BRIGHT SHINING LIGHTS

This Christmas seems to have arrived in unseemly haste. It does not feel like a year since I last wrote something for the Christmas period.

It’s been a bleak year what with the rise of ISIS, the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Whilst in Syria a combination of the vile Assad dictatorship and the equally vile Islamists continue to tear that country apart. Everywhere Islamist violence is inflicted upon the innocent and vulnerable. From Boko Haram, committing mass murder and kidnapping Nigerian schoolgirls to the Pakistani Taliban slaughtering children in their classrooms. 
Above all as been the grotesque 8th Century barbarism of IS [Daesh]. Particularly horrible has been the mass rape and enslavement of Yazidi women. Where is the western outrage over this? Where are the Western feminists, so outraged by an inappropriate shirt and yet silent over this terrible crime in Iraq?  

Thus to celebrate and over indulge feels particularly at odds with reality. Still I will engage in a little over indulgence, it is after all what we do.

The one bright shining light for me this year has been the incredible courage of the Kurdish people in fighting the evil of Daesh; symbolic has been the resistance of Kobane. Most incredible of all has been the amazing women of the YPJ self-defence force. So I will devote this page to them, a bright shining light in a darkening world.


Finally if you are in a position to do so please consider the plight of the Kurdish and Yazidi refugees and make a donation to Heyva Sor. 

https://www.justgiving.com/DilanaKurdi/. You can view here how your donation will be used here:-

http://vimeo.com/115055594 

So enjoy a well earned break if you can, if for any reasons you cannot here's to a better year in 2015. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS/HAPPY HOLIDAY


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