10.08.12
Nuisance terrorism journalism
Lots of journalism on terrorism qualifies only as nuisance reporting. It’s purpose is to either titillate an audience, pitch the journalist’s faux bravura, or both. Nuisance journalism has no relationship with reality.
Today, from the Telegraph in the UK:
If groups have supporters overseas, then the internet allows communities all over the world with similar goals to unite and share knowledge – it enables, for example, far-Right White Power groups in the US to give online weapons training to their colleagues in the UK. It was this sort of online advice that led father and son extremists Ian and Nick Davidson (aka “The Aryan Strike Force???) to manufacture the poison gas Ricin in their kitchen.
Taking their lead from US groups, and working from Terror manuals produced in the USA, the Davidsons managed to not simply manufacture the gas, but also they were able to home make explosives, recruit a network of almost 350 like-minded people and plan attacks on Blacks, Muslims, Asians and Jews. They funded their activities by selling Nazi-themed mouse mats and key rings.
Ricin is not a poison gas. And the “recipes” on it, as simplistic as they are on the Internet, do not even state that.
“Thus, the internet has made terror much easier,” concludes the Telegraph piece by Wllard Foxton, “an investigative journalist & television producer [who] writes on skulduggery wherever he finds it, especially in the world of technology.”
Foxton gets the name wrong of the Brit neo-Nazi in this case — it was the father/son team of Ian and Nicky Davison.
DD blog commented on it two years ago here.
A thorough reporting job, by a UK newspaper, is here, in the rather cleverly entitled, “Keyboard warriors, or threat to the republic?”
What the two produced was an unrefined mixture of ricin and liquid in a jar. The case revealed it had been made in 2006 and stored in a jam jar for four years.
“It is thought the ricin had been produced in 2006 and had remained undisturbed in Davison’s kitchen ever since,” reads the newspaper report. “Although it was fairly crude and had not undergone the purification necessary to turn it into an effective weapon …”
In the kitchen.
Castor powder mess, including ricin, in a jar. Does it look like an easily made poison gas to you?
mikey said,
October 8, 2012 at 11:23 am
DD, you flashed me back to your “Ricin Beans Gang” cleverness with this one. I have to say, it’s hard for me to be productive when I’m laughing every 9 seconds thinking about it!
One of the best I’ve ever heard, hands down.