Gauteng Smallholder December 2015-January 2016 | Page 59

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From stupidity to sadness

U

sually at this time of year, this column has something to
do with Christmas, sometimes funny, hopefully
uplifting. Not this time.
For as I sit here the Metro rail system in Brussels is closed for the
weekend due to the threat of terror attacks and the news is
filled with pictures of heavily armed soldiers patrolling the
ancient streets of European capitals, accompanied by interviews
with survivors of terrorist attacks and analysis by all manner of
so-called pundits.
And I am left with a feeling of deep melancholy and a yearning
for a more innocent and peaceful age.
For many months now I have been telling anybody who will
listen (and even those who won't) that the world is embroiled in
the Third World War which, if it is allowed to escalate, will be
every bit as ruinous as the previous two. While many say I am
alarmist and delusional, I am not alone in my view. Following
the Paris massacre no less an eminence than the Pope also
described the current situation as the Third World War.
Because while the media’s focus has, lazily, been on Paris this
time around, what about Australia, the plane in the Sinai desert,
Beirut, the Sudan, Nairobi, Mombasa, Bamako? And elsewhere.
Maybe now, if the realisation catches on, world leaders will start
to take the whole thing more seriously, stop making stupid, halfbaked decisions and come up with a multi-faceted plan which
addresses the issue politically, militarily, economically,
humanitarianly, and religiously.
Because thus far the decision making and foresight has been no
more advanced than that of a bunch of Grade One kids
squabbling over marbles on a playground.
In Europe at least, at the heart of the problem is that bureaucratic lunacy named the European Union with its stupid single
currency and supposedly open borders.
Then there's George W Bush and his British crony Tony Blair
who went on a wild goose chase in Iraq looking for WOMADS
(weapons of mass destruction, which they didn't find). In the
process they destroyed a country and left it bereft of a civil,
political and economic infrastructure when the heat became
too much at home, after they had been revealed to be lying
about their cherished WOMADS.
Into the civil, economic and educational void that resulted
came a bunch of turban-wearing fanatics carrying all manner of
murderous weaponry in their hands and a twisted, perverted
and thoroughly obnoxious version of the Muslim religion in

their heads, if not their hearts. In time these fanatics coalesced
into what we now know variously as ISIS, ISIL, IS or, as Francois
Hollande insists on calling it DERSCH.
Waging war, raping women, killing babies and beheading aid
workers and journalists alike, this bunch forced middle-class
Iraqis and Syrians to flee their homes and countries on foot,
boating, swimming (and drowning) in the Mediterranean, and
then walking westwards across
Europe. In their thousands.
Did nobody in power stop to
think and say “Hang on, maybe
among this endless trail of
staggering human misery there
just might be some who are
intent on infiltrating our
countries to perform horrendous acts of violence.” Nope,
seems not.
On the outskirts of Brussels lies
Molenbeek, a suburb now
being described as a “hotbed
for jihadists.” Knowing this,
would it not have made sense
for the Belgian police to have
rounded up the known Islamist
hotheads of Molenbeek and given them a “stern talking to”
before they were able to get up to mischief? Maybe to have got
a few search warrants and found the AK47s, and suicide vests
BEFORE they could be used in Paris.
If kids in their bedrooms can hack into high-security computer
systems, could Europe’s security agencies not have hacked into
and closed down the jihadists social media networks used to
recruit new members?
After the Paris atrocities I heard a French journalist remark how
it seems that every Parisian knows somebody, or knows
somebody who knows somebody, who was killed or hurt in the
attacks. I was reminded how, after SAA’s Helderberg crashed, it
seemed that every (White) South African similarly knew
somebody who died on the aircraft that night. Life has moved
on for us, now, although it is different. In time, life will move on
for those in Paris and elsewhere, too.
In the meantime, however, the world’s leaders need to up their
game if they want to make the world safe again.

WRITTEN BY SMALLHOLDERS, FOR SMALLHOLDERS