Next Monday marks the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack and the beginning of the 'War On Terror.' In that time, many of us have made fun of the 'alert but not alarmed' catchcry.
All the while, we have progressively lost a sense of purposeful alarm, which is the necessary wake-up call we need when a situation goes beyond the pale, and action is required. Our capacity to respond to alarm is diminished by the media's manufacturing of monsters, in order to sell papers and compete for ratings and website hits. Last week, acquitted terror suspect 'Jihad' Jack Thomas was recalled from holidays in Gippsland to have a control order placed on him. At the weekend, sex offender turned model parolee John Lewthwaite was put back behind bars in response to the media-induced outcry after police spotted him exposing himself to a consenting adult in the dunes at Cronulla Beach.
The hysteria created by this style of reporting of such events diverts our hearts and minds from more legitimate sources of alarm. The Dili jailbreak has created conditions for a return to the violence we saw earlier this year in East Timor. In North Darfur, the security situation has taken a major turn for the worse, with a massive build-up of troops and military hardware. In Sri Lanka, there have been massacres every few days, almost all of them unreported in our media. The Catholic Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Jaffna lists scores of violent events that took place in August, such as the Allaipitty massacre in which 20 people were killed in an attack on a church. 91 were injured, including seven babies, 20 children, 18 men and 28 women.
In this issue of Eureka Street, we sound the alarm where it is required. In the week of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, the legitimately alarmist film on Al Gore's climate change crusade, we look at the implications for the elderly and the most vulnerable. The bottom line, as Kate Mannix puts it, is that their bodies will cook if we don't do anything about it.
Suzanna Koster, a correspondent based in Pakistan, looks at the ongoing battle between the desire for democracy and the dangers of allowing militias and al-Qaeda-associated groups too much freedom. This is not a battle easily won, nor one in which either side is without fault. Similarly, Kaylea Fearn writes on