“That’s IRA terrorism. Not Irish terrorism; anymore than Islamic terrorism is Arab terrorism.”

Hmmm… so in your formulation Irish is to Arab as IRA is to Islam? Surely, more properly, by your definitions, we should be referring to ‘Christian terrorism’.

Oh, or we could assume that ‘Al Qaeda’ is not the same thing as ‘Islamic’. Just a thought…

It’s 1968, and my friend PW is about 17 and a Welsh speaker and fervent Nationalist.
He fell in with this group of Free Wales Army types who thought that a spot of training for the struggle would be a good idea.
So 12 of them went camping in the Brecon Beacons, naively thinking that they would be un-noticed.One even brought his retriever, Cariad, with him.
This wasn’t a Jihadi type organised camp, crawling under barbed wire and stuff, this was just camping.
Bring your own tent and food. They had the one .22 rifle to practice with between them.
And they had the promise that via the organisation of Celtic brotherhood, an IRA operative would be coming to show them how to use explosives.
Well, none of them had actually been camping before. So the first night after they’d pitched the tents (with some difficulty) and had a campfire fry up cooked by the bloke they all knew the least about, it started to rain.
They soon found that the tents were in the wrong place when a torrent of water pretty much washed them away, along with most of the food.
So the next night they spent in the pub in the nearest village, drying out the tents, getting pissed and eating in the chip shop.
Well the next day the IRA guy finally turned up from the Fishguard ferry.
They were ready to go home by now.They were really fed up.
But he was made of sterner stuff. So it was back up the mountain with the tents, to teach them the magic of dynamite.
Trouble was they were a bit short of food, and tried fishing in a little lake nearby. There were plenty of fish in the lake, but they couldn’t catch any.
So somebody suggested what has become known as Mujahadin fishing. Tossing a stick of dynamite into the lake stunning all the fish which float to the top,then you can collect at your leasure.
Better stand well back though they thought, not being sure how big the bang would be.
Remember Cariad the Retriever?
Yes well when he saw the stick being thrown he was after it like a shot.
The wimp who threw it didn’t manage to hit the lake, Cariad caught it and was bringing it back…
Oh fuckin hell!… of a panic in all directions.
Well it blew up the dog and everybody was so scared and dishevelled and pissed off, that they just went home, vowing to continue the fight via the letters page of the Western Mail in future.
Turns out the cook they didn’t know very well was Special Branch, and they had been observed by the SAS, who they and practically everyone else had ever heard of until the Iranian Embassy seige, the whole time.
Brecon Beacons are SAS training grounds you see.
They must have been laughing their asses off at these adolecent clowns.
Just as well we went for language, culture and S4C innit?

Sunfish – I am aware of “Shrine of the Mall Ninja”. Funny stuff. Let’s hope it’s parody.

We Welsh got an Assembly and only 30% of the population even bothered to vote in the Referendum, let alone vote FOR one.

Wales went the cultural route, emphasising the Language.

Oh there were a few nutters in the Free Wales A back in the Army that blew up a few tv transmitters back in the 60s, but they really were a complete shower, and certainly didn’t have the bottle to kill anyone.

I have a really cracking anecdote about an old friend of mine, who, in his impressionable youth, went to a “Secret” Free Wales Army training camp in the Brecon Beacons, back in the late 60s.

Just shout if you want to hear it.

(After watching the programme last night I was thinking about the whole NI issue and came to the conclusion that after all that war and bloodshed the Nationalists kind of got what they wanted, however the Scottish nationalists got it a whole lot quicker with out ever having to fire a shot!)

That is not a Mall, that is a public street that has been pedestrianised. That’s a late Victorian building behind the “holster sniffer”(like that one Sunfish)

So sue the ass off them in all directions, and make as big a fuss as possible.

Are security guards throughout the UK & USA developing something akin to ‘blue tit milk bottle cap syndrome’.

Google “Shrine of the Mall Ninja.” It’s probably parody, but it’s not too far off from my own experiences with the private sector. (The term ‘holster sniffer’ is also commonly used to describe such, although the latter can mean any wanker who buys a decommissioned 1996 Chevrolet Caprice with the spotlight still mounted. Firefighters will recognize the term “Ricky Rescue.”)

In my state, private security is nothing more than an extension of the client, with no more power than the client has and chooses to delegate.[1] A store employee has the legal authority to detain a suspected shoplifter long enough to call police. Any person has the power of citizens arrest, subject to limitations. The catch is, it’s really not okay to arrest or detain people if whatever bad thing they supposedly did isn’t actually a crime.

I got a call to a disturbance at a bar. I get there (in uniform, driving a Ford CVI that says “We’ll kick your ass and take your donuts too” on the side) and the bouncer tells me that he’s not letting me in. Then he tells me that he needs to seize my weapon before letting me in. Eventually, I used my powers of persuasion to get past him. I found out that he and his partner decided to ‘detain’ a patron who was taking pictures, and got a little rough in the process.

Did I mention that you can only ‘detain’ when the alleged bad behavior would constitute a crime, if true?

Victim ended up signing a complaint for assault and false imprisonment. One bouncer was smart, went home, and showed up for his court date. The other, well, play stupid games and you win stupid prizes.

(Okay, Sunfish, the point of that war story was what, again?)

Getting back to the original topic: The mall ninjas in Middlesbrough may not have been thinking about terrorists at all. Shopping malls are a little touchy about photography inside, for reasons that I can’t quite fathom. I suspect it’s about a third that, a third testosterone poisoning, and a third something that wasn’t in the original story.

[1] There are states where private security goes beyond this, usually in states with uncivilized gun laws but that’s a rant for another time.