In an interesting and informative article the Centre for Public Integrity explains how Daesh nearly abducted and compromised a senior Belgian scientist. He, like many working in hospitals and doing research in universities, has access to the expertise and materials necessary to make sophisticated far reaching and lingering dirty bombs.
What is terrifying is that this enlightening and well written article bodes bad tidings itself without delving into the facts that Daesh already have both the physical components and the in-house expertise to deploy dozens of dirty bombs. For those of you who forgot, Mosul (Iraq’s second largest city) was taken by ISIL (Daesh) on 10 June 2014 and apart from the estimated US$400 million in cash plus gold bullion that Daesh stole they also got their dirty hands on a more valuable haul.
They took control of the hospital’s and university’s experts on radioisotopes along with large amounts of radioactive material. In fact, the barbarians thought that they had done so well that only nine days after capturing Mosul, to the complete surprise of NATO and other “onlookers”, they declared their purported caliphate had been created.
As reported in the UK press in the last week or so the UK authorities alongside their US counterparts have acknowledged that they have recently been holding dummy runs for simultaneous dirty bomb attacks on well known targets in London. The exercises were code-named Kirchhoff’s Impedance and involved US and UK special forces (Navy Seals, Delta Forces, the SAS and SBS) as well as the FBI and Metropolitan Police. Of course, London may not be the only target on the minds of Daesh’s bestial irreligious thugs.
After 9/11 the financial markets went on hold for days. What if they had to go on hold for weeks because of radioactive contamination and multiple financial centers were afflicted? What would inaccessible billionaires’ mansions in City centers be really worth when still contaminated 50 years on?
Most markets discount the inevitable but property market experts all over the world seem to think they know better: maybe that’s because they aren’t regulated by retired real estate agents et al but these risks have been described as “inevitable” by those who should know.
To quote from the article written by Patrick Malone and Jeffrey Smith: “Many U.S. experts — including Laura Holgate, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction terrorism — consider the eventual detonation by terrorists of a dirty bomb containing radiological materials to be inevitable. “I’m surprised it has not happened yet,” Holgate told a Washington symposium three years ago, because the mechanics of such a device are simple and widely-known.”
That was three years ago. Logically one must ask some simple questions. Why are these exercises taking place now? Why are billionaires let alone mere mortal multi-millionaires still paying over the odds for properties in cities (particularly London) that may well be contaminated for up to fifty years from the days the bombs go off? Which cities will feel “the fallout” in prices first? Why hasn’t an attack happened yet?
It’s not even a question of “if”; it is inevitable according to anyone whose job it is to monitor the likelihood of cataclysmic events such as these. Maybe the property price crashes wouldn’t matter that much in the mayhem that followed such a tsunami? We don’t think so. As after 9/11 the ensuing market turmoil would be short-lived but the impact on inner city property values would more likely be long lasting.
This article was first published on 8th March 2016 and updated on 12th March 2016.
It is worth considering this article in the context of Sky’s revelations (within 24 hours of this article first being posted) about the theft of data containing details of 22,000 Daesh jihadists (and each one of their sponsors/mentors). However, it is of note that Sky News released the data it had to MI6 before the publication of the Centre for Public Integrity’s article on 29th February 2016 which was also put on hold prior to its publication so as not to alert Daesh as to what the authorities knew was happening.
