Whoever was behind this massacre, it plays into the hands of the most reactionary forces seeking war abroad and police-state measures at home.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/08/fran-j08.html)

The Paris atrocity conforms to the pattern of virtually every major case of terrorism internationally, stretching from the September 11, 2001 attacks to the present. They have not been carried out by people off the security services’ radar, but by individuals who were well-known and purportedly under scrutiny. Invariably, the authorities asserted that the atrocities were not prevented due to “intelligence failures.”

snip

Whatever the case, the political intention and effect of the attack is clear: to polarize society along national, ethnic and religious lines, dividing the working class and strengthening the drive to war, social reaction and repression.

The main danger arising from this horrible attack is the political purpose to which it will be put. In that sense, the media’s initial comparisons of the Charlie Hebdo shooting with the September 11 attacks are a sharp warning to the working class. That tragedy was exploited to embroil the American people in unpopular wars across the Middle East, above all in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to build up US intelligence agencies as a massive domestic spying apparatus, combined with paramilitary forces operating an unaccountable global network of torture and drone murder.

Twitter is awash with diatribes on both sides of this. It IS polarizing and liberals/progressives and all to the right of these are screaming for retaliation, while a different bunch (some real leftists, others not) are asking for comparisons with western atrocities against brown folks that got no attention, from any official or media (difference?), at all.

Couple this with the fact that every ten seconds on tv and radio there are cries of honoring veterans and serving military. It appears that every person in the US military has a solid gold asshole. I saw a commercial for the US Navy that said "They will have to come through us, before they can get to you!" We are left to wonder who "THEY" are - pretty scary, no doubt.
The level of military "whip-up" is approaching the shrill level. You better watch out, They may be coming!

Twitter is awash with diatribes on both sides of this. It IS polarizing and liberals/progressives and all to the right of these are screaming for retaliation, while a different bunch (some real leftists, others not) are asking for comparisons with western atrocities against brown folks that got no attention, from any official or media (difference?), at all.

Couple this with the fact that every ten seconds on tv and radio there are cries of honoring veterans and serving military. It appears that every person in the US military has a solid gold asshole. I saw a commercial for the US Navy that said "They will have to come through us, before they can get to you!" We are left to wonder who "THEY" are - pretty scary, no doubt.
The level of military "whip-up" is approaching the shrill level. You better watch out, They may be coming!

'They' are here....

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4bdadb177f8b9a2b31720100-480/swat-team-police-shield.jpg

"Thank you for your service."

https://www.extension.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/PIC00007.JPG

Besides being a Trot twit Orwell lacked imagination.

The CT is thick & fast on twitter. Maybe some of it will shake out, who knows? All of the usual suspects are being indicted and while all of them are guilty as sin of many things and might have some hand in it that is beside the point. The point being that this whole opera was initiated by the US and it's allies/vassels 25 years ago and has become more and more encompassing. A few 'black-ops' or whatever are a drop in the bucket compared to the geniune blowback of this imperialist frenzy. Either circumstance 'profits' the ruling class by providing the circular logic which excuses and feeds imperialist war. CT is the handmaiden of reformism.

CT is the handmaiden of reformism.

Right. The talk of these gunmen being some form of detritus from Syria is probably accurate, as far as that goes, but the overall drift in these events is pure imperialism gone amok. "Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech!" "These people died for our freedoms! We are all Charlie!" Hunh? Man it is getting deep in some of these places...

I am NOT Charlie

Okay, let's be clear. I am not Muslim. I oppose terrorism. I don't even support the death penalty. I loathe Takfirism. I oppose violence as a means to make a political or ethical point. I fully support freedom of speech, including critical speech and humor.

But this morning I am most definitely NOT Charlie.

In fact, I am disgusted and nauseated by the sick display of collective hypocrisy about the murders in France. Here is why:

Charlie Hebdo for the Darwin Awards

The folks at Charlie Hebdo had it coming. Here is what I wrote about them in September 2012 when they published their famous caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed: Worthy of the Darwin Awards, if you ask me. Excellent, the “gene pool” of the French “caviar-Left” badly needs some cleaning". Today I fully stand by my words.

Let me ask you this: what would be the point of, say, taking a nap on train tracks? You don't have to "agree" with the train which will run you over, but it still will, won't it? What about taking a nap on train tracks specifically to make a point? To prove that the train is bad? To dare it? To make fun of it? Would that not be the height of stupidity? And yet, that is *exactly* what Charlie Hebdo did. I would even argue that that his how Charlie Hebdo made it's money, daring the "Muslim train" to run them over. You think I am exaggerating? Check out the caricature which one of the folks who got murdered yesterday had just posted. The text reads: "Still no terrorist attacks in France - Wait, we have until the end of January to send you are best wishes". The crazy person shown in the drawing is packing a Kalashnikov and wearing an Afghan "Pakol" - the typical "crazy Muslim" in Charlie Hebdo's world. Talk about a stupid dare...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6v_NDuCMAAhoMZ.jpg]/img]

"Spitting in people's souls"

There is an expression in Russian: spitting in somebody's soul. It fully applies here. Muslims worldwide have be unambiguously clear about that. They take blasphemy very, very seriously, as they do the name of the Prophet and the Quran. If you want to really offend a Muslim, ridicule his Prophet or his Holy Book. That is not a secret at all. And when Charlie Hebdo published their caricatures of the Prophet and when they ridiculed him the a deliberately rude and provocative manner, they knew what they were doing: they were very deliberately deeply offending 1.6 billion Muslims world wide. Oh, and did I mention that in Islam blasphemy is a crime punishable by death? Well, it turns out that of 1.6 billion Muslims exactly three decided to take justice in their own hands and kill the very deliberately blaspheming Frenchmen. You don't have to be Muslim or to approve of the death penalty for blasphemy to realize that this was inevitable and that this has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. Offend any group as large as 1.6 billion and sooner or later you will find 1-5 folks willing to use violence to make you pay for it. This is a statistical inevitability.

Are some victims more equal then others?

So 12 deliberately "soul spitting blasphemers" were murdered and all of France is in deep mourning. The media worldwide does such a good job presenting it all as a planetary disaster that many thousands people worldwide say "I am Charlie", sob, light candles and take a "courageous" stance for freedom of speech.

Crocodile tears if you ask me.

The fact is that the AngloZionists have carefully and lovingly nurtured, organized, armed, financed, trained, equipped and even directed the Takfiri crazies for decades. From the war in Afghanistan to Syria today these murderous psychopaths have been the foot-soldiers of the AngloZionist Empire for decades. But, apparently, nobody cares about their victims in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Chechnia, in Kosovo, in Libya, in Kurdistan, in Iraq or elsewhere. There these liver-eating murderers are "freedom fighters" who get full support. Including from the very same media which today is in mourning over Charlie Hebdo. Apparently, in the western ethos some victims are more equal then others.

[img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QMLZRtYmLOA/VK6P3DMDpqI/AAAAAAAAGrI/qHfCoRrvGls/s1600/Happy%2BWahabi.jpg

And when is the last time somebody in Europe shed a single tear over the daily murders of innocent people in the Donbass whose murder is paid for and directly directed by the western regimes?

How stupid do they think we are?

And then this. Even a drooling idiot knew that Charlie Hebdo was THE prime target for that kind of attack. And I promise you that French cops are not drooling idiots. Yet, for some reason, they were nowhere to be seen that day. Only a van with two (or one?) cop was parked nearby (hardly an anti-terrorist protection detail) and one poor cop was shot and then executed with an AK shot to the head while he was begging for mercy. Is this the best the French state can do?

Hardly.

So what is going on here? I will tell you what - the EU 1%ers are now capitalizing on these murders to crack down on their own population. Sarkozy already met Hollande and they both agreed that new levels of firmness and vigilance need to be implemented. Does that not reek of a French 9/11?

So no, I am most definitely NOT Charlie this morning and I am disgusted beyond words with the obscene display of doubleplusgoodthinking "solidarity" for a group of "caviar-lefties" who made their money spitting in the souls of billions of people and then dared them to do something about it. And I am under no illusion whatsoever about the fact that cui bono clearly indicates that the French regime either organized it all, or let it happen or, at the very least, makes maximal political use of it all.

But most of all, I am disgusted with all those who play along and studiously avoid asking the right questions about all this. I guess they really are "Charlies" all of them.

I am not.

The Saker

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.ca/2015/01/i-am-not-charlie.html

Barbarians

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article2621

I can imagine letters like this being written in Ravena after the Ostogoths sacked Rome. And how did youse Franks get to be squatting in Paris in the first place? Oh, the humanity! Who are the barbarians?

The targets are the Republic, its values, history, enlightenment, and secularism.

How about the Republics' acts of murder in Syria, Libya, and everywhere that NATO slaughters people with impunity? Oh the "values"! Oh the "enlightenment!" I am sure that Algerians and Vietnamese folks would just line-up to heap praise on France's innate humanity, enlightenment and values. The Republic is a bourgeois, imperial bastion and, currently, a puppet of US hegemony. No one should be executed as those "Hebdo" geeks were - no one, anywhere, regardless of their privilege, or lack thereof.

The barbarians are in charge...

No one should be executed as those "Hebdo" geeks were - no one, anywhere, regardless of their privilege, or lack thereof.

Don't worry about it. Even discounting Saker as the source, it is not wrong to invoke the Law of Large Numbers here. (although I could do without the good Reverend Bayes)

(although I could do without the good Reverend Bayes)

I'd of given you odds on that...

Statement of Communistes on the Attack on Charlie Hebdo (Fr.; Eng.)

We salute the victims of the criminal attack on January 7 against "Charlie Hebdo."

We condemn this attack against a newspaper. Only political struggle against the ideas and slogans carried by the media will allow establishing in our country the necessary freedom of the press, for which we struggle.

We take note that this attack was condemned by leaders of Islam in France and around the world.

We denounce the political use of the assassination. The President of the Republic and his government, the employers and their French Business Council, political parties from Mélenchon to the National Front, "personalities" and so forth, together call for “national unity."

We denounce this new version of the 'Sacred Union' which wipes out a reality, to which we will return.

"France is the country engaged militarily behind the United States. 8,000 French soldiers are deployed in overseas operations mainly in Africa and the Middle East," says the newspaper "Les Echos."

We denounce this 'Sacred Union' that wants to gather together once more, on the one hand, the exploiters, big industry and big finance, and their governments, and on the other hand, those that they exploit: the workers and the people.

One reality will always remain: as long as capitalism exists, so will the class struggle.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nous saluons les victimes de l’attentat criminel du 7 janvier contre «Charlie Hebdo».

Nous condamnons cet attentat contre un organe de presse. Seul le combat politique contre les idées et les mots d’ordre véhiculés par les médias permettra d’établir dans notre pays l’indispensable liberté de la presse pour laquelle nous luttons.

Nous enregistrons que cet attentat a été condamné par les responsables de la religion musulmane de France et du monde.

Nous dénonçons l'utilisation politique de cet assassinat. Le Président de la République et son gouvernement, le patronat et son MEDEF, les partis politique de Mélenchon au Front National, des «personnalités» etc., appellent ensemble à l «union nationale ».

Nous dénonçons cette nouvelle version de l'union sacrée qui efface une réalité sur laquelle nous reviendrons. «La France est le pays le plus engagé militairement derrière les Etats-Unis. 8.000 soldats français sont déployés en opération extérieure principalement en Afrique et au Moyen-Orient» indique le journal «Les Echos».

Nous dénonçons cette Union sacrée qui veut rassembler, une fois de plus, les exploiteurs ces grands industriels et financiers, leurs gouvernements et celles et ceux quils exploitent, les travailleurs et le peuple.

Une réalité demeurera toujours tant que le capitalisme existera, celle de la lutte des classes.

http://mltoday.com/statement-of-communistes-on-the-attack-on-charlie-ebdo