All posts tagged: fear

Fear and Joy in Chicago | Fintan O’Toole

Fear and Joy in Chicago | Fintan O’Toole

Published by skeptic

As we stood on the slow line to enter the secure zone around the United Center in Chicago, an angry preacher thrust his sign toward us: “How can ye escape the damnation of Hell?” He probably did not realize how apt this question was. Just a month earlier, before Joe Biden announced that he would not, after all, seek a second term, America was hurtling unstoppably toward the Hell of another Trump presidency, and the Democrats deserved to be damned for their seeming inability to do anything about it. Now, with extraordinary rapidity, impending doom had given way to the ecstasy of release. The whole convention was an answer to the preacher’s question: “here’s how.” All week I kept having the thought that the whole event felt like one of those movies where the wrongly incarcerated prisoner, so long trapped in miserable gloom, emerges blinking into the light, dazzled and amazed. And then, on the last night, the image became real as Al Sharpton brought onstage four members of the Central Park Five, who as …

Ethnic minority shop owners targeted in UK riots fear more attacks | Features

Ethnic minority shop owners targeted in UK riots fear more attacks | Features

Published by Sam

As rioters went on the attack in dozens of British towns and cities recently, some targeted businesses belonging to ethnic minority Britons. The unrest began in the aftermath of a fatal stabbing attack in Southport that killed three young girls, which agitators misleadingly blamed on a Muslim migrant. As disinformation about the suspect travelled at pace online, angry crowds took to the streets to abuse migrants and Muslims at random. Black and Asian Britons were also targeted. On August 3, as many brought chaos to the northern English city of Liverpool, which is near Southport, Ardalan Othman watched in real time as his convenience shop was looted and vandalised. His security cameras filmed the incident. In one scene, a group of men steal boxes of cigarettes. Some take expensive items like vapes. A couple spend their efforts trying to break into the till. But some are seen placing singular bars of chocolate into their rucksacks. “I could see everything as it was happening,” said Othman. He called the police immediately but it was too late. …

‘I fear when we stop, no one will replace us’: Madagascar’s forest guardians – in pictures | Global development

‘I fear when we stop, no one will replace us’: Madagascar’s forest guardians – in pictures | Global development

Published by skeptic

Friends, left to right, Mara Tongamana, 46, Soja Mahafeliky, 38, and Realy Tsitigna, 45, are three of the last four rangers looking after the Enekara forest. They are also apprentice healers, or ombiasy, and use the forest to gather plants, leaves and bark. Among the challenges they face is people coming into the forest to kill owls, snakes and chameleons, which are all associated with black magic in local folklore Source link

Marc Conway risked his life to stop the London Bridge terror attack. Why did he fear being sent to prison for it? | Prisons and probation

Marc Conway risked his life to stop the London Bridge terror attack. Why did he fear being sent to prison for it? | Prisons and probation

Published by skeptic

Marc Conway was regarded as a model IPP prisoner. Perhaps the model IPP prisoner. He received an indeterminate imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence at 30 for armed robbery. Before that, he had committed a long list of crimes including driving without a licence, selling class A drugs and firearm offences. He had spent eight years in jail. Now, here he was, a free man, studying with students from the University of Cambridge, working for the Prison Reform Trust and delivering speeches to the great and the good. The date was 29 November 2019. The occasion was the fifth-anniversary celebration of an educational project in which Cambridge students and prisoners learned together. Conway, who had taken part in the project, had been asked to give a speech at Fishmongers’ Hall, a Grade II* listed building in the City of London. “It was a lovely sunny day. You never get that weather in November in London,” he says. “We had food, we was laughing, we was joking, we was patting each other on the back. I was getting …

Marc Conway risked his life to stop the London Bridge terror attack. Why did he fear being sent to prison for it?

Marc Conway risked his life to stop the London Bridge terror attack. Why did he fear being sent to prison for it?

Published by Sam

Marc Conway was regarded as a model IPP prisoner. Perhaps the model IPP prisoner. He received an indeterminate imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence at 30 for armed robbery. Before that, he had committed a long list of crimes including driving without a licence, selling class A drugs and firearm offences. He had spent eight years in jail. Now, here he was, a free man, studying with students from the University of Cambridge, working for the Prison Reform Trust and delivering speeches to the great and the good. The date was 29 November 2019. The occasion was the fifth-anniversary celebration of an educational project in which Cambridge students and prisoners learned together. Conway, who had taken part in the project, had been asked to give a speech at Fishmongers’ Hall, a Grade II* listed building in the City of London. “It was a lovely sunny day. You never get that weather in November in London,” he says. “We had food, we was laughing, we was joking, we was patting each other on the back. I was getting …

For Muslim student protesters, a sense of purpose mingled with fear

For Muslim student protesters, a sense of purpose mingled with fear

Published by Sam

NEW YORK (RNS) — Fahad Kiani knows he is making history by participating in the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses around the city. Over the past few weeks, Kiani, a graduate of the City University of New York, has demonstrated at his alma mater and at Columbia University. But while the heightened police presence and the 24-hour tent encampments dominate news headlines, Kiani found hope when a fellow protester decided to become Muslim just outside Columbia’s gates one night last week. After reaffirming the young man’s decision, Kiani, 34, found two Muslim witnesses among the protesting crowd and, with bystanders looking on, they together recited the shahada prayer to accept Islam. “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadur rasoolu Allah,” the young man, with a kaffiyeh wrapped around his head, repeated back. Afterward, the two shook hands and embraced.  “It was the best experience of my night,” Kiani, a Pakistani American, said. “That really kind of turned it around from all of the wild hatred I’m seeing around me.” As some campuses around the country enter a …

The Politics of Fear Itself

The Politics of Fear Itself

Published by skeptic

A few months ago, I had an email exchange with a person who works in the right-wing-media world. He said that crime was “surging,” a claim that just happened to advance the Trumpian narrative that America during the Biden presidency is a dystopia. I pointed out that the preliminary data showed a dramatic drop in violent crime last year. (Violent crime spiked in the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, during the coronavirus pandemic, and has declined in each year of Joe Biden’s presidency.) During our back-and-forth, my interlocutor at first denied that crime had dropped. He sent me links showing that crime rates in Washington, D.C., were increasing, as though a national drop in crime couldn’t be accompanied by an increase in individual cities. He insisted the data I cited were false, implying they were the product of the liberal media. “Perception is reality,” he told me. “Nobody is buying the narrative that crime is getting better.” Eventually, after I responded to each of his claims, he reluctantly conceded that crime, rather than surging, …

As Trump seeks US presidency again, Asian-Americans fear another rise in hate crimes

As Trump seeks US presidency again, Asian-Americans fear another rise in hate crimes

Published by Sam

MANY ATTACKS GO UNREPORTED Research by the foundation showed that three out of four of those surveyed in New York changed their behaviour last year, out of fear of being targeted in an anti-Asian attack. Almost half of women respondents avoided taking public transport. The foundation also found that half of the Asian-Americans living in New York City experienced hate crime because of their race or ethnicity in 2023.  These crimes included threats, harassment, verbal abuse or physical attacks, with many incidents going unreported. These hate crimes prompted some in the city’s Chinatown community to install security cameras to ease safety concerns.  Campaigners said official statistics fail to capture the full range of anti-Asian incidents – either because they’re misclassified, or victims don’t come forward. In early 2021, several violent attacks on older Asians rocked the state of California. An 84-year-old Thai man died after being shoved to the ground in San Francisco, while another 91-year-old was assaulted and fell face-first onto a pavement. These unprovoked attacks were caught on video within a span of …

Metal detectors, fear, frustration. College commencements altered amid protests

Metal detectors, fear, frustration. College commencements altered amid protests

Published by skeptic

The chain link fences are up, bag searches in place and metal detectors installed. At many universities across the country, graduation for the Class of 2024 will feel more like making it through airport security than a procession through a free-flowing campus green or a cheering stadium crowd. The drastic changes arrive as universities grapple with pro-Palestinian tent camps — the scenes of recent mass arrests and turmoil — during a volatile time of campus divisions over the Israel-Hamas war. Last week at UCLA a mob attacked an encampment, and violence erupted. The biggest commencement overhaul is at USC, where the 65,000-attendee “main stage” ceremony was canceled after unspecified threats over the selection of a pro-Palestinian valedictorian who critics said was antisemitic. Early Sunday morning, police in riot gear cleared an encampment where protesters were pushing for divestment from Israel. It was set up near the site of where the stage would have been and reemerged after Los Angeles police arrested 93 people there on April 24. A USC graduate walks with her gown while …

I have no children and have started to fear for my legacy. What can I do? | Life and style

I have no children and have started to fear for my legacy. What can I do? | Life and style

Published by skeptic

The question I am a 54-year-old woman with a good career and a stable marriage. I live across the globe from my parents, my siblings and their kids and I am child-free. I have reduced contact with them to brief and polite birthday and Christmas messages, which they respond to, but we have no relationship or ongoing contact as such. It is close to estrangement, and I have no desire to try to repair this. I am child-free because I always feared repeating my family’s parenting style and had no sense of my childhood as a positive experience. I have become preoccupied with the idea of a legacy of a life well lived. I have always placed high value on social contribution and working hard. But, as I increasingly ponder the likelihood of dying alone and without children, I have started to become quite critical about the point of striving in my career, and how and what I should be doing with my time. I feel “being forgotten” is a realistic proposition – and it …