much." He's a nice child, but talkative.
27: Eh. When he was 2, he was surprisingly untantrumy. And if he was, I'd mostly just pick him up and carry him elsewhere.
Which is probably why we're still dealing with the angry meltdowns at six, come to think of it.
Also what LB said. "Honey, please: just shut up."
You know that when GWB and Condi Rice were in LA POTUS saw that very car, turned to the Secretary of State and asked "why didn't you think of that?"
Rah and I were out running errands this weekend and discussing the Jeep in Glasgow and I said, "You know, I hate to say it, but I have to imagine that the people who made the Mercedes not-bombs were like, Damn it, I am going to blow up a car if I have to drive it myself!"
I think car bombs must be the new 'going postal.'
Yes, "use your words" gets said a LOT around my household. Mainly to the kids.
On a kid-note,THANK GOD for summer school. Or, rather, THANK YOU summer school teachers!!!
My daughter is worn out, asleep now.
29: I believe the implied message is that our leaders behave like children.
The novelist wasn't the self-aggrandising Tom Clancy type either, so his concerns sounded believable."
Hey, Clancy had a guy fly a plane into the White House. Credit where due, I say.
39:
Their hands are always down their own pants?
Or is that just my kids?
With Apo in 39, I assumed "No war: use your words" was intended to be humorous.
Now that this site is turning into the Blogospheric Anarchist Aerobic Training Gymnasium and Gereontic Hippie Day-Care Center we can recommend this movie Monkey Warfare which can be subtitled "Bud, Bicycles, and Bombs!" and is Canadian to boot!
I'll help with Technorati by linking to Anarcho-Syndicalism.net.
(If I were cool or tech-literate I'd link the banned post-credit instructional video from the tubes somewhere)
"Use your words".
"Fuck you, mom".
re: 32
My 6-year old niece has spectacular melt-downs too. However, she's always had them. If she takes after my sister she'll still be having them at 15.
"Use your words" sounds weird to me. The addition of the 'your' into it makes it bizarrely non-idiomatic to British ears. "Use words" would be better (for me).
45: It's not normal sounding in American English either -- it's a specific phrase that you'd only direct at a small child who's hitting or yelling.
Yelling is an instance of using your words, right?
re: 47
Ah. It's a phrase I've never heard, then.
I maintain that "use your words" is a stupid thing to write on your car when preceded by "No War."
I maintain that writing just about anything on your car is stupid, except maybe "For sale," "Just Married," or "Baby on board."
I'm going to hate everyone associated with that website, just to make sure, but that first comment leaps out like a spark from the stupid fire:
I got arrested in 1991 for protesting gulf war I - no conviction, thank god. After I pulled my head out of my ass a year later and registered as a Republican
I've never been arrested for protesting anything, but I've never voted Republican, either. During my whole adult life, my own political views probably haven't shifted more than a few degrees either side of left-liberal. Gradual change I can understand; sudden 180° shifts just look like evidence that you were an idiot to start with.
"were an idiot to start with" s/b "had your spot in the will jeopardized"
I maintain that writing just about anything on your car is stupid, except maybe "For sale," "Just Married," or "Baby on board."
Nope. Those last two are stupid too.
41: Nope. Not just your kids.
Actually, the whole thing about the doctors being involved is very bad news and not to be laughed at. As FL implicitly acknowledges, high-level professionals have access to many more opportunities for destruction than low-level people do. These guys were too dumb or squeamish to use theirs, but maybe the next ones won't be.
When the high-level professional who decides to sacrifice his life to strike back at the West is a nuclear engineer in Pakistan, then we'll all be screwed.
I believe the implied message is that our leaders behave like children.
"Use your words" also contains a specific - and correct - policy recommendation for our government as it ponders its policy regarding Iran. As far as bumper-sticker-type sentiments go, this one is pretty cool, I think.
Al-Qa'ida was originally rather like an armed, Islamic Unfogged - a bunch of infuriated thirtysomething professionals. OBL is a civil engineer, Ayman al-Zawahiri is a surgeon, there's at least one architect in there..
This differs from the actual Unfogged how, infidel?
53: High-level professionals have an inflated opinion of their effective deadliness. It's easy enough to come up with evil plans, it's quite another to come up with the detailed operational orders to oneself and some trusted few that would actually make something spectacular happen without tipping their hand first.
I'm hoping they're all watching movies for hints and thus stick with propane tanks and such.
I'm actually wondering (purely as a matter of psychology -- I don't think this is a question of any moral import) if the doctor was inhibited from hospital-related terrorism by medical ethics. I can picture someone crazy enough to try and blow up civilians who still couldn't make himself hurt his patients because doctors don't do that.
61: Plenty of people who wouldn't have qualms about dropping bombs and killing people who probably are polite to their secretaries. Human beings are weird motherfuckers.
59: Standpipe, that series hasn't been good since the first book.
61: LB, I wondered about that; if not ethical twinges per se, maybe some familiarity with the people he'd be killing would make things much more difficult, psychologically.
I think it was probably more an issue of who to bill for the terrorism, the number of forms to fill out, whether he needed prior approval before killing, etc. Bureaucracy is the enemy of initiative.
Wikopedia suggests that while Baruch Goldstein was willing to massacre Arab worshippers with an assault rifle, there is no conclusive evidence he refused to treat Arab patients as a doctor, despite his ideology. I'm inclined towards LB's training/compartmentalization thesis as a general rule, although I'm sure exceptions exist.
50: Unbeknownst to him, he guy has a Klein Ass, whose inside and outside are the same, each encompassing all of reality.
writing just about anything on your car is stupid
An exception must be made for "Trog is my copilot."
What the hell does "use your words" mean?
"Darling, we've run out of dessert plates and our guests are beginning to riot."
"Use your words."
"But you can't put pie on words."
[Sound of door slamming]
The 9/11 gang were all clean cut kids who'd been to college too, and they were extremely low tech in their m.o. as well. Just saying. A lot of clever people aren't actually very practical. Sometimes that's a good thing.
What the hell does "use your words" mean?
It's what you say to a still-learning-to-talk toddler who has dissolved into an incoherent screaming tantrum.
Growing up the phrase was 'you have to say it.'
71: That situation would rather call for "Say it, don't spray it".