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Showing posts from January 11, 2015

Je Suis ... not a Charlie.

Yes, the fiendish killing of mere cartoonists and journalists is to be (to put it mildly) deplored. In a part of the world where free speech is lauded as a totem of our achievement as a civilisation, there is justifiable horror at the gunmen's action. But ... and there is a but ... all it does to me is to suggest that there are aspects of our way of life that have failed to accommodate these extremists. What, we might ask, made them into such extremists? Information has filtered through that their childhood was not good; they lacked (it might appear) the comfort of a loving home. I assume that later, the rise of the Islamist faction gave them something to hold onto as a meaningful activity for their lives - almost to justify their existence. Now none of that justifies the killing spree they went on. Of course not. But it does yet again reveal that things go on in our society that are far from perfect to create this type of mentality. The example of abused children in care