The failure of beards

You may have heard that this week, a jury failed to to convict three men accused of conspiring to blow up transatlantic airliners. The narrative that the news agencies have decided on is that this was once again an overreaction by the authorities acting against brown-skinned men with scary beards and funny names, and the jury verdict therefore vindicates the politically correct worldview that these gentle souls from the only peaceful monotheistic religion are being oppressed by evil Western forces.

Mohammed Gulzar (left) with a suspicious lack of beard, will most likely be let off.
Abdullah Ahmed Ali (right) was not found with plane tickets, but did have a beard; he's going to jail.

The real story is...a little different. The take-away points are:

• 9 defendants were charged.
• 4 of them had made martyr videos
• 3 of them had viable home made bombs that consisted of a bottles filled with concentrated hydrogen peroxide (the main charge), hollowed out AA batteries filled with hexamethylenetriperoxidediamine (HMTD) (a commercial grade detonator) with flash bulb filaments ready to be connected to a flash camera to deliver a strong electrical pulse to activate the detonator.
• Most of them had beards

A little YouTube of what 50g of HMTD can do.


The jury did in fact did find that three men were GUILTY of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions and they will all be going to prison for a long time. The reason why they weren't convicted of the apparently more heinous crime of blowing up planes is that they did not have any flight tickets on them when they were arrested. Also, they stated during the trial that:

"they intended to let off a small bomb inside a Heathrow terminal as a political statement. But they say they never wanted to wreck planes in flight, killing innocents by the hundred."

Yes officer, we were making bombs, but we were just going to let them off in the airport terminal...not on an actual plane. See, heaps better!! Now serve me some halal prison food or I'll report your government to the EU Human Rights commission.

If it walks like duck, talks like a duck, and builds bombs like a duck, then, in all probability it's a duck. The article does make the point that a "you don't deter suicide bombers by custodial sentences (or even death sentences)." Therein lies the rub. How do you stop people willing to die for their cause? Can you?

At the very least, the cops didn't lock them in dog pens...