Der Spiegel, via thelocal, reports on a tip from a would-be defector that warns of a Mumbai-style terror attack on the German Reichstag to be carried out in the Spring. Since when is kicking it Bombay style a way to talk about stratagems, as if it were comparable to ร la russe or Stockholm Syndrome, because as dreadfully effective and tragic as it was for the city of Mumbai, storming Parliament and running amok is on a different level. It is just tacky shorthand.
Given the calm and collected reactions of the Ministry of the Interior, taking these developments in stride, I feel confident that with this warning and insight, the public will be kept safe—though Germany’s quitting Afghanistan altogether would probably be a cheaper and more expedient way to curb terror threats. One other item about this tip that seems suspect, however, is the speed with which authorities leaked this to the press and how quickly the news filters to the public forum. Transparency and disclosure are very important and ought to be expected, but maybe this threat, source and intelligence was too quickly put up for speculation and argument, even without all the details. That the luggage bomb couriered from Windhoek to Germany turned out to be a
security test, a dummy, which no one is taking credit for planting, would also make me a little wary of tipsters and possible self-fulfilling prophets of gloom. When the news broke, before it was discovered that the suitcase was a tester model, I tried to fill in the blanks, remembering that Namibia is a former German colony, but now the country is a bit upset over the bad, and misdirected, publicity. Much of the war against Iraq and the regime of Saddam Hussein was prosecuted on the testimony of exiles, some of whom were later shown to have more complicated agendas and motives, but despite purity of evidence, it was taken as such because that was what the defenders wanted to hear. The exiles were very obliging.
