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Scared to Live in TnT
Posted: Wednesday, December 28, 2005

by Linda E. Edwards

A Mr. Wilding of England, whose letter was published on Boxing Day, professes that he is scared to live in TnT, where he had hoped to retire with his Trini-born wife. Well, he must be reading the TnT papers with their lurid, full colour, front page headlines. He should read the London Observer too.

I also read the plain black and white text of the Guardian and Observer from London (guardian.co.uk) and I would be scared to live in any big English city too.

First, the train and bus bombings and constant terrorist threats that go back to the 1970's; when on my first visit to London, I had to take my shoes off before crossing the final boarding checkpoint. The terrorists were the IRA in Britian, retaliating for what the British army was doing in Ireland. There were warning signs everywhere about not picking up abandoned packages, and calling in suspicious packages. That state of terror has never really abated. In July, the bombings began again.

Now Britian too, has an increase in racially motivated killings. The Guardian says so in commentary after commentary. Stephen Lawrence was the first, most publicised recent case, but it goes on steadily; An A level student waiting in a bus stop is beaten and stabbed to death by young hoodlums. The racially motivated police do a half-hearted job, and no one is ever convicted of his death, though everyone knows who did it. It is a nightmare for Africans and South Asians.

Pakistanis are beaten to death for being in the company of British girls. A young black is murdered right before the eyes of his white girlfriend. Check for yourselves. Let your readers check for themselves. Four hundred young African boys have disappeared from Greater London in the last year, and that hardly made a headline until the body of one was found floating in the Thames. These are all boys between the ages of five and nine.

On the non-racial front, we had the invasion of a small school and the murder of 21 kindergarteners and teachers. There was the case caught on video, of two boys luring away a three year old from his mother and murdering him. The perps were eleven and twelve I believe? Nothing like that has ever happened in Trinidad and Tobago.

In North America too, the same thing happens. A young Trini woman and her boyfriend, both cops, are murdered by a fellow officer, in Baltimore. A Trini woman in Canada disappears and is found stuffed into her closet at home after her husband commits suicide in a park. Down the street from me, a few years back, a man was murdered after an argument about borrowed clothes. A cop shot another cop in his front yard after an argument over a Super Bowl Game. All the guests were fellow cops. Since when do people go armed to a party? Two Enron executives were murdered last week after returning from a gala party, clad in dressy evening wear (No one yet arrested but gossip says its another love triangle, this time among high flyers).

If Mr. Wilding is looking for a peaceful paradise, he should choose some part of the recently melting polar ice cap, either in the Arctic or in Antartica. No where else is safe from the murderous rages of twenty-first century killings. The rage that was Europe under the Visigoths, the Vikings and the Barbarians has spread to wherever Europe touched, through conquest, colonization, and the spread at sword's point of their brand of Christianity. It has recently been exercerbated by the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy on a global level; and the poor's determination to get even through the same sort of crimes that were committed on them a long time ago.

History is a circle. It does not make for peaceful nights.

An now, the clincher: There is the possibility that since this mail includes the words terrorists and exploitation, your recieving it may put you on the watch list generated by the U.S. president for spying on the e-mail contacts of Americans who send e-mail abroad. You may have already been on that list without your knowing. Another modern crime, that Mr. Wilding should really worry about.



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