I don't do policial posts much, but not because I have no interest! It is just that others do a much better job than I can on some of these issues. For example, Kobayashi Maru. Today he blogs on Europe Under Siege - Van Gogh One Year On
And a couple of days ago, the Paris Riots
I've lived through riots - most recently the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. The amazing thing is that one can be watching TV and see violence going on just a few miles from home and yet be able to distance oneself from the reality. It is so unreal, that one just dissociates, much like the victim of abuse or torture does during the event. It's a kind of survival mechanism.
In the USA, we used to celebrate 1492 as the date when Columbus opened up the Western Hemisphere to the Old World. In Spain, it was celebrated as the year that the last of the Muslim invaders were forcibly expelled from that end of the European continent. Now, more than 500 years later, the Alhambra has been lost again.
