TODAY'S VIOLENCE, YESTERDAY'S VIOLENCE - AND FEARS.

Violence is always with us

Letters TheAge January 13, 2015

I look back at the tranquil 1970s. Remember those years when the Middle East was at war and the PLO hi-jacked planes regularly and cruise ships occasionally, and raided the 1972 Olympics?  The English were on edge awaiting the latest IRA bombs.  The Red Brigade and Baader Meinhof held Italy and Germany to ransom.  Algerian bombs went off in France. The Vietnam war reached its end while Cambodia subjected itself to internal slaughter.  Anyone with a social conscience in Central and South America tended to go missing; indeed, whole governments could disappear. Over it all the US and the USSR pointed large nuclear arsenals at each other.  Even in quiet Australia the Ananda Marga or someone in its name fired a bomb in central Sydney. Such easy times.  No wonder we are panicking now. 

Conor King, Pascoe Vale South