It’s Christmas Eve, and I just watched a touching ad for The Animal Humane Society, advocating against cruelty to animals. A noble mission. But as the videos of abused cats, dogs, and horses scrolled by, I couldn’t help thinking of the 500 pound “barrel bombs”, filled with dinamite, nails and gasoline, dropping on the men, women and children of Alepo, Syria. How is it possible, after all this time, that the rest of the world sits on the sidelines, like spectators at a football match, while these atrocities are visited upon innocent people?
I suppose there is a Human Humane Society. It’s called the United Nations. Maybe it needs to scroll videos of its own, featuring the barbarity taking place in Syria. It might ruin Christmas for those of us who will sleep safe in our beds tonight. But it would remind us there are those who, amid the clatter of the gunships, don’t sleep at all.
Rupert