Tag: terrorism

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Mediawatch Politics Terrorism

Lessons in Fear (after Munich)

fear munich akkuza

It’s a new thing now. Not Pokemon I mean, but this habit to drop “and Munich?” in conversation without as much as a semblance of intent to actually engage about the matter beyond signalling a mutual acknowledgement of the existence of yet another horrible event marking the simultaneous deaths of multiple human beings. “And Munich?” dropped at some part of an exchange is meant to imply a plurality of emotions, feelings and thoughts without actually dealing with them. In post-fact, emotion driven society there is a whole series of “taken as reads” packaged in a two-word reference.

“And Munich?” means that they have stricken again. It means that we are condemned to live another series of days in anxious attention watching the news to hear about how yet another subset of innocent victims had their lives cut short and how the state can do nothing or seems to be unable to do anything about them. “And Munich?” means that the terrorists are winning the war and that all we can do is share a feeling of helplessness as the multi-headed hydra strikes again with wanton abandon and without any recognisable pattern. “And Munich?” definitely implies that the refugee/immigrant problem is out of hand and that whether we like it or not it must be stopped. “And Munich?” includes the sentiment that now even Merkel’s Germany is no longer safe from gun or truck wielding maniacs so why should we be safe? “And Munich?” insinuates that we are living under constant siege and in constant fear and that nothing seems to be able to save us.

Therein lies the problem. Social discourse prefers not to engage but rather to wallow in emotional dysfunctionalism. There is no effort to define beyond the effortless generalisations and assumed truisms that sweep everyone and everything under the same carpet and into the same media-wrapped boxes of cliches. Munich showed us the direction in which we are moving when it comes to fear-based social reasoning.

The first clues came with the breaking news. “Shooting in Munich” did not need any further elaboration. We, and when I say we I mean the global media village’s spectators, were already braced for the worst. A series of automated events were expected to be put into place. “The escalation”, “the police reaction”, “the heroes on scene”, “the vindication”, “the first amateur videos and reports”, “the rise in number of reported victims”, “the stand off”, “the resolution”, “the global political condemnation”, ” the solidarity and mourning” and of course “je suis Munich”. All these steps were in place in our collective minds once the our medium of choice tweeted us the breaking news that there had been a new “Shooting in Munich”.

Then came the early analysis as the events continued to unroll before our eyes. Munich Police stated that since a man had wielded a gun in public this had to be treated as a terrorist attack in order to mobilise the maximum resources to counter its effects. It was an interesting honest statement at a very early stage. As far as I can recall it is the first time that while we had an “attack” in progress we were given direct access to the security protocols of the nation in question. The official reaction is, rightly I add, tuned to assume that we are dealing with a terrorist of the organised (ISIL) type and then question that assumption later. The reasoning is clear and pragmatic – in the worst case scenario the security forces are right and they have all the means to deal with the issue. In the best case the attack is not really a terrorist attack but one that seems to be so due to the circumstances and still all means have been deployed to minimise the damage.

It turns out that the Iranian born 18-year old who went on a shooting spree in a shopping district of Germany’s third largest city was actually emulating a Norwegian far-right madman who had gone on a shooting spree among a group of political youths on an holiday island in Norway. The Iranian was more Breivik and less Daesh. Yet we would only find that out over 24 hours after the events. As it turns out, the Munich police deployment of security measures – blockdown on transport, curfew, assumption of other shooters involved in the attack – may have saved more lives and contained the damage. Similarly, the social mindset as the events unfolded demonstrated a “trained” mentality among the general public. Twitter hashtags offered support and shelter to anyone stranded in the potential zone of carnage, Facebook triggered a fine-tuned function that helped people show that they are safe and sound, the media (or most of it) knew better than to defy police instructions not to share videos and images at the peak of the crisis.

So what lessons do we draw from the Munich attack? Early the next morning I put the following post on facebook:

One of them is as old as the word itself: it takes FEAR and TERROR to make a TERRORIST. Not ISIL, not an organised network of sharpshooting ideological maniacs, not immigrants who got in under the radar with intent to kill, not far right extremists with an agenda. Those are all masks and labels that hide the real danger – misfits, renegades, angry individuals who will prey on the new mindset of fear. One man with a gun is no longer a criminal – he is a terrorist (hasn’t crime always spread terror?) and the third largest city in Germany is locked down.  The biggest cause of fear is lack of knowledge. Today’s society needs new ways of responding to these realities. Part of that development lies in understanding how and why all this is happening.

I do believe that is our biggest lesson yet. We have come to realise that due to a combination of circumstances that include the immediacy of breaking news and coverage we are a society that easily falls prey to fear and helplessness. Crimes and criminals that involve deaths and victims are no longer to be treated “simply” as such but as part of a wider bigger problem that is holding all of society at ransom. the new crime of “terrorism” is like nothing that we have ever seen before – mainly BECAUSE of the immediacy of the breaking news when the situation is no longer limited to the immediate closeness of wherever the events unfold but involves a whole global community. This sense of communal fear and helplessness was previously not achievable by similar groups as ISIL operating on the basis of terror and fear – the IRA, the Brigate Rosse, Bader Meinhoff, the PLO.

This psychological hostage situation is exacerbated because all the while society will carry on with its own agenda and there will unfortunately always be the misfits, the renegades and the angry individuals who will commit crimes that would in all other circumstances not qualify for the “terrorist” moniker but that will henceforth contribute to the generation of mass hysteria and uncertainty.  It is important for all of society to take time and understand such acts – in order not only to be in a position to better react to them in the future but also to try, as far as possible to avoid them ever happening.

The best way to fight fear is with knowledge.

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Mediawatch

No Peace for Nice

peacenice

With the end of EURO 2016, Nice and its inhabitants must have thought that they had closed their account with violence. The football tournament had been the scene of some violent moments when “supporters” hailing from different nations wreaked havoc on many of the host towns in France. Nice was one of them. When the violence among fans erupts we tend to hear two arguments. Firstly there are those who claim that these are not “real fans”, that they are only on site in search of violence and ways to display their pent up anger. Secondly the reaction this time round was to threaten deportation. Some of the fans arrested after violent nights were in fact returned to their country of origin.

Last night, during the 14th July celebrations on the Nice Promenade, an individual who has now been identified as a French-Tunisian ploughed into the huge crowd watching the event with a van and ended his mad drive by firing shots into the crowd before being put down by policemen. President Hollande stated that this attack had a “terrorist character” that cannot be denied and that we need to do “everything we can to fight against terrorism’. Once again a Western nation squares up against an invisible enemy…. a chimera. The reaction to such events is still a siege mentality of us vs them – as though there is an invisible army among us ready to strike again and against whom measures have to be taken.

It is now almost 15 years since the brutal attacks on the Twin Towers in the US and it seems that we have not moved much further forward. The war on the ground in Syria, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East gives us the illusion that a battle is being won or lost. Daesh gives an ephemeral shape and face to “the enemy” whenever one is needed but soon fades in a cloud of confusing and contradictory information peppered with amateur youtube videos of beheadings and crucifixions far from the “civilised West” that is under attack.

Reactions closer to home are very much like those we witness in the football violence month. An attempt to define “them” (the real fans vs the fake fans) ends up in the simplification of the all encompassing term “terrorist”. Those who sow terror. The knee-jerk reaction fuelled by ignorance is to assemble an identikit based on the cliches – islam, immigrants, arabic…. – and ask that all of these get thrown out. Donald Trump? A hero. Give us more walls. Suddenly the Brexit vote does not look so dumb. Just as in the football months , just as every time a mad idea to “purify” society seems to be taking over the idea of “deportation” begins to gain in popularity. But will it work?

If, as the reports are claiming, this was a French-Tunisian, then blaming the EU and its policy on immigration has little or nothing to do with the events.  Tunisia was a French colony until the mid-fifties. Persons of Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan origin coloured the French landscape adding a touch of diversity  long before the sudden awareness on “immigrants” was given a new tinge of alarm by a disgruntled part of the population. Thousands of persons of Maltese and Italian descent pepper the coast of France as they do the north coast of Africa – relics from a time when the concept of free movement across the Mediterranean was much more fluid and economic based than it is today.

The truth seems to lie more in the fact that the perpetrators of recent events labelled as “terrorist” are more likely to be angry misfits in society. We used to call them criminals. They perpetrate violence on large number of people while hanging on to the excuse of “martyrdom” or “vindication” but we should not be side-tracked by the mask that they choose to show when committing the crime. Normal society, acting calmly and rationally, has laws for criminals and sends them to prison. Criminals are not deported, they are punished for their crimes.

The 2000s have been a fertile ground in the Western World for the creation of angry generations of individuals. I have already spoken about this not so long ago (Killing in the name of – June 16th):

The truth is that it is all of society that is threatened – as it always has been – by the existence of misfits and grudge-bearers who would do more than write a letter to the editor complaining about how society’s mores have gone to the dumps. Intent and motive is beside the point if not only to understand how much pent up anger exists or needs to exist in an individual before he resorts to violence. The Orlando and Paris killers may have pinned their banner to ISIS and some contorted view of a religion but the fact remains that their twisted acts are the result of violent social misfits.

It is not even their creed or origin that should be under focus but the reasons why they failed to fit so badly in the societies in which they were brought up. Badly enough to pick up a gun or dagger and kill fellow human beings. Badly enough to not care.

I came across a chat this morning where one of the people (an Australian based individual) was advocating deportation and exit from the EU for France because of the EU’s “immigration policy”. The implication is always the same. The problem is immigration and immigrants. Is it really? Not too far back in time Sarkozy’s government faced huge riots in French suburbia. We read about battles between the police and suburban angry youth burning cars and rioting in the streets outside and around Paris. Was this Islam or immigrant inspired? No it was not.

Western democracies are having to face a bigger problem than terrorism. The bigger problem is the huge number of individuals who no longer feel safe or happy in our society. Economically downtrodden, socially marginalised and with no hope these are the fertile grounds for explosions of anger and acts of desperation. From Orlando to Nice the resorting to angry deeds becomes almost a natural consequence.

Society needs to notice that creating a convenient label such as terrorist or immigrant does not take the monster away. It also needs to be told fast that Trump-like solutions or Farage-like fear mongering are not on the table. Isolation gets nobody nowhere. Rather than concentrating on demonstrations of strength the problem should be tackled at the roots – ironically projects such as the EU intended for economic and social betterment of the peoples of Europe are being hijacked by fearmongerers and the jackals of war.

Listening to Farage, Trump and the like will not solve anything. It will only exacerbate the very problems that we need to be solving.

 

Categories
Mediawatch

A call for Union

brussels_akkuza

It’s been a long break. I had planned to post earlier but the events in Brussels have been at the back of my mind for some time now and had sapped at the will to write and make whatever little difference another opinion could make – especially in this world that gives the impression of getting more cynicial by the minute.

Last week saw confessors of the world’s largest religion prepare for the most intense period of meditation and contemplation. Believer or unbeliever you could still listen to the words of Yeshua from Nazareth – a simple maxim – thta could have been revolutionary for mankind. Sat at a table of equals he would reportedly tell us that all humans had to do was to love others as they do themselves and do to others what they would do themselves. Simple really.

In Palmyra the Syrian forces advanced and freed the ancient city forcing ISIS forces back to stronger holds like Raqqa and Homs. They left behind them a trail of destruction – around these supposed “religious fanatics” hangs a stench of death, misery and desolation. Reports in the media informed the gawking world that a kidnapped priest had been crucified by ISIS over Easter. Humanity? Not much. Religion and faith? Another excuse to justify psychopathic actions, nothing more. Not in my name shouted millions of muslims worldwide.

As I am sure there are muslims in Pakistan who condemned the atrocious attacks in Lahore where over 60 christians died in an attack. Same goes for Iraq where an innocuous soccer event was cut short with an explosion causing over 30 deaths. Not in their name.

Which brings me to Brussels and Zaventem. ISIS have claimed authorship of the vile attack that took place at the airport and metro. For many Maltese this is even more familiar territory than Paris and New York were after previous criminal attacks. Around 36 hours before the blasts ripped through the departure lounges I was travelling home exceptionally via Brussels. Our check in row was row 8 – apparently only two rows away from the site of the main explosion. As the news pored out familiar marks of the airport were mentioned – the Starbucks in the main gallery where I had sat with my dad for a long, long coffee a couple of months ago stuck out.

It’s more personal for us now but it does not change the way we are all handling the matter. We still speak of “terrorism” and we are quick to link the issue to the wave of immigrants that has become a constant in Europe. The failure of integration is proclaimed. The EU’s nations retrench to their nationalistic stances and the biggest menace now is to one of the fundamental and most obvious pillars and advantages of EU membership – Schengen and free movement.

There are a few reflections to be made:

1. Terrorism as a label

It is worth noting that the way the media report the issue is facilitating ISIS’ business. A brilliant article in the Guardian noted that the media are acting as a lunga manu PR for the IS by attributing a larger sense of organisation where there is none. We are quick to rush to the label of “Terrorism” combined with “Islamic Fanatics”. In reality, and viewed with a cooler mind, these are cells of instability in our own society that are the result of multiple causes – and not just a religious orientation gone awry.

Europe has a long, recent history of terrorist cells of political, religious or sectarian and independentist inspiration. “Terrorism” is a label we use for a sophisticated type of crime against the general public – car bombs, explosions, gun attacks and now even a belt full explosives for a kamikaze ending. These perpetrators need to be treated as criminals first and terrorists later. By exalting their actions as being the result of some kind of intricate organised network and hidden army we are falling in the hands of ISIS and its supporters.

Finally these are mostly home-grown citizens who have a bone to pick with society in general. ISIS offers them a great means of escape and an excuse to unleash their anger with such devastating consequences. They must be treated as criminals – home-grown criminals – and the punishment must be exemplary of a society that deals strongly with these problems. Deportation to some trumped up “country of origin is an escapist solution. It is a solution adopted by nations that are in denial that social and economic problems within their borders lie at the real base of what is going on.

2. Crime exists and it is Europe-wide

Having said that the “terrorist” label is not helping the cause does not mean a denial of the existence of criminal elements that use the religious angle as an excuse for their psychopathic actions. What Brussels (and even Paris) taught us is that there is a systemic problem of lack of coordination in the EU. Too many hands, too many seperate limbs of enforcement that fail to communicate with each other and too much ambiguity about our common border.

The calls are out to suspend Schengen and for a retrenching to nationalist lines of control. The calls are wrong. The problems with which the member states of the European Union are faced today are in need of exactly the opposite remedy. The Union was built on the pooling of sovereignty in areas where the whole is better than the parts. We’ve all heard how the Common Market became the driving force of an Economic Community that strengthened its connections.

Now, more than ever the areas of Security and Justice require a stringer pooling – not a breaking down. A Union Police that acts across borders and on all borders is required. It cannot have the face and interest of the few states that are facing the problem of the moment – in other words it cannot be a Frontex that begs for the attention of states that are far from the action. This Union Police should have Union-wide powers of monitoring entry, exit, and also internal activity within the Union. Intelligence would be pooled and enabled by all parties, a budget would ensure it has the resources possible to combat crime and a clear delineation of its competences would enure it can work within its own range as well as collaborate with national forces.

Schengen is the target of the bomb touting criminals. Suspending Schengen, restricting the fundamental freedom that European Union citizens have so proudly achieved is not a solution. It is a dangerous step towards submission.

3. Integration

Finally, one last point about integration. As I said earlier the existence of such criminals cannot be linked to problems of integration. The religious angle is an excuse to unleash destructive wills – an excuse that could very well have been found elsewhere. Having said that a Union that is teetering on establishing its own ideals needs to take up this challenge and face up to it. Rather than speaking of integration we should be looking at the common values that the European Union member states hold dear and ensuring that anybody who is born or enters into their territories understands that these are the rules by which civil society lives.

Once again in the name of humanity the Union should be working to strengthen the commitment to the universal values of human rights and anybody wanting to live within its confines should be prepared to live along and not against such precepts.

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Immigration Middle East Terrorism Values

Know your enemy

know your enemy _ akkuza

The language of war has returned ever since the Paris Attacks. The French PM has not held back the ballistic rhetoric and insists on qualifying this as a war between France and Da’esh (they hate that name). In doing so, Hollande steps into the shoes of George W. Bush who similarly had declared war on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shortly after the sad events of 9/11. Ever since 13/11 (European calendar) Hollande has upped the tempo and has even resorted to invoking international clauses before the UN in order to intensify the attacks on Da’esh.

One thing that has really been getting at me ever since this war discourse has begun is the frequent reference to the facts of the Paris Attacks as though they are the first time ever that a European nation is facing terror and terrorist attacks. The modern generation of politicians seem to have a faint, or non-existent, grasp of the recent history of their continent. It would appear that it is the first time that a group of men opened fire on innocent civilians, the first time that bombs went off in a major European city, the first time that a sporting event was directly in the line of fire and – to add the events of the Russian events on the Sinai – the first time that a plane was bombed or hijacked by terrorists.

As if this historical distortion is not enough we have to also add the fact that the context of all this terror-talk is a Europe that is already submerged in fear-mongering in relation to the “threat” of immigration. The Paris Attacks occurred within the context of a major continental upheaval with regards to immigrants and refugees and we had no time to factor in the issue of continental values that was still very much unresolved at the time.

What do I mean by historical distortion? This is a generation of politicians that are used to selling their wares through very efficient marketing and rhetoric. They are used to manipulating facts and figures in order to infuse feel good factors. Just take a look at “Our economy is booming” Renzi and Muscat for a clear example of what is meant. These politicians are now faced with a concrete problem and have to seem as efficient as when they are trumping up figures to make their economy sound beautiful. So they tell us that this is a danger such as we have never seen before. In one fell swoop the deeds of the IRA, ETA, Baader-Meinhoff, Brigade Rosse and the PLO (and PLF) are vanished away.  According to the new rhetoric the bombings at Liverpool Street Station, Bologna or the shootings at Munich are just fiction.

Muhammad Zaidan (Abu Abbas for enemies) never existed. The governments of Thatcher and Craxi never had to deal with terrorist cells. No. Only now are we at WAR. The enemy is everywhere. That is what they want you to believe.

Does this mean that a terrorist threat from Da’esh should be ignored or is not so bad as they make it sound? Nonsense. What I mean is that this sudden linking of terrorist attack to acts of war has consequences that go far beyond dealing with them as the type of security threat that they really are. With the death of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the Paris attacks, we were told that he was very probably the mastermind behind most of the other attacks that occurred recently – or that were foiled. from the shootout in Verviers to the foiled Thalys aggression  – it was Abaaoud. When you read the facts that are available in terms of 70s and 80s terrorism it begins to look very likely that we are dealing with a cell of extreme terrorists.

This kind of cell is a bunch of individuals disgruntled with society in very much the same vein as a Breivik or your average US High School Shooter in the US. It is now also clear that they are raised and bred in Europe only to abscond to war zones like Syria to get “training” in much the same way as the Che Guevara’s of other decades rushed to zones of popular revolution. The “ideology” is an excuse or pressure valve justification to unleash pent up anger at a society that they claim misunderstands them. When they do manage to succeed with one of their plans to explode or kill that is when Da’esh steps in to claim ownership. Which is fortunate for Da’esh because, as they themselves claim in their newsletters, any action that is successful and perpetrated by anyone can be claimed as originating from them no matter how spurious the link is. This makes Da’esh look much larger and organised on the European mainland than it really is.

The flaws in European security relate to the inability to flag disillusioned individuals, the facility with which they can obtain weapons in a society that does not treat guns and bombs as liberally as the US and finally, the biggest flaw is looking for a massive organisation where there most probably is none. Da’esh’s hand in all this is ‘limited’ so to speak in obtaining a monopoly on fear. The ultimate aim for Da’esh is to provoke the “Us and Them” mentality – and they hope to recruit more than just a handful of misplaced youths with suicidal tendencies. That is why the war language serves Da’esh more than it serves your average European state.

It may sound crazy at this moment in time but I strongly believe that Europe – particularly the Union – has much bigger problems than the terrorism threat. The main issue here is the search for a Europe of Values with common intent. It is that Europe that failed to take shape when Giscard d’Estaing’s constitutional convention failed to deliver a clear definition of the Europe that we all want. It is only by defining what it is and what its values are that Europe can finally stand up and be clear about its position vis-a-vis the immigrants that are looking to it as a place of refuge or economic improvement. When we can tell refugees and immigrants who we are and what standards they must conform to then we can really wage the real war that counts. The war on ignorance and intolerance.

Before you face your enemy it is important to know thyself. Nosce te ipsum.

Categories
Constitutional Development Politics

Article 42, ISIS and neutrality

article42_akkuza

There has been quite a flutter in Malta since Francois Hollande decided to invoke article 42(7)  of the Lisbon Treaty. Even without the eccentric shenanigans of former PM Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, questions were being raised as to how and to what extent Malta would be committed thanks to this invocation. I thought of providing a little Q&A, just like in parliament, but without the nigi hemm u nifqghek bits.

1. First of all, what does Article 42(7) state?

Article 42 (7) TEU states:

If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.

Commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation.

2. So. This means war right?

No it does not. At least not in the sense that the army blessed and formed in the image of Manuel Mallia will be sent to the front to stand shoulder to shoulder with peshmergas. Nor does it mean that we will have AFM troops patrolling the Champs Elysees any time soon. The emphasis in article 42(7) is on aid and assistance and, more specifically, on the fact that the “security and defence policy” of certain Member States should not be prejudiced. This means two things:

a) Firstly, it means that any state invoking article 42(7) can negotiate individually with any other Member State (and crucially without the need to use any of the EU institutions) any temporary form of aid and assistance.  Each Member State is responsible for determining its contribution on the basis of what they deem to be necessary, which does not necessarily mean the deployment of military assets.

b) Secondly, and more importantly in the eyes of many in Malta, the fact that the security and defence policy of certain Member States is clearly invoked is a direct reference to the ‘neutral’ status of states such as Ireland, Austria and Finland – to give an example of some others. What that means is that notwithstanding any interpretation of military intervention that might be given by states dealing under this article, this obligation stops when the security and defence policy of certain States does not allow it. The second paragraph referring to NATO commitments is a further reinforcement of this distinction.

3. Oh so we are not at war then.

That’s a nice one. Modern politicians of the Hollande mould have a tendency to slip quickly into the language of war once a terrorist attack takes place. This “tradition” is new to this century ever since Commander in Chief Bush declared war on Al-Qaeda. Unlike the 70s and 80s when a terrorist bomb attack or shooting never really translated to a casus belli the political psyche of the post 9/11 words seems to require such heavy handed references and we are living in an age where France will now even try to provoke the UN to declare a war on a state whose existence nobody beyond the self-declared caliphate acknowledges.

Still. In the microcosm of Muscat’s land,  we will first engage in a debate of “neutrality” clauses in our constitution. The significance of such clauses dwindles into nothing when one considers that they were intended to deal with a specific battle between superpowers (a battle that no longer exists) and that in any case they would be invoked in case of a war between states – and not neutrality in the face of the war on terrorism. Another thing, Muscat’s government spent most of its legislature whingeing about the fact that immigration problems are a common problem that should be faced and borne equally by all EU states.

Calling oneself out of the fight on terrorism by relying on an outdated and practically inapplicable neutrality clause is hypocritical to say the least. By saying this I am not advocating participation by Malta on military activity but rather that Malta’s attitude towards security and its contribution to ensuring that the borders of the European Unoion are impervious to terrorists leaves much to be desired. From the Algeria VISA scandal, laughed off by our Chief Salesman to the thousands of Libyan Residencies to the continued insistence of this government to transform Malta into one big trojan horse for entry into the EU… these are ample examples as to how Malta’s contribution to the war on terror could be vastly improved.

4. Where does that leave us?

Well it leaves us with an EU that is gearing up to battle the amorphic monster that is “terrorism” with a series of knee-jerk reactions. It leaves us with a government in Malta that ironically needs to wake up and smell the coffee for the reasons outlined above.

Most of the time, it seems, it leaves us reverting to the centuries old adage: si vis pacem, para bellum.

Categories
Mediawatch

Guernica revisited

The other day I was browsing the news on my phone when I came across an item about a series of bombings around Irak and Afghanistan. I remember thinking how this kind of news has become so frequent as to become almost unnoticeable. My first idea of news is in the early eighties when the bulletins would be dotted with IRA bombings, kidnappings and hijacks. Post 9/11 terrorism had not come into being yet and you still had the tangible feeling of people losing their lives – of humans engaged in suffering and misery inflicted upon them by lesser beings – but by humans nonetheless. The Habibiya bombings were just a flicker on the news ticker. By the time the full information was gathered thirty-one people had lost their lives in a series of bombings in the Middle East and many more were injured.

Sports bulletins were not stopped, nation’s leaders were not rushing to express their condolences with the victims of these attacks or solidarity with a nation that was once again pregnant with mourning relatives. Most of all, the item barely made it to the top of news bulletins or front pages across the world.

Then came Boston.

Comparisons are odious and this is not intended to compare for there is no comparison that holds ground with the suffering and misery inflicted by loss of life or grievous injury. An injured human is an injured human – whether he is running a marathon, watching a marathon, on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean or shopping in a market near Tikrit. A dead human is a dead human – whatever the cause of death may be and no matter if the death was caused in the name of some ‘greater cause’ or due to mere madness.

But the Boston marathon lies in the heart of a United States that still tries to be a melting pot of sorts. People from all over the world aggregated to the town of freedom and tea parties to celebrate life in a sporting fashion. Some twisted minds who deserve the worst of Dante’s circles in hell planned and plotted for bombs to explode at the moment when the largest number of runners are crossing the line. It’s ugly. It’s vile. And the world yelled “Enough” in angry indignation. Which is all good for the par. Every one of these dead runners or spectators (three at the moment of typing) and every one of the persons who had to have their limb amputated, must be mourned and showered with all the compassion and help they may need.

They must be helped because we are human and because we like to believe that our kind is capable of thinking as a society that cares. In equal measure must the perpetrators be found and eradicated. Yes. Eradicated.

But Boston also showed the two-faced approach to emotions. Almost daily the world observes tragedies such as what happened in that fair American city. Yet while Boston will enjoy more than its fair share of attention, events such as the bombings in Irak get relegated to second, third or even nth place. This is not a competition mind you, nobody would vie for top billing on the tragedy headlines. It does say much about our perception of the world. For much as I would like to give the news conglomerates and journalists (as well as their customers and clients – the reader, viewer and listener) the benefit of the doubt you do get a nagging feeling that some lives are more important than others.

If not more important, then more relevant to others. The onlooker at a marathon is not as distant as the “oriental” at a souk who gets blown to smithereens while buying her vegetables for the daily pot. The message that this sends out is that these people are “different”. That very message of difference that we had all nixed when Huntington came around with his clash of civilisations business. It could not happen we thought. We are all human and humans and their rights are universal.

The irony of the Boston attacks was that they occurred during a marathon. The concept of a marathon began after the battle of Marathon in 490 BC after the united city states on the peninsula beat the invading Persians at Marathon (with Pheidippides running the distance to Athens to announce victory). The battle itself would have been seen as a clash between two great civilisations – the lords of the earth versus an association of free states. The temptation to succumb to this kind of rhetoric might be great but in the end it is humankind that suffers – not democracies or authoritarian regimes – but the man in the street… jogging, shopping or simply minding his own business.

Every so often we get a new version of Guernica painted directly onto the canvas of our collective memories. We are reminded once again of the pain and suffering that a human can and will inflict on another human. We are reminded of the ugliness of our nature and of the fine line that divides this exalted race of ours from animal-like behaviour and of what a struggle it is to be and remain “civilised”.

May their souls rest in peace and may the victims of humankind everywhere be vindicated by what will hopefully be an increased awareness about ourselves and who we really are.