Wed January 07, 2015 11:30 pm
Terror Attack on Paris Newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, Kills 12
PARIS — At least two masked gunmen on Wednesday burst into the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper that had drawn threats for lampooning Islam, killing 12 people in a methodical hail of gunfire, fleeing by car as they battled on the street with the police and setting off a wide manhunt for the killers.
The deputy mayor of Paris, Patrick Klugman, told CNN late Wednesday that three suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. French media reported the brothers were born in Paris. There were conflicting accounts about whether any suspects had been arrested.
The terrorist attack, on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, was among the deadliest in postwar France, setting the nation on edge, sending shock waves through Europe and threatening to deepen the distrust of France’s large Muslim population. The attack came at a time when Islamic radicalism has become a central concern of security officials across Europe.
The attack, carried out with automatic weapons, was carried out with an unusual degree of military-style precision. President François Hollande of France called it a display of extraordinary “barbarism” that was “without a doubt” an act of terrorism. He declared Thursday a national day of mourning.
He also raised the nationwide terror alert to its highest status, saying several terrorist attacks had been thwarted in recent weeks as security officials here and elsewhere in Europe have grown increasingly wary of the return of young citizens from Syria and Iraq, where they went to wage jihad.
The French authorities put some schools on lockdown for the day, and added security at houses of worship, news media offices and transportation centers, and conducted random searches on the Paris Metro.
The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said witnesses said the attackers had screamed “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great” during the attack, which the police characterized as a “slaughter.”
Thu January 08, 2015 2:04 am
Thu January 08, 2015 2:30 am
Thu January 08, 2015 2:46 am
Thu January 08, 2015 2:48 am
dimejinky99 wrote:Not sure if this is a good or bad idea...call for May 20th to be a #DrawMohammadDay...
the rolling news all over europe is pushing the free speech debate and how it shouldnt be intimidated by any of this.
#JeSuisCharlie
#CharlieHebdo
on twitter if you want to see international cartoonists & artists responses to todays events.
Thu January 08, 2015 2:49 am
Thu January 08, 2015 2:52 am
Thu January 08, 2015 2:56 am
Green Habit wrote:If any of you are interested, there was a 26 page thread on the related subject back in 2006:
http://archive.theskyiscrape.com/viewto ... =7&t=32826
Thu January 08, 2015 3:09 am
dimejinky99 wrote:Not sure if this is a good or bad idea...call for May 20th to be a #DrawMohammadDay...
the rolling news all over europe is pushing the free speech debate and how it shouldnt be intimidated by any of this.
dimejinky99 wrote:France's relationship with it's Muslim citizens has always been fraught with difficulties. This will only make things worse.
Equating Prudence with Cowardice
Theodore Dalrymple
7 January 2015
How long would it take for a Western journalist to blame the Charlie Hebdo murders on French colonialism and journalistic insensitivity to the feelings of Muslims? Not nearly as long, I suspected, as it would take a journalist in the Muslim world to blame them on the legacy of Mohammed and Islam.
And I was right. It took less than four hours for an associate editor of the Financial Times, Tony Barber, to post a piece on the website of his august publication blaming the journalists and cartoonists of the satirical French magazine (and the two policemen as well?) for their own deaths. Here is what he originally wrote and posted, though he later edited out the final clause:
[Charlie Hebdo] has a long record of mocking, baiting and needling French Muslims . . . [This] is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo . . . which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims, but are actually just being stupid.
According to this perverted logic, if the relatives of the 12 murdered men were now to storm into the offices of the Financial Times and shoot 12 staff members because of the considerable provocation offered by Tony Barber, it will prove only that Barber had just been stupid.
There is, of course, a relevant difference between the two cases: when he wrote his disgraceful little article, Barber knew perfectly well that the relatives of the murdered men would not behave in this fashion, and that therefore he was not “just being stupid.” Hence, he equates prudence with cowardice, a sure way to encourage (though not perhaps to provoke, in his sense of the word) more such attacks.
Barber’s implicit recognition that some people react differently to provocation is not flattering to those whom he wishes to exculpate, in so far as it implies that they are childishly unable to accept the kind of mockery that is perfectly normal in a free country. In his first paragraph, he writes that the attack on Charlie Hebdo will “not surprise anyone familiar with the rising tensions among France’s 5 million or more Muslim citizens and the poisonous legacy of French colonialism in North Africa.” In other words, France had it coming, though it offers a far better life to its 5 million Muslims than they would be likely to find anywhere in the Muslim world, including in their countries of descent. The Muslims owe nothing, no loyalty, to France.
Such thinking is by no means unique to journalists for the Financial Times. Edwy Plenel, a former editor of Le Monde, published a book late last year called Pour les Musulmans (For the Muslims), which resolutely refuses to acknowledge that a problem exists with Muslims, other than that they have been treated badly—though France seems to have accommodated immigrants from around the world without similar tensions.
Barber ends with a rhetorical flourish at odds with the rest of his piece. “The murders in Paris throw down a challenge to French politicians and citizens to stand up for the republic’s core values and defeat political violence without succumbing to the siren songs of the far right.” Here, I can only agree. The French must, in true Voltairean fashion, defend to the death the right of their satirists to mock, bait, and needle Muslims, in France and elsewhere.
Thu January 08, 2015 3:48 am
dimejinky99 wrote:yeah big time.
But it wasn't any right-wing anti-islam agenda they pushed, they went for everyone, politicians, popes, the works.
France's relationship with it's Muslim citizens has always been fraught with difficulties. This will only make things worse.
The anti-islamic movement all across Europe is becoming quite frightening. Those marches in germany especially.
Thu January 08, 2015 3:50 am
Thu January 08, 2015 8:36 am
fakeplasticdreams wrote:dimejinky99 wrote:yeah big time.
But it wasn't any right-wing anti-islam agenda they pushed, they went for everyone, politicians, popes, the works.
France's relationship with it's Muslim citizens has always been fraught with difficulties. This will only make things worse.
The anti-islamic movement all across Europe is becoming quite frightening. Those marches in germany especially.
Its funny that the PEGIDA movement in Germany is led by a potential nutcase as well.
if it was up to me id throw all these Al Qaeda fuckers and Neo nazi like dudes in the sarlacc pit.
Thu January 08, 2015 12:54 pm
Thu January 08, 2015 1:42 pm
enimmi wrote:http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html
"The only effective response to this manipulative strategy (as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani tried to tell the Iraqi Shiites a decade ago) is to resist the impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to carry out identity-politics reprisals."
Thu January 08, 2015 1:47 pm
Thu January 08, 2015 3:31 pm
Thu January 08, 2015 5:44 pm
Thu January 08, 2015 6:03 pm
Thu January 08, 2015 8:34 pm
Thu January 08, 2015 8:35 pm
dimejinky99 wrote:Some of the forums i'm oin here, talking about this, a lot of posters are asking this same question..why is absolutely everyone else getting the blame for this apart from those who did it?
France's intelligence services should have known ahead of time, the cartoon people shouldnt have been allowed push their buttons for so long etc etc.
It is almost like media outlets are afraid to tackle it head on..