I had a wild west moment in Egypt in '92. I was backpacking around while taking a break from working in Israel and the first Muhajeed's from Afghanistan had returned home filled with zeal for re-spreading the word of the prophet and killing as many unbelievers as they could. A few tourist buses got shot up and the Temple of Hatshepsut was the scene of a massacre. A cafe I frequented in Tahrir square was blown up a week after I had moved down the Nile to Luxor. But I didn't know about it until after I had left the country and read about it in a western newspaper.
It was all a bit worrying but somehow didn't spoil my stay, I travelled on local buses and stayed in cheap pensions so I felt fairly immune and didn't feel like a target. Until one day in Cairo. I was walking around trying to find the City of the Dead, a place where families own a patch of lad and live on the tombs of their ancestors. It's supposed to be worth a visit but we couldn't find it because of a curious custom the Egyptians have: If they don't know an answer to a question they lie so as not to look stupid in front of foreigners! If I'd known that I would have bought a map and we got hopelessly lost because of it. In fact we got inadvertently directed into a bad part of the city. It was like that scene in the western where trouble comes to town and shopkeepers pull down their shutters and women run out of buildings to scoop up young children and take them inside. Within a minute of me and this English girl's arrival the only people on the street were us and a few very sinister and dangerous looking arab guys. We crossed the street with them trying to head us off and force us down an alley when a taxi pulled up and we leapt in and made our escape. Which was a relief, until we got back to our hotel and found out that because we didn't haggle the price he was honestly expecting us to pay the bill on the meter which was in piastres (cents) but he was insisting was in dollars, and the police were called when we refused and much arguing ensued until a compromise was reached. But it was a small price to pay compared to not being beheaded I guess. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : This is going to sound like one of those Barry non-sequitur cafe raps, and to some extent it is. I finally have enough spare time in my schedule to start a book and have hopes of being able to finish reading, so I've belatedly started reading Bruce Cockburn's autobiography, "Rumours Of Glory." And it's been great, filling in the blanks in many songs I know by heart, and supplying the background stories that led to the writing of many of them. Many of those stories involve travel, and so far I've read a number of Bruce's memories of traveling to war zones. THAT is the part of this rambling rap that isn't a non-sequitur. Your description of the Menezes incident reminded me of what it's like to be in a war zone, or a place that a certain number of people have come to believe is a war zone. I've been in a few war zones myself. Not as a willing combatant, just a bystander, but I had enough experiences of such places to realize how easily I could have become a dead bystander, collateral damage in a conflict I barely knew was going on. Anyway, I *remember* what it's like when the fear of terrorism takes hold, and you have to live in an environment in which your chances of terrorism become larger than nil. I saw it in Morocco and in Algeria and to a lesser degree in Paris during the OAS post-Algerian conflict years. Bruce wrote in his book about being in Paris the same time I was, and feeling the OAS-inspired paranoia and seeing the reaction on the part of the police. His description made me remember how icky that was. Americans have less risk of being killed by a terrorist than they do being poisoned by a tainted bag of Doritos they bought at the corner market, but they sometimes act as if they were living in Casablanca or Algiers or Oran or Paris and had actually *seen* terrorism happen. I have, and it's pretty icky. You start picking your cafes so that you're not sitting in one on a major street that a truck could drive by on and thus do a drive-by. The closest most Americans have ever gotten to a terrorist attack is to watch one on their TVs -- either on the news or in the terrorporn TV series like "24" that networks started churning out to pander to their fear. But they're still afraid, and so afraid that they literally don't care if the collateral damage from police is ten times higher than the collateral damage from terrorism. One of the reasons I'm not tempted to go back to the U.S. any more than I absolutely have to is that it feels icky walking around cities there. It's that same unmistakable "living in a war zone" ickiness that I felt in Casablanca and Algiers and Oran. I feel exposed and constantly in danger while walking around in U.S. cities. But interestingly it's not the criminals I'm afraid of. It's the cops. From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> It is rather rare thank god. They are usually called out to deal with armed criminals on their way to a job or people committing suicide by attacking the police with what looks like a gun (surprisingly true). But basically it's quite peaceful. The only shocker I remember was the Brazilian guy, Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot in error by anti-terrorist police on a tube train. They had been watching the house of a suspected Islamic terrorist but the officer on duty got out of the car to take a leak, and when he got back saw that a man was walking away. He didn't see what door Menezes had come out of and assumed he was the suspect. He was followed to a nearby tube station where it was decided to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Nasty business, especially as they lied that he had run when challenged and jumped over the ticket barrier - he hadn't - he was just sitting on a train minding his own business and he got 8 bullets in the head. He wasn't even wearing a coat that would cover a suicide bomb. I think they've changed the way they decide who to shoot so it's very unlikely to happen again, so you can come over for a holiday without too many worries. Don't sit on the top deck of the bus though, it's much more dangerous: Bus roof torn off after hitting tree http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31097083 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31097083 Bus roof torn off after hitting tree http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31097083 The roof of a bus is ripped off after it hits overhanging trees in central London. View on www.bbc.co.uk http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31097083 Preview by Yahoo ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : I saw this article drift past on some forum not long ago, and at first assumed it was fiction. Since then I have learned that PRI.org is a non-profit news organization, but not one known for fiction, so there is a possibility that the 2013 statistic cited in the article is true. A Wikipedia page on the subject (which excludes stats from Northern Ireland) lists only 23 people killed by police firearms since 1980, none in 2013. This is how many times British cops fired guns all of last year: 3 http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-18/how-many-times-british-cops-fired-guns-all-last-year-3 http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-18/how-many-times-british-cops-fired-guns-all-last-year-3 This is how many times British cops fired guns all of la... http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-18/how-many-times-british-cops-fired-guns-all-last-year-3 As the debate over gun control — and, now, the use of force by police — rages in the US and elsewhere, Britain offers a stark contrast. Police there rarely carry gu... View on www.pri.org http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-18/how-many-times-british-cops-fired-guns-all-last-year-3 Preview by Yahoo From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2015 1:18 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why European tourists you meet in America are so polite Is the NRA a terrorist organisation? I'm trying to imagine what would happen if a couple of Floridians moved to my street and tried to set up a shooting range in their front garden. I'd give it ten minutes before there were armed police units surrounding the entire area and everyone concerned was dragged off to jail and their kids put into foster care. The whole thing would be filmed by helicopter by every news channel we have and I'm sure a few American ones would turn up to laugh at the fuss we make about nothing. We seem to take child safety a bit more seriously here for some reason. Probably because the school shootings we've had actually motivated people to do something rather than leading to calls for everyone of the age of two to be armed at all times. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : They've read articles like this, and assume that everyone they meet is both insane and armed. The Front Yard "Gun Range" Just Feet From My Neighbor's Kids' Bedroom Window UPDATE http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361295/-The-Front-Yard-Gun-Range-Just-Feet-From-My-Neighbors-Kids-Bedroom-Window?detail=facebook http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361295/-The-Front-Yard-Gun-Range-Just-Feet-From-My-Neighbors-Kids-Bedroom-Window?detail=facebook The Front Yard "Gun Range" Just Feet From My Neighbor'... http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361295/-The-Front-Yard-Gun-Range-Just-Feet-From-My-Neighbors-Kids-Bedroom-Window?detail=facebook My son is 9. His best friend is 10 and that little boy has a 7 year old little sister. My son loves playing at their house. These are no computer game kids. They ha... View on www.dailykos.com http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361295/-The-Front-Yard-Gun-Range-Just-Feet-From-My-Neighbors-Kids-Bedroom-Window?detail=facebook Preview by Yahoo
