Monday, November 16, 2015

My Reaction to Global Terrorism

I was reeling from Friday's attack on Paris. When I saw it on Dateline, I thought, "How could I have not heard about this on Social Media?" I hadn't quite connected that it was so new that it hadn't made it to Social Media when I was there (which was three or four hours before Dateline aired). Needless to say, when I got back on, my feed was covered with images of the Eiffel Tower Peace Sign and people's avatars in French Flag colors.
I love and support all of you for standing with France and don't want to diminish that by putting what I'm feeling into words.
What I'm feeling is that terrorism is a global problem. It harms everyone. It harmed the victims of the Paris attacks. It harmed Shiites in Baghdad and a family in Mount Hebron, the West Bank that same day. It has claimed victims in Lebanon, Cameroon, Chad, and, yes, Iraq; Egypt, Israel and Somalia have also been hit this month alone. Every lover of history and of art was hurt when ISIS / ISIL was destroying Mesopotamian Antiquities that can never be replaced.
In the US and throughout the world, we feel the impact of Terror every day, it seems. Terror is a global problem that hurts everyone. It even harms the terrorists, although they're too stubborn/hate-filled/fanatical to see what living with that constant level of hate is doing to them.
So, to recognize that terror is a global problem, I created the following images of the flags of the world, to try to show that we're all connected. My thanks to the US CIA (cia.gov) for providing images of the flags to the Public Domain.
The first is cropped close to the flags image, the second is in a square space.
I chose a gray background simply because none of the flags had a that gray in them, at least, not on the edges (and purple didn't seem appropriate for the statement).
I'm declaring these images to be in the Public Domain as well. I'm pretty sure that's all it takes. If you want to use one for any purpose, go ahead. But you should probably credit the CIA as the source of the flags.

Addendum: The squared image with black bands on top and bottom, symbolizes mourning over every loss of life, every human driven from his or her home, every priceless -- or not so priceless -- item destroyed by the intolerant.