Your knee must be aching by now surely?

Firstly, I’d like to get the whole Paris thing out of the way.  What happened over the weekend of 14-15/11/2015 was an abomination. Nothing more.  The people who were directly involved and those animals who convinced them to blow themselves up or shoot innocent civilians need executing… No more, no less.  The 130 or so victims and their friends and family have my condolences, without reservation, not that it means much in the grand scheme of things. The dead will still be dead and the living will still be scared.

If you’re holding an event, or a silence, or if you’ve changed your Facebook picture to feature the Tricolore then it’s brilliant, especially if it makes you feel better about the situation or yourself… It’s great… You should totally do it – You probably shouldn’t do it if you’ve felt in any way pressured to do it, or you’re only doing it if everyone else is doing it and you’re worried about what people will think of you (See wearing a poppy).  But hey, that’s just my opinion and what do I know when it comes down to it? I’m just a fat, bald bloke who goes on about his unimportant thoughts.

What I’ve been thinking about recently are the other terrible things that have happened recently that no-one seems to give a toss about.  

You’d have had to have searched the news pretty hard to find out about the mass grave that’s just been found in Sinjar in Iraq, where the bodies of 70 or so elderly Yazidi women were found… Executed for the crime of being too old to be sold as sex-slaves by ISIS (or Daesh as people would have us call them this week – I wish these terrorist organisation would pick a name and stick with it… Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL… I can’t keep up) I’ve only seen one person who’s – very bravely in my opinion, changed their Facebook profile pic to the Iraqi flag to show solidarity with them. 

As it happens, I’ve seen a couple of Lebanese flags too.  What? You hadn’t heard that anything had happened in Lebanon? Now you’re wondering if you even know where Lebanon is. Well, does it help if I tell you that their capital city is Beirut?  People of a certain age may well have used the phrase ‘It looked like bloody Beirut.’ to imply that a place was messy… As if a bomb had gone off possibly, at one time or another.  Very popular in the 70’s were phrases like that – I’ve used it myself on occasion. Just before the weekend there was an ISIS twin bomb-attack on the Burj al-Barajneh district of downtown Beirut.  Admittedly, it only killed 40-odd people, but it did injure another 240, so that got the numbers up nicely – Should really have been worthy of some column inches somewhere other than in The Guardian don’t you think?

Then there was that nastiness with the Russian plane flying out of Egypt… You’ll have seen that on the news surely? But did anyone change their Profile picture for that? Although I’ll freely admit that I probably wouldn’t recognise a Russian flag if someone wrapped me in one and put a stitch through my lip – Back in my day it was a big, red affair with the hammer and sickle on it, but I gather it has stripes and everything now, it’s very post-modern – But I’m sure I would have remembered a minute’s silence for the 224 people who were blown to pieces by ISIS there.

Why France but not Lebanon or Iraq? It probably wasn’t because they were ‘only’ Arabs or some made-up Zoroastrian type religion that they don’t cover in British RE lessons.  Might it be because they were Middle-Eastern ‘Stone age’ type people who live in the dust and have livestock roaming about the place and read squiggly lines rather than good, honest western-type letters?  The world’s not really going to miss people like that are they?  It’d save us a fortune in aid if they all just kept blowing each other up wouldn’t it?

And the Russians? Is that just because they’re Bond Villains? They’re not men, women and children who were just flying home, moaning about having to go back to work in the office on Monday, or excitedly talking about the time that little Ludmilla trod on that sandcastle that her brother had taken an hour to make and he cried then tried to punch her.

And don’t get me started on Israel Vs Palestine – I’m really not sure whose side we’re supposed to be on at the minute – Is it the one that we sell guns to, or is it the ones who were flinging their sandals in the air and cheering on Sept 11^th? – I can’t keep up with that either.

What really gets me is the reaction from all the British people who have the perfect answer to it all.  Whether it be killing all the ‘Muslins’, Daubing Nazi symbols on Bangladeshi shops or bombing ISIS back to the stone age.

Actually,

There’s two problems with that last one:

1. They’re pretty much already in the stone age (see above)
2. They look exactly like the plucky indigenous people that we’re trying to defend… You know, the people who are running away from it all, helping us out by trying not to die so that we don’t have to feel guilty about them.  When questioned, they will often reply “ISIS? No, not me squire, I’m a pomegranate salesman.”

We’re 100% at war, we’re at war with an armed group who have no issue with killing innocents (because they don’t really see anyone other than themselves as innocents).  But we’re not at war with a country.  If we were, we could just turn Syria or Afghanistan into car-parks in short order.  We have the technology.  We could do it from space probably, just to be sure.

We’re not even at war with a religion.  If we were, we’d be quite within our rights to have a crusade or at least a nice cuddly pogrom… We could put everyone who stops work every ten minutes and ululates towards Mecca to the sword and have done with it.

But we’re at war with an idea… A way of interpreting words in a book.  Can you kill an idea with bombs? You can kill the people who have that idea with bombs certainly.  But you have to find and kill every single person who has that idea.  And the people who’ve ever heard the idea – In case they ever decide that it’s a good idea.  Then you’d also need to kill the children of the people who’ve ever heard the idea – Because they’ll be bound to wonder why you killed their parents and they might get a bit shirty about it in the future and no-one wants that do they?  Not the whole thing starting all over again.

Do they? Powerful things these ideas, aren't they?

But it’s not a perfect world.

Before we go any further, let me just re-iterate that what follows is MY opinion.  You may disagree, in fact, I already know that a few of my readers hold views exactly opposite to mine and that is their right.

In fact, that’s everyone’s right.  You believe what you want to believe, it’s not my place to judge and that goes for all of us.  That is, you have an inalienable right to believe what you want to right up until the point where your beliefs start impact on me or mine in a tangible way, then we’d have a problem.

Obviously, I’m talking about yesterday’s shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine.  At around 11:00 Paris time, men entered the office, armed with AK assault rifles and proceeded to kill eleven people and injure about the same again.  The reports are varied about the details and it’s way too early to figure out what actually happened and what is pure speculation. 

Some reports say that the gunmen asked for their targets by name and then executed them, others that they entered a meeting room during an editorial meeting and started indiscriminately shooting. (which is pretty much what the AK was designed for, they’re not known for their accuracy)  Upon leaving the building they were ‘challenged’ by two police officers in a car, one of whom, Ahmed Merabet (also a Muslim, not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things) was shot, then executed with a subsequent bullet to the head.  Remember his name and the fact that he leaves behind a wife, I’m going to refer to him again briefly in a minute.

Let’s get the knee-jerk stuff out of the way now shall we?

Are Said and Cherif Kouachi psychopaths? – Yes they are.

Did they believe what they were doing was a reply to Charlie Hebdo’s repeated attacks (as they saw them) against the Muslim way of life in general and Allah/the Prophet Mohammed in particular? – Yes

Has the institute of Charlie Hebdo (i.e. its buildings and staff) suffered from attacks and threats from Radical Islamists before yesterday? – Yes, the offices were firebombed in 2011 after listing the Prophet Mohammed as its Editor in Chief and using his image on the cover in a less than complimentary way.

Were any of the gunmen previously known to be radicals? – Yes, Cherif Kouachi has been on various watchlists for around ten years, after being arrested in 2005 and imprisoned for his part in a plot to send volunteers to Iraq to fight against the US forces.

Did the Editor, Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier seriously think his life was at risk? – I don’t know if he did personally, but he was assigned a Police bodyguard because other people did.

Was his bodyguard killed? – One was, one was injured according to reports.

Was this an attack by the Muslim people on innocent Christians? – No, it really wasn’t. 

Let me explain… (Again, remember this is just my opinion)

Forget for a second about Paris, and Charlie Hebdo, and Muslims.  Instead, imagine… Oh, I don’t know… A crocodile, living in the mud, by the riverbank.  It’s not a hugely nice fairy-tale crocodile, it doesn’t ‘tick’, it’s real and it eats things alive.  But crocodiles do, don’t they? They’re known for it, it happens all the time.  In fact recently it happens more and more as global growth crushes us all together and we’re living in each other’s back yards.  So, one day, a group of kids hears about this crocodile and to prove to themselves how brave and clever and modern they are, (and in the back of their minds, how cowardly and stupid and prehistoric crocodiles are) decide to go and poke it with a stick. They poke it a few times, the poking gets harder over time and eventually, the crocodile snaps at them.  In fact it chases them back to the safety of their houses, where it sits, watching them all through the night.  In the morning it’s gone, but you can see that it had been walking around in their gardens and had lain outside their bedroom windows.

Shortly after that, the pokings start again.  In fact, the pokings become stabbings.  The old crocodile realises that chasing the kids and scaring them again is pointless, it doesn’t work.  So it waits until night-time and goes back to the children’s houses and eats them. But that’s not where it stops, it eats the other people asleep in the houses too, because they’re there and the crocodile is so caught up in the moment that it feels invincible and it’s convinced that this is the only way to cure the situation in the long-term.  But someone raises the alarm and people come to help, despite the fact that there’s nothing that can be done.  They get eaten too.

All that’s left is to hunt down the crocodile and kill it, because it’s got the ‘Maneater’ label, and everyone knows it’s much easier to eat someone once you’ve already done it once.

You get it right? – It’s an allegory.  It’s not meant to be flippant and I agree that there’s never any excuse for killing someone just because you think they deserve to die.  There’s the whole due process and not being a psychotic religious radical thing to consider first.

Actually, I should probably add another disclaimer: I DO NOT IN ANY WAY CONDONE ANY ACT OF TERRORISM / RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM, WHETHER OR NOT IT INVOLVES ILLEGAL ACTS.

But… would the people at Charlie Hebdo still be alive today if they hadn’t continued to ‘poke’ at Radical Islam?

Do you agree that we’re living in a radically different world than we were ten years ago?

Should you broadcast an opinion that you don’t temper with common sense? (Remembering that we come down pretty hard on people we consider to be fascists, fundamentalists and Nazis because of the offence they cause to 'our' way of life)

And lastly, should Ahmed Merabet’s wife have to live the rest of her life alone because some educated men drew some pictures that someone else didn't think were funny?

My thoughts are with the families of Charlie Hebdo employees and contributors who stood up for what they believed in until the end. Elsa Cayat, Bernard Maris, Jean Cabut, Stephane Charbonnier, Philippe Honoré, Bernard Verlhac, and Georges Wolinski.

I do not think I would have done the same.

Also with the families of Frédéric Boisseau - the office’s janitor, Franck Brinsolaro – Charb’s bodyguard, Michel Renauld – a visitor to the office, and Ahmed Merabet – a police officer executed in the street, in front of the world’s press whilst trying to do his job.

All of whom were murdered through no fault of their own.

-oOo-

• In a perfect world, you would be able to say what you wanted without fear of reprisal. (as long as you remembered that it works both ways)
• In a perfect world, religious intolerance would be a fairy story, something you added to a bedtime story to prove to your children that things like that really don’t happen.
• In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to tell yourself that you’re not afraid to leave the house because a fundamentalist of any religion might wander into your bus-queue and detonate himself just because he thinks that you’re an infidel or a heathen or an unbeliever.
• In a perfect world, you could wave goodbye to your kids in the morning and be 100% sure that you’ll see them again in the afternoon.
• In a perfect world, your blood wouldn’t run cold every time you heard a siren.

Now read the title of this post again.

I see a tall, dark stranger

Crap! is it that time already?

Better start Blogging I guess.  I could go for the whole Easter story, what the Bible actually says about it, how it's another stolen holiday that the pagans celebrated ages before Christianity was brought to England, how commercialization has ruined it. How it's a travesty...

But in fairness, I really like chocolate, so it would be a bit two faced of me.

So I sit here, on the verge of a four-day weekend pondering what to re-hash in a humourous fashion and entertain you guys with before you zoom off to Paris for the weekend (or whatever it is that you're telling your workmates you're going to do, we all know you're going to spend the days sat in a dimly lit room playing COD or FIFA, in your pants, whilst the snow falls outside like the cobwebbed cape of Thanatos himself.

So I thought long (lie) and hard (lie) about today's subject... Fortune telling.

There are many ways that people claim to be able to tell the future, there's palmistry (Reading of lines on the palms), hepatoscopy (Reading of entrails), scrying (crystal ball and water-bowl reading) and tasseography (Reading Tea Leaves - Which was a favorite of my paternal Grandmother), to name but a few.

I'm not saying it's all tosh, it could all be cockroach jugglingly true for all I know, but it's very open to abuse... And not in a good way.  In the olden days, anyone who was a bit bald, and a bit mad, and fairly greek, could set themselves up as an oracle, all it took was a bit of narcotic incence, and possibly getting someone from Handmaidens R Us to pop in on a Wednesday afternoon, wear the diaphenous clothes and wiggle about a bit. while you talked about auspicious circumstances, stars rising in the East and the lion lying down with the lamb.

So I got to thinking, I'm a bit bald, and a bit mad, and I like Greek food...

Welcome to the Grotto of Dandyissimus, newest, wisest and most accurate of the new wave of oracular prophets.  Cross my palm with coinage (but not the Euro, obviously, because that's worth less than a dog-fart in a crash helmet) and I will foretell your future with such accuracy as would blind a hamster.

You want a free trial?

Is that the marketing model that you're used to?

OK... Here goes - Some free glimpses into your future, but seeing as you buggers haven't paid me, I'm not going to tell you whose fortunes they are, or whenabouts they're going to happen.  (these are in no way just things I have overheard, or have been told in confidence)

Your husband, who loves you very much, will start living a double life.  Don't worry, he's not gay or having an affair or anything like that.  He finds himself mixing jam, drinking chocolate powder and 'space dust' and spreading it over his body with your best spatula every time you go out.  He will enjoy the feeling at first, but after a while it will become a compulsion, and his usage of it will get more and more extreme.   Things will come to a head when you notice that your toothbrush is sticky and smells of strawberries and every time he breaks wind, it crackles slightly.

An entire group of people, who currently meet under social circumstances will decide, after a celebratory night out, possibly after some kind of sporting event, to have commemorative tattoos.  These will done in ultra-violet ink and will look like random lines drawn all over their bodies.  However, when they stand in a human pyramid, naked, at a local nightclub, the silhouette of Deliah Smith 'tasting a tangy sauce' personally prepared by Heston Blumenthal will be revealed.

Two seperate people, in two wildly seperate locations will start vociferously complaining about the quality of british cheese since we joined the EEC.  MI5, intercepting their (completely seperate) emails will assume that there is some kind of lactose intolerant terrorist uprising on the way and ban the sale of Stinking Bishop and Sage Derby to anyone without a Rolls-Royce.  Questions will be asked in Parliament, which will lead to the leader of the opposition being 'outed' for running his own, black market trade in Dairylea Triangles.

Your wife will decide that her current position as your nearest and dearest, agree-er to your hair-brained schemes and backer-up of your obviously idiotic ideas is no longer enough.  She will start her own business on eBay, buying up surplus fur coats, cutting them up and sewing them back together as suits for those bloody awful sphynx hairless cats.  All will be rosy at first as all over the world people who have mistakenly bought these obscene creatures realise their mistake and buy a new coat for their hairless companions.  Then there will be a short period where sales will fall off due to an expose in the press over allergy issues and then business will boom again as she branches out into fur coats for reptiles who wish to live in arctic areas.  (P.S. she will also discover she is a lesbian and will take you for every penny you have.)

The Government will decide that to bolster the economy, they will put a tax on ducks, only privately held ducks are targeted and the bill (if you'll pardon the pun) flies through Parliament (if you'll pardon the pun) without notice by the general populace.  The next morning you will be visited by agents of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, demanding £6,000,000 pounds tax on the 20,000 ducks that you purchased from a man that you didn't realise at the time was the Speaker of the House of Lords.

And finally.

One of you out there will realise that that thing that your Aunt left you in her will, that one on the mantlepiece that you hate, but can't bring yourself to throw away, the thing that makes you feel all tingly and nauseous in equal measure.  The one with the purple stone that looks like it glows when you look at it out of the corner of your eye, is the key to the time machine that she had in her cellar.  You'll realise this just after the developer you sold her house to to make a quick buck has bulldozed it and built a housing estate on top.  You spend the rest of your life digging in peoples gardens in the darkness... You disappear one night, never to be seen again.

Happy Pascha to everyone.