Little island chain ripe for terrorist atrocity
says New York Times…
If you believe the news and, frankly, why would
you given it’s all in the paws of Jews and Big Pharma,
religious terrorism has become quite a thing.
From New York to Kuta to Sydney, Orlando to San Bernardino
to Machester, London, Paris, Nice, Berlin, Munich and so on,
civilians are machine gunned, stabbed, beheaded, run over and
blown apart. It’s a period, I imagine, that will pass but not
before a few thousand more people die in the most dreadful
manner.
Which is why it’s nice to know there are places like The
Maldives where you can go and just goof off for a while.
Not only is the vacationer spared the terrorist
threats that make big cities shake, but the waves rarely
threaten. It ain’t the North Shore. The benign peel angle of
the waves make it the ideal destination for the beginner all the
way to the competent amateur.
Howevs, even The Maldives is losing its appeal. As headlined in
the New York Times a few days ago, Islamic extremism might suddenly
flip the switch in that country from happy little democracy to
festering pit of Western resentment.
And you know what happens
next.
Fat on a sun-bed reading the cocktail menu to bleeding
out on the sand.
Let’s read.
This island paradise made news recently
for a reason other than its pristine beaches and high-end resorts:
the gruesome killing of a liberal blogger, stabbed to death by
multiple assailants.
The killing in
April of Yameen Rasheed, 29, a strong voice against growing
Islamic radicalization, has amplified safety concerns —
particularly for foreign tourists, a highly vulnerable group and
one that the islands’ economy depends on. It is no idle threat, in
a country that by some accounts supplies the world’s
highest per-capita number
of foreign fighters to extremist outfits in Syria and
Iraq.
Here’s how the terrorist might approach an
attack.
The Maldives’
unusual approach to tourism, in which a single island houses a
single resort, has also meant that entire islands without robust
security teams are vulnerable to being seized.
A collection of about 1,200 islands in
the Indian Ocean, the
Maldives hosted 1.2 million visitors last year, including
over 30,000 Americans.
It was governed
as a moderate Islamic nation for three decades under the autocratic
rule of the former president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. But after the
country made a transition to democracy in 2008, space opened up for
greater religious expression, and conservative ideologies
like Salafism cropped
up.
Don’t forget Bali or Tunisia, says the
NYT.
The tourism
industry has mostly remained off limits as a target for terrorism,
but security experts say many resorts are ill equipped to fend off
an attack on par with those that have occurred in places
like Tunisiaand Bali,
Indonesia.
A security chief from a resort in a
northern atoll of Maldives said the country’s resorts are not
prepared, adding that regulations and policies from the government
were needed to address the issue. The security chief spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of a fear of being targeted by the
government, which has a history of jailing individuals
who discuss sensitive issues.
Read the rest of the
story here.
Oh! And the Four Seasons’ Surfing Champions
Trophy kicks off August 7 to 13, at Sultans in the Maldives. The
contest stars last year’s winner Taj Burrow, CJ Hobgood, Maya
Gabeira and the winner is decided after heats on singles, twins and
thrusters.
One scenario: a terrorist attack forces
cancellation of the event after one round with CJ leading, who is
subsequently announced the winner of the shortened contest.
It’ll be 2001 all over
again!
