The application of common sense
About this terrorist attack on the market in the centre of Berlin, its aftermath and the bloody end of the Tunisian Anis Amri, widely suspected to have being the main perpetrator, in Milan after a European-wide manhunt – pardon me, but am I missing something?
Let me begin by mentioning a couple of aspects:
Shortly after the outrage took place the German police arrested and held a suspect, only a few hours later firstly, to admit that they weren’t 100% sure that he was the right guy … and then subsequently announce that he was nothing to do with the incident and they had let him go.
It being the height of the festive season, the world’s media immediately went into overdrive.
Generally I have an ambivalent relationship with the concept of 24/7 rolling news stations. On the one hand, when something really momentous is occurring (e.g. 9/11) they represent a wonderful way of ‘watching news as it unfolds’. On the other, and this Berlin market attack is a good example of what I’m talking about, when something big has happened – and yet there are no particular developments for hours (or even days) at a time – they can drive you crazy with their blandness and unwarranted sense of importance and occasion.
Anis Amir
Here’s a ‘for instance’. A studio-based (radio or TV) presenter opens a segment of their programme with a summary of the item, i.e. there has been a suspected terrorist attack in Berlin … that 12 people have died … that someone has been arrested but subsequently released … and that the authorities are looking for a chief suspect who has gone on the run.
They then ‘hand over’ to their relevant foreign correspondent [for this purpose let us call her Jane Doe] who is standing on a pavement at the edge of the aforementioned market in Berlin, with police tape cordoning off the area in the background, who then tells the viewers/listeners … er … that there has been a suspected terrorist attack in Berlin … that 12 people have died … that someone has been arrested but subsequently released … and that the authorities are looking for a chief suspect who has gone on the run.
And this then happens, four time an hour, for the next half-day … or until some new development happens.
In other words, to justify the enormous expense and size of their operation, the 24/7 news channel feels it necessary to get its nearest local correspondent (and/or a camera crew) physically to the ‘scene of the crime’ – (1) to demonstrate that they can; and (2) to give its viewers/listeners the impression that they are being magically transported around the world to wherever matters of great importance are happening.
The point I am making is that 24/7 news operations burble along for days at a time reporting nothing significant at all, albeit in manner that seeks to imply it is the ‘important news of the moment’ even when that patently isn’t the case, until (“Hallelujah!”) something vaguely historic or important does happen, whereupon everyone perks up because at last they’re covering the kind of event they have set out upon this career in this industry and with this employer to work upon.
Why waste the time and effort?! You could just as easily ‘throw’ the item to ‘Jane Doe, Walthamstow’ and be done with it (and save money of course), especially where they’re only required to regurgitate the facts as we already know them every fifteen minutes for hours on the trot.
Next comes the comment, analysis and rhetoric.
Talking heads (expert or not), commentators, pundits, journos of every background and then any old Tom Dick and Harry politician(s) are brought in to give the viewers and listeners the benefit of their opinions on what has happened and every aspect of how and why … and why wasn’t this prevented, what were the underlying causes and (of course) why have the German police not made faster progress in their investigations … and/or was this not all caused by Angela Merkel and her ilk letting all these grubby, unkempt migrants and asylum seekers into the country in the first place?
You know the sort of thing I’m talking about.
Regular Rust readers will recall that on 23rd June I went out on a limb and cast a political vote for the very first (and probably only) time in my life by voting for Brexit. I did so partly out of a wish to experience the novelty of casting a vote at least once in my life, but mainly because I wanted to take the opportunity to put two fingers up to the whole Establishment (and/or political elite) and effectively register a protest vote [“Whatever it is you bastards are for … I’m for exactly the opposite!”]. I didn’t and don’t care whether Brexit may cost me one penny, one hundred pounds, or even one hundred thousand pounds. I just want the UK to be back in control of its own destiny.
Which brings me to my simple and basic point today.
When it comes to the EU and its politicians, its Eurozone, the Schengen Area and all the rest of it, including Angel Merkel’s brave decision (I presume) to ‘set an example’ by welcoming over one million refugees to Germany, and then the position that – if I’ve got this right – that the now dead main suspect Anis Amri had at one point been shadowed for ‘terrorist’ reasons by German counter-terrorism officers for six months but then not deported from Germany because, not having any proper papers (or something like that), in law they couldn’t identify any particular country of origin to send him back to, I’ve got one simple comment to make.
What the hell was the EU doing in the first place allowing anyone to enter if they haven’t got any papers demonstrating where they’ve originated from?
I know I’m ignoring the possibility that refugees by definition seeking a haven from war, famine, terror and/or persecution may have fled without their papers, or lost them, or had them stolen, whatever.
But surely it’s better to have a presumption against – rather than for – letting anyone ‘suspect’ to enter, i.e. without at the very least having established their country of origin (to where they may subsequently be deported if later they are identified as being ‘suspect’)?
I don’t know the numbers, but the actuaries (or whatever they’re called) can surely work them out.
If, for example, the likelihood is that 0.01% of any number of refugees are going to be ‘suspect’, then by letting a million refugees into Germany, you’re deliberately taking the risk that 10,000 of them are going to be potential terrorists. That’s 10,000 people that potentially your security services, police and other authorities are going to have to work like buggery to identify, locate and monitor – at potentially many millions of euros-worth of expense – and that’s without regard to the potential costs in lives, property, economic disruption and aftermath that will come further down the line when those obtain the wherewithal to commit acts of terrorism.
No system is ever going to be perfect, I accept that. But from where I’m sitting prevention is still better than a deliberate policy that is inevitably going to result in risking the lives of your own innocent law-abiding citizens.
That’s all I’m saying (and no, I’m not Nigel Farage writing under a pseudonym).
