Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Some remarks on Paris

Any person sensitive to human suffering can’t but repudiate the killing held in Paris. The terror attacks were directed against a defenseless population and completely oblivious to the blunders that their governments have done for many years in foreign policy.

Clearly the event has an explanation well above the hatred or the (supposed or real) religious differences. Also George Bush, the father or son, always attacked and bombed Iraq in two ruthless wars, calling on the US religious maxim: ‘God bless America’. All nations who invaded and enslaved peoples and nations (as in his time Portugal in Africa or Brazil) sent priests with their troops and crusades to bless the soldiers before they proceeded to the killings and ‘conquests’.

What the major powers have done on the planet? Depredation of natural resources, invasion of countries, support of despotic governments (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt) in the Middle East, Africa, etc. And what has happened in Western Europe under the Euro? Permanent austerity, precarious work, total lack of prospects and massive unemployment. So, we are facing an international and systemic problem.

The famous and prestigious American professor, Noam Chomsky, when asked to comment on the attacks on the Twin Towers (in 2001), said: “The United States promote wars all over the world, ‘They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind’.” Is it hard to understand that what happened in France is the result of its foreign policy with internal reflections?

Probably, very soon it will be shown that many killers of November 13, 2015 massacre are not ‘infiltrated terrorists’ among the refugees who arrive daily to Europe, but already born children of immigrants in France (such as the “Algerian”, black or white, players who are applauded in the French football team), impoverished by the French capitalism and who also do not like the wars unleashed in countries from where their ascendants came from.

From anything I say can be inferred any sympathy or justification of the deadliest attacks on that sad Friday. But that the main and primary responsibility are those who make war – the imperialist bourgeoisies of France, Germany, England, the US and even the Russian bourgeoisie. On the other side, there are similar criminals, responding to the ‘fire’ caused by the major capitalist powers of the world with the same weapons of terror they have learned from the ‘masters’.

For all these reasons, we repudiate the vindictive response given by Hollande of indiscriminately bombing Raqqa in Syria. The French state responded authoritatively, bringing the army into the street, holding an “emergency state” national for three months. This happens in a context of recession, austerity measures and the growth of the extreme right and xenophobia. We have to repudiate this military response that will make workers and the youth, especially immigrants and their children, pay for the criminal acts of the Islamic State in Paris and Hollande in Syria.

Of course, I find myself on the side of the French people at these terrible hours, but at the same time I appeal to the revolt of the peoples of Europe, Africa and the Middle East against those that on both sides of the world launch a climate of misery and despair.

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