Pretty sure the gardai and the army bomb disposal squad *are* the authorities.

The phrase IED became fashionable when the US invaded Afghanistan, but an improvised explosive device can mean just about anything, including a glitter-filled balloon. Given that the target was apparently a wasteground, I think we can assume this was a bunch of bangers in a jamjar that got forgotten on Hallowe’en.

The army disposal squad and the Gardai are the frontline workers on the coal face who deal these devices . The authorities are their bosses , the people ( in the army / gardai ) who decide how to deal with the issues of security, the ones who give the orders.
Do you think the man / woman on the beat are the authorities ? They are the face of it.
It is still a worry that so many devices have had to be dealt with

Cormac
Maybe the Gardai should call you in future to deal with any IED that they come across . Yes Cormac we are all aware of what an IED can mean , but I for one would prefer to be safe than sorry and call in the people who are trained to deal safely with it .

Jeez calm down there.

Its examined at the scene. You dont call bomb disposal out unless you think you have a pipe bomb on your hands or a grenade.

The IED’s are being manufactured by the leftover republicans who are generating much needed funds by selling these items to criminal gangs who then use them as they see fit. These are the same republicans who also earn income from those same drug gangs by forcing them to pay protection money. They’re also into diesel laundering and any other form of antisocial and criminal behaviour because they have a lifestyle to maintain and reputations to uphold. A Nation once again…

You’d have to wonder would any of them be of that special branch of republicanism run by their MI5/6, and subsidiaries, handlers.

The problem with Scientific American(and I have the latest hard copy beside me) is that it comes with a built in ideological agenda. I’ve been a regular reader since the ’70s.

An excellent example is its tendentious pseudo-scientific article in the current issue by a theory-pusher called Kevin Dutton that is tagged under the rubric of ‘psychology’ and glorying in the title ‘The Wisdom of Psychopaths’.

Paper has yet to refuse ink. Not all conspirators are incompetent. If they were our kids would be a damn sight safer.

confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe)

Your point being?

That particular sword of Damocles cuts both ways. It is common to theoreticians of every stripe.
The scientific method is to seek evidence to disprove your surmise.

Elaborate please.

“Your point being?”

That I think you’re displaying confirmation bias.

Sorry if that wasn’t blindingly obvious.

Sound, I’d gathered that. No problem. And appreciated if I am.

Now explain what bias I am confirming with what evidence.

@Damocles
“Them: Adventures with Extremists” by Jon Ronson is about conspiracy theorists and makes for an interesting read…

But then perhaps ‘Jon Ronson’ is just a pseudonym and it was really MI5/MI6/CIA that published the book to discredit those pesky truth-seekers ;-)

For an example of the dangers of extreme conspiracy theorists look up Jim Jones and his ‘People’s Temple’ movement….

Still no reply only smear and twist.

Heres one for you mattoid, ‘Inside the Company: CIA Diary’, by Philip Agee(1975), or even the more recent(in case you were too young)’Legacy of Ashes, the history of the CIA’, by Tim Weiner.

Boy scouts all. But then, in your Shangri La, thugs are all isolated ‘bad apples’ and never conspire.
Clean as a bishop’s crozier.

Ah Damo would ya relax! My comment wasn’t directed at you, it was just a generalised comment about the psychology behind conspiracy theorists – a subject I find quite interesting – after Damocles brought it up.

Quite relaxed thanks, matty.

If you are that interested in the subject you will have read both already, and will be aware that those who do collusively conspire prefer that any hint that conspiracy is the norm rather than the exception be rubbished and dismissed as paranoia.
Its a common strategy and is featured and promoted as such in such paragons of openness as the very organisations you mention.
Can you do me a favour and explain what the opposite of a conspiracy theorist is?
A conspiracy denier?An wilful ostrich?And have you a problem with conspiracy or theorising in particular.
Are golden circles just Mittological figments?RSVP.

Well since you ask, my definition of a conspiracy theorist would be someone who favours a less likely hypothesis over a more likely one, particularly when the less likely one involves a notion that a covert organisation or government is secretly manipulating a situation to their own ends.

By default, I suppose a ‘non-conspiracy theorist’ would be a person who favours the more likely and more everyday hypothesis.

And yes, since you ask, based on this I would regard you as a conspiracy theorist, as on another thread you stated your belief that I was a professional propagandist working for the Israeli government, an assertion which I know to be complete nonsense.

I think my reply at the bottom of the page covers that. And your emphasis on the earlier thread(which I do not have to hand, and am not revisiting as I consider it troll diversion)certainly gave an impression of strong partiality towards a dangerously outlaw nuclear state hungry for liebensraum at the expense of its neighbours and serving atavistic imperial interests that are not sane in the 21st century.

When someone presents an awkward fact in a post its so easy to dismiss it as ‘spinning’, ‘twisting’, ‘smearing’ and ‘trolling’ (all terms you have used against me).
Not much point in continuing this.

Entirely up to yourself.

Some of us will continue to question the complacency that allows democracy be undermined and aborted for the ulterior motives of vested interests with no benign intent. Thats how fascisms thrive, on the apathy of many and the malignant intent of well-groomed psychopaths who direct their remote control war-games into primitive villages.
You might like to scan this short into your conspiracy-free dreamscape. Its not a work of Hollywood fiction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&hl=en&v=DcHszo89ugc&gl=US

You don’t have to agree with it 100%, but I suggest you consider it. As I saaid, I’m not here for argument. Its information that interests me. Noise is inimical to it. I may question motivation, I do not preconceive it.

Apologies Nicko.

Consider yourself considered.

Need I translate that?

Or as Hamlet said to O’Feelya(you did do the honours paper), ‘Get thee to a dick-shunnery!’.

Damien
Do you mean there are Agents Provocateurs out there doing the dirty ?
Goodness gracious me ! In lovely old Ireland are there sneaky bas**rds who are not only condoning this but actively arranging it ?
I think you are on to something there. Fear of losing power is a great incentive to do the dirt .
Spot on sir.

Damien, sounds a bit … well .. paranoid.

Damocles , yes it does a bit . But he has a point . It is not unheard of in other parts of the world so why not here ? A lot at stake .

Paranoid,D?

Did you sleep through the ‘troubles’?

Besides, just because you’re paranoid, as they used to say, it don’t mean they ain’t out to get ya.

Given the revelations down the years I don’t reckon you could be paranoid enough for the…custodians of our tranquility.

” just because you’re paranoid, as they used to say, it don’t mean they ain’t out to get ya.”

Very paranoid.

@damien
Either that or it could have been left by a Dublin criminal thug.

And you, Damocles, come across as rather naive and innocent in the ways of our wicked little world.

I am making no definitive statements, merely pointing to precedents, which abound.

The nation that gave the world Tammany Hall had a miraculous recovery from its momentary saintly and scholarly aberration.

@Eileen
Is it unheard of? No.

Is it the most likely explanation? Probably not.

So the EU and Irish governments which are unable to find their backsides with both hands are suddenly able to perpetrate complex false flag operations against the citizenry to attempt to blow up small areas of wasteland outside Bray only to be thwarted by Gardai.

No. That doesn’t sound mad at all.

And there are external interests who will wish to prepare for Greek/Spanish type indignados in advance.
They have already mobilised the likes of Golden Dawn to pre-empt any alternative economic structure that might upset their debt-powered apple-cart. We are dealing with long games and deep power structures behind our sham democratic Punch and Judy charades.

Damien you come arcoss as very innocent and kinda walter mitty type. Load of crap really its just alan ryans crowd selling on bombs to criminal gangs. They are the fasists of ireland. I know the guards a. Psni watch them but needs to be closer and in their face

@mattoid

Very likely a Dublin criminal thug. Who do you think they usualy recruit?

Unlike many of the commentators I’ve been expecting this for a while. But then I was a while waiting for the Tiger hysteria to blow past too. Just as I expected the denial reactions.

It can’t happen here?No more than child abuse it can’t. Cop on.

You know the guards?

Grand. Safe as Pat O’Donnell’s boat so.

Those of you still away with Mary Poppins google Frank Kitson on Low Intensity Operations.

The handbook has been available since ’71.

Its never too late to catch up. But it is getting late.

Damien, this is very tedious but let me try again:

Either that or it was just left by a Dublin criminal thug acting on his own initiative…

Ok damien. I would ask that maybe you should talk to a professional. Just reading back on your post here and well you make jim corr look sane.

OK.panopticus..

Kitson was an amateur, Bloody Sunday was just a few bad apples, the Wall St crash was an accident, Krupps, Siemens and big business did not put Adolf and Benito into power, Pinochet was a misunderstood philanthropist, elimination of the intellectual leadership of the 1916 strike for independence and conversion of it into a mythologised Manicheaen polemical dog-fight evolved without external collusion, we are not de facto involved in Nato’s neo-fascist resource-wars of the 21st century, Washington and Berlin are our ‘friends’…and the Pope shits in the woods.

And I was wrong to talk down the Tiger, it was doing fine till I opened me gob. Mea culpa.

@mattoid

I said it would not be the first time..not that it was the only possibility.
As for criminality..its not all petty. It trickles all the way up.

@Damien
Just to give us the heads-up, can you give us a list of the next things you’re expecting to happen…

@Mattoid

For you, certainly.

I’d expect you to keep on with your twisting distortions and selective spinning and trolling so it appears that something that is mentioned as a possibility with precedents to be wary of becomes ridiculed as a dogmatic insistence of monocular perspective so as to personalise and discredit any view that doesn’t confirm and conform to your preconcieved agenda.

You can take your head up out of your navel now.

Thanks for the personal insult Damien – very constructive…

My point was merely that many people are very wise after the event (“I expected this this to happen”) but far fewer are prepared to actually lay their expectations out in advance of the event (“what I expect to happen is…”).

Much the same as a soccer commentator might on the one hand say its a finely balanced match, but following a goal he will then say “its been coming for a while…”

Can’t really see where I was ridiculing you either – merely offering an alternative, and quite frankly far more likely, hypothesis to your own (which I agree is also a possibility, albeit pretty remote).

Never ceases to amaze me how sensitive the sarcastic prove to be when they get the blowback from their snide attempts at dismissal. Lighten up lad. Not ALL your trolls can be successful.

Not did it take any great gifts of prophecy to forecast the gilded tiger’s implosion.

Surely you are familiar with GK Galbraith’s account of the ’29 crash?The pigfest of PD derugulation could only ever have one outcome. Thats why I set up the Regressive Hypocrites Party in ’87 as an attempt to penetrate the ideological blizzard in our media propaganda organs. Some chance.

Try Adam Fergusson’s ‘When Money Dies’. Not a forecast, not a prophecy, but the possibility of a return to the hyperinflation of Weimar. Put it through your conspiracy-theory analytic engine.

Can’t really see how I’m being sensitive either – you can throw personal insults out about me all day long and it wouldn’t bother me, it would just say more about you than it would about me.

But I do think that if someone resorts to personal insults they’ve lost the argument.

Agree with you about the celtic tiger though – many people, including myself, genuinely predicted the crash in advance (and were castigated by one B. Aherne for doing so). It wasn’t that difficult to predict though tbh – economics 101 stuff – but that didn’t stop me from having heated debates with people who thought Ireland was different.

“Irrational Exuberance – The Myth of the Celtic Tiger” is well worth a read. Can’t remember the author but it was written around 1999, when the ‘tiger’ was only starting to roar…

Therein, perhaps, lieth the difference.

I didn’t comment for arguments sake or to score points as some ego-burnish.
I commented primarily to draw attention to the rise of the organised right across Europe and the dangers here. This may well be simple criminal feuding, but these are the forces the wealthy conservative invisible handlers of the market will mobilise to arrest any alternative economic evolution and will unleash against protest or opposition on the street, should emigration lock up because of external slow-down and contraction and Occupy type mobilisation occur.

As it stands, the general right-wing temper of our residual population always forestalls a more egalitarian society emerging. Thats why the eviction of the only people with the gumption to stand against the looting of the country could be accomplished at the gestapo hour of 4am. without a ripple of alarm in our smug media consensus.

And thats why I resent inaccurate spinning of my statements for the sake of some steam-driven argumentation.

But then, in the conspiracy-free universe, such nefarious plotting never occurs.