Is Ignorance the Root of Today’s Problems?

I’d be lying if I didn’t think our world was crumbling apart. Every morning we wake up to news notifications telling us about a shooting, a stabbing or a suicide bombing. We wake up to diplomats giving their condolences to allies worldwide. We hear and watch the vigils set up by citizens who want to give back to those who have lost their lives and offer support to the families who have to live with the tragedy. Each day we are hearing about the deaths of innocent people who are targeted because of fuelled hatred. We live in a world where hatred is ruling over us and we’re currently letting that get the best of our society.

All these events work in conjunction to polarize the global community. But if we let that divide the world then we limit the extent of knowledge citizens can have about everything and everyone that surrounds them. And without knowledge we are nothing but vulnerable.

In this article I’d like to tackle a few of the concerns that have risen from all these events, which in my opinion are the driving points for polarisation. To a few people this may seem absurd, but I’m only asking for a place to display my thoughts on our world’s biggest misconceptions.

Number 1: Muslims are not terrorists.

Islam is not a religion built around killing others of other religions. I have lived in a Muslim country for half of my life, and being a catholic person, I will reassure you that I have never been treated with disrespect nor have I at any time felt threatened by them.

Islam is not some sort of alien, malicious religion. Muslim individuals are like any other individual- their headscarves do not make them any different than any of us. In fact, we must keep in mind that the mass worshippers of a religion cannot be blamed for the actions of selected individuals, especially individuals that are mentally unstable. Terrorism isn’t a Muslim thing; lunatics are everywhere.

Number 2: Terrorists = Radicalism.

The so called IS (Islamic State) is not a random group of Muslims who have decided to stand up for the entire Muslim community and attack others who they feel threaten their religion. This is a misconception of caused by those who only use the media as a reliable source for personal judgments.

This terrorist group, just like any other, completely twists what a religion is based on. The words by which it guides are changed so that a completely different meaning is conveyed so they can use it as a basis for their malice.

Terrorists are just like any group of bullies we all have come across in school. They pick on a particular point and hold on to it so they can use it against other innocent people, just for personal advancement; in IS’s case, world dominance. But we can never forget that how bullies treat their victims is a production of a twisted, cruel mind.

Number 3: Immigrants are not the cause of your problems.

The majority of migrants want a degree so they are able to find a job, raise money and support their families. They are willing to work hours and hours to get a decent salary just so they have something to repatriate back into their own, poorer home countries. It helps to keep in mind that many of these individuals tend to become highly qualified and dedicated persons. Think of the biggest inventions in the US to the UK: they have come from very talented migrants whose inspiration has stemmed from an urge to succeed, wherever they have been given the opportunity to.

I am a Venezuelan migrant in the UK and the UAE, I have been a migrant in Singapore and I will be that in the Netherlands, all because I strive to be internationally educated so I can have more opportunities. I’d like to clarify that people don’t migrate to developed countries to plot their next attack against Westerners; immigrants are solely looking for a better tomorrow. We all go to educate ourselves in places where we know the education is of better quality, not because we want to take-over schools and destroy the system. This is a massive misconception and a very grand discriminatory perspective of the international community, especially the Muslim community.

And additionally, we must not forget that thanks to these immigrants, developed economies have larger workforces, greater innovation, more productive labor and most importantly, that it opens up the minds of individuals and helps people understand diversity. This last point, is what glues societies all together.

Number 4: #BlackLivesMatter

I am white, but I am Latino. And I’d be ignorant to say Latinos were not largely discriminated against in the US. But the most persistent issue even in the 21^st century, is that black people are seen as a threat and ultimately it’s a truly despicable way of seeing a race. This view has been embedded in the minds of several citizens because racism has been built in the minds of many white individuals. White supremacy, as I always say, has always been around and there is no justification for such perception.

Black people are not any less important than white people, they are as equally smart, valuable and worthy. No, they are not dirty, revengeful people- they are perfectly normal and beautiful just like any other individual in this world. But many seem to be oblivious to that.

The years of oppression were never over, black people have had to abide by the rules of white people so they could live in less fear. Racist view points are still persistent in our societies, the only difference being that people don’t want to be called out on it as they care way too much about their reputations. But the underlying racist thoughts still remain, and until we change those thoughts they will continue to be destructive.

I have made my 4 claims, but now I’d like to convey my own view of the overall picture.

We live in the 21^st century, and those that have been oppressed, be it because of racism, religion, gender, sexual orientation or heritage, are sick of living suppressed lives for all these years. Just like any other person, we all have the right to have our rights respected- and oppressed communities are sick of having theirs taken away.

People need to stop calling others out for speaking their minds, because freedom for an individual stems from having freedom of speech; you wouldn’t like to have your opinion ignored, so why should any other have theirs?  And that I believe is the main issue: as many of us are beginning to partake in protests and become activists about issues that concern us, some individuals respond to it with walls, physically and metaphorically.

The issue with walls is that they don’t solve problems, they only hide them; we cannot expect to go back to an un-globalised world because cultures have mixed, people have travelled and we have opened our minds. Society can’t expect to be better off if we divide; because once we divide we are a less powerful force.

Radicalism only sucks in those who are in vulnerable positions, not those who have a more accepting view of the world’s reality. If we educate people enough about differences in culture, traditions and religions, think of what our world could be instead.

We can say our society is falling apart at the moment, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t change what has occurred or can occur. The world has to unite to fight the larger forces. It is only by uniting that our societies and communities can fight radicalism and groups who are guided by hatred, so that we can live in a world where we don’t feel threatened, but rather accepted.

By Astrid Sofia Flores Maya

An Exclusive Chapter from an aspiring novelist

As the summer gets into full swing and A Level exams are a thing of the past, so begins the detailed planning of a novel idea, that up until now has been drafted in the memo section of an out of date iPod. 18-year-old Jordan Edwards is an aspiring novelist from a small town in North Wales and has begun the next step in deriving a novel from his interests in business and politics. Take a sneak peek at the opening chapter of this corporate thriller and be just as hooked as I was!

CHAPTER I

Had one gentleman not decided to depart one of London’s tallest buildings via the seventy­fourth floor that day, perhaps Arthur Marshall might’ve made it home for dinner. The moment he saw the roadblocks and police barricades surrounding his office’s headquarters, he realised that he wouldn’t stand a chance of arriving for his wife’s homemade stew unless he left his chauffeur­driven Mercedes Benz and opted for the claustrophobic rush hour Jubilee line.

The so­called ‘jumpers’ got on his bloody nerves. How selfish must a man be for their final intention to be for half of the roads in Canary Wharf to be inaccessible? They seemed to be dropping like flies more often now than ever in the business district, sometimes hitting one a fortnight and always causing a headache for everyone within a square mile.

What’s worse, despite his constant questions and pressuring for answers from the police barricading the roads, Arthur had never been given a single notion as to who jumps from these windows, from which buildings, or how long it would take for them to clear the mess left behind. For a man as nosey as he was, this was torture in its own right. Of course he refrained from calling himself that, and preferred to use the word ‘interested’. ‘It’s just a matter of personal interest!’ he would insist to whichever officer was present to block the roads that day, only to be turned away, forcing him to grumpily waddle back to his car.

The whole ordeal had left him rather miserable, hunched over grumpily in his Armani suit as the tube dragged through London Bridge station, a distant three stops from where he would then have to change to the District line at Westminster. His face, stretched out long by the angled window opposite him, surprised him; it made him look even more miserable than he felt. The tube made him feel sick.

Arthur watched impatiently as the carriage sluggishly rolled through Southwark and Waterloo before finally halting in Westminster, where he would rejoin what looked and felt like hundreds of cattle attempting to clamber onto the same escalator. It seems that the traditional appearance of commuters on the tube should look similar to that of one of the most despondent groups of people on the planet, and yet even amongst this motley crew Arthur seemed to be trumping the competition.

The misery would only continue as Arthur hopped onto the District line for the final leg of the journey. Well, not necessarily hopped. Squeezed, perhaps, pushing his way onto a carriage with limited open space between other sombre passengers clutching the moist poles for dear life such that they did not fall into anyone else as the train jolted from the station and jaunted towards St James’s Park.

There were dozens of newspapers scattered across the carriage, some tattered, a clear sign of being read by passenger after passenger as they boarded the train, browsed quickly, and left the paper as they had found it on the dusty seats of the carriages before leaving the train. Others were newer, freshly bought from the shops and smelling strongly of the presses they’d left merely hours beforehand. What was common throughout the front pages, however, was the fact that a rather large mugshot of Arthur’s face accompanied by columns about his company, Arbicon, seemed to dominate the first few pages of most of these national publications.

It was for this reason that Arthur was grateful for the rush hour traffic of bodies to keep him hidden. At that moment in time, his face was perhaps one of the most acknowledgable in the country. On this tube carriage, it was buried deep between the shoulders of three other passengers, eyes focused on the floor such that Arthur took on the figure of a low­headed businessman having a tough day. The last thing he wanted was to be recognised.

The train screeched to a halt at Victoria. Almost immediately as the carriages had stopped shifting and shunting, the door flew agape and a flurry of passengers appeared to fly from the carriage and onto the platform. The bodies knocked past Arthur in quick succession and suddenly he was exposed. No longer were three shoulders around him to protect his face from the eyes of other passengers. Bugger, Arthur muttered. It had been years since he had had to ride the tube, and in that time he had completely forgotten that the train almost always empties at Victoria station. Despite the fact that everybody looks as though their heads are down looking at their phones and newspapers and shoes, all riders of the tube are constantly secretly watching each other, and even the tiniest of movements can often be noticed by everyone on the carriage. It could take mere seconds for him to be recognised if he stayed up here holding this pole. In fact, he had noticed a seated passenger wearing a press pass as he had boarded the train, and God knows that was the last kind of thing he wanted to deal with right now. Without tilting his head too high above his shoulder, Arthur gave the carriage a quick scan, covering as much of his face as possible with his fist as though to mimic a cough.

That was the moment he saw his opportunity. An empty spot had just opened up on a chair just a couple of metres away from him. Without thought, he leapt for it. He would be able to rest his legs and cover his face when sat down, which was a double win from his perspective.

Unbeknowingly to him, he was seemingly racing a woman perhaps forty years his senior to this Priority Seat designated specifically for the elderly and disabled, and he had arrived there more quickly not only because he was slim and athletic, but also because she was shuffling across the carriage excruciatingly slowly and relying on a walking stick for balance. The moment his behind graced the grubby purple cover of the seat was when he detected her approach. It was also the moment his expression blushed a deep shade of crimson. Several other passengers were regarding him strangely, and with a brief and particularly embarrassing ‘Sorry’ he was stood gripping the moist poles once again.

Suddenly the press pass reporter was advancing towards him with an outstretched hand. “You’re Arthur Marshall,” the reporter gasped incredulously.

“Last time I checked,” Arthur joked, without laughing.

“Alan Godfrey,” he announced, shaking Arthur’s hand rather too violently. “The press conference, I was there with the Huffington Post. You did such an excellent job­”

“­I was simply doing my job,” Arthur interrupted. The reporter stopped for a moment, analysing Arthur from head to toe, looking for a cuff out of place on his suit or a nose hair protruding from his nostril. These reporters were always looking for imperfections.

“Well if I may say so, I thought you were very brave. Ridding of the tyranny in the company, giving it a fresh new start. I do look forward to seeing those horrid factories torn to the ground.”

So vocal yet so thoughtless, Arthur thought to himself. “If I may remind you, those factories were my father’s idea.”

“Apologies, sir, I do forget. My condolences for his death.” Arthur felt the floor stop moving beneath his feet. He had lunged from the train sooner than the reporter could utter another meaningless syllable. Sloane Square station. A single stop from where he longed to be. Even so, hailing a taxi would be a world better than remaining on that train. He had heard so many condolences in the past couple of weeks he was beginning to feel like a funeral director. He rushed into the pouring rain without an umbrella and waited in the puddles for a taxi to arrive. Getting wet did not faze him, he just wanted to be home.

It was only when Arthur arrived home, not to the smell of fresh home­baked stew but to his wife leaning forward on the edge of the sofa, her palms cradling her shaking head ­ that he realised something was wrong. Not immediately panicked, he meandered over to her calmly, first placing his umbrella into the bucket by the door and hanging his coat neatly upon its hook. The children were always playing truant and worrying his wife, and her friends were constantly remarking about her behind her back. I wonder what’s got on her back today , he thought.

Although, something seemed different today. Not only was Aleksei Novakov, his personal bodyguard, regarding him worryingly, but the way his wife almost refused to gaze upon Arthur rather than leap up to him for his support was peculiar. He wondered whether she might’ve found out about him and Nikita, and suddenly he was nervous.

Yet as he approached, it was not upset that Arthur saw behind her dewy hazel eyes. It was fear. A fear which made her pupils dilate the moment she saw her husband coming towards her. She gestured towards the television, where a breaking headline story displayed the story of a man who, just hours ago, had leapt from the seventy­fourth floor of one of London’s tallest buildings. Arthur recalled the barricaded roads and no entry signs which had forced him to endure such a gruelling journey on the tube.

“Selfish bastard,” Arthur noted. “What of it?” he shrugged towards his wife, who pulled herself away from him as though he was going to destroy everything within his reach. Arthur, in no mood for playing games, placed his cool hand gently upon the area between her neck and breast, pressing upon the sweating diamonds of her necklace. “Tell me.”

“The suicide,” she gasped, without saliva to moisture her throat. “It’s Perry Hart.” A heavy look of defeat immediately broke upon Arthur’s face as he turned backwards towards the television to see Perry Hart’s face appear. The picture they’d chosen was staring blankly at Arthur from the screen as though mocking him. A single word dominated his thoughts like a childhood memory he just couldn’t be rid of;

Shit.

Feature: A Patriot’s view of Brexit

The night before Britain headed to the polls in potentially the most infamous referendum of our time, I tweeted an aggressively pro-remain message to the world which gained over 10,000 interactions. The popularity of such a tweet left me bubbling with confidence; not only had I achieved Twitter-famous status for a couple of hours, but the countless retweets and likes left me thinking that there were thousands of others who shared a similar opinion.

Even despite my best efforts to avoid the news on Friday 24th June such that it would not distract me from my Further Maths exam that same morning, I was awoken by the legendary BBC News headline chime resonating from my phone, explaining that the British people had decided by the thinnest of margins that the country would be better off outside of the European Union. I’ll skip the jibber-jabber; I was angry, and the adverse economic effects of Brexit immediately came into light. But I am not here to repeat stone-cold facts, nor am I here to express my disappointment.  I am simply here to explain my top three most important things to note in light of the biggest decision of our generation.

The media must stop throwing all pro-Brexit supporters under the same bus. After the vote concluded, most of the pro-remain crowd resorted to blaming the disillusioned elderly, claiming that it was their ‘old-fashioned’, xenophobic views which led them to vote to, as Floundering Farage or Jocular Johnson would say, ‘take our country back’, a phrase frighteningly easy to confuse with the baffoon across the pond’s slogan, ‘make America great again’. While it may be true that number of Brexiteers increased as the age increased, it is important not to label them all under the same umbrella.

Wales, for example, is an example of a country which decided as a whole that Brexit was the best option; and while it may be true that many voted out of fear of immigrants and the rise in Islamic terrorism, entirely ignoring the advice of security chiefs of GCHQ, MI6 and MI5, there remained many Welsh men and women who placed their vote to leave simply as a protest against the higher powers in Westminster and Brussels pretending to allow the Welsh Government freedom yet seemingly overshadowing them and dictating their every move. Despite the country receiving such a heavy amount of EU funding, there were still those, especially on the farms and in the countryside, who believed that they had never seen a single penny of this ‘beneficial’ EU funding, despite being members of the taxpaying crowdfunding the money our Government sends over to Brussels.

Furthermore, the elderly are more aware of life before the EU in the United Kingdom, and it is probably safe to say that entering the EU in the first place was not a particularly wise decision for the country, given that I am yet to speak to anyone who believes that this is the case. For those who can remember the country beforehand, a country they thought was ‘better’, ‘stronger’ and more ‘independent’, it seems obvious that the choice would be to get the hell out of the EU and return to the ‘independent’ nation we used to be. Perhaps this was a very gullible approach to take given how much the economic climate of the world has changed since we joined, but nevertheless, it goes to show that while the vast majority of Brexiteers voted out of fear of the people who may be coming into the country, it is unfair to drag others of different opinions under the same ‘xenophobe’ label. In fact, as a whole, I believe that Brexit has shown how much fear is harvested in the British people. Be it for political, personal or logical reasons, the number of people voting to leave the EU just came to show how unhappy the British people are with the current system.

Secondly, as the vote crept closer and closer, the arguments being made on either side of the public became more and more about immigrants and terrorism and open borders etc. rather than focusing on the effects which I believe are actually relevant; trade, the economy and funding for new projects and buildings in the country. Whilst the free trade movement does involve free movement of EU residents into the country, I personally feel as though the EU argument should always have been based on the economy and trade. Despite its occasionally ludicrous laws and sanctions, the free trade movement has evolved into being one of the most vital components of business in our country, and to see it cease would, in my opinion, cause a great deal of hassle for businesses who use it frequently and put a strain on those who have been using the movement to import and export products, who will, if we do eventually trigger Article 50, have to deal with much more paperwork and fees with which they are not accustomed to dealing with.

Moreover, for those wishing to have rid of the free trade movement because of the free movement of workers involved, if the UK is to continue being a strong economic power then a future deal with the countries of the EU and maybe even the EU itself will have to be struck regardless, which heavily implies that the free movement of workers will have to be negotiated in the future either way. In my humble opinion, it seems unintelligible to think that the UK could possess the power to pick and choose what they want and don’t want from trade deals, and even more unintelligible to think that we will be able to negotiate future trade deals with the EU without giving any leeway for the movement of its workers into the country. Thus, my second note on so-called Brexit would be a resolution that must be made for the future; let’s focus on the economy from now on rather than continuing the argument over immigration, an issue which from my perspective is completely negligible.

Speaking of ‘if we do eventually trigger Article 50’, my third note is that despite the fact that the referendum is now over a month gone, I wouldn’t expect to hear the conversations about it faltering any time soon. Considering the fact that as of yet we have managed to change Prime Minister without negotiating a date for triggering the Article, it seems uncertain if and when Brexit talks will go ahead, even with Theresa May insisting that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Moreover, with parliament holding a debate on 5th September to discuss the possibility of a second referendum supported by over four million petition-signers, only God knows when on earth the whole ordeal will come to an end. Certainly not soon, by any means. The ‘two years’ between triggering Article 50 and actually leaving the EU that vote remain supporters used to calm themselves down after the votes were counted hasn’t even begun yet, and with Theresa May looking determined to get her role in Office off to a superb start, who knows when she will even consider running the risk of finally triggering Article 50.

This is not the end, and with Brexit leading to the most right-wing cabinet of my time being put in charge of the country I adore so much, I can see signs of a changing Britain over the horizon. A fearful Britain scared of interacting with the rest of the world whose largest companies are considering emptying their headquarters and shifting them over to some other country who may not gamble with their profits so much. In such a time of personal faith loss in the people I have come to call my own, I can only remain optimistic and hope for a better future. By the words of the old man Churchill; “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

By Jordan Edwards