Those Who Care Prepare And Help In Their Own Security..others Foolishly Live In Denial And Vulnerability…

Back in the 70’s and 80’s when the issue of International terrorism came up it was largely viewed through the prism of hijackings and abductions. In many cases the victims would encounter the nerve racking ordeal of not knowing what their fate would be when hijackers commandeered airplanes and forced pilots to fly to countries friendly to them. Not all hijackings ended without loss of life but many did.

Today ter­ror­ism has tak­en on a much more dead­ly turn.
Generally if you are unlucky to be any­where around the epic cen­ter of a ter­ror attack you are like­ly to be dead or at best seri­ous­ly maimed. Those are the real­i­ties of present day ter­ror­ism. As a con­se­quence those who are tasked with pro­tect­ing the pub­lic must adopt new think­ing as they do their very best to pro­tect the inno­cent from those who would vis­it mas­sive casu­al­ty and death on non-combatants.
Most intel­li­gent pop­u­la­tions across the globe have already come to the real­iza­tion that there is a new normal .
That nor­mal is that the days of open bor­ders, and the sta­tus quo lais­sez-faire which once exist­ed may very well be a thing of the past.

Across the Globe secu­ri­ty experts are scram­bling to get ahead of the game as it relates to ter­ror­ism and in gen­er­al keep­ing pop­u­la­tion cen­ters free from mas­sive ter­ror­ist attacks . Regardless of the progress they make the game has changed when it comes to soft tar­gets. Despite the best efforts of police agen­cies the best they can hope for is to min­i­mize the poten­tial loss of life dur­ing an attack.
Terrorists only have to get it right once,police and intel­li­gence agen­cies have to be right a hun­dred per­cent of the time . On that basis we must rec­og­nize that we prob­a­bly will not be going back to the days when some indi­vid­ual guar­an­tees were in place.

There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus it seem these days that all dis­putes must be set­tled with dead and man­gled corpses lit­ter­ing land­scapes. In this no one has clean hands, what we hear are jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for why peo­ple who kill do so, each believ­ing in the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of their actions.
Whether the killings are done using high tech drones or through crude explo­sive devices the pol­i­tics of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is an age old one which will not be set­tled any­time soon. What emanates from their ash­es are young minds cal­loused and seared in hatred and deter­mi­na­tion to exact death and destruc­tion on those to whom they are opposed.
Whether it be in the slums of Gaza the west bank, or cities across Europe , the man­gled ghost-like ruins of what was once Syria , Libya , or whether it is New York City, Orlando , or the count­less oth­er instances across the globe vio­lence is the way peo­ple iron out their differences.

We can argue all we want that this will not hap­pen where we are, guess what It won’t hap­pen until it actu­al­ly does. Yesterdays attack in Istanbul Turkey hap­pened despite incred­i­ble under­stand­ing and prepa­ra­tion by Turkish offi­cials which includ­ed check­points away from the inside of ter­mi­nal build­ings. Nevertheless the death and destruc­tion was mas­sive. Single shoot­ers with the right kind of weapon­ry and ammu­ni­tion has demon­strat­ed the extent of the death and destruc­tion they can inflict in the week­ly shoot­ings across America the lat­est being the Orlando night club massacre.

With infor­ma­tion eas­i­ly and read­i­ly avail­able across the web peo­ple are able to find com­mon cause with oth­ers across vast expans­es of oceans . They are able to com­mu­ni­cate, share ideas and in the process radicalize.
Mass killings or the quest to engage in killing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble as a polit­i­cal state­ment seem to be on the rise. I do not want to blame any one reli­gious group as some do in the west with­out seek­ing to see things through the prism with which peo­ple in oth­er parts of the world do.

What we can­not ignore are the loom­ing clouds of rad­i­cal Islam and what it means for safe­ty of peo­ple in places once thought of as secure havens . Conversely many in the Middle East argue that they are mere­ly respond­ing to the aggres­sion of west­ern pow­ers and the state of Israel . For many in that part of the world they wit­nessed west­ern and Israeli bombs rain down on their cities and towns dec­i­mat­ing their lives and families.
The debate about that equiv­a­lence is a legit­i­mate one to which con­sen­sus will not come any­time soon.

Back here in the United States many of the young black men who are incar­cer­at­ed align them­selves with Islam . Just yes­ter­day a young man who was recent­ly incar­cer­at­ed revealed to me that in prison align­ing with a cause is a means of sur­vival . He argues some of his con­tem­po­raries do not want to be aligned with the Bloods or the Crips or any of the oth­er crim­i­nal gangs on the inside, so they self iden­ti­fy as Muslims.
Many of the young men of col­or who find them­selves behind bars are from oth­er places includ­ing the Caribbean. After doing their time these men are gen­er­al­ly deport­ed back to their coun­try of ori­gin with a rad­i­cal new world view and anger toward the United States or whichev­er coun­try they got deport­ed from.

In Trinidad there is an active Muslim com­mu­ni­ty , frac­tions of which has­n’t shied away from engag­ing in vio­lence against the state. On the Island of Jamaica there is an ever increas­ing Muslim pop­u­la­tion , parts of which came into exis­tence through depor­ta­tions as I allud­ed to. To date there has not been any real evi­dence that this com­mu­ni­ty has engaged in any acts of ter­ror­ism against the state or any oth­er inter­ests as for that mat­ter . At the same time the Island is present­ly gripped in the ten­ta­cles of an exis­ten­tial fight against home grown crim­i­nals many of whom are using ter­ror­ist meth­ods to make their point.
Incredibly the pop­u­la­tion spends its time and resources tear­ing down the insti­tu­tions which are try­ing their best to pro­vide some sem­blance of security.
Major coun­tries like the United States Britain France and oth­ers has the resources to strength­en secu­ri­ty around their facil­i­ties but what hap­pen to the inno­cent pub­lic with­in poor­er nations in which these assets are stationed?
Many small­er nations through­out Europe and even poor coun­tries across Africa has suf­fered untold loss of life and incred­i­ble dam­age and destruc­tion to their infra­struc­ture as a result of terrorism.
Even with lim­it­ed resources they are being forced to con­tend with the emerg­ing real­i­ties of a chang­ing world. Those coun­tries under­stand that they have to band togeth­er with the agen­cies try­ing to pro­tect them and as some say if you see some­thing say something.

As the stakes becomes high­er those who sur­vive will be those who aid in their own secu­ri­ty. Whether it is a man walk­ing into a bank in Guyana attempt­ing to rob the bank claim­ing ISIL bona fides ‚every instance is a poten­tial wake up call .
As it is on the Serengeti the week who decide to go it alone despite the rel­a­tive secu­ri­ty of the herd will be vic­tim­ized . Whether ter­ror­ism comes through reli­gion or sim­ply because we allow it to hap­pen through home grown punks , ter­ror is ter­ror. Those who would take lives will con­tin­ue to do so unless they are stopped .