In the space of a night we all should have seen coming, Friday 13 November, the world suddenly became a smaller, sadder, and far more hostile environment for all.
A new globalisation is upon us and we would be even more foolish than we pretend we like to be, or as deluded as our benighted Minister of National Security, if we joined him in his vacuous opinion that Isis is no threat to T&T.
One of the many lessons to be learnt from the Paris massacre is that current global intelligence is totally unequipped to deal with the reality of Isis on the ground.
Just as narco and people traffickers have conclusively demonstrated for at least the last 30 years, the state agencies of the developed world are unable to compete financially and technologically with those who have no regard for the sanctity of life.
Battling those whose sole purpose is profit has now become a poor second to the battle against those whose sole object is to destroy the world as we know it and return us to a condition of mediaeval barbarity.
Maybe the goodly minister is unaware of the documentary on social media featuring four Trini jihadists, just the latest in a series of sickening videos in which T&T nationals promote the creed of hatred and destruction. To enumerate that officially at least 89 nationals have so far been documented as active Isis operatives and then to state that returnees from Syria would be allowed re-entry, smacks of a dotishness that is remarkable even by our standards.
The avowed intention of the so-called Caliphate is the destruction of decadent European civilisation. How anyone can now doubt that intention is unfathomable.
There is rejoicing that Paris—“the city of prostitution and obscenity”—which the rest of the world knows as one of the world centres of culture, has been struck by the hand of evil incarnate. As someone pointed out European interests are very much evident here in T&T-in the shape of investors and joint ventures in the energy sector.
Even with our limited memory, we should know that the 1990 attempted coup did not materialise from a vacuum, that T&T nationals have been travelling to Pakistan, Libya, Afghanistan and now Syria for training, indoctrination and jihadism since the 1980s.
Given the general level of incompetence which seems endemic to our state machinery (protective services unable to protect or detect; a judicial system which churns slower than a geriatric morocoy; basic administrative processes which stall indefinitely) there should be real concern right here over the monster which has just bared its fangs and flexed its talons, on the other side of the Atlantic.
Even if Isis had not issued a threat yesterday that after Paris, America could expect another 9/11, we cannot afford any kind of complacency-especially in a country where only recently the designated head of the Secret Service turned out to have less credentials or experience than the actor portraying James Bond in the latest 007 feature.
I am not panic-mongering on a local scale (although sociologists, criminologists and terrorism observers might note strong parallels between the backgrounds of several of the Paris attackers and those of gang members in Central) but merely recognising what has rapidly emerged to be as much of a global issue as is climate control or the refugee crisis.
Some commentators have pointed out that massacres in Pakistan, Lebanon and Afghanistan have not received the media attention that Friday 13th in Paris did. However tactless it might be to mention this while France mourns, there is the moot point that whether we like it or not, we are all now involved in what can only be a final showdown.
Everything is now up for grabs and while politicians and coalitions bluster about procedures, what is painfully obvious is that in little more than a year Isis has covered more ground, killed more people and seized more territory than Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabab and other jihadists over the last 20 years.
They fight literally at the cutting edge, not only of swords but the latest technology; in their attempt to destroy western culture, history and civilisation they appropriate and then pervert the best and worst of what the west has to offer—including arms, people and drug trafficking.
It seems that now Europe at least is waking up to the unlimited potential for devastation Isis poses.
And yet we’re still hearing the tired rhetoric of a previous age. Shortly after the Paris massacre some were advocating that the response should be a continuation of the values of “humanism and tolerance”, which secular and republican France prides itself on. Here in T&T there’s a pastor who believes that “the power of love” can defeat Isis. We need to be as brutal in our thinking as Isis—anything else will be construed as weakness.
Do you welcome the man who comes to behead you, to rape your wife and daughters and then sell them as sex slaves? Time to take in front.