Don't Panic (British Consulate Explosion)

I'm late, but, a quick post on the explosion outside of the British Consulate in Manhattan:

It took place just before 4 am, or, around when the polls opened in Britain.

Nobody was hurt.

It was, apparently, some freaking toy grenades loaded with real gun powder. Penny ante terrorism, at best. This was a street-crime level event. Heck, there were probably more important, or more violent street crimes committed in the city last night.

I'm not to saying that people couldn't have been hurt or that this wasn't a bad thing.

But dealing with terrorism is all about "keeping perspective." Let's see if perspective is kept in this case. This was hardly the Madrid Rail Bombing in its scope. It also might be the act of one of the city's many paranoid weirdos and not any organized terrorist group. If it was the act of an organized terrorist group, it shows how their capabilities, at least in New York, have diminished.

So, keep an eye out for the xenophobes, the enemies of civil liberties and the security hawks to try to make more of this than it really was. Exageration is a tool for a lot of those types.