Safe and secure is the wish of all of us and we pay other people to make sure that we are. In fact in today’s world hundreds of thousands of people are employed one way or another in the security business.
Looking at the macro-side of it, despite the fact that we all hate being treated as suspects when we go to the airport, most of the time the security people seem to get it right. After all, although many have been planned, there have been very few successful terrorist attacks since the infamous 9-11 in New York City and The Pentagon.
Nevertheless we have to be vigilant and cautious no matter where we are in the world. This is particularly so for American citizens and government employees, who are potential targets overseas.
Even in the most unlikely of places.
On July 31, last year, for example, Norwegian Police blocked off the area around Oslo’s royal palace following the discovery of a suspicious object beneath a nearby automobile outside the U.S. embassy.
The embassy was evacuated.
So was Norway’s royal palace and part of downtown Oslo.
Authorities even temporarily suspended subway service.
An international children’s soccer game was canceled at nearby Voldslokka Stadium so that the field could be used to land helicopters close to the embassy.
The Oslo bomb squad, emergency services and other agencies responded to the bomb alert. They examined the ‘device’ but were quickly able to determine that it was in fact a fake, much to the relief of everyone.
However, the incident then raised further questions.
Who had been responsible?
How had the perpetrators managed to breech Embassy security and plant the device, even a fake one?
It wasn’t too long before an “Oh, oh…” was heard.
Keen to make sure everyone was alert to the possibility of an attack, security staff at the U.S. embassy in Oslo had carried out a safety drill earlier in the week. That safety drill had included placing fake bombs on vehicles to rehearse their emergency-response operations.
However, they forgot about one of the ‘bombs’ and a few days later the practice bomb was spotted on an embassy vehicle as it tried to enter the embassy grounds just after 11 a.m. The eagle-eyed security guards on duty leaped into action and the bomb alert was declared.
Of course the officials concerned apologized for their mistake in leaving the fake bomb, regretting any disruption caused by this incident, and essentially calling a bomb scare on themselves.
It’s not often that I post twice in one day. I did the funny post earlier but there is something else that I want to say and today is the day to say it. Strap yourselves in!
I don’t remember where I was when JKF was shot. It was a bit too far back in time for me to be worrying about such things. I do remember where I was when I saw my first movie about the assassination, though. I was in a cinema. The movie was called Executive Action and starred Burt Lancaster. Some critics panned it at the time but I thought it was very good, based on a conspiracy theme naturally enough. I actually thought it was better that Stone’s acclaimed effort, ‘JFK’, made many years later.
I also remember where I was this day eleven years ago. It was the day that the world changed for ever and I was sitting in my study at home battling with a few spreadsheets for a business plan I was putting together. The TV was on in the background and the normal programs suddenly cut to what was happening in New York.
World Trade Center, New York City, September 11, 2001
Of course that was the end of my spreadsheets for the day. I became totally enthralled in the news coverage which was to say the least confused. By that time the first tower was belching out a steady stream of smoke. It was clearly on fire and had been very badly damaged.
The reporters were speculating as to what may have been the cause. They talked about ‘accidents’ and eyewitness reports of a small private aircraft hitting the building. But, to anyone with any wit at all, it had to have been much more than a small airplane to do that amount of damage to a building that huge.
Then, as I continued to watch, the second plane hit the other tower. Some of the reporters still could not come to grips with what was happening. The second plane was clearly a large commercial jet and, equally clearly, it had been flown deliberately into the second tower.
This was the real deal. And all of the multi-billion dollar military/intelligence defense network had been caught with their trousers down round their collective ankles.
A massive terror attack was in progress and we were able to watch it in real time on our televisions. It was at the same time mesmerizing, engrossing and, not least, horrifying.
The horrific nature of what had happened became clearer when everyone began to realize that, not only had many innocent people probably lost their lives when the airplanes had struck the buildings, but also that there was little or no hope of saving those on the floors above where the impact had occurred. It got even worse when some of the trapped people threw themselves out of the building and could been seen falling to the ground and to certain death.
Emergency services rushed to the scene. Many acts of extreme bravery followed as police and firefighters went into the burning buildings with little or no regard for their own safety. I can’t say this for sure, but I imagine at least some of them knew there was little chance they would get back out again. But they did it anyway.
Then we heard that the Pentagon had been the target of a further attack and yet another airplane, also bound we were told for the Washington DC area, had gone down somewhere en route.
In all 2,977 people were murdered as a result of the terrorist attacks that morning.
We know who was responsible for the attacks. We know that many of their terrorist comrades, including the figurehead Bin Laden, have since been killed. And we know the terrible cost in terms of lost lives and serious injuries to the various armed forces who were sent to do that job.
September 11 is now officially ‘Patriot Day’, a day of remembrance. And we should all take at least a moment in honor of the victims.
Sadly the aftermath of these terrorist attacks eleven years ago brought only knee-jerk reactions from jerk politicians. They had the audacity to call it the Patriot Act, but it attacks the freedom of innocent law-abiding citizens just as much as it does the terrorists and criminals.
Contaminated by the hellish liberal inspired ‘guilt’ that now pervades all government decisions and means that it is no longer perceived as acceptable if we take our own side in a fight, a raft of idiotic, unnecessary and unfair legislation has, and is, being enacted.
This is being done in the name of defending the homeland, but unwilling to only target the national, ethnic or religious groups who are responsible for the vast majority of the terror, poor old law-abiding Joe Public gets targeted as well.
Everyone is now guilty until they can prove their innocence. Get on an airplane at an airport and you are treated as a potential terrorist and irradiated and probed and so forth. Open a bank account and you are treated as a potential terrorist trying to launder money – despite the fact that it was the banks themselves who were doing that job.
It’s not that any of this is a great hardship. It’s just that it is completely unnecessary and unproductive. It is the typical politician’s and bureaucrat’s way of trying to con the populace by substituting activity for real progress.
A lot of potential terrorist attacks in America and elsewhere have been thwarted during the past eleven years, but not one of them as a result of all the overt claptrap at airports and so forth.
Will it change? Will sanity and intelligence take over?
Not a chance.
Will it get worse? Will the bureaucrats’ hunger for control and interference increase?
Of course it will, regardless of whether the regime is Republicrat or Democrican.
So who really did win?
The terrorists may well have lost, but the people certainly didn’t win!
fasab 