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Terrorists Bomb Moscow Airport
jayme0227 writes "Terrorists detonated a bomb at Moscow's busiest airport on Monday, killing 35 people and wounding another 152, Russian authorities said. President Dmitry Medvedev, who called the bombing a terrorist attack, ordered additional security at Moscow's other airports and transportation hubs, and Moscow police went on high alert in case of additional bombs."
According to the NY Times, "The airport remained open on Monday evening, and passengers continued to flow through the hall where the bomb had exploded."
Then they should have the bomb sniffing dogs sniffing you. Much less invasive and will ACTUALLY find any bomb residue/traces.
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The US hasn't had terrorism in apartment buildings, urban mass transit systems or transportation hubs like Russia has, so you can't say what the American response would be.
However when there was a mass shooting at LAX in 2002, they didn't shut down the airport.
Russia has been involved in a high causality war costing them a lot of money and many lives since 1999. The causality rate for Russian combat soldiers in the Second Chechen War was roughly 5 times higher than for US and allied forces during the worst fighting in Iraq at the same period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_the_North_Caucasus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War
Moscow theater hostage crisis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
Beslan school hostage crisis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis
Domodedovo International Airport was the entry point for other terror attacks in the past and so it was one of the, if not the first airport with full body radar scanners - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_bombings_of_August_2004
Terrorist attacks are horrible.
I've personally been in areas in Israel where massive bombs exploded killing and maiming dozens of people, weeks before the incident. It's a fact of life.
There are bomb scares every day in Israel. Woops. Grandpa left his grocery bag unattended next to an ATM. Area is closed off.
You can see people waiting impatiently, tapping their feet with a "come on get on with it" look at the bomb sapper in full gear is tippy toeing to the bag (abandoned grocery bag),
detonating it in minutes. Once the all clear is rang out, as the bomb sapper is nervously taking his bomb proof helmet off, sitting on sidewalk, slowly pulling out a cigarette, people are practically pushing and shoving next to him,
right next to where the "bomb" was, queuing to use the ATM.
I saw this scenario happening a few times.
People get on with their lives.
security theatre is dangerous, and only common sense, intelligence, and self-policing will work.
Make sure you design public spaces with heightened terrorist attack value (e.g. airport) well designed to lower casualty count.
More precisely its a conflict between Russia and separatists in an area that Russia has long tried (sometimes occasionally) to occupy. That the separatists happen to be largely Muslim is inconsequential. educate yourself.
No, not every time, here's one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
In fairness, a hallmark of Al Qaeda is to blow something up, wait for first responders to arrive, and then blow it up again. So, securing the area might reduce loss of life in the event there were a second bomb.
This is an ethnic issue between Russia and North Caucasus.
It was an ethnic issue back in 1994-1996, during the First Chechen War. It stopped being an ethnic issue in 1999, when "mujahideen" from the then de-facto independent Chechnya invaded the neighboring Dagestan, proclaiming the long-term goal of driving the "kaffir" out of Caucasus and establishing a unified Islamic state there.
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols didn't blow themselves up.
Stalin DID evacuate Stalingrad. He evacuated the Red Army, the only group of people he cared about. That the citizens of Stalingrad took up arms and defended the city was a completely unexpected turn of events for both Stalin and the Nazi's. Only after the good people of Stalingrad ground the Nazis to a stop in street to street urban warfare did the Red Army regroup across the river and hit the Nazi's back, but not until after the Nazi's has killed a good portion of the citizens resisting. Don't credit Stalin with the bravery in Volograd (formally stalingrad), he had nothing to do with it.
Clearly, it is time to move the security checkpoint out into the parking lot.
That's how they roll in Israel. Apparently, it's quite effective. http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother
I don't know where you got that idea, but this section of the Wikipedia article on the battle should demonstrate how wrong you are. The Red Army fought to defend the city right from the beginning, although all they had left was a toe-hold by the time the counter-offensive started. I realize that this is Slashdot, but you should still at least try to get your facts right, especially when they're not in dispute.
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Why? Because Dagestan was predominantly Muslim and the first militia formations opposing Chechens in Dagestan during the first days of war was Muslim as well.
Various Dagestan ethnicities are, traditionally, Sufi Muslims. On the other hand, the folk who invaded in '99 were hardcore Salafi fundamentalists who regard most Sufi practices - especially the institute of murshids, and Sufi ritualized dhikr - as shirk, and see it as their religious duty to stamp it out (and they did try to do so in captured areas of Dagestan). So religion still makes a difference there.
The same division exists within Chechnya, by the way. Chechen nationalist party - represented in past by Dudaev and Maskhadov - are mostly traditionalist in aspects of religion, and so are Sufi (though Dudaev wasn't even particularly religious in general). The Islamist party, with a nucleus formed of foreign "mujahideen" and young new converts such as Sayyid Buratsky - are Salafi. The latter party prevailed, which is why the war in '99 even happened. The latter party is also the one that unilaterally disbanded Chechen government-in-exile and proclaimed "Caucasian Emirate".
Contrary to popular Slashdot lore, low UIDs do not necessarily correlate with increased intelligence.
They might start correlating with increased dementia...