Last Monday night, a suspected terrorist drove a black 40-foot container truck into a Christmas market in busy Kurfurstendamm in central Berlin, killing at least nine and causing severe injuries to some 50 others as of the time of this writing.
An American tourist, one of the horrified many who were spared from the carnage, was shaking in fear when she told a news reporter that “she went to Berlin instead of Paris, because I thought it is safer here.”
The whole world recalls that a similar terrorist incident happened at the Boulevard des Anglais in Nice, killing even more tourists and residents gathered for a holiday fireworks show.
What happened in Berlin the other night was a repeat of the modus operandi employed by terrorist cells now spreading mayhem wherever and whenever.
What is the whole world coming to?
In the Turkish capital of Ankara on the same day, a young policeman assassinated Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in front of a shocked audience of diplomats and culturatti attending a photo exhibit.
Shouting the usual “Allahu akbar!” after the kill, the young policeman then fired more shots into the air and smashed the photos in the exhibit, claiming that he did what he had just done because of what Russia was doing in Syria.
And to think that just last December 10, 44 people were killed in bombings in the financial and tourist capital of Istanbul.
What is the whole world coming to?
The American in Berlin probably remembers the simultaneous bombings at the Theatre Bataclan in the 16th arrondissement, at a St. Denis stadium, and a café in Paris in 2015. And before that, the massacre of journalists by terrorists shouting “Allahu Akbar” at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. And of course, the carnage in beautiful Nice by the Riviera.
The world has never been the same since terrorism reared its ugly head, punctuated by the Nine-Eleven terror in New York’s World Trade Center and in Pennsylvania in September of 2001.
Writing for another paper in the aftermath of the horror that enveloped the heart of every citizen of the world, I recalled to mind a favorite Burt Bacharach song entitled “The Windows of the World,” where the melancholy refrain was “What is the whole world coming to?”
Terrorism is not alien to us in these islands either. There have been a spate of bombings related to terroristic activities here as well. The December 30, 2000 bombings in the LRT station at Caloocan, along with several other sites in Metro Manila. Those were the days preceding Edsa Dos.
The Valentine’s Day bombing of a bus in Edsa upon Makati, during the term of Erap’s successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Police findings later established that the two bombing incidents were perpetrated by cells of a similar terrorist group.
Most recently, the Davao City bombing incident while the President himself was in his beloved city, arriving at the bloody scene just a scant hour later.
In Aleppo, a five-year civil war that has killed a hundred thousand Syrians and deprived hundreds of thousands more of their homes, displaced into a forced diaspora in Europe and elsewhere, ended in the most brutal and senseless manner. Bashar al-Assad remains in power, but at what tragic cost? And will the conflict of power really end in Aleppo?
What people the world over cheered as the Arab Spring, from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya has degenerated into more human tragedy, more internal conflict, and more unrest and instability in the Middle East.
And then comes Donald Trump, soon to be president of the US of A, whose pronouncements have began to discombobulate leaders in capitals as diverse as Beijing, Tokyo, Taipei, Mexico, Ottawa and Europe as well.
In a luncheon meeting with the minister of a foreign government last week, he said, not without a sad tonality, “the world has become too unpredictable.”
And all we had been discussing before that was Donald Trump.
Terrorism will take its toll on economies all over the world. See how nervous capital suddenly took a dive in the stock market indices in almost all capitals right after the Berlin terror incident and the Russian ambassador’s assassination, by an officer of the law at that.
Note how tourism and travel will be affected.
On a medium and even long-term basis, how the international economic order will retreat into insular mode, affecting trade and investments all over.
What indeed, is the whole world coming to?
***
With a bit of irony, although purely coincidental, Senadora Leila was in Berlin at the time the Kurfurstendamm violence took place.
Speaking before a Conference on Cultural Diplomacy in Germany’s capital, she most undiplomatically damned the government of Rodrigo Duterte for human rights violations.
Of course it is called washing the nation’s dirty linen internationally, but then again, what could one expect from the embattled senadora?
I really am beginning to believe the story on my mind that I wrote about last Monday. Will she opt for asylum and is she laying the predicate for such?
***
Let me greet our readers, and our editors and Manila Standard’s officers and staff as well, wishing upon all the brightest cheer of the holidays and the best of health and luck in the coming year!
