In America an IRA is an Individual Retirement Account. In Great Britain the IRA levies superannuation through the intermediacy of infernal devices remade into improvised explosive devices - bombs. The Irish Republican Army has been blowing up cars, buildings, and people for nearly a century themselves alone. Irish Roman Catholicism wants an end put to the sinful opulence of the English Protestant ethic that Northern Ireland may return to its obligatory tasks of brazen reproduction, abject poverty, and profligate emigration. Expunging politicians or soldiers is more hazardous that whacking civilians. English authorities rather enjoy the destruction of property and wanton killing, for it awards them carte blanche for budget, and sanction to militarize society, train troops, and promote officers. The English had a deal going with Indian Thuggees with the same motivations through 1840, likewise America and Vietnam until 1975, and Muslim War II forever - the Eastern Front.
Outstanding attributes of IRA dialectic include austere stupidity and ruthless physical incapability where the robbers meet the road. Even Hell's Angels sends its best and brightest to college (visit Nanaimo, British Columbia) to stock up with lawyers and chartered accountants lest the Family business of drug and gun running suffer a poor bottom line. The IRA has spewed the same idiot political swill of Popery, freedom, and oppression nearly since Parliament introduced the potato (and the Potato Famine, to correct that horrible error). IRA bombs are cretin clockworks, typically with fingerprints molded into the plastic explosive. (A venturesome terrorist organization would apply for US statehood; military advisors, Welfare, and "No Child Left Behind" to follow.)
Yo, Harps! Has anybody told you about digital timers; digital accelerometers and inclinometers; physical microswitches; and digital logic? Clunky ticking moving parts are passe. You breadboard, wire wrap your circuitry and power supply, and mold it INSIDE the slab of plastique with the blasting cap. When you remove an arming lanyard the thing pauses a few minutes, assays the logical state of its sensors, and waits for a disturbance or a preset interval. Kablooie. The bomb cannot be physically disarmed. (Add a magnetic reed switch or Hall sensor and you have an extra safety or an external OFF switch.) Is that an improvement over blowing yourselves up or having a collection of uniformed Brit gits disarm the thing with a pair of wire cutters?
A kilogram block of orange Semtex will make even the dullest British officer a wee bit suspicious. Plastic or composition explosives are not deep dark secrets like Maggie Thatcher's testosterone treatments. One begins with a finely divided, high brisance base like hexogen (cyclonite, RDX), octogen (HMX), or PETN. About 10% of non-explosive resin (organic polysulfides, polybutadiene, polyurethane, acrylic elastomer) or up to 20% of explosive plasticizer (for C-2 or C-3) is added and dispersed, and perhaps cured. The final product has consistency between that of a pencil eraser and plasticine clay. It is remarkably resistant to initiation by mechanical shock.
A clever (no attribution intended) terrorist would mix modeling resin and explosive, lay up fiberglass roving (shrapnel), and literally build a bomb. It could be a pet carrier, or a car body, or a boat. It could be a kitchen counter or a Synthe-rock Madonna concealing a hideous surprise behind her veil, or anything else made of fiberglass composite or filled resin (like the bar in a modern pub, or the shower stalls in new military barracks). The electronics and (long life lithium) batteries are embedded and polymerized into the substance of the construct, waiting for a radio signal. Will your new bathtub flatten your flat when a boyo rides by with his finger on the button?
A clever terrorist organization of national liberation (and other Leftist blather) would visit the local sheetrock manufacturer. White powdered high explosive and trace binding resin sandwiched between cardboard sheets is indistinguishable from gypsum board. If the IRA could see farther into the future than the bottom of a Bushmills bottle they would cause to be constructed the finest block of housing in Ireland, to be wholly financed at ruinous cost by British authorities for secure housing of civil servants and military brass. (Care is to be taken with the fireplaces.) Hundreds of tons of cataclysmic payload would patiently await the inaugural ball, to be attended by elegant dress, refined music, superb liquors, unending delicacies, the totality of proper conqueror society and their servants... and suborbital injection. Kablooie.
Will Northern Ireland become the 51st state, thereafter to luxuriate in social counseling, material wealth, and a frenzy of televangelical butterballs? Will the IRA stop diddling about and proceed with innumerable proficient bombings? Will somebody buy another round of whiskey?
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