Sunday 15 November 2015

The enemy is hard to distinguish.  The enemy is hiding in plain sight.  Those barbarians who committed this ghastly massacre of innocents in Paris were thoroughly radicalized by the crazed fanatics who have The Book to fuel their grand delusion of a pious and heavenly afterlife.  They use ancient and primordial grievances as their weapon of choice to rage against the way of life of us infidels.   We all know how all this is going to play out from hereon.  The state will react with all the fury at its disposal, it has no choice really, and it has to be seen to be doing something after all.  There will be further shrinking of the already eroded civil liberties, the tyranny of snooping and surveillance will intensify even more.  International travel is going to become even more of a nightmare than it already is.  So, in a sense the terrorist have succeeded in one of their objective that is to destroy the implicit trust we have for one another as a human beings, that trust which is bedrock of any civilized society.  Anyone trying to proffer ‘root cause’ theory just to put things in perspective will be shouted down as a traitor and worse.  Ultra-right-wing forces will have a field day with a kind of ‘I told you so’ expressions on their faces.  I just keep asking myself where and what should we aim our incoherent and unfocused anger at?  Should we just keep going round in circles like a headless chicken with our numb despair?  

#241

As they say, one should be gracious in victory and generous in defeat.  So, let me be generous enough in admitting that this sledgehammer o...