Thursday, October 12, 2006

Giant Improvised Explosive Device in the Middle of Manila

...Being an occasional series on the High Value Terrorist Targets of the Philippines...

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This live Google Map contains several high value terrorist targets in the middle of the City of Manila. (All the PAN and ZOOM controls work, so have a better look around while you can.) Shown at the center of the Map is Pandacan Oil Depot on both banks of the Pasig River, which snakes its oily green way horizontally across the map. Observe the numerous oil and gasoline storage tanks (each of the round white objects contains tens of thousands of liter of oil or fuel. To get an idea how big each storage tank is, compare the width of each one to the four lane Nagtahan bridge which you can see nearby by panning to the left. Immediately west of the bridge, on both sides of the river, are the MALACANANG PRESIDENTIAL PALACE grounds. Immediately north of the bridge, you will see the LRT-2 Light Railway Transit Line 2 (LRT-2) which carries thousands of passengers daily. One of the trains is visible after pulling out of a nearby train station. Boarding passengers, usually only the women, have their handbags checked by poking a small wooden stick into them. And of course all around this highly combustible situation are slums, ghettos, businesses, homes and markets. But it isn't like this is some kind of secret. The continued existence of the Pandacan Oil Depot, is a major, tragic disaster waiting to happen.

Fourteen innocent bystanders have been killed by three successive terrorist bomb attacks in Mindanao all coming within a 24 hour period. Amazingly, many Filipinos have never gotten past the mental challenges of "defining" terrorism with metaphysical precision, and argue for inaction on that account. Of course, such debate is not deemed a strange luxury when it is only in exotic and unfortunate places like Tacurong, North Cotabato, in which the jihadis are playing at being homunculi of Kim Jong Il.

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