I keep seeing references to the “fools” who didn’t know who Paul McCartney was when he recently collaborated with Kanye West on the song Only One. Hell, even I wrote about it on Facebook. I was appalled that someone (many someones actually) didn’t know who Paul McCartney was. Everyone knows the Beatles, they were more famous than Jesus…

But it turns out that not everybody actually does know about The Beatles. and they are being virtually hung and quartered. The abuse being directed to some innocent young tweeps whose only “sin” was not to know who Paul McCartney is hideous. I am not sure how mocking and ridiculing people for not knowing who a music legend is makes you “better”, more worldly or more culturally advanced. In fact I’d go so far as to say abusing someone online makes you worse than all that. Bitter and angry – not better at all.
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I’ve read the news headlines countless times. I’ll be honest – I read about skirmishes in in Afghanistan and Pakistan and gloss over them. Sure I am aware of what’s going on, on a very superficial level but it all seems so distant, so foreign, so very far away.

But I think yesterday changed that, I think the events that took place in Martin Place yesterday have changed the way we will react to news for a long time to come. I don’t think that we were the target of a terror group, I don’t think the Australian way of life is in any way endangered but I do know that our senses are heightened. We are all feeling fraught. I do think terror came that little bit closer to our front doors even if it was ushered in by the media.

Tonight we read about a terror attack in Peshawar in Pakistan

BBC News reports

At least 100 people, 80 of them children, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistani officials say.

Five or six militants wearing security uniforms entered the school, officials said. Gunfire and explosions were heard as security forces surrounded the area.

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A Taliban spokesman says the assault is in response to army operations.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.

A school worker and a student interviewed by the local Geo TV station said the attackers had entered the Army Public School’s auditorium, where a military team was conducting first-aid training for students.

There are no real words to describe this terror.  None that convey the enormity of the situation, that can describe the horror, the loss, the anguish.

But today when we read about Pakistani children being killed we think about the three children left behind after their mother perished at the hands of a very disturbed man in Sydney. We think about our children. We think about the mothers of these children murdered in Peshawar and we feel our chests close. We hear their anguished screams, we feel one hundredth of the pain that they feel and even that feels like it could destroy us.

I have no pithy ending, no grand solution – not even a suggestion. Just a heart full of sadness and a fervent wish for peace. For all.