We are pleased to welcome back international journalist Gynne Dyer on Tuesday, February 23 at 2 pm in the Carman Collegiate Community Theatre. Mr. Dyer is presenting to our grade 9 to 12 students on his new book, “Don’t Panic: Islamic State, Terrorism and the Middle East”. If any parents or community members would like to sit in on this presentation, please contact the school at 204 745 2001.Don’t Panic - A Lecture by Gwynne Dyer
Has the dam really burst? Is the reasonably stable world of the past few decades going to be overwhelmed by violence and chaos?
The rapid rise of a terrorist “Islamic Caliphate” in the Middle East seems to mark a break with a past where things like that were simply not allowed to happen. The unbridled cruelty of the ISIS fighters who created the “Islamic State” in parts of Iraq and Syria last year (together with the capture of most of Libya by Islamist militias) suggests that Osama bin Laden’s dream of a Muslim world united under extremist leadership is creeping closer to reality.
That probably won’t happen, although Islamic State, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Boko Haram, al- Shabaab and the rest are revolutionaries with a political programme, not just vicious idiots with guns. Their political programme, for those who do not share their own quite peculiar religious convictions, starts at the implausible and ends up deep into the surreal, but all their actions are calculated to bring the day nearer when that programme will be fulfilled. Bad news for many people in the Middle East if they succeed, but there simply aren’t enough people and resources there to make them a global threat. And terrorism is a minor threat elsewhere, unless the potential victims succumb to panic and start doing stupid things themselves.It’s a couple of months since the Russians began their air-strikes in Syria, and the countries that have already been bombing there for over a year – the United States and some other NATO countries – are working themselves up into a rage about it. But France is a prime target because French aircraft are part of the Western-led coalition bombing Islamic State, and because it’s relatively easy to recruit terrorists from France’s large, impoverished and alienated Muslim minority. Russia has also become a priority target since its aircraft started bombing jihadi troops in Syria.
China, for decades a country dedicated only to growing its economy and expanding its overseas trade, is getting more belligerent abroad as the regime tries to distract public opinion from economic problems at home. It has frequent confrontations with Japan over seabed territorial disputes in the East China Sea, and it is building thinly disguised military bases all over islands and shoals in the South China Sea that are also claimed by South-East Asian countries that are far closer to them. This is a legitimate cause for worry, but it is unlikely to result in a war. Everybody involved is much more interested in trade than in fighting.
There is a sense that the world is drifting out of control, and the level of fear of the future is definitely rising. This lecture is an attempt to assess the real level of risk. It’s not nearly as high as it seems. We’d do better to worry about really serious risks like climate change.
