Monday, July 25, 2005

The Staff gets topical

Given that we, the Staff, have been mandated to post about certain current issues in the world, we'd like to draw attention to, you guessed it, that topic that's on everyone's mind, the "T" word, Terrorism.

The recent events in London have, yet again, brought this whole issue front and centre. Some of you may have read about the incident last Friday where an innocent man was shot to death by London police because he was suspected of carrying explosives. The cops there are taking a "Shoot First, Ask Questions Later" approach adopted from their Israeli counterparts, where suicide bombings are a fact of life. Granted, the poor bastard didn't react all that intelligently, given that he was ordered to stop and proceeded to bolt into the subway train... how did he expect the cops, already jittery from a second wave of attempted bombings the day before, to react? Nevertheless, it is disturbing that those in authority are now going to such drastic measures in the name of attempting to thwart further incidents.

Our point with all this is relatively simple - Extremists use these attacks to sow fear in the daily lives of their enemies, namely, western civilization. Fear is an incredibly potent tool. Those in authority attempt to assure the public the only way to defeat this sort of warfare is to ignore it, carry on with our daily lives, as they do everything they can to combat it. But, when it is shown that they are willing to go to the lengths of taking innocent lives in the name of suspicion, however logical it may seem, it nevertheless creates further doubts in the minds of the public... further fear. Not only fear of the extremists, but fear of the authorities as well.

Does this mean the terrorists win in the end? Or have we, the western world, just come to the point where we have to poke our heads out from underneath our collective safety blanket and accept that the world is a dangerous place? Perhaps the answer is that we need to root out the causes of extremism (i.e. economic and social disparity) and do something to affect change in said causes. Who knows, perhaps humanity could learn something for once.

-The Staff

3 comments:

Juxtapose said...

Excellent post. The sad part is, do you really think that the west will go to such extremes as to root out the causes of extremism?

Seeing as how most of the western action towards the east is spearheaded by the yanks and their Bush administration with there non-negotion stance, I can't see it happening.

Instead, the States seems to like to capitalize on fear to maintain control over their own public. Worked for Bush in last years election.

As such, innocent people on both sides will continue to suffer.

Juxtapose said...

I meant negotiation, not negotion. See, I talk about the yanks and thus I spell like them.

Telly said...

No, we don't think the west will bring itself to do this. Not yet. However, these acts, due to their impact and excessive media coverage, are becoming more and more a central focus of western society. It may eventually prove that the members of western societies will have enough of this extremism, come to their senses, and realise that violence (i.e. the War on Terror) only begets reprisals and more violence. Thus maybe, just maybe, socioeconomic solutions may at least be considered. Sadly, however, this is all just an idealist vision, and there are too many other factors involved (i.e. capitalism and the driving force of money and power) that may well prevent it. We have always conceded that it will likely take a massive single event (or even a series of massive events) to force people to realise their doctrine is wrong.