Tuesday, December 27, 2005
This Is A Fine "Kettle Of Fish'
There was an attack in St. Petersburg Russia with several weapons of mass destruction. Apparently, timed "stink bombs" of methyl mercaptan (the smell in natural gas) went off in stores and others were found prior to detonation.
The FSB is describing this as a criminal attack rather than some kind of terrorist attack. It looks like an attempt to discredit this particular chain of shops.Some things to think about:
A St Petersburg police spokesman told the Interfax news agency: "The likely explanation for what happened is that it was malicious competition."
"Not long before the incident, the managers of Maksidom appealed to the police because they had begun to get letters with threats to disrupt pre-New Year trade. Now we can definitely say that the possibility of a terrorist act is ruled out."
- Methyl mercaptan is just irritating in low doses like in natural gas or in skunk spray, but it is very toxic in sufficient concentration - this was a potentially lethal attack.
- Where is the line between "terrorism" and "criminal activity?" This was certainly a terroristic act, even if motivated by simple commercial gain.
- There is a long history of organized crime and politics running hand-in-hand. What if Al Queda, or Hamas, or the IRA teamed with some organized crime types to test attack scenarios or for funding purposes, or...?
Captain Ed is not having any of this "criminal activity" stuff.
This explanation reflects a ludicrous level of denial. Of course these attacks constitute terrorism; they're designed to inflict fear on civilians for a specific effect, even if the Russians have correctly identified the perpetrators and their motivations, which sounds doubtful in the extreme to me. If the Russians have reached the correct conclusion, the shoppers won't simply switch to Makisdom's rivals -- they will shop far away or not at all in the future.I'm not willing to go that far - crime and terroism have extremely important legal meanings and it is important that such acts be properly designated -- it's the possibility of cross-pollenation that scares the pants off of me.
This operation looks pretty darned expensive in materials, time, and expertise. If Russian shopkeepers have this kind of access to terrorist technology, just think what the political and Islamist terrorists can access there.
