New information, published by the Croatian daily Slobodna Dalmacija, alleges that the French state was responsible for the attacks which occurred in Paris in January and November 2015. Either the French authorities had previously infiltrated the groups which perpetrated these attacks, and chose not to intervene to prevent them, or else they were directly implicated in the organisation of the attacks.
In this globalised world, if we launch weapons of great destructive power into communities abroad, incinerating and shredding women and children, we cannot avoid the fact that those who identify with those communities – ethnically, culturally and religiously – will take revenge on people here. If we are lucky it will be revenge on combatants. If we are unlucky it will be on our innocents. But either way, the truth is this. We caused it.
“On international politics Charlie Hebdo was neoconservative. It supported every single NATO intervention from Yugoslavia to the present. They were anti-Muslim, anti-Hamas (or any Palestinian organization), anti-Russian, anti-Cuban (with the exception of one cartoonist), anti-Hugo Chávez, anti-Iran, anti-Syria, pro-Pussy Riot, pro-Kiev … Do I need to continue?
“A string of at least 69 arrests in France this week on the vague charge of ‘defending terrorism’ (‘l’apologie du terrorisme’) risks violaing freedom of expression,” Amnesty International said in an understated press release on Friday.
claims over the sacrosanct status of ‘free speech’ and its expression as ‘satire’ cannot elide the more elementary issue of human consideration and social responsibility. As cartoonist Joe Sacco observes, Hebdo’s output is a “vapid way to use a pen.” One might also add, pernicious, vulgar and racist.
Like the rest of the media, the Guardian protests passionately when ‘bad guys’ commit an atrocity against ‘us’, but emotive defences of free speech are in short supply when ‘good guys’ bomb Serb and Libyan TV, or threaten the life of progressive US filmmakers. Far fewer tears are shed for Serb, Libyan or Palestinian journalists in US-UK corporate media offices.
it came to a significant ideological turning point at the end of the 1990s. Philippe Val supported NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and adopted an anti-Palestinian position during the Second Intifada. From then on it took on Islam, which was seen as a fundamental threat.
It was not pencils and pens – let alone ideas – that left Iraq, Gaza and Afghanistan shattered and hundreds of thousands of human beings dead. Not twelve. Hundreds of thousands. All with stories, with lives, with families. Tens of millions who have lost friends, family, homes and watched their country be torn apart.
