Jacques Cheminade: Overcoming the Fear

The following statement was released on Nov. 14, 2105.

by Jacques Cheminade, President of Solidarité et Progrès in France

Horror has struck Paris. The massacres were committed blindly to plunge our country into a state of shock. With the same barbarity and the same methods as those used in the Middle East, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel or Syria. Six simultaneous attacks in the heart of our capital, and one at the Stade de France stadium, aimed at maximizing the number of victims, bodies piled up in the streets, restaurants transformed into morgues, emergency vehicles with sirens wailing: a carefully planned strategy of fear to signal that the worst can happen everywhere and to everyone.

Our reaction must be equal to the challenge. We should fear nothing but fear itself, as fear inspires mad reactions that add to the initial madness. Coping with fear cannot be done in a state of passivity or denial, but by facing the situation as it is, in the name of truth. Only the fight for truth allows us to escape the vise of anxiety.

The declaration of a state of emergency and the closing of the borders announced by President Hollande, as well as the deployment of police and military forces, are immediately necessary measures, because we are at war. And it is immediately indispensable that we remain united and stand together in upholding the values of the Republic enshrined in our Constitution.

However, we have to go to the root causes, otherwise the horror will happen again and will spread. We need to create a world in which the national and international environment no longer promotes crime, as it does today. There is no escaping evil by simply repressing it, but only by establishing the conditions in which the good leaves it less and less room.

NATO’s wars, economic injustice, and the destruction of decent living conditions created the conditions for terrorism. As did the cynical, criminal policies of divide and rule, on the British imperial model, which nothing in our trans-Atlantic universe really opposed.

Therefore, to stop the horror, we need an absolute change of policy. We need an approach of mutual, “win-win” development, to ensure that our children and our grand-children live better than we do. This is the approach announced by the Chinese and Indian leaders, which is the only real source of peace. That means fighting all forms of terrorism in the Middle East, including the Islamic State, the Al Nusra Front and the Army of Conquest. Today, Saturday November 14, France must play a leading role in the talks to begin a peace process in Syria, by coordinating our efforts with Russian diplomacy, rather than playing into the hands of those who hold freedom hostage.

In the Middle East, we must hit IS in the heart of its financial resources, by bombing its oil pipelines and going after the banks that launder its resources, which has not been done until now. We must end the complicity of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates with terrorism, uncompromisingly. Finally, at the same time, the conditions for economic development must be recreated in all the countries of the region, so that the migrants once again have decent living conditions, as China offers to do by extending its conception of the New Silk Road. In the meantime, in all the camps in the region, we must create, in coordination with international humanitarian organizations, such conditions, by ensuring healthy nutrition, medical care, decent temporary lodgings and schools for the children.

This conception is not Russian, Chinese, American or French, it is the one that justifies the existence of nation-states: to serve the cause of mankind. France should be at the forefront of this vital commitment, instead of accepting barbarians in djellabas, qamis or three-piece suits.