Search results for Terrorism:

Politics is often about the unexpected, just ask anyone living in 15th century Spain where no one expects the Spanish inquisition. What do you call an unexpected gardening tool? A non sequiturs. It seems that this one one of those weeks with the news being caught off-guard by the sudden and shocking murder of Southend politician, and from what I can tell all-around goo d bloke, David Amess.

I’d started writing another script about the supply chain and a failure by politicians on either side ......

This week some Russian hackers launched a cyberattack on a major US oil pipeline, demanding millions of dollars in the process. I can imagine that the idea came about when the Kremlin asked if they had any new ideas in the pipeline and a light bulb clicked above their head, possibly followed by a click behind their head as the FSB operative held up a pistol and told them to get on with it. Either way, motorists in the US South East are paying the sort of eye-watering petrol prices that haven’t been seen since, Britain about 20 years ago. $4/gallon, that’s still cheaper than orange juice, although the one positive to come out of it is the hilarious videos online of people dangerously trying to stockpile fuel by filling up carrier bags with petrol, presumably leaving their insurance company with lots of burning questions. One curious byproduct of the outage is that they finally caught and arrested that man who went crazy with a firearm in Times Square a few weeks back, after his car ran out of petrol in Florida. Say what you will about electric cars, if he’d been driving a Nissan Leaf then he’d only have gotten as far as New Jersey. Anyway, now that the pipeline company has paid the ransom in full, it pretty much means open season for this sort of thing, there’s a very good reason you’re not supposed to negotiate with terrorists. It did however make me think of the old joke about what was the difference between Amy Winehouse and Exxon Mobil? One like pipelines, the other likes pipes and lines.

The other story this week is about somewhere else in the world with no oil and that would be Israel, the one country in the Middle East to not have any massive oil or gas reserves, opting for being the land of milk and honey instead. Anyway, attacks by Hamas have kicked off a major retaliation, so far I’m reading 110 dead in Gaza, 7 dead in Israel. 100 for 7 then, you could also call it 24/7, round the clock fighting. There are some pictures online that look like instagram-worthy sunsets until you realise that it’s actually nighttime with a lot of fire and explosions on the horizon and we’re now at the stage where Hamas is calling for a ceasefire while Israel is instead opting to call up 9000 reservists to prepare for a possible ground invasion. I’d like to imagine that the recruitment posters for the army are like the old WW1 Kitchener one, but with with Benjamin Netanyahu pointing and saying saying he needs jew. Can anything be done, should anything be done? The usual idiots are out in force online, apparently peace will only come about when the British consumer starts boycotting Marks & Spencers for selling Israeli oranges or some such nonsense. I’m more along the line of both sides being as bad as each other but Israel has the right to defend itself and neither side want a 2 state solution anyway, they both openly advocate for a one state solution where they are the state. In the meantime, let’s close with a joke, what do you say when you meet someone in Jerusalem? “Israeli nice to meet you”

Another week and another ratcheting up in seriousness for the Coronavirus. For me personally I was affected when my car engine light came on despite it just being serviced but it turned out that it was just the car owner virus

What's been going on around the world then? In the UK London is being put on lockdown with the Queen making a dash for Windsor Castle before the curfew came into affect. Alas most people are not able to relocate from their 1 bedroom flat to a massive mansion in the countryside. The Islington metro set are probably also getting puzzled about why only men and woman are being reported amongst the dead, the news never quotes any numbers for the other 300 genders. There's also a lot of talk about airports how to detect new cases, to which I would suggest they're all on that conveyor belt going around and around. Come on so-called experts, it's obvious!

In Italy there are a morbidly large set of numbers being reported with the government suggesting that they'll have to bring in incinerators to dispose of the bodies. That's an industrial sector that Germany has historically dabbled in although they try to not mention it. Perhaps they're more interested in the French response to the virus after the government there said it was at war with the contagion and the best way to fight that war is by staying at home. Which as we all know didn't work out very well in 1939.

In the US it depends what part of the country you live in, New York is starting to resemble that Kurt Russel film, Philadelphia is starting to like it did back in the movie 12 Monkeys and the west coast is a worry too because in this world of social chains and contact, we know that if Kevin Bacon tests positive then EVERYONE has it. The president also came under fire for suggesting that it's not racist to call it the Chinese virus, although I guess it depends if you call it that whilst putting fingers up to the corners of your eyes.

As for me, I'm working from home and the only thing I can see damaging my health is a diet consisting largely of pasta and tinned food. Earlier today There was no milk in the local shop so I ended up getting some evaporated milk, then when I got it home I discovered it was just an empty jar.

Carnage this week in London, at least that's what a lot of Arsenal fans will be saying down the pub, after the sacking of Unai Emery after 18 months of abysmal managerial malaise that made Leanne Wood look like Queen Victoria. David Cameron hasn't made a comment on that story, though it's probably because he can't remember if that's one of the teams he claims to support or not.

But the big story of course this week was of course a different kind of arsenal, the kind that armed police carry on them; this was of course the 2nd London Bridge Attack, in which two members of the public were killed, 3 more injured, the terrorist himself was shot dead and thousands of Southern Rail commuters heading to London Bridge had to suffer delays and inhumane conditions although that was later reported to be unconnected with the attack and a company spokesman said that commuters affected by delays to the service would be compensated with a price hike in the new year.

It's at this point that of course anyone near a television camera started making the usual platitudes and comments about community engagement and suchlike. The public can normally be relied upon to be a bit more blunt in their vox-pops, calling him a complete idiot which is frankly a relief in so much as for a while it looked like he had a suicide vest on and it's obviously far better that he's a complete idiot than one where some pieces of him are missing, floating down river towards the Thames Estuary.

As I said though, it will be interesting to see how the leaders make the issue about themselves over the last 2 weeks of the campaign. Boris will make nods to promised security funding, the Lib Dems will blame the islamic attack on the white working class, the SNP will complain that the Media's relentless focus on London is purposefully designed to draw attention away from Scotland and Jeremy Corbyn will likely spend the rest of the campaign refusing to confirm or deny whether he would lay a wreath at the site on the bridge where the peaceful terrorist ultimately lost his life.

This week has seen a lot of debate, by which I mean politicallyy correct attention seeking, over whether teenager Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK, after spending years living in ISIS controlled territory and discovering that 'ISIS' rhymes with 'crisis' and that like those still holding onto Blackberry telephones, the jihadist extremists are very much on the losing side these days; the territory held has been reduced to just a couple of hundred square miles, approximately the size of a mid-sized Ikea. I know it's a military cliché but this war may well be over by Christmas, but don't tell them that, the overtly Christian religious symbology of that will only strengthen their extremist zeal.

Anyway Shamima's heard that Doctor Who is a lady now, so she wants to return to the UK. She's over 17 now too so she'd even (as a woman) be allowed to legally drive or visit the shops on her own if she lived in the UK. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people say that the caliphate is a great place for women to live, but then you realise they say it's the best place "hands down" and you become very aware that an axe is being ushered in.

For all the talk of international law and the technicalities of her case, the arguments put forward by the lawyers really seem a bit like complaining that the kitchen in the Titanic wasn’t up to code. The same people who say she was young and immature already want young people to be given the vote and at the end of the day, she was already older than that when she publicly justified the Manchester Terrorist attack. Of course it was around that time that the fighters lost interest because they'd put a lot of effort into capturing oil fields just before the price of crude headed south. Something else that of course headed south was a wave of drone fighters from NATO bases in the north.

Jeremy Corbyn of course made some platitudes which were broadly in line with his previous sentiments for extremist organisations starting with the letter "I" Mind you, with his MPs defecting to form their own group, you can't blame him for wanting every possible vote he can lay his hands on. Things aren't going too well really, I saw pictures of him in the press visiting a homeless shelter, it makes you wonder: things must be really bad in London if someone on his salary can't afford the rent.

Well it's halloween time but there's always someone who takes it too far and this year it was a 56 year old man in Florida who took it upon himself to scare politicians by sending them over a dozen pipe bombs in the post. The potential victims included the Clintons, former president Obama as well as actor Robert Deniro who having escaped a grisly death akin to Goodfellas or the Godfather, will now have many more years in which to murder his reputation with films like the Fockers series or that one, Dirty Grandpa, in which the crassest joke was the one in which millions of people were convinced into paying money to see it.

Anyway, the domestic terrorist Cesar Sayoc was apprehended at an Autozone where he was possibly buying more bomb parts. This story of course should not be mistaken with the similar but different story in which Elon Musk was seen in an auto factory manufacturing a bong. Cesar was traced fairly easily after he left fingerprints on one of the bombs so the lesson there is either to wear gloves or to not make bombs in the first place. For Elon Musk the lesson is not to publish videos of you taking drugs if you're the owner of a billion dollar company on the verge of bankruptcy.

Of course, one of the telling parts is the part where President Trump went on to tweet that political violence has "no place in this country" with the key word being "this" what with the White House being surprisingly ok with political violence when it happens in other countries, especially those closer to the equator, or oil. I guess chain letters have gone out of fashion but I could imagine Mohammed Bin Salman being told that someone posted a chainsaw to him, and misreading that as an excuse to start sending saws onto people in his address book, like that chap in Turkey who ended up more hacked than a Windows XP computer.

Other point to note has been a lack of response from Jeremy Corbyn's office but I imagine he must find it morally difficult to pigeonhole a glorious freedom fighting terrorist who somehow isn't Irish, Middle Eastern, or in charge of economic policy decision making.

There was news this past week in America when that old problem of racism managed to escape from its containment cell in Mel Gibson’s house and make it all the way across the country to Virginia with a flashpoint of violence in Charlottesville which is a small university town up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, ironically in one of the few parts of Virginia where there wasn’t even any fighting during the actual US Civil War.

It was always liable to turn violent and then President Trump decided to troll everybody by saying that everyone was to equally to blame and implied that when the KKK make questionable scientific claims, there’s a moral equivalence with the Lying Mainstream Media. The rise of social bubbles and selective internet news doesn’t help either but that’s an age old problem, after all in 1863 it was Abraham Lincoln himself who said “don’t trust quotes you read on the internet”

Sure, protests always attract a violent element, just look at the unspeakable violence you get when mime artists go on parade. And at the same time, most people know the US is a deeply divided country on many subjects, that diversity of opinion works in its favour most of the time. But we also assumed that nowadays the more extreme elements of the white supremacy movement listened to their own advice and “kept themselves to themselves”.

Back in the 1860s the civil war was an actual legitimate war with guns and everything to settle the issue once and for all, and then of course about a century later the US realised they should maybe pass some laws to really clear up the apparent misunderstandings over who’d won. Sometimes we don’t like what’s in the history books, just ask David Cameron about the thing with the pig. But sometimes you should really focus on the bad stuff so you can teach its lessons properly.

Another attack, this time in Manchester, and as usual the only good news is that there’s now one less terrorist in the world. Seems that once again it was a lone nut-job, although ISIS have since claimed responsibility which shows that they’ve got the same ‘management claiming all the credit’ problems that other organisations have, we’ve all had jobs like that I suppose.

Manchester is a great place though, in spite of George Osbourne trying his hardest to dilute its ‘Madchester’ edginess with his unique brand of oddness. I always half imagined Gideon George looking out of his car and seeing people going to a rave in high-vis clothing and assuming that they were folk on their way to a conference about the Northern Powerhouse. It’s also fantastic to see that Manchester has already erected a huge sign on one of their buildings to tell the world that they remain as one, Manchester united. In the mean time islamic extremist remains a deeply complicated geopolitical issue but let’s all post some British flags on Facebook and see if it fixes the problem this time round.

And one last thing, on the subject of the intelligence services was that today saw the passing of James Bond actor Roger Moore and I raised an eyebrow so to speak when I remembered the old joke that Viagra might not make you James Bond, but it will make you Roger Moore.

What a depressing week: an utter tosspot killed some folk in London, not normally news but it happened right outside parliament so it’ll be generating column inches for years to come. Just look at Guy Fawkes, he didn’t even succeed with his plot and the papers still mention him every year. As for the Westminster Bridge attack, it was actually a year to the day since the Brussels bombings where 32 people died, and it was lucky for many I suppose then that in comparison the British attempt was quaintly rubbish

On the other side of the spectrum, this week also saw the death of Irish terrorist mastermind and general human vermin Martin McGuinness. I’ve never visited Northern Ireland but I did live for many years in Glasgow which I suppose was like a sectarian version of visiting Euro Disney rather than travelling to Florida. Anyway, he’s in the ground now although the Queen was unable to attend the funeral, owing to being unable to find her dancing shoes.

A lot of folk now consider The Troubles to be something from a bygone era or something that happened far away across the Irish Sea. I’d suggest going on Google and look up images of the Bishopsgate Bomb that London experienced back in the 90s and people forget that the Gherkin skyscraper was only built because Martin McGuinness and his pals used a van filled with Semtex to destroy the old Baltic Exchange.

But fair enough, things have changed, let’s move on and think about the positives of Northern Ireland. It’s now a beautiful and peaceful place with good people, they gave us Bushmills and the DeLorean motor company and nowadays the only shooting is when they’re shooting Game Of Thrones.