Tag: Terror

Magdeburg, Germany

Photo by Ingo Joseph on Pexels.com

I shouldn’t touch this one with a ten-foot pole but when has that stopped me?

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King

A man drove into a crowd at a Christmas market on Friday evening killing at least five people including a 9-year-old child and injuring over 200 others. It was a horrific incident.

The driver in question is a 50-year-old Saudi national living and working as a doctor for nearly 20 years in Germany. He is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy. The man also has Islamophobic views and so doesn’t fit your normal profile of a terrorist. No motive has been established yet.

Yet, that hasn’t stopped Germany’s far-right from mobilizing and screaming, “Wake Up Germany!” This was a slogan used by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and its usage is a punishable offense in Germany.

Talib A, the perpetrator and driver of the car caused a tragedy of massive proportions but let’s not tar and feather all immigrants as, ‘terrorists,’ ‘criminals,’ and ‘low lifes.’

Let’s take a hard look at Germany’s extreme right. The irony is not lost here. The same groups who promote violence, terror and hate are the same ones marching against violence because in this instance it was caused by a foreign naitonal. The mantra of these groups is “HATE” and “VIOLENCE” is their hand-grenade.

Racist attacks have increased against migrants in the wake of the deadly Christmas market attack in Magdeburg to the point that it has become a hostile and threatening environment for migrants living there. There has been a significant rise in attacks against foreigners who are seen as “looking different” according to these individuals and they have a target placed on their backs. You may think that this is a recent event because of the deadly incident but it has been ongoing. They (the extremists) look for any excuse to promote violence against foreigners. The extreme-right and neo-Nazi parties are demanding the mass deportation of migrants from the country. Sounds familiar America? The cry is, “Deport! Deport! Deport!”

Here’s the question. Where do you send these “hate mongers?” These perpetrators of hate, violence and even death in some cases. Their brand of violence will never stop because they are blinded by hate and that’s the kind you should worry about. Remember, Adolf Hitler, the most hated man on the planet and the hate and destruction he unleased which in turn killed around six million Jewish people? It was mass murder on an unprecedented scale. Let’s not go down that road again.

It’s time to look at violence and terror from a broad scale. Let’s LOOK at everyone who causes ‘terror’ and not just at the Islamic world. Terror is terror, it doesn’t matter who causes it but it needs to be stopped otherwise we’ll have more innocent lives lost. Working on that solution should be the main focus. PERIOD!

Have an amazing day.

Terror in Manchester

Shortly after 10.33 pm last night, just after the conclusion of American singer and pop idol Ariana Grande’s concert, a man in a suicide vest with a bomb strapped to it detonated an explosive device killing 22 people and injuring more than 50 people.  Most of the dead were children. They are known as “soft targets.”  Police are treating the incident as a terrorist attack.

We’ve seen this scenario often enough.  Remember the Bataclan in France?  On Friday 13, November 2015, three heavily armed men got out of a black Volkswagen Polo and entered the concert hall, three hours later, the carnage included 90 dead and many many critically injured among the victims.  In December 2016, a lorry driven by a Tunisian man drove into a crowded Berlin Christmas market killing 12 and leaving 48 injured.  Again, there was sorrow and anger at the senseless killing of so many and again, the country involved had to stand tall and not flinch at the slaughter of so many innocents.  German author, Anne Wizorek, said it best during her speech to the people gathered to pay their respects at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin.  “We need radical solidarity.  We have to stand together and not be torn apart.  We cannot let the hate and the fear have a platform.”

So, here we are again, shocked beyond belief at the senseless and horrific killing of so many, including children.  It should have been a night of fun and unforgettable memories.  Instead, many will carry images of people strewn around like rag dolls and blood  and body parts splattered everywhere.  Furthermore, for the dead the memories have stopped for all eternity.

Evil has a name, it is called terror.  This kind of terror will happen over and over again and stopping it will be like looking for a “needle in a haystack.”  Even if they do find a way to stop it, knowing when and where the next attack will take place will be a guessing game.

That is the scary reality.