I really had no intention of writing about the Paris massacre, but........

..... certain aspects keep coming up which annoy me to the extent that if I don't get my feelings down I will have a fit.
I suppose I understand why politicians have to have their say - they cannot really appear to have no feelings on the matter but why can't they just say things which make sense and omit the utterly pointless posturing.
I heard Obama making a televised speech on Saturday in which he said, "France is America's oldest and most reliable ally." and, "Paris is the cradle of Western civilisation."
Who on this earth told him either of those things and wouldn't you think that he would have more sense than to actually say them?

And it's not just powerful political leaders who find this an appropriate moment to make idiotic remarks.
This is a comment on one of my Facebook 'friends' who was wittering on her latest update about expressing one's feelings on Facebook (or somesuch nonsense):-

Did you know since social media came around the human population has 40% less empathy than before... How sad

First of all - How does this person imagine that human empathy can possibly be measured? Does he imagine that there have been armies of pollsters out there asking how you and I feel about things? Have you ever been asked? No, me neither. So all that actually happens is that somebody with precious little else to do checks the sympathy values recorded on one of those sites that evaluates social media updates. Therefore if there is no social media there is no comparable way of evaluating human empathy - let alone arriving at a figure of 40%. It's just total bunkum.

Finally, as always, there seems no area of human tragedy in which the Mail Online can avoid adding to it's immense catalogue of grammatical errors and factual distortions. In an item entitled Britain On Terror Alert with subheadings:-

Britain on terror alert: Special forces on the streets of London as experts warn ISIS is using the PlayStation 4 network to recruit and plan attacks because it's 'more secure than WhatsApp'

It continues with pictures of armed bobbies (AKA civilian policemen) standing around on corners and in railway stations with not a single SAS (AKA special forces) man in sight.
But what amused me (okay, perhaps inappropriately) was the quote from a 'security expert' who supposedly said:-

Messages between ISIS supporters following the French attacks urged them to 'act when you're ready', 'wait for the word' and that the UK was 'very hot' with police action so said they should 'bide your time and wait until your safe'.

Which begs the question - are the terrorists as ignorant of grammar as the Mail Online? And if they are using this supposedly encrypted software, how come the world and his wife know what's being said even down to the grammatical errors?

Oh and just in case there is a single soul who cares what my opinion of the extreme Islamists and ISIS might be I can only refer you to a previous post I made way back at the start of the Syrian uprising when I said that the West was sympathising with the wrong side. They should have been helping Assad, okay he's an asshole and a mass murderer but see what has happened now. If we had helped him put down the rebellion it is very likely that none of this would have happened. I further refer you to one of my favourite quotations:-

Always hold tight to nurse, for fear of finding something worse