Paris 2014: the city and people we love
Bravo to family and friends who have turned their Facebook profile photos into a tricolour in respect for the victims of Friday’s appalling murders in Paris.
I love France and the French, and grieve for them and everyone else who died in this assault on humanity. But I won’t be changing my profile photo. I feel equally sad for those who have been savagely killed in Beirut, on the Russian airliner, on the beaches of Tunisia and across the Middle East. And those who have perished fleeing the death cults of the Middle East.
I just wish we could find some way to combat such brutal, medieval tribes that wish to defeat those who hold different values. The sad truth is that the western powers will most likely respond in a way that makes things worse, not better.
It’s easy to change your profile photo. That’s not to say that doing so has no meaning. I’m sure it will bring some comfort to the people of France, a country that millions of us love and cherish. But I’d rather see brilliant minds across Europe thinking how we can turn the tide of hatred. The west has a grim record of intervening in the Middle East without thinking or caring about the consequences, from Britain, France and Israel’s 1956 Suez adventure through to the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Please prove me wrong.
Ertblog 
I changed my Facebook profile picture. I agree that it is easy to do – and thus many will do it because it is easy so to do. I also agree that something must be done , and done as a matter of urgency – as it should have been already. However, it is a hugely complicated situation, there are incredibly complex issues, with incredibly complex interests and needs. My changing my Facebook profile picture was not just an expression of sympathy for the people of Paris ( and those of many nationalities who have lost their lives or had life changing experiences). It is a also a joining with others in expressing to those that might be able to do something that that “something must be done”. It’s just that I don’t know what or by whom.