By Bernie Bell. Image credit John Hain.
A friend posted a short video of a Russian kamikaze drone chasing a man selling vegetables by the side of a road in The Ukraine, before blowing up. Thankfully the man survived.
This led to the following exchange
Me
“Something that particularly disturbs me about this is …there’s someone somewhere, controlling that drone. Sitting in a room, nice and safe, not engaging at all with their ‘target’. Is it some kind of game to them?”
B
“Well they are engaging with their target, and yes, I think it is some kind of game. We’ve seen the same kind of thing elsewhere. When shootings were at their height in the early weeks of Israel’s most recent invasion of Gaza, medics and field hospitals in Palestine were reporting clear patterns of shooting injuries. One day it would be mostly men, another day mostly women another day mostly teenagers etc. More horrible still, sniper wounds would be to different parts of the body, and these also changed day by day – head, right arm, left arm, genitals et cetera It was like the snipers/shooters were competing with each other and setting different daily challenges to keep themselves interested… and amused.”
Me
“By ‘engaging with’ I meant connecting with….feeling for as a fellow being.
I’ve Just remembered a scene in a film set in a German Concentration camp, probably ‘Schindler’s List’, where a Nazi stands on a balcony casually picking-off people walking across the yard, randomly.
And in ‘Apocalypse Now’ where the American helicopter pilots play ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ as they bomb in a nice neat pattern.
I know – these are scenes in films but, I think, based on real incidents.
What is it with us humans?”
I’m presently dipping into a book entitled…..’Kilmactigue Parish: History & Memories’ – Kilmactigue being my parent’s home parish in Ireland. There’s an extract from the memoirs of the late Jim Fleming of Curraghboy, County Sligo, telling of when the Black & Tans were in the area
“During the War of Independence there were lots of shooting and that was when the Black and Tans arrived. They used to go around in lorries, we were scared of them. They wore black trench khaki pants with a loose fitting cap with a tassel hanging down at the side.
They were a tough crowd, when we’d hear the lorries coming we’d take to the fields and get to cover as you could be taken on the lorry. We heard stories of people been taken on the lorries, they would be brought a few miles then told to get down and run then shot, they said they were shot trying to escape and there was no more about it.
I remember there was lorries burned at Dawros, they came from Tubbercurry, they picked up every man in the locality and threatened to shoot them. It was spring and we were cutting turf, they came every day went up on the sand hill and fired shots in every direction. When we heard them coming we got out of sight by hiding in a hollow because if any of us were shot there would be nothing done about it as they were the law.”
‘As they were the law’.
The question I ask is…what is it in a person that means that they want to do that – hunt a fellow human being?
Maybe I should explain the Black & Tans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Tan
How it should be
