Je Suis Charlie

Peadar O’Maoileoin with his views on the religious fascist attack on freedom of expression in Paris yesterday. The piece featured in The DC Dispatch.



Charlie Hebdo is a weekly magazine headquartered in Paris, France. The magazine was initially founded in 1969 and ran until 1981. It was then resurrected again in 1992 and has been operating since that date.

Stephane Charbonnier, the magazine’s editor since 2009 was murdered today, along with eleven others, two of whom were police officers. A group of Islamofacists, offended by the magazine’s caricature of Islam, carried out the attack and were heard yelling the Prophet Muhammad’s name.

Charbonnier and his staff have been receiving death threats for quite a while, and instead of capitulating to blackmail they stood by their convictions, and died as a result.

This is not just an attack on a magazine in the capital city of France; it is an attack on western civilisation and European democracy. It is an attack that has been going on for some years, as I’m sure you’re well aware.

Kurt Westergaard, the famous Danish cartoonist has been living in fear since drawing a caricature of Mohammad in 2006. When said cartoon was published, protests took place all over the world and Danish people were murdered for the crime of being Danish. When this happened, you’ll recall the condemnation was not for the riots in the street and the murder of innocent civilians, it was for publishing the cartoons in the first place.

The same condemnation is seeping out through the cracks in our society today. Thankfully Twitter and the online world are alive with support for the massacred cartoonists, but said backing far from unanimous.

I have witnessed people say the magazine staff had it coming, they were playing with fire and deserved it. Yes, deserved it! I have also witnessed people say anyone who continues to draw these cartoons, or oppose Islam deserve to die as well.

The cartoonists bodies are cold less than a few hours, and people feel the need to chime in and say the problem is western civilsation not the Islamic threat to it.

Blame the cartoonists for expressing freedom of speech.

Belittle the cartoonists work and say they had it coming.

Well then, these imbeciles can cower away in the corner and make all the concessions they want to Islamic extremists. I will be up front fighting this, because I am not a shameful coward. I will not capitulate.

To paraphrase the late Christopher Hitchens, the barbarians are not at the gate, they are already here and this sort of capitulating mentality is holding the door open for them.

6 comments:

  1. A Propper Charlie. The French people and the wider European community need to dig down into why these things happen. Why should Europeans carry the can for American foreign policy.

    To be honest I could not give a flying hoot about those cartoonists, they ordered their fate of the menu when they made a dick outta Mo.

    Western governments dont give a hoot, they will see this as an opportunity for further repression of thier own peoples with more anti-terror laws.

    Could you blame Arabs for hitting back given what the west has done onto Mussy countries.

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  2. Who mmurdered the journalist Ross Mc Whirter ? The provos were and are scared shitless of the American military. Guantanomo makes the Maze look like a 7 * hotel.

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  3. Toutes mes condoleances aux victimes. Vive la Liberte. Vive la France. Vive Charlie Hebdo. ✏️

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  4. Feel te love,
    While American foregin policy has a part to play with yesterdays events... Algerians by and large haven't forgiven the French for events like the Paris massacre of 1961.. Most don't care about the three cops killed or staff of Charlie hedbo.

    If Marine le Pen gets voted in as the next president la france will be fcuked... The postcard is gone (it went yrs ago under Chirac's 2nd term)..

    Last night my oldest wee girl said "Daddy, I don't like France and I don't trust Europe... I'd love to go to Brasil"...

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  5. As numbed as we have become here after 30 years of madness there was just something deeply sad about seeing a helpless policeman on the ground getting shot in a Paris street. The criminal gang of Bush, Chaney and Rumsfeld and Bliar have this all on their hands. They are funding mass murder throughout the M. East and beyond.

    The targeting of the magazine workers is just an indication of how devoid of tolerance and blind with hatred fundamentalism is. Perhaps it was seeing it from a non involved, removed position helped bring it all home. Terrible event.

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  6. Feel te love,

    No doubt there are some fundamentalists out there who think you deserve a similar fate for your dismissive abbreviated reference to their prophet, let alone for mentioning his name in the same sentence as the male sexual organ.

    Personally, I think they would be wrong, regarding both yourself and the murdered cartoonists.

    Peace.

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