There is a scene in 1984 in which a group of people are in a theatre. The propaganda announcements come on and the face of enemy number 1 comes up. The audience spends a solid minute booing and hating this face of their enemy.

I could not help thinking about this as Twitter and the media lit up in reaction to Osama Bin Laden’s death. Has he been killed? Certainly. Has terrorism and it’s causes been cured? Certainly not. We get a false sense of comfort and increased sense of security when really nothing has changed. We continue to do irrevocable damage in our farming, mining, and oil extraction, not to mention our use of their products. We also have an unthinkable amount of people trapped in poverty, often held in place by regimes our Western governments support.

Our hatred for Osama Bin Laden and our satisfaction in his, deserved, death cannot allow us to ignore that until such a time that there is true justice in our actions and economies there will always be those who are willing to kill, maim, and die in bringing it about. One man is dead, but nothing has really changed.