Don't be scared, that is what the bullies want!

This is my rant about the horrible events in Paris this weekend

I love Paris, always have, since my first visit when I was 11 to my multiple visits since. I think I've been to Paris over 15 times including 3 times for work and it never fails to impress me and now my French has improved from the school learnt "Je voudrais un kilo de pommes" I am comfortable going there alone and not needing to speak  English.  Paris is huge but feels less crowded than London, Parisians are reputed to be rude yet I've never experienced the level of rudeness I experience in London on a daily basis.  Stereotypes abound but taken on face value Paris is wonderful and I hope to return to her soon, I've promised that my first weekend abroad in 2016 will be Paris to revisit my favourites and hopefully discover something new.

Musee D'Orsay

So I turn to the bullying, the terrorists, bullies, hate filled and armed.  That is what they are, yes they are angry but do I really need to know why some angry men decided to target people at a concert, families at dinner in restaurants? Surely they would be better directing their ire at the government, the establishment, those who are controlling the bombers and drones, the governments who are willing to sell weaponry to governments in the middle-east who treat their own people badly never mind their minorities (and I include Israel in this rant).  It is the governments who poke the wasp's nest, not me, not the people of Paris.  Our governments wage wars abroad yet fail to grasp the consequences. You bomb a village in Iraq you make people angry. Our governments have created monsters who believe they have god on their side (Blair and Bush thought god was on their side too). No god I ever learnt about at school ordered its followers to shoot innocents. Some people won't agree with me. I sadly know people who are complete islamaphobes, dare I say racists, but if these people I know are as intelligent and as well informed as they claim, they must see that the actions of our state, its collaboration with dictators, its support of one branch of Islam over another is adding to the anger and is creating terrorism even as they claim to be fighting it.  Our governments and right wing press try and equate the fight in the middle east to the fight the allies had with the Nazis and its axis allies, it isn't. It doesn't compare at all.  Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s did we regard Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan as a threat, did we experience mass killings on the streets of Paris, London, Ankara etc, no, most of the terrorism we experienced was closer to home.  The IRA were fighting a warped war against the British state to liberate Ireland yet this fight wasn't supported by the majority of Irish and nor was yesterday's massacre supported by anything but a tiny tiny minority of Muslims (and possibly by some non Muslims such as the Front National who will benefit from the death of their fellow countrymen).  Perhaps I am ranting but since learning about the holocaust as a child I've never been fooled into thinking we live in a utopia, humanity is capable of the worst atrocities and the evidence of that lies in mass graves in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and in many other places across the world. What we never seem to do is learn from it.  So as we fight the latest middle east bogeyman yet ignore the worst behaviour of Israel and our other allies in that region we are sowing the seeds for more events like Paris. 

These armed angry men are bullies, they focus their hate on people who cannot fight back and that applies to the terrorists and the generals ordering the air strikes and drone attacks! It won't end until we learn.

November 15, 2015