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What news to wake up to..
This is getting to happen too often
Do hope not too many people are affected.
Will make folk too scared to fly
What a world we are living in.
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Just heard there is another at Brussels Metro station.......
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Considering they are now saying that there were 2 bombs at the airport, the number of deaths and casualties are less than they might have been. 13 dead & 35 Injured.
The Metro system has been shut down. No Eurostar trains to run to or from Brussels stations.
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The security powers that be are expecting King Cross to be targeted
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Just possibly the present residential mix of the Brussels quartier of Baalbek is not the best of ideas. "Tu viperam sub ala nutricas"
[77] Rogo, Habinna—puto, interfuisti—: 'Tu dominam tuam de rebus illis fecisti. Tu parum felix in amicos es. Nemo unquam tibi parem gratiam refert. Tu latifundia possides. Tu viperam sub ala nutricas' et, quod vobis non dixerim, et nunc mi restare vitae annos triginta et menses quattuor et dies duos. Praeterea cito accipiam hereditatem. Hoc mihi dicit fatus meus. Quod si contigerit fundos Apuliae iungere, satis vivus pervenero. Interim dum Mercurius vigilat, aedificavi hanc domum. Ut scitis, casula1 erat; nunc templum est. Habet quattuor cenationes, cubicula viginti, porticus marmoratos duos, susum cenationem,2 cubiculum in quo ipse dormio, viperae huius sessorium, ostiarii cel[p. 154] lam perbonam; hospitium hospites capit. Ad summam, Scaurus cum huc venit, nusquam mavoluit hospitari, et habet ad mare paternum hospitium. Et multa alia sunt, quae statim vobis ostendam. Credite mihi: assem habeas, assem valeas; habes, habeberis. Sic amicus vester, qui fuit rana, nunc est rex. Interim. Stiche, profer vitalia, in quibus volo me efferri. Profer et unguentum et ex illa amphora gustum, ex qua iubeo lavari ossa mea.”
Or if it is a while since you last dusted off your copy pf the Satyricon:
[77] You would have thought he had always lived with me. You remember, Habinnas?—I believe you were there?— 'You fetched your wife from you know where. You are not lucky in your friends. No one is ever as grateful to you as you deserve. You are a man of property. You are nourishing a viper in your bosom,' and, though I must not tell you this, that even now I had thirty years four months and two days left to live. Moreover I shall soon come into an estate. My oracle tells me so. If I could only extend my boundaries to Apulia I should have gone far enough for my lifetime. Meanwhile I built this house while Mercury watched over me.1 As you know, it was a tiny place; now it is a palace. It has four dining-rooms, twenty bedrooms, two marble colonnades, an upstairs diningroom, a bedroom where I sleep myself, this viper's boudoir, an excellent room for the porter; there is[p. 155] plenty of spare room for guests. In fact when Scaurus came he preferred staying here to anywhere else, and he has a family place by the sea. There are plenty of other things which I will show you in a minute. Take my word for it; if you have a penny, that is what you are worth; by what a man hath shall he be reckoned. So your friend who was once a worm is now a king. Meanwhile, Stichus, bring me the graveclothes in which I mean to be carried out. And some ointment, and a mouthful out of that jar which has to be poured over my bones.”
"Those who disregard the past are condemned to it in their future."
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I was working in London close to one of the Underground and the bus bombings on 7/7.
The only defences against this type of attack would seem to be intelligence and education given that guns can be smuggled into the Country and explosives can be home-made from commercially available materials.
Whether you can educate people that blowing up yourself and innocent bystanders will not persuade any Government to let you take over their Country is debateable.
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terrorism is a very effective weapon. It puts fear into the hearts and minds of
citizens any where. The fear factor is debilitating but a natural response
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"Such wonderful times as these when some religions claim they can more easily win Heaven by shedding the blood of others than by praying to their own God".
An appropriate quote often repeated by the media over the last few years.
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Man's inhumanity to man :-\
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You’re more likely to be injured or die on *the way* to an airport in a RTI, then actually at the airport or in a plane!!
Think of the 10s of thousands of people who commute daily to London. After the Underground bombings, they may have been fearful, but with a few exceptions, they coped with that and carried on with their routine.
I wouldn’t hesitate to go as a tourist to Paris or Istanbul. I might be more cautious about Brussels at the moment, although there is always the alternative of Bruges or Lille.
That's a legacy of living through the IRA London bombings.
Brussels workers & those flying in for a meeting will probably be back at their desks as soon as they are given the all-clear.
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The lifetime risk of death is 100%. We all owe the grave many a day.
Not much consolation, is it?
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I agree that it could be anywhere and they are going to go after busy areas,but we still have to travel,as I did last year to Northern Cyprus and Turkey landing in Antalya on the day that the G 20 were there so security was extremely high.
Friends said I was being foolish for going to Turkey,but ,I said it could be anywhere and I will still want to travel,but a lot of folk are scared of planes anyway so this will scare them even more.
It is a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,,,but it is so sad for the families involved...and the cost of it all as it happens more and more.
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Men of straw
The kind of explosives used today in Bruxelles cannot be fabricated in a kitchen or industrial unit they have to be sourced from one of the handful of manufacturers. Ammuntion is also very difficult to obtain in bulk. And then there is the problem of moving such stuff around ... NATO ammunition will not fit AK47s.
None of the intelligence agencies have a clue about what is going on and that includes GCHQ and MI6 or the Surete in France. That is why they have been unable to interdict these outrages or even catch those on the wanted list.
Some pin their hopes on mass surveillance of internet comms and mobile phones. Sure this may catch some expendable items - usually ex post facto - but there 101 ways to evade Theresa May's telecoms charter most of which are fairly well known and all illegal to post.
What would really help would be a far better knowledge of Arabic including its many very distinct dialects and current idiom. As it is UKGov has pretty well shut down the study of oriental languages as a cost saving measure and retired those who can. History (and recent history) tells us that hiring foreign interpreters is very risky.
In the end anti-terrorism depends on the usual two factors in combating crime (a) motive and (b) follow the money. The dreams of young malleable men and heavenly virgins are not relevant.
Dealing with motive. There are those who dream of a fundamentalist islam but in the longer run cannot be self sustaining. They certainly cannot shift significant quantities of small arms and explosives around Europe. So who will help out ? It seems not to be very much remarked that Chechnya has gone very quiet these last two years. The head of NATO has complained that the Russians are waging asymnetric warfare against the EU by dropping barrel bombs in Allepo, Idlib and so on. It is a prime Russian aim to wreck the EU/NATO. So much so that they started a war in the Ukraine.
Terrorist incidents such as that today will tend to set one EU state against another and of course stonewall any solution to the Syrian refugee crisis. It will undermine Germany and give strength to the seductive tales of the brexiters.
(b) follow the money - ISL is more and more short of funds and its access to international electronic banking more or less curtailed. Setting up and carrying out serious terrorism requires a lot of cash both for the operation and to ensure silence and compliance. Belgium, with its myriad security outfits all at each other's throat, open port of Antwerp and poverty stricken muslim ghettos is a perfect target. Only a state can easily proivde the required funding.
London will not be attacked. Of course May, GCHQ will bounce up and down so as to justify their actions / pretended skills. The reality is that Our Friends In The North have so much invested in London and so many wealthy citizens living there that it is in the safe zone. Even the odd freelance operation is quickly shut down thanks to our friends.
"so he huffed and he puffed and he blew their house down"
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We just have to be vigilant and hope it is not our turn yet. I doubt being vigilant will help if somebody has a bomb in their luggage to detonate at check in. I have actually mentioned that possibility before, so many people milling around. So looks like we are reliant on luck and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Much like when we used to continue to go to London at the time of the IRA threat.
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Seems with these people any crowd anywhere is a potential target :-S
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it's now over 30 killed and over 150 injured :-(
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It is indeed an odd belief that a person can gain favour in the eyes of his God by massacring innocent people, including those of their own religion.
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