Friday, November 21, 2003
It's time for me to be a bit contencious and opinionated, since I haven't done that in a while.I spent most of my day yesterday performing the duties of channel operator/moderator in the #england chatroom on irc.undernet.org yesterday, and during this time came to a grim conclusion.
The terrorists carrying out these bombing campaigns really do know what they're doing.
I don't mean the technical aspects of delivering and detonating the bombs, but in achieving a reaction favourable to their goals. The main factor in this is the actual nations most of their targets are in... or rather the people of those nations.
What do I mean? Let me explain what happened yesterday.
Two bombs went off in Istanbul yesterday, destroying the British Consulate and HSBC bank... both soft targets. english and turkish citizens were killed.
Within the hour, the #england chatroom was inundated with turks screaming "Kill all english!... kill all murderers!" and suchlike.
So... the fact that it was english targets that were struck, and no doubt by turkish bombers, the fact that turks were killed too caused a significant number of turks to blame the english. I'm in no doubt that this is no accident. The fact that english citizens were killed is purely to legitimise the attack... it was necesary to the goals of the bombers that turks be killed too, to achieve the exact reaction observed yesterday.
So a few raging turks in a chatroom is no big deal, and easilly handled, but it's this emotional and completely irrational (or even downright stupid) nature of the people in the nations being targetted that causes wider problems. These are the kind of people who in their rage will take up arms and join the very terrorists who have killed their own countrymen. I'm not just talking about Turkey either... look at what's happening in Iraq, it's exactly the same phenomenon... and it's going to get worse.
This is idle speculation now, but I tend to believe that human beings are by nature pretty stupid. Combine the ill concieved invasion of Iraq and the attitudes that brought it about, with the actions being displayed now by the terrorists and populations of those countries being attacked, and it seems conceievable that all out world war is not that far off. Not a declared war... but random and extreme violence throughout the world, so that nowhere is safe, and no-one knows who is enemy and who is friend. Bombings here, retaliatory airstrikes there... much like Israel/Palestine, but on a global basis.
Insane.
Steve 2:15 PM [+]
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