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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."
Sacrificing civil liberties does not prevent terrorism.
Just think about this next time you're queued up forever in the security theater line waiting to get your junk touched. It seems like the ideal place to attack an airport and get lots of casualties.
"The airport remained open on Monday evening, and passengers continued to flow through the hall where the bomb had exploded."
Good to see the terrorists haven't won everywhere...
Clearly, it is time to move the security checkpoint out into the parking lot.
Then they should have the bomb sniffing dogs sniffing you. Much less invasive and will ACTUALLY find any bomb residue/traces.
UPS Sucks
The last time Russia was fighting for its territorial integrity 24 million Russians died. The terrorists have severely underestimated what it takes to frighten the Russian leadership into making concessions. You see, as long as all the terrorists die, the Russians don't really care. If you look at the Beslan massacre or the Moscow Theatre Seige, there was very little concern for the hostages, many of whom died during the raids by the security forces. It seems the main thing the government accomplished in both of the raids was killing all the terrorists and minimal casualties to security forces. It's probably modeled after things like Stalin's decision to not evacuate Stalingrad when the Nazis invaded.
It's not surprising that these idiots were able to bomb the place. Whilst there's always a guy at the door with a metal detector / baggage scanning machine when you walk in everyone just walks right through so you're not actually being scanned unless they specifically stop you (never happens unless they *really* don't like they way you look. Now of course that will change for a while... but Russia is such a big place with so many landmarks that can be targeted that there's no way to stop some lunatics from blowing themselves up in public and killing people if they're really keen on it.
The one difference worth noting is that in Russia/Israel/India etc... they just get back to work, in USA they would've created some 500 million $ memorial and immortalized the event for at least a decade.
I think the point was that condemning an entire religion for the actions of a few is, well, stupid. Be it Christian fundamentalist murderers, Islamic fundamentalist murderers, cow rapers, or fungal mutant centrists.
Remember to maintain your supply of
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.
I think that this demonstrates how utterly pointless most of airport security we've implemented truly is now that terrorists have shown that they're completely willing to blow themselves up and kill hundreds of people before getting on the plane. Why go to all the hard work of actually getting on a plane when there's plenty of people queued up at a security checkpoint that you can easily kill and cause just as much panic and terror?
There's no easy way to prevent this, unless the security checkpoint is at the front door, in which case you still have a large queue of people, even more miserable and pissed off that they have to stand inline outside. Even if they made people strip naked, it still wouldn't stop the first clever terrorist to shove the bomb up his ass.
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.
I know this because I have lived in a "good christian home" and saw violence and depravity that few can imagine
If few can even imagine the "violence and depravity" you witnessed at home, and Christianity is one of the world's major religions, it stands to reason that perhaps by any definition of Christianity that you didn't actually live in a "good Christian home". Also I don't know what version of the bible you're reading "every chapter, every verse, and every word" of but if it has anything about the Spanish Inquisition being the foundation of Christianity then you should probably buy a new one.
First of all I would like to express my condolences to all the victims of this senseless act of brutality. Second, I would like to express my respect for the mature manner in which the Russians handled this. I've always said regarding the US that we have reached maturity as a society only when someone can commit an atrocity and no laws or procedures need to change as a result. Terrorism is all about getting a reaction; if you react to the terrorists, then the terrorist have won.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Civil rights cannot be "sacrificed" or bargained with in any manner. The very notion smacks of tyranny, and fosters a conformist ideology where it is expected that governments cherry-pick the civil rights they "allow" for "their" people.
But I never sacrificed anything after 9/11 -- did you? Of course not. I don't know anybody that did. What actually happened is that your civil rights were stolen. from you. Denied. Oppressed. Attacked. You and I didn't have a say in it at all, and neither did the pawns who cheered it on. There was no "sacrifice" in any of this, only the elite at the top of the pyramid playing god with powers that no mortal man is worthy of.
Let's call a spade a spade: civil rights are either honored or oppressed. There is no picking and choosing.
No, it's not a coincidence. It's also not very useful.
You need to examine the distinction between "Statistical Significance" and "Practical Importance".
For example, suppose the difference in IQ scores between people in two cities is 1/2 point. The studies can be extremely accurate and the results can be correct to a strong degree of statistical significance, but the overall result is of no practical importance.
Similar with Muslim extremists. Try to assign a probability (high or low) to each of the following:
Probability that someone is a Muslim, given that they are terrorist.
Probability that someone is a terrorist, given that they are Muslim.
There are about 8,500 people on the U.S. "no fly" list, and about 1.5 billion followers of Islam. If *all* terrorists are Muslims, you still have to sort through 175,000 profiled people to find one terrorist.
This is not a piece of data which is useful in and of itself from which to draw conclusions or make policy.
You don't have to be afraid of your neighbors, even if they are are from Pakistan.
That the separatists happen to be largely Muslim is inconsequential.
But as a consequence of the separatists being Muslim, their cause is taken up by supporters of global jihad throughout the Muslim world. Just like fighters in Kashmir and Palestine, they receive support from abroad solely due to their religion and the religion of their opponents.
How can you not call that a consequence?? Do you even know what "inconsequential" means?
There are over a billion Muslims in the world. There is a 1/6 chance of any randomly selected person being Muslim.
If only 1 out of 6 suicide bombers were Muslim you would have a pretty good argument right there. Maybe you're not proving what you think you're proving.
I had Christians, Muslims, and Jews at my wedding... we got along then, and 10 years later we are still getting along!
That's nice, but were your wedding guests randomly selected from the entire world? No? Then what is your point? That your own close circle of friends has different dynamics than the societal thrusts of populations numbering in the hundreds of millions and billions spread across the entire globe?? Wow, I never would have guessed that.
The only way to defeat the terrorists is to refuse to be terrorized.
Not a sentence!
Contrary to popular Slashdot lore, low UIDs do not necessarily correlate with increased intelligence.
They might start correlating with increased dementia...