Tag Archives: Bomb

News

Stephen Harper says Islamicism is the biggest threat to Canada

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From CBC. (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Excerpt:

In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the biggest security threat to Canada a decade after 9/11 is Islamic terrorism.

In a wide-ranging interview with CBC chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge that will air in its entirety on The National Thursday night, Harper says Canada is safer than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda attacked the U.S., but that “the major threat is still Islamicism.”

“There are other threats out there, but that is the one that I can tell you occupies the security apparatus most regularly in terms of actual terrorist threats,” Harper said.

Harper cautioned that terrorist threats can “come out of the blue” from a different source, such as the recent Norway attacks, where a lone gunman who hated Muslims killed 77 people.

But Harper said terrorism by Islamic radicals is still the top threat, though a “diffuse” one.

“When people think of Islamic terrorism, they think of Afghanistan, or maybe they think of some place in the Middle East, but the truth is that threat exists all over the world,” he said, citing domestic terrorism in Nigeria.

The prime minister said home-grown Islamic radicals in Canada are “also something that we keep an eye on.”

Harper said his government will bring back anti-terrorism clauses that were brought in in 2001 but were sunset in 2007 amid heated political debate.

Can you imagine Janet Napolitano taking the threat of Islamic terrorism as seriously? She thinks that screening Muslim males under 35 who enter the United States is “not good logic“. But groping babies and grannies is good logic.

Here’s more:

Janet Napolitano, 51, is President Obama’s new Homeland Security Secretary. She spoke with SPIEGEL about immigration, the continued threat of terrorism and the changing tone in Washington.

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word “terrorism.” Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

Making judgments is wrong for people on the secular left – everyone has to be equal, and no one is ever right or wrong. This moral equivalence is going to get a lot of people killed, as in the Major Nidal Hasan incident. Political correctness kills, but you won’t get that from Stephen Harper.

“You’re not using good logic there. You’ve got to use actual intelligence that you received. And, so, you might — all you’ve given me is a kind of status. You have not given me a technique for tactic or behavior. Something that would suggest somebody is not Muslim, but Islamic, that has actually moved into the category of violent extremists,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a forum on U.S. security and preventing terrorist attacks.

“We have ways to make some of those cuts. And they involve the intel that comes in, the analysis that goes on. For example, we often times, for travelers entering the United States, we won’t not do what is called a secondary inspection just because they are a 35-year- old male who appears to be Muslim, whatever that means. But we know from intelligence that if they have a certain travel pattern over a certain period of time, that should cause us to ask some more significant questions than if we don’t.”

News

Is the TSA more interested in airport security or supporting unions?

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Consider this story by Hans Bader in the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

The TSA shut the door Friday on a private airport screening program that was making the inefficient agency look bad by outperforming it in safety, innovation, and passenger satisfaction.  The TSA’s action was praised by a liberal union in Washington that expects to unionize the TSA, the American Federation of Government Employees. Its head, John Gage, applauded the Obama Administration for requiring a “federalized” government “work force.”

Previously, the Screening Partnership Program allowed airports to replace government screeners with private contractors. 16 airports did so. “But on Friday, the TSA denied an application by Springfield-Branson Airport in Missouri to privatize its checkpoint workforce, and in a statement,” TSA head John “Pistole indicated other applications likewise will be denied.” The TSA’s head said he did not see any “clear or substantial advantage” to the TSA in allowing additional airports to use private screeners, although he said that the few other airports that already use private screeners will be allowed to continue to do so.

[…]Earlier, the TSA retaliated against a veteran pilot who exposed the TSA’s security failures, taking away whistleblower Chris Liu’s credentials and firearm.

The Obama Administration is now seeking to unionize the TSA, even though the TSA was originally forbidden to unionize due to security concerns.  Unlike the TSA’s current head, all past TSA Administrators have recognized that collective bargaining and union work rules are inconsistent with the flexibility needed to protect public safety and adapt quickly to changes in terrorist tactics. (Undercover agents have managed to slip bombs past TSA screeners, and the TSA is even less effective at detecting them than the private security firms it replaced after 9/11).  The AFGE union predicted on January 21 that voting to unionize the TSA will begin by mid-March.

The problem with unionizing the TSA is that it leads to the same problems we have in public schools, where there is no concern about pleasing customers because it is impossible to fire teachers no matter how badly they perform. Is it the job of government to provide adult day care to a bunch of poorly-performing layabouts? If the TSA cannot do the job of keeping us safe, then why should be locked into hiring them? We need to have more flexibility to get the best people for the job, and that means that we cannot hire union workers who will not respond to our needs.

News

Car bomb kills 21 Christians in Egypt

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Mary tipped me to this story.

Excerpt:

A bomb killed at least 17 people outside a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria early on New Year’s Day and the Interior Ministry said a foreign-backed suicide bomber may have been responsible.

Dozens of people were wounded by the blast, which scattered body parts, destroyed cars and smashed windows. The attack prompted Christians to protest on the streets, and some Christians and Muslims hurled stones at each other.

Egypt has stepped up security around churches, banning cars from parking outside them, since an al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq issued a threat against the Church in Egypt in November.

[…]A statement on an Islamist website posted about two weeks before the blast called for attacks on Egypt’s churches, listing among them the one hit. No group was named in the statement.

Gateway Pundit had a later report of the bombing from AFP. (H/T Robert Stacy McCain)

Excerpt:

A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Coptic church on Saturday, killing 21 people and wounding 79 others in an attack President Hosni Mubarak said was the work of “foreign hands.”

The strange thing that Gateway Pundit found was that the White House (Barack Obama) was emphasizing that a terrorist attack on a Coptic Christian church injured and killed Muslims, as well as Christians. This is the kind of moral equivalence you find so often on the left. If a bunch of Christians are blown up by a bunch of Muslims, then no one is to blame, because everyone is a victim, including the Muslims who committed the crime. People on the left just can’t bring themselves to say that violence against innocent people is wrong, and that the people who do it are wrong. They just can’t name evil or blame evil. They don’t want evil people to feel bad about being evil.

UPDATE: Gates of Vienna links to this AINA article which claims that the Egyptian church guards left the church an hour before the bomb went off.

Excerpt:

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but officials hastily blamed either Al-Qaida or the Israeli Mousad of being behind the blast, but none of them mentioned the Egyptian state security which is viewed by Copts as the real culprit.

To clear his security forces of negligence, the Minister of Interior said that the blast was an “individual” case, caused by a single suicide terrorist detonating his vest, and has nothing to do with an exploding car. The governor of Alexandria claimed the attack as being aimed at Muslims and Christians alike.

After the blast, traumatized Copts were angered by chants of “Allah Akbar” from Muslims and began hurling stones at the mosque. Immediately security forces which were absent during the car blast and the ensuing events, appeared and starting shooting tear gas at the Copts, and they in turn hurled stones at them, said an eyewitness. Fifteen Copts were rounded up from their homes by the authorities.

[…]Eyewitnesses confirmed that security forces guarding the church withdrew nearly one hour before the blast, leaving only four policemen and an officer to guard such a big church and nearly 2000 people attending the midnight mass. “Normally they would have waited until the mass was over,” said el-Gezeiry. He also commented on the Muslim’s schadenfreude at the massacre at the church, who were heard chanting “Allah Akbar.”

Read the whole thing.