Disaster Strikes Again

Image by The Bay Area’s News Station

This week has been ridden with disasters and terrorism - the Boston explosions and today's gunfight, the explosion at the Texas fertiliser plant, the ricin-laced letters sent to a US senator and Barack Obama, and the earthquake in Iran. Unfortunately, they are the harsh reminders of what a fearsome world we live in. We should not be subject to such worries yet, on a daily basis, many are; anti-terrorism legislation, constant presence of surveillance devices and security announcements on public transport serve to remind us.

This week’s Boston bombings are a horrible event for the hundreds of thousands citizens to endure. Twice this week, ordinary people have been warned to not leave their homes and been left stranded with a continual threat of death, disaster and destruction to their relatively peaceful lives. Causes for celebration became crime scenes and, as is far too common in the United States, a place where people go to learn, became a place where people should avoid for their own safety. It is not a situation that anybody should have to experience.

Hence, it is ludicrous that people should use such time to promote their political message. As support and solidarity was expressed from people across the world, others took the opportunity to attack the media for their coverage of the events in contrast to the coverage of other equally-important events. On Twitter, there were messages along the lines of “the media are forgetting that people die in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria everyday”. But this is a sad argument. Yes, it is true that people do die in these sorry situations, but there is no reason to devalue the deaths and injuries of those affected in other crises. 

Perspective: 3 killed in Boston but in Iraq last month, 271 people were killed in similar attacks m.aljazeera.com/story/20134156…
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 18, 2013

Indeed, media coverage of events in war-struck zones is not as high as it should be and there are areas of the world that the media do prioritise over others. This is wrong and this is unfair, but the death of anyone is a highly important event. It is important to provide coverage to any distressing events, but to capitalise on the coverage of one act of terrorism to protest the lack of coverage of another is disrespectful.

Yes, media coverage of deaths in conflicts (Syria, Iraq) is disgracefully poor. But doesn't lessen the tragedy for injured/dead in Boston.
— Eytan Halon (@eytanhalon) April 15, 2013

The world is a truly dangerous place in which to live. Damage is done to individuals and their environment almost constantly, and the right coverage is never given, and equal coverage will never be possible. We are experiencing a period of complete upheaval of our beliefs and faiths and this is not something that should be ignored. We should not tolerate any threat to life, but to use one horrific event to protest about another is simply petty. Save it for another day.

“The Sworn Enemy”

 Image by Parker Knight 

Tell me, when I ask you to think of two nations of the world who are notoriously known for their enmity, what names come to your mind? Israel and Palestine? USA and Russia? USA and North Korea? It is the latter that has come particularly into the limelight most recently yet it is quite a strange situation. If we consider them to be archenemies, it is questionable as to how their long-term hostility has not resisted a manifestation into direct conflict. So, what is it that’s stopped a usually arms-friendly nation from sending their warships over and demolishing the republic?

Their history spans a relatively long period in the timeframe of American history with relations being negative from as early as the mid-nineteenth century, before the nation split into the North and South regions, when the region closed its borders to Western trade and attacked ships sent to negotiate treaties. These relations worsened during the Cold and Korean wars and on creation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the United States refused to and continue to refuse to grant diplomatic recognition to the country.

As we look over the last century, we can see the US comfortably waging war in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and, most recently, intervening in Libya. It would appear that wherever the US saw a threat, they would pre-emptively act on it and reduce the threat considerably. It is debatable, but perhaps they have stopped short of colonisation and imperialism whilst “democratising” and “stabilising” their battlegrounds. If they’re not waging a war physically, it’s almost certainly some form of psychological and propaganda warfare and a constant assertion of US dominance and power throughout the world – even if they wanted to, no country is left believing the US weak, including the UK. However, it appears the same cannot be said of North Korea.

Recent tests of satellites, long-range missiles and nuclear weaponry in the North Korean region has heightened tensions across the world. Yet, in vast contrast to the US intervention in Afghanistan which was just under a month after the 9/11 attacks, any direct action from the United States is restrained. Perhaps it is the worry of response from the allies, China and Russia in particular. Yet, this is unconvincing; the lack of support from allies did not stop them in their advancement into Iraq in 2003. Perhaps they have learned their lesson from the global criticism of this attack, and this is the reason they have also not intervened to stabilise Syria.

Yet, when Kim Jong-Un is blatantly threatening the United States with technology that could be used against Hawaii immediately, and an invasion that the American people are more likely to approve of than Iraq, it is bizarre that the US administration are able to hold so much restraint on their actions; it is not something they are so well known for. Perhaps we are seeing a change in attitude under Obama, even though his own home turf is supposedly directly at threat, with the whole Western coast in sights within three years.

Is this a continuation of the cold war that emerged between the United States and Korea in the mid-twentieth century, or is this a new cold war? Whatever it is, it is definitely a case of both countries preparing to flex their muscles and show off about their fabulous warheads that they could launch at any time, and maybe something we should be worrying about. Perhaps we’ve already responded with a secret deployment of troops in the South region who should be worried about their “final destruction”.

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