Sorry, backing off and not taking over this gentle, compassionate thread. It doesn't matter to yellow jackets what foreigners think, they are having some impact on the greed of French politicians which gives hope to people living on basic wages in very humble occupations = caregiver, lorry driver, agricultural worker. What Wishful Thinker wrote made me cry, but I'm not the ones who spend all their free time standing in the cold on roundabouts in the hope someone can hear their struggle. They are sterner stuff than me, and crying is a fools game.

I'm sad to hear that some/ another terroristic person may have again seen fit to tear down something precious/ intimate/ human. A French friend said to me last week that France has a terrible history of ideological violence: religious oppression is etched on the walls of all their southern towns and formed the underlying laicism of their constitution. Violently destructive ideologies...

There is something that I don't understand about how human beings... can believe that their ideas are more important than life itself. Medieval cathedrals supported hope during times of terrible oppression and disease. Yet human spiritual beliefs can be deeper than respect for human life. Life seems so fragile and unknowable to me. Yet some of my friends think their beliefs are more important: and all of that good and bad is "religion".

Our brains, emotions and physical bodies seems to go in different directions...