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pat_le_lionI don't normally dwell about how good or bad a year has been: good or bad, you still lose a year of you life once it comes to an end ;)
But I feel 2015 has been somewhat different. Although I live mostly abroad now, in Ireland, and consider myself to be a citizen of the world, I felt reminded of my identity as a French person because of the acts of terror perpetrated in France this year. The attacks against the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo were the first blow last January and the atrocities committed in Paris last November were an other... A weaker country could have seen its social fabric desintegrate and sunk into violence. Fortunately, even though I felt physically sick to see the National Front score so many votes at the last regional elections, the country is still strong enough to brush off attempts at winding people up against one another. And ultimately, the French rejected Marine Le Pen at the second round of the elections.
But should we be complacent and think that the population will be able to carry on after acts of terror are perpetrated against it? Especially knowing those mass murders were carried out in retaliation for the actions of our government and our armies in the Middle East?
So 2015 is coming to an end, we'll kiss under the mistletoe at midnight in the New Year and it will be relegated in the past. Roll on 2016! 2015 has been an atrocious year for us, giving us a taste of the horrors faced daily by people in Syria, Lybia and others as a direct consequence of France's foreign policies in those countries. But I also fear 2015 has been merely a foretaste of more bloody and barbaric plots to come.
But I feel 2015 has been somewhat different. Although I live mostly abroad now, in Ireland, and consider myself to be a citizen of the world, I felt reminded of my identity as a French person because of the acts of terror perpetrated in France this year. The attacks against the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo were the first blow last January and the atrocities committed in Paris last November were an other... A weaker country could have seen its social fabric desintegrate and sunk into violence. Fortunately, even though I felt physically sick to see the National Front score so many votes at the last regional elections, the country is still strong enough to brush off attempts at winding people up against one another. And ultimately, the French rejected Marine Le Pen at the second round of the elections.
But should we be complacent and think that the population will be able to carry on after acts of terror are perpetrated against it? Especially knowing those mass murders were carried out in retaliation for the actions of our government and our armies in the Middle East?
So 2015 is coming to an end, we'll kiss under the mistletoe at midnight in the New Year and it will be relegated in the past. Roll on 2016! 2015 has been an atrocious year for us, giving us a taste of the horrors faced daily by people in Syria, Lybia and others as a direct consequence of France's foreign policies in those countries. But I also fear 2015 has been merely a foretaste of more bloody and barbaric plots to come.