The whole world stood aghast as a pair of gunmen, angered by free speech itself, stormed into a satirical magazine, mowing down cartoonists and writers who they saw as “insulting Islam.” 12 were killed, simply because of caricatures.
Lots of people buy that story, just like a lot of people bought the idea that 9/11 was done because “they hate us for our freedom.” In both cases, the underlying context isn’t examined too carefully.
The truth of the matter is, France has gotten extremely aggressive militarily in recent years, engaging in multiple military interventions across Africa and the Middle East, The same week of the attack, French officials were beating the war drums on Libya.
Blowback is a far more reasonable explanation for the sudden and violent attack in Paris. Charlie Hebdo may have been the convenient target, but many analysts agree that it was French foreign policy that was the real inciter.
The deaths of the cartoonists has sparked a beautiful narrative around the inviolability of free speech, and the price that must be paid to ensure freedom to future generations.
Yet ultimately, the attacks on “offensive” cartoonists are less about the cartoonists themselves than they are about the anger and desperation fueled by military intervention abroad. The lesson will be lost on many, of course, as the most convenient explanation is that the worst cases of terrorism are happening for their own sake.
And the establishment world wide is going to honor free speech by coming up with measures to curb it, to monitor people, to gather data. Lovely.
Only a matter of time.
I think it is straightforward and tactically stupid. Nation states with standing militaries are powerful. The prior French Administration was the driving force for the overthrown of Ghaddafi in Libya. A gang of thirty year old men and possible cohorts are a nuisance. Killing cartoonists of a left wing tradition is stupid and irrational. The jihadists like other religious zealots believe in magical thinking. 'Advenging the prophet' is not foreign policy.
The Law of Life:
a) If you're Stupid you better be Tough, and
b) If you're not Tough, you better not be Stupid.
If you don't want to be bitten by the neighbor's bulldog, it's probably not a good idea to climb over the fence and poke him with a sharp stick, is it?
You are correct.
I agree that the foreign policy of France and their constant interventionist attitudes towards issues in Africa and the Middle East are the most logical reason for the attacks.
Just as France has stirred the bees, so has the USA to a greater extent.
It would not be surprising if a similar attack happened in the USA, it is just about when not if.
Terrorism and false flags will continue as long as main sponsors of "terrorism without borders" / US, Israel, Sauds/ will continue create wars of aggression, export arms, create chaos and destabilise anybody anywher who does not aggree with them, whom they cant control…While leading Internacional Banksters quitly support it for their greed and enorm profits…..Pedro CR
Jason you have swallowed the hook. The attack was not an emotional response that was incited. it was theatrically orchestrated like all the other false flag initiatives to create a facile narrative which will justify widely suspending French civil rights, freedom of movement and provide for more intensive surveillance while producing some fog of war to obscure initiatives to spend vast wealth on armaments and creating an even more paranoid security state. With sufficient instances of apparent terrorism identified with Middle Eastern and North African discontent, France can justifiably behave as racist and neocolonial as Israel. Cui bono eh? In five years the new Pieds Noir, a lot like the looney Israeli settlers, will be building a separation wall across the once and future European pale of North Africa. The Paris attack especially the mise-en-scene finding of the perp terrorists wallet in the getaway vehicle is a deus ex machina adjustment of the plot by the producers. It makes you wonder if the whole Charlie Hebdo organization is not just a disposable al ciada funded initiative. How many magazines and newspapers does the CIA and Mossad operate in France, each a potential target. Don't you think the Mizrahi's get a little tired of being typecast as rabid islamists? Wake-up Jason, this terror initiative was staged with real blood and will polish a slippery path for France into domestic fascism and north african neocolonialism. Michael\
Jason has it down to a tee.
Nobody say that these gunmen were fighting against Assad.So who armed them and trained them ?
Obama or Putin ?
Just as we found the 911 attacks were more complex than what the corporate
media tried to make us believe, there is also more to these senseless killings
than the so-called Arab bogeyman, or 'They hate us' nonsense.
Unfortunately, the chicken hawks and bigots in the corporate media will ride
this current act of violence for all the mileage they can get.
The two brothers do not even speak Arabic. They where recruited by a janitor who preaches in a Paris park. The US is full of street evangelicals. Other parts of the world are not so different. The two brothers are orphans, fully French taught and raised. Its fine to question corporate media. Its fine to resist entanglements. Their own words are "we avenged the prophet".
One of the brothers was featured on a France (Channel) 3 documentary ten years ago. A French sociologist knew him well.You can go to Venice beach California and talk to all sorts of fringe groups who pick and choose believes and grievances like items in a buffet.
It is battle ground Iraq and Syria that give these people a platform, a network, status and access to sophisticated weapons.
Thanks Chaz, you spoke my mind. very true.
From the training of Afghan Mujaheddin in the 80's to the latest Pentagon announcement to train 5000 Syrian 'rebels' per year, (when they say 'Syrian' they mean being sent into Syria from all corners) what the Pentagon and other Western governments foreign policies, (including France) have assured, is plenty more future savage blow-back events, plenty more contracts for the arms industry and more ramping up of blanket surveillance on us all.
This is a vicious cycle and is going on since the American proxy war against Soviet which was fought by Afghans and other guests from Muslim countries. Billions of dollars were spent to create those monsters Mujahideen , they changed to Alqaida,then Taliban. Now they created ISIS and Daesh.
The war machines are benefiting and a few western here and there being killed, beaded, not important.
The Two most revealing aspects of TV coverage today in France regarding the so-called Islamic terrorism:
1. That the quote used on the supposedly liberal Morning Joe propaganda 'show' related Islamic terror to be against "capitalism".
2. That the French security guy in the light brown LL Bean style jacket and shaggy blond hair being the person obviously in charge of communication and 'actions' of the two groups of heavily armed militarist cops.
My conclusion is that the shaggy-haired guy, who looks like the type of CIA under-cover agent that was infiltrated into "Occupy" sites here in the US HQ of the Disguised Global Capitalist Empire, and the quote about "capitalism" being the target of Islamic so-called terrorism, is NOT a media coincidence.
1. Re. "Capitalism" being at the core of the Disguised Global Capitalist Empire:
"The U.S. state is a key point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups around the world to resolve problems of global capitalism and to secure the legitimacy of the system overall. In this regard, “U.S.” imperialism refers to the use by transnational elites of the U.S. state apparatus to continue to attempt to expand, defend, and stabilize the global capitalist system. We are witness less to a “U.S.” imperialism per se than to a global capitalist imperialism. We face an EMPIRE of global capital, headquartered, for evident historical reasons, in Washington." [caps added]
Robinson, William I. (2014-07-31). Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (p. 122). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
2. Re. the Empire absolutely being dependent on 'disguise', and the fact that disguise is the most important soft weapon of the Empire:
As Zygmunt Bauman hauntingly puts it, “In the case of an ailing social order, the absence of an adequate diagnosis…is a crucial, perhaps decisive, part of the disease.”13
Berman, Morris (2011-02-07). Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire (p. 22). Norton. Kindle Edition.
PS. It is also not coincidental that the media/propaganda sector of the
Empire that the media on "Morning Joe" (and shortly after on all
'channels' of the highly integrated Empire's media/propaganda sector)
was TOLD by HQ that it was dangerous to show too much of what is going on in this security operation against the Islamic supposed terrorists because they might 'learn something' about our tactics, as Joe said.
But what the Empire is really concerned about is that the domestic
'subjects' in the US might see, 'learn' too much, "diagnose", and
confirm that what is going on in this Special Operations Action in
France today in 2015, might give Americans too much insight into what as done much more softly during the CIA, NSA, and JSOCs operations during the nation-wide "Occupy" movements of 2011-12.
As Hannah Arendt warned from her painful experience under the earlier Nazi Empire, "Empire abroad entails tyranny at home" —- of which we should now be fully aware of both!
The French Potatoes HAD IT COMING …
I really think two things are going on in the Muslim community. The fact that France is engaged in military actions should piss people off–but it should be primarily the people living (or having immediate family) in those countries where France is engaged. I really don't think it's the havoc that western powers have caused in assorted Muslim countries that is the driving force behind the jihadis, it is Islam itself (or a version of it). Muslims leaders have pretty much ruled their countries quite shabbily over the years and one faction fighting another is a fact of life. Yes, Bin Laden, for example resented the US troops setting up shop in Saudi Arabia (at the request of the royal family), not because the US was causing any particular havoc in Saudi Arabia itself, but because it was an infidel army.
The motivation was primarily religious than political. These guys in Paris were not fired up for any real political reason after returning from doing jihad in Syria. They were fired up because of Islam-which doesn't allow criticism (especially from infidels) and is a totalitarian theocratic supremacist system at it's root. Thank the heavens that all those of Muslim heritage do not follow this system fully. The West is weak, the west is infidel, the west is perverted in Muslim eyes and needs to be subjugated and forced to submit to the will of Allah.
French Foreign Legion — Goose that laid the golden egg
In the 1970’s France paid President Nixon cash for all the gold that our government kept in reserve. Quite an accomplishment considering that just 25 years previous France was bankrupt and occupied by Nazis Germany.
Such is the profit in plundering the under developed nations that have the richest natural resources on earth.
It's hard to imagine the attack on charlie hebdo occurring absent Frances military involvement in the middle east the past few years. It's pretty clear the 2003 iraq invasion/war and the Libya/syria interventions have been key events in many young muslims turn towards Islamic terrorism, i doubt the cartoons alone motivated the attackers.
The key for western countries is to not create the conditions for these groups to arise and hone their skills in the first place, particularly when it's totally unnecessary and it not in the national interest. If saddam was still in power now how exactly would that be detrimental to western countries ? they guy couldn't even project power regionally! all of this has been completely unnecessary, but the fall out from the wests silly response to 9/11 continues.
More like blowback from the insane compulsion to import hostile aliens who subscribe to a non Western culture.
These large countries that can't seem to let go of their colonial past – going into 3rd world countries, killing the natives – they act all surprised when it comes back home and bites them on the ass. The only thing that surprises me is that it doesn't happen more often, and in more places. The problem is, TPTB KNOW this is a risk and they are willing to take that risk, whereas a generation ago they might have been more prudent…goes to show you what they think of us and how cheap life is these days.
Not bite, just little nips and large countries will write those off as the price they have to pay for freedom, aggression, oil, whatever you want to call the reason. As long as we/they/France/US/Canada/UK don't have to suffer the BIG bite. I fear it's coming and it will make 911 look like one of those nips.
Free speech is not an ideal in France. France’s top comedian Dieudonne was silenced by French authorities for mocking the holocaust.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayssot_Act
For their part Muslims want the same protection extended to them.
It's not revenge, it's the same as the 911 attack. They're jealous of our big screen t.v. sets.
The US and Britain should probably topple the secular French government and destroy all of its civil institutions and infrastructure by declaring a no-fly zone over France, sponsoring "moderate" sectarian rebels to fight a prolonged civil war and, if that's not enough, bombing with "boots on the ground". Following this, the country can be partitioned along logical, neat sectarian lines and peace & democracy will reign over the land. After all, similar strategies have done wonders in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander…maybe not, but anyway, what's bad for the goose makes delicious pate de foie gras.
piece from July about French military exploits in North & West Africa. incredible how they get away with it with almost zero coverage in anglo/american media.
France24: It’s time for Africa again as Hollande starts three-nation visit http://www.france24.com/en/20140716-france-west-a…