Tag: terrorism

On The Road Again

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

“See it. Say it. Sorted” says a message on the loud speaker after telling passengers to report anything suspicious. Don’t get me wrong there have been situations involving public transport in the past but the constant need to remind people of the fear they should be in, the potential that there could always be something to look out for, makes me far uneasier than any possible – I’m assuming terrorist – danger does.

I just missed my mouth slightly and spilt beer on my face mask. We can add that to the drawbacks list. I’ve never quite understood why when drinking alcohol is illegal in outdoor public places, on buses, even as a passenger in cars apparently; it is perfectly fine to drink on a train. I can only assume it has something to do with them being able to sell alcohol themselves and it being impossible to regulate train beer from carry on beer. Maybe it’s just a throwback to dining carts. I’m not complaining. Few countries in the world seem to allow such things and I see it as a genuine positive of what is already probably my favourite form of transport. I’ll take a bus if I have to, I’ll avoid the train if it’s too expensive and I’ll take the plane if it makes more practical sense but there’s still something I enjoy about a train that I’m yet to put my finger on entirely. Comfortable, fast, easy, goes through scenic areas. Maybe I should go on one of those long train journeys like the Trans-Siberian or across America, the Andes, Australia and anywhere else that begins with ‘A’.

Despite spending the last few months delivering bread and working in a bakery and pizza shop I seem a little more nervous about this virus though. The little Northumberland seaside village and the Scottish countryside of my parents feels like a little bubble I’ve stepped out of. I’ve gone south where bad things happen. I’m now in the real world. A world with dangers.

I can still only smell beer. This is going to make me paranoid. Is it me, do I stink of beer or is it simply a drop on my mask leading to a false reading. I’m not sure if I can spend the next twelve hours breathing beer fumes.

I’m on the move again then. Off to Greece. I’ve mentioned it previously but I doubt anyone reads every post every day so this is me informing you all I’m off to Greece. I had a short break in Dublin over Christmas but it does feel like I’ve not been abroad for a year now. This virus really has made us change our way of existing. I’m a little nervous actually and I’m curious how I’ll feel about it. I have a habit of wishing for the sedentary life when I travel a little too much and the travelling life when I’m in one spot for too long. Considering it has been a long time since Christmas and an even longer time since my last adventure, the wishing became a slight insanity.

It can be hard to leave though. We become comfortable and after all these years I do wonder if maybe I am getting a little old for all this. Ten years ago I did meet people in their thirties just starting out so perhaps age has little to do with it. We just experience things in a different way. I do find it harder to leave my parents each time though, especially now in this present virus related fear period. I don’t give a shit about potentially suspicious packages, I give a shit about my loved ones coming into contact with a deadly virus. Leaving them at the train station questioning whether it will be the last time I’ll see them but knowing I have to leave regardless. The truth is, life goes on. The whole world ground to a halt for a few months once already and now we just have to get on with it. It is easy to blame the economy and capitalism but it’s human nature. We can’t stand still. Sometimes it’s not always easy though.

The Lebanon

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This incident seems strange. It seems pretty horrific too. Ammonium nitrate left in a warehouse at the port for six years and it accidentally goes off. That is not an implausible story, let’s be honest. It is possible that fertiliser is imported into a country and it is also possible that it has been left for one reason or another and abandoned. It does happen. But ammonium nitrate is also used as an explosive. It is not implausible that it has intentionally gone off.

Usually in stories like this it’s very quickly pointed out as potentially an act of terror if not jumped on and accused of being so. Unlike other previous events it feels like it is not following the same pattern. The main focus is on the fertiliser and while it is suggested investigations are open into other possibilities, this is not seized on. I have only read the article on the BBC, this could end up being an analysis of the BBC’s reporting or a sign that I’m missing many other angles elsewhere. It just feels notably out of the ordinary in comparison to how these kind of things are usually reported on when covering the Middle East.

It is important to know context with the Lebanon in regards current social and economic issues. While I admit I don’t know in depth, the country is struggling with an arguably failed economy. I’m sure I remember reading that they were on the verge of defaulting as a country for the first time which would be a massive thing. The pandemic and subsequent global economic lockdown has only exacerbated the situation. There are currently protest although I am unsure on what scale. I don’t quite know the political structure of the country but I know Hezbollah, who were elected democratically it is often forgotten and ignored, are in power but I’m sure also the Prime Minister and his ministers are not Hezbollah, so perhaps there are two system within one. The regional political situation is that they are strong allies with Iran and that the Israelis seem to be fighting Hezbollah on and off, who are also deemed a terrorist organisation in the west, yet not fighting with Lebanon, or at least that is the narrative. With all that in mind the Israelis have had to distance themselves already, but have also offered food and humanitarian aid along with offers from Boris Johnson and Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State. It’s fair to say these are ominous gestures you would be cautious of accepting.

All of which make this feel eerily calm, almost like we’re waiting for something to happen. Maybe it also means that it genuinely was an accidental explosion of fertiliser and it has caught everyone, the Lebanese, the Western powers and the media off guard. All scrambling for an as yet unknown and too sudden line to follow. The next twenty-four hours will reveal the immediate direction it’ll take as events unfold, parts of the truth come out and the death toll becomes clear. No matter what does arise, one thing is clear, it is an horrific event either way.

The Paradox Of Numbers

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There have been some stabbings then. It happened yesterday, three were killed and three badly injured. It was announced today that Khairi Saadallah has been held on suspicion of terrorist activities. Apparently he shouted some “unintelligible words” before attacking a group of people. I don’t know about the intricacies of law and being able to name people but there must be a reason for the discrepancies over naming suspects, and in this case not even someone who has been charged but is just being held on suspicion. They must have a pretty strong, let’s say definite, case against him to make what is ultimately a public announcement of his guilt. Perhaps the ones not mentioned are down to the issuing of injunctions of some sort and the standard approach is to be able to name people. Either way it it’s something new for people to get horrified over and will now be the new thing to focus our attention on.

I mentioned a week or two ago about how we seem to be lurching from one crisis to the next; be it Brexit, disastrous elections, back to Brexit, coronavirus, police violence and now we can add these stabbings to this years list of events. It does seem to be one thing after another and I wondered how long it would take for something extreme to happen so as to distract people from what feels like genuine social change. The Black Lives Matter movement was helped by people being dissatisfied and restless after the virus. I thought with the return of capitalism and the opening of shops that people would forget but they’ll have this now to take the headlines completely. I’m not suggesting or going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy but undoubtedly the government, media and anyone else who’s vested interests were in danger will use this event to maximum effect and personal gain. The old maxim of never letting a good crisis go to waste can yet again be expected to ring true.

Let’s not forget that people have been mercilessly murdered but I’m not going to dwell on that because I doubt beyond the public statements neither will the authorities. Maybe it’s just my mood today but I feel incredibly sceptical about the expected response or just immune to being horrified about the extinguishing of more life. It also highlights a difference in our responses to virus deaths and these ones. Over forty-thousand people have died of coronavirus based upon one set of statistics, some suggest more and some less, but despite everything we have seen and felt, there is still an underlying feeling inspired by that being nothing more than a number. It comes back to the idea that we feel more of an emotive reaction to the deaths of three people than forty thousand people. Perhaps we can comprehend three people, there’s a good chance there are three people in the same room as us now but forty thousand is difficult, if not impossible to comprehend. It also makes you realise football crowds are enormous. Wembley stadium can hold double the number of people killed in the virus. Which make it feel like not many people have died at all. Yet they have, but have they really? Three have now died and that’ll feel perversely like a higher number. All it does is makes me feel even more that worldwide events, disasters and news are better off ignored, the spare energy from this can be put towards embracing our immediate environments. Perhaps that’s the way forward. Or at least embracing a little more of what’s around us than living in a version of reality the news wants us to.

With Crisis Comes Change

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

And just like that the attacks have begun. The government has been accused of all things recently, ‘inept‘ being an unfortunately common one when it refers to their response to a pandemic. Generous certainly isn’t one despite their attempts at passing off a £330 billion pledge to businesses and small businesses as some kind of benevolent offering to their subjects. The fact people are going to have to pay it back, and at a higher rate in line with inflation, suggests they vary considerably to the charitable offering made when the banks were bailed out during the last recession. We’re all in this together apparently but don’t forget nothing is for free, unless you’re part of the international banking cartel or have friends in high places.

But back to the attacks which I managed to digress from almost immediately after raising their existence. There has been a lot of talk about governments using current events to push through legislation they would have previously been unable to. Milton Friedman, the father of Neoliberal free-market economics, and the man therefore responsible for this shit show of a world economy, suggested it was. “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around”. It appears some of these ideas that have been waiting around are being given their moment to be pushed through. In the US Trump has been suggesting payroll tax cuts which will destroy social security. In Israel proposals have been pushed through to monitor peoples phone much more easily using legislation usually reserved for post terrorist attack hysteria.

And now in the UK the government are attempting to push through the Civil Contingencies bill which will give police and immigration officers more powers to detain suspected carriers of the virus “to take them to a suitable place to enable screening and assessment” for an as yet unspecified amount of time. If someone is clearly ill and a danger to those around then it is fair for them to be taken somewhere they can get help and prevent them from harming others but this bill is dangerously ambiguous. Throw in the rather alarming length of two years that it will be in law, considering very worst case scenarios for this virus stand at eighteen months, and considering it could simply be put up for renewal each month as it’s required and the cocking of your head starts to feel justified.

This bill like everything currently in Parliament is being pushed through without debate and without being voted on. In times of crisis we need to strengthen democracy not weaken it, and certainly not use it as an opportunity to empower and enrich those already holding a disproportionate amount of power and wealth. It may be worth keeping an eye on what isn’t reported or perhaps what is whispered between the hysterical shouting. You may just start to spot a few new ideas that look as if they’ve suspiciously had a layer of dust blown off them. There’s nothing like a little crisis for some change after all.

Why With All The Terror?

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was another terrorist related incident in London today. It seems we have one roughly every six months these days. I know that’s not accurate but it certainly feels that way. I also don’t really understand what such an ambiguous statement terrorist related incident means. The media love jumping in without all the facts and throwing around accusations of A, B and C before they really know anything. This is as much down to their irresponsible necessity to sensationalise anything they can as it is to the constant demands of twenty-four hour news coverage. I also don’t know the facts but I’m also quite sure I’m not going to dangerously mislead the seven people, including my Mum, who read this.

Seemingly a man entered a shop and started stabbing people. He was someone who the police had been monitoring for a while now and it must be for this reason that they believe this was the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims, thank you Google dictionary for that definition of terrorism. To speculate what exactly happened and what his motives and rational for doing what he did are pointless. This is partly because I don’t know and probably never will, but also because I imagine them to be far more complex than the lazy and dangerous ‘bad man’ narrative some would have you believe.

The London Mayor Sadiq Khan used the exhaustingly tired cliche that he wanted to “destroy our way of life” but curiously enough also said that the Metropolitan Police truly “are the best of us”. Despite all the other information that entered my mind while reading about todays incident, this statement shocked and offended me the most. I’ve met the Met as the sticker they stuck on my bag once said; I have certainly felt compelled after and since that moment to use a rather different type of superlative to describe them.

The idea that people are trying to destroy our way of life though is a very interesting one and something which never really gets discussed in much of a mature manner in any of these public news style debates. Are we supposed to just believe, as many do, that this man simply hates democracy and freedom, two increasing loose and ambiguous concepts. Is our way of life not in fact capitalism and globalisation? There seems to be something more constant and tangible about that than some abstract notion of freedom and the illusion of a version of political theory invented over two thousand years ago.

Perhaps to admit that there may be reasons other than that he hates us simply for existing would mean not only that we may have to discuss whether any of his beliefs or rationale have any credibility or justification but that this de-humanising narrative is an irresponsible and dangerous one. It must be said that at no point do I justify killing anyone, especially innocent people going about their daily lives but this narrative we’re all willingly skipping along to never really deals with why this man felt compelled to do this in the first place. Perhaps if it did we may just have to deal with the one thing we really can’t and that’s ourselves.