We have a bomb threat on campus. Right in my building. The Secretary of State Bomb Squad Unit is investigating using, among other things, bomb-sniffing dogs. They say the actual threat is low.
We are starting the final exams, so all bomb threats and such are not as credible as they would be at a different time. But still, who knows any more?
Somehow I doubt “there’s a bomb in the building!!!” is a foolproof ruse for eking out an extra day’s revision, somehow… but there you go.
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Prior to 9/11, I was in several situations where bomb threats were called in. One occurred while I was sitting in an airliner at LAX airport, and the plane was about to leave the gate. Another happened while I was stationed at a NATO military compound in Sardinia.
Nobody took bomb threats very seriously back then (and they turned out to be crank calls). But they were a big “groan factor” nuisance, because everybody had to leave the plane and the compound while authorities searched for the non-existent bombs.
Nowadays, unfortunately, such threats have to be taken very seriously.
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But – when did a terrorist warn for any real, live bombs? The only ones that did that was the IRA – but their purpose was more like shutting down the financial district in London than to kill a lot of people. The more radical branches killed people – but they didn’t warn beforehand. If somebody wants to kill me, and warn me first – is it because the culprit is plain stupid – or is he a sportsman who wants to give me a sporting chance to fight back?
Topic for the day – the Imperial Japanese Navy did not warn Pearl Harbor before the attack. They didn’t even declare war first. But by some logical paradoxes regarding the International Date Line (not to be confused with online dating) they claimed to have declared war beforehand – I have read in an old WW2 German propaganda magazine, of all places. “They started today – they attacked yesterday”. As the planes took off west of the International Date Line, the date there was December 8. When they attacked Pearl Harbor, the local time there still was December 7. Maybe this could be called a case of “sophistic rhetoric”?
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” But – when did a terrorist warn for any real, live bombs?”
The radical Zionist terrorist group Irgun called in warnings to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem before blowing it up in July 1946. Those warnings were ignored because hoax threats were common at the time, and 91 people were killed and about half that number wounded.
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“But – when did a terrorist warn for any real, live bombs? ”
Yes, I agree. I suspect a lazy student. Still, I hope the student is apprehended and catches hell for wasting time and resources like that.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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