Like many, I have spent the last few days trying to wrap my mind about what happened in Norway last Friday: Namely, the slaughter of 70-odd innocents by a heavily armed white, rightwing, anti-Muslim extremist who may or may not have acted alone.
The facts of the case are difficult enough to absorb without wondering what has happened to the peaceful, beautiful, largely harmonious nation of 5 million people.
When I think of Norway, I think of the wonderful Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, the Oslo-Bergen train ride over the mountainous spine of Norway, the skiers gliding up to high-country rail stations and clattering on board the train with their gear, a father and daughter in Bergen harbor bobbing up to dockside with a load of fresh fish they had caught themselves in a small boat. It's difficult to reconcile these memories of Norway with the cracked concrete and blown-out windows in Oslo and the perfectly horrible sight of bodies in the water off the island where the mass shooting of Labor Party youth took place.
In the blogosphere, where opinion is never in short supply but facts don't always seem to matter, Left and pro-Muslim bloggers took scant time saying "see!'' and pointing out that Muslims hadn't carried out this latest terror attack, while scoring others for initially assuming they had.
They shouldn't congratulate themselves too much. It took 16 years following Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City attack of 1995 for mass murder on this scale to happen in a Western country that wasn't carried out by Muslims. Radicalized, jihadist Muslims - who, it must be said again and clearly understood, don't speak or act for the majority of decent people around the world who happen to be Muslim - have carried out many attacks in many countries in those 16 years, claiming thousands of lives. Condemning the acts of the shooter/bomber in custody, one Anders Behring Breivik, is certainly the right thing to do. It doesn't begin to excuse the terrorist acts of others - many aimed at travelers and commuters, such as the atrocities in Mumbai, London, Madrid and several locations in Egypt, notably the tourist magnet of Luxor.
As for the accused Norwegian killer, one irony here is that he has become a mirror image of the people he hates. This fact has not gone unnoticed in Norway.
"Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said (Breivik's online) manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those issued by Osama bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda, though rather from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view,'' reports a July 24 New York Times story. "Like Mr. Breivik's manuscript, the major Al Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, include a pronounced sense of historical grievance and call for apocalyptic warfare to defeat a religious and cultural enermy.''
Once again, it has become clear that we live in a dangerous world - as if we could forget. Among other things, this latest outrage fuels the fatalism of the it-can-happen-anywhere brigade. Indeed, terrorist attacks can happen anywhere, even in peaceful Norway. The facts remain, however, that some countries - India, Egypt, Indonesia, to name three - are targeted considerably more often than others, and most organized, mass attacks in recent years have come from jihadis.
Shattered and shaken, Norway will heal over time. As for concerns about the safety of travel there, I wouldn't hesitate to go back to Norway - and I am not a traveler driven by derring-do. As always, travelers should study the patterns of the threats to safety and go with the odds. There is never a guarantee, but the chances of remaining safe in some places are definitely better than in others, regardless of what relativists would have you believe.
Showing posts with label terror and travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terror and travel. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Mumbai, Again
Mumbai, India's maximum metropolis, has been hit by terrorist attacks eight times since 2000, the latest arriving today when unknown killers set off three bombs in what appeared to be coordinated attacks. The explosions were timed to go off in crowded places during the evening rush hour, ensuring that a large number of innocent people would be killed or maimed. Early Indian media reports put the number killed at 21, the number of wounded at more than 100.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for attacks, but if events follow true to form, this latest outrage will be traced back to politicized Muslim extremists in neighboring Pakistan or in India, itself.
This is the biggest terrorist attack in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) since Islamic fanatics assaulted two luxury hotels, a Jewish cultural center and the central train station in November 2008, killing more than 160 innocents. One begins to run out of words when contemplating yet another assault on civilians in this vibrant, gritty, sprawling, difficult, exciting city that has the grave misfortune to be located on a hard-to-defend seafront not far from Pakistan. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and Mexican drug cartels have also employed terror tactics, and are just as culpable.
This time, travelers didn't appear to be primary targets, as they were in the attacks on 5-star hotels filled with Indian and international visitors in 2008. This time, it was the hard-working, long-suffering people of Mumbai who were targeted.
Pundits and police will pick over the story as events continue to unfold. There will be an investigation, perhaps a commission, statements of regret. U.S. President Barack Obama, who visited Mumbai last year and stayed in the Taj Mahal Hotel and Tower, one of the hotels set on fire and raked with gunshots in 2008, has already exorssed solidarity with India. Indian security, which was very visibly ramped-up when I visited Mumbai in November 2009, has again proved insufficent.
Should travelers stay away from India, or at least Mumbai? Some, inevitably, will stay away. I put off my visit for nearly a year out of security concerns, but when I did go, I was glad I went. Everyone has to decide for himself.
What is to be done? Security officials can't turn every marketplace, hotel and airport into a fortress, but smarter security is sorely needed. Some will argue that the best way to fight terrorism is to eliminate its root causes, one of which is poverty. Yet, many of not most of the terrorists in the Sept. 11, 2001, horrors in the United States were well-educated and middle class. Fanaticism, while fed by poverty, is not created by poverty alone.
Somehow, the principle has got to sink-in that the end - heaven? a global caliphate? simple revenge for perceived wrongs? - does not justify the means - jihad, bloodshed, heartlessness toward 'the other'.
And we, as travelers, have got to use prudent common sense - and persevere. The worst thing in the world, and for the world, would be to abandon it.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for attacks, but if events follow true to form, this latest outrage will be traced back to politicized Muslim extremists in neighboring Pakistan or in India, itself.
This is the biggest terrorist attack in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) since Islamic fanatics assaulted two luxury hotels, a Jewish cultural center and the central train station in November 2008, killing more than 160 innocents. One begins to run out of words when contemplating yet another assault on civilians in this vibrant, gritty, sprawling, difficult, exciting city that has the grave misfortune to be located on a hard-to-defend seafront not far from Pakistan. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and Mexican drug cartels have also employed terror tactics, and are just as culpable.
This time, travelers didn't appear to be primary targets, as they were in the attacks on 5-star hotels filled with Indian and international visitors in 2008. This time, it was the hard-working, long-suffering people of Mumbai who were targeted.
Pundits and police will pick over the story as events continue to unfold. There will be an investigation, perhaps a commission, statements of regret. U.S. President Barack Obama, who visited Mumbai last year and stayed in the Taj Mahal Hotel and Tower, one of the hotels set on fire and raked with gunshots in 2008, has already exorssed solidarity with India. Indian security, which was very visibly ramped-up when I visited Mumbai in November 2009, has again proved insufficent.
Should travelers stay away from India, or at least Mumbai? Some, inevitably, will stay away. I put off my visit for nearly a year out of security concerns, but when I did go, I was glad I went. Everyone has to decide for himself.
What is to be done? Security officials can't turn every marketplace, hotel and airport into a fortress, but smarter security is sorely needed. Some will argue that the best way to fight terrorism is to eliminate its root causes, one of which is poverty. Yet, many of not most of the terrorists in the Sept. 11, 2001, horrors in the United States were well-educated and middle class. Fanaticism, while fed by poverty, is not created by poverty alone.
Somehow, the principle has got to sink-in that the end - heaven? a global caliphate? simple revenge for perceived wrongs? - does not justify the means - jihad, bloodshed, heartlessness toward 'the other'.
And we, as travelers, have got to use prudent common sense - and persevere. The worst thing in the world, and for the world, would be to abandon it.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Neros Fiddle
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. These days, we have got politicians, security-industry functionaries and reflexively defensive bureaucrats around the globe fiddling while globalized terrorists try to light fires on airplanes - or do anything else they can do to harm innocent people. The attempted bombing on symbolically frought Christmas Day of a Delta/Northwest jetliner near Detroit has brought these home-truths to the fore.
In the United States, the Usual Suspects went into action with the speed of a jet plane going wheels-up from a runway.
The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, embraced plausible deniablity, implausibly claaiming that "the system worked" after courageous passengers and crew stopped the accused terrorist from taking 300 lives. She had to backtrack the very next day. Now, U.S. President Obama is acknowledging that the expensive systems put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. have failed and has ordered a top-to-bottom review.
For their part, the opposition Republican Party used the thwarted attack to verbally whack Obama and his team. Even though, as numerous media reports point out, a Republican Senator, one James DeMint, has blocked a Senate vote on Obama's nominee for head of Homeland Security, Erroll Southers, on the grounds that Southers might allow airport security screeners to join unions. And even though Republican legislators voted against increasing federal funds for airport security just this year. Obama-bashers counter, correctly, that Obama waited until September to nominate his choice to fill the Homeland Security post, vacated back in January. Simultaneously, there is no permanent head of U.S. Customs, either, as the administration has let this important border-security service drift without a steady hand on the rudder.
While all these neros point fingers at each other in an endless circle of blame, Rome - that is to say, the civilized world, and the intricate, vulnerable transport system that makes it possible for that world to function - remains under threat by homicidal fanatics.
It's tempting to just throw up your hands and shrug there's nothing to be done. But we can't just do nothing. There were terrorists well before Sept. 11 and there will be terrorists long after today, but that's no reason to forget about them. They are not forgetting about us. They must be stopped. There are many ideas on how to protect travelers - and commuters, and schoolchildren, and people in markets, and innocents at religious services - from cruel attacks. Some of these ideas contradict each other. We don't yet know what response the world of travel will come up with to counter the latest threats, but we need to consider ideas from everywhere - and not just about new high-tech screening devices but ways of thinking pro-actively.
One of the most lucid voices I have heard is that of Giovanni Bisignani, the director-general and CEO of the International Air Transport Administration, the trade group of 230 airlines.
"Instead of looking for bad things - nail clippers and rogue bottles of shampoo - security systems need to focus on finding bad people,'' Bisignani said in a Sept. 30 statement from IATA's Geneva headquarters. "Adding new hardware to an old system will not deliver the results we need. It is time for governments to invest in a process built around a checkpoint of the future that combines the best of screening technology with the best of intelligence-gathering. Such a system would give screeners access to important passenger data to make effective risk assessments. The data are being collected. The technology exists. Industry is supportive.''
This is the kind of wholistic thinking we need.
They say out of crisis comes opportunity. We need to find the opportunity in this crisis, and there is no time to lose in exploiting it.
In the United States, the Usual Suspects went into action with the speed of a jet plane going wheels-up from a runway.
The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, embraced plausible deniablity, implausibly claaiming that "the system worked" after courageous passengers and crew stopped the accused terrorist from taking 300 lives. She had to backtrack the very next day. Now, U.S. President Obama is acknowledging that the expensive systems put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. have failed and has ordered a top-to-bottom review.
For their part, the opposition Republican Party used the thwarted attack to verbally whack Obama and his team. Even though, as numerous media reports point out, a Republican Senator, one James DeMint, has blocked a Senate vote on Obama's nominee for head of Homeland Security, Erroll Southers, on the grounds that Southers might allow airport security screeners to join unions. And even though Republican legislators voted against increasing federal funds for airport security just this year. Obama-bashers counter, correctly, that Obama waited until September to nominate his choice to fill the Homeland Security post, vacated back in January. Simultaneously, there is no permanent head of U.S. Customs, either, as the administration has let this important border-security service drift without a steady hand on the rudder.
While all these neros point fingers at each other in an endless circle of blame, Rome - that is to say, the civilized world, and the intricate, vulnerable transport system that makes it possible for that world to function - remains under threat by homicidal fanatics.
It's tempting to just throw up your hands and shrug there's nothing to be done. But we can't just do nothing. There were terrorists well before Sept. 11 and there will be terrorists long after today, but that's no reason to forget about them. They are not forgetting about us. They must be stopped. There are many ideas on how to protect travelers - and commuters, and schoolchildren, and people in markets, and innocents at religious services - from cruel attacks. Some of these ideas contradict each other. We don't yet know what response the world of travel will come up with to counter the latest threats, but we need to consider ideas from everywhere - and not just about new high-tech screening devices but ways of thinking pro-actively.
One of the most lucid voices I have heard is that of Giovanni Bisignani, the director-general and CEO of the International Air Transport Administration, the trade group of 230 airlines.
"Instead of looking for bad things - nail clippers and rogue bottles of shampoo - security systems need to focus on finding bad people,'' Bisignani said in a Sept. 30 statement from IATA's Geneva headquarters. "Adding new hardware to an old system will not deliver the results we need. It is time for governments to invest in a process built around a checkpoint of the future that combines the best of screening technology with the best of intelligence-gathering. Such a system would give screeners access to important passenger data to make effective risk assessments. The data are being collected. The technology exists. Industry is supportive.''
This is the kind of wholistic thinking we need.
They say out of crisis comes opportunity. We need to find the opportunity in this crisis, and there is no time to lose in exploiting it.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
After Detroit: The Way We Fly Now
Many details remain to be discovered about the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Delta Air Lines/Northwest flight in Detroit, but one thing is perfectly clear: Travel and tourism in general, and civil aviation in particular, remain high-priority targets for globalized terrorists.
The latest murderous Islamic militant - identified in media reports as a 23-year-old Nigerian man who boarded the threatened plane in Amsterdam - to target innocent travelers was thwarted by alert passengers when he attempted to detonate an explosive device during landing at Detroit's international airport. Good on them. And shame on airport security officials who missed a chance to nab this would-be mass murderer while still on the ground. It's back to the drawing board for them, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
I have flown out of Amsterdam Schiphol airport, which has tougher security screening than most world airports. It was here that the would-be bomber, traveling originally from Lagos, Nigeria, changed planes for the United States. Passengers are screened again at the departure gate in Schipol airport just before boarding their flights. Additionally, the airport is testing whole-body X-ray screening machines that are said to be more sensitive in detecting objects concealed on the body than are other technologies. It's not clear at this writing whether the attacker passed through the latest high-tech screener or how he evaded other security measures.
In the short-term, the take-away for travelers heading to or from the United States is this: Travel will be slower and additional layers of airport and airline security - not all of them visible - will be in place, accounting for delays and frustrations. Understand and expect this.
This heightened security means that air travelers should leave for the airport earlier, be patient and expect their luggage and their person to be searched more thoroughly than in the recent past. Several airline Web sites - notably, Air Canada's site - have said U.S.-bound passengers should take just one carry-on bag onboard their flights, put away all bags, including laptops, during the final hour of flight, and say buckled in their seats during the last hour before landing. Air Canada cites the U.S. Transportation Security Administration for the rules changes, though the TSA as of this moment has not acknowledged making these requests.
Tighter security will certainly stay in place throughout the year-end holiday season, and probably beyond. Expect security to spike again if and when - and it's probably when - another incident occurs, and again during the busy summer travel season in the New Year.
It's sad and sometimes scary, but there it is. Some politicized religious fanatics still believe that the end justifies the means, and they are still doing their utmost to distrupt travel and cause as much harm as they can in the process. Don't let this stop you from traveling, but do take common-sense security precautions. After Detroit, this is the way we fly now.
The latest murderous Islamic militant - identified in media reports as a 23-year-old Nigerian man who boarded the threatened plane in Amsterdam - to target innocent travelers was thwarted by alert passengers when he attempted to detonate an explosive device during landing at Detroit's international airport. Good on them. And shame on airport security officials who missed a chance to nab this would-be mass murderer while still on the ground. It's back to the drawing board for them, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
I have flown out of Amsterdam Schiphol airport, which has tougher security screening than most world airports. It was here that the would-be bomber, traveling originally from Lagos, Nigeria, changed planes for the United States. Passengers are screened again at the departure gate in Schipol airport just before boarding their flights. Additionally, the airport is testing whole-body X-ray screening machines that are said to be more sensitive in detecting objects concealed on the body than are other technologies. It's not clear at this writing whether the attacker passed through the latest high-tech screener or how he evaded other security measures.
In the short-term, the take-away for travelers heading to or from the United States is this: Travel will be slower and additional layers of airport and airline security - not all of them visible - will be in place, accounting for delays and frustrations. Understand and expect this.
This heightened security means that air travelers should leave for the airport earlier, be patient and expect their luggage and their person to be searched more thoroughly than in the recent past. Several airline Web sites - notably, Air Canada's site - have said U.S.-bound passengers should take just one carry-on bag onboard their flights, put away all bags, including laptops, during the final hour of flight, and say buckled in their seats during the last hour before landing. Air Canada cites the U.S. Transportation Security Administration for the rules changes, though the TSA as of this moment has not acknowledged making these requests.
Tighter security will certainly stay in place throughout the year-end holiday season, and probably beyond. Expect security to spike again if and when - and it's probably when - another incident occurs, and again during the busy summer travel season in the New Year.
It's sad and sometimes scary, but there it is. Some politicized religious fanatics still believe that the end justifies the means, and they are still doing their utmost to distrupt travel and cause as much harm as they can in the process. Don't let this stop you from traveling, but do take common-sense security precautions. After Detroit, this is the way we fly now.
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