30 days in November 21...

Hello, today is:

World hello day

Hello day kicked off in 1973 as a direct response to the Yom Kippur War, another kick off. Since then it’s been celebrated in over 180 countries as a way to spread world peace. Its effectiveness has been vouched for by 31 Nobel Peace Prize winners, but just how they can claim that saying a ‘hello’ could be effective against a terrorist with a gun in his hands is hard to understand.

I can’t imagine that screaming ‘bonjour, bonjour, bonjour, bonjour’ would have made much of a difference in Paris when those Isis animals  started spraying innocent people with bullets and I’m certain that screaming ‘bonjour’ would not have saved the 15 passengers of a Cameroon bus when Boko Haram murdered them back in January.

Hello, bonjour, hola, shalom, marhaba, hujambo, hej, are all going to be pretty useless as a defence against a madman dressed in black intent on hacking off your head in the desert with a scimitar. And offering even the loudest guten tag, gia’sou, namast, dai dhuit, jambo, selam, xin chao, or hylo to radicalised fundamentalist morons wearing vests packed full of explosives isn’t going to stop them pressing their detonation buttons and going to whatever paradise they are foolishly expecting.

We have to start somewhere with world peace, but somehow I don't think saying 'hello' is going to be enough to stop this mess. If saying 'hello' is a metaphor for sitting down, talking and trying to sort things out through discussion, then yes it might work given time. After all there hasn't been a war for centuries that wasn't ended over a conference table. But on its own 'hello' is such a tiny word in a world where there are madmen who are not prepared to listen. Maybe it’s time to stop saying ‘hello’ and say ‘goodbye’ to this scum, no matter what it takes. Maybe the time for talking is over.