For some strange reason not all countries vote in the EU elections at the same time - the UK voted on the 22nd, but la France goes to the polls today. Although apathy abounds, it's important.
This week I've been reading Robert Harris's latest 'An Officer and a Spy' - an intrigruing conflation of fiction and fact about the 19C Dreyfus case. Can't help but think that, two centuries later, the French mindset hasn't changed much. Back then crowds gathered in the place de Fontenoy in Paris, baying for the blood of someone, anyone, who must be the cause of all their problems. I can just hear the racist spin doctors of the day: 'He must be guilty, therefore let's find the evidence for it'. It was with this in mind that I read M. Jean-Marie le Pen's comments this week about 'M. Ebola' - at a stroke racially condemning and advocating the eradication of whole nations he didn't much like the look of. I hope that intending Front Nationale voters today bear all this in mind. Putting all the blame for your own troubles onto someone else perceived as 'different' is childish and never the answer. Forget 'vive la difference' and embrace 'nous sommes tout pareille'. Unlike our neighbours here, hold out the hand of friendship. Now if only our local candidate would say that.....
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
5th January 2014
I see that Nicolas Anelka's left out of the West Brom (football) game, I said to Him indoors yesterday. Don't know about left out, said he: should have been 'right out'!
As many will know, the French striker is now infamous for making that quenelle (meat ball) goal celebration recently - a reverse Nazi salute. He seems to have convinced his manager and the world at large that the appalling gesture was simply to honour his friend, the French comic ironically called Dieudonné. God-given? What a misnomer. The so-called comedian is well-known for his racist, particularly anti-Semitic, 'jokes'. Let's be clear here for a moment. We all have responsibility for what we do and say. Democracy gives the right to free speech, but - and here's the rub - free speech means we can criticise or run-down what people do and say (their actions) but NOT who they intrinsically are, how they are born. Racism is about who people inherently are, so must be condemned. That's my suggestion for a global resolution this year.
Talking about resolutions, I asked Him indoors 'what's yours?' A whisky, please!
As many will know, the French striker is now infamous for making that quenelle (meat ball) goal celebration recently - a reverse Nazi salute. He seems to have convinced his manager and the world at large that the appalling gesture was simply to honour his friend, the French comic ironically called Dieudonné. God-given? What a misnomer. The so-called comedian is well-known for his racist, particularly anti-Semitic, 'jokes'. Let's be clear here for a moment. We all have responsibility for what we do and say. Democracy gives the right to free speech, but - and here's the rub - free speech means we can criticise or run-down what people do and say (their actions) but NOT who they intrinsically are, how they are born. Racism is about who people inherently are, so must be condemned. That's my suggestion for a global resolution this year.
Talking about resolutions, I asked Him indoors 'what's yours?' A whisky, please!
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