A Good Day to Value Freedom of Speech
Derek Lowe, who usually blogs on chemistry, took time off from scientific topics to post a short message yesterday.
I don’t often note world events here. But since a blog is the embodiment of freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, I’m taking some time to remember the journalists in France who were killed today over nothing more than that. As Stphane Charbonnier, one of the victims put hit himself a couple of years ago:
“Je n’ai pas peur des reprsailles. Je n’ai pas de gosses, pas de femme, pas de voiture, pas de crdit. a fait srement un peu pompeux, mais je prfre mourir debout que vivre genoux.”
(“I am not afraid of reprisals. I have no kids, no wife, no car, no mortgage. It surely is a bit pompous, but I’d rather die standing than live on my knees”)
Australian cartoonist David Pope has it right.
To check whether this guy really respects ‘freedom of speech and freedom of opinion’, I posted a short comment pointing out that US and European governments had been funding and are still funding many of these terrorist groups in Libya and Syria, but call them ‘rebels’ and ‘freedom fighters’. I also posted two links from kosher sources - one from USA Today and the other one from Ron Paul.
The comment was promptly deleted. This clown allows ‘freedom of opinion’
as long as it is in agreement with his thought. Needless to say, his blog is
not an ‘embodiment of freedom of speech and freedom of opinion’.
Edit. The comment is up there now. Thanks Derek.
The real value of freedom of speech and blogs come from being able to discuss and value alternate viewpoints. Let’s try that for a change.
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Okay, lets be clear. I am not Muslim. I oppose terrorism. I dont 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.
Just a stupid dare?
Let me ask you this: what would be the point of, say, taking a nap on train tracks? You dont have to agree with the train which will run you over, but it still will, wont 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 its 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 Hebdos world. Talk about a stupid dare
Spitting in peoples souls
There is an expression in Russian: spitting in somebodys 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 dont 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 Empire’s freedom fighter
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.
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
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Who profits from killing Charlie? - Pepe Escobar
Putin did it. Sorry, he didn’t. In the end, it was not Russia “aggression” that attacked the heart of Europe. It was a pro-style jihadi commando. Cui bono?
Careful planning and preparation; Kalashnikovs; rocket-propelled grenade launcher; balaclavas; sand-colored ammunition vest stuffed with spare magazines; army boots; piece of cake escape in a black Citroen. And the icing on the lethal cake; faultless Paris-based logistical support to pull that off. A former top French military commander, Frederic Gallois, has stressed the perfect application of “urban guerrilla technique” (where are those notorious Western counter-terrorism “experts” when one needs them?)
They might have spoken perfect French; others said it was broken French. Anyway, what matters is that they uttered the magic word; “We’re al-Qaeda.” Better yet; they told a man in the street, “Tell the media that this is al- Qaeda in Yemen”, which means, in American terror terminology, al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), which had Charlie Hebdo’s editor/cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier (“Charb”) on a hit list duly promoted by AQAP’s glossy magazine Inspire. Accusation: “Insulting the Prophet Mohammed.”
And just to make sure everyone had the perpetrators implanted on their brain, the killers also said, “Allahu Akbar”; “We have killed Charlie Hebdo”; and “We have avenged the Prophet.”
Case closed? Well, it took only a few hours for French police to identify the (usual?) suspects; French-Algerian brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. The third man - the driver of the black Citroen, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad - then turned himself in with an ironclad alibi. So the third man remains a cipher.
They all wore balaclavas. The Kouachi brothers have not been captured. But the police seem to know very well who they are. Because they found an abandoned ID in the black Citroen (oh, the troubles of being a command in a rush …) How come they didn’t know anything before the carnage?
Right on cue, Cherif Kouachi’s bio was splattered all over. He was on a global watch list. Along with six others, he was sentenced in May 2008 to 3 years in prison for “terrorism”; in fact unloading a dozen young Frenchmen via madrassas in Egypt and Syria to none other than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the killed-by-an-American-missile former head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the spiritual father of Daesh/ISIS/ISIL.
Also right on clue, a full narrative was ready for mass consumption. The key point; French police privileges the hypothesis of “Islamic terrorism”. According to their “experts”, this could be an attack “ordered from abroad and executed by jihadis coming back from Syria that have escaped us”, or it could be “suburban idiots that radicalized themselves and concocted this military attack in the name of al-Qaeda.”
Scrap option two, please; this was a pro job. And staying with option one, this points right at - what else - blowback. Yes, they could be Daesh/ISIS/ISIL mercenaries trained by NATO (crucially, France included) in Turkey and/or Jordan. But it might get even false-flag nastier. They could also be former or current French special forces.
**Blast Islam, will travel **
Predictably, Islamofascism peddlers are already having a field day/week/month/year. For simpletons/trolls/hordes exhibiting an IQ worthy of sub-zoology, when in doubt, demonize Islam. It’s so convenient to forget that untold millions from Pakistan’s tribal areas to street markets across Iraq continue to feel pain devastating their hearts and lives as they are expendable victims of the jihadi mindset - or “Kalashnikov culture”, as it is known in Pakistan - profiting the “West”, directly or indirectly, for decades now. Think ritual droning of Pakistani, Yemeni, Syrian, Iraqi or Libyan civilians. Think Sadr City witnessing carnages over 10 times worse than Paris.
What French President Francois Hollande defined as “an act of exceptional barbarism” - and it is - does not apply when the “West”, France in the front line, from King Sarko to General Hollande himself, weaponizes, trains and remote-controls assorted mercenaries/beheaders from Libya to Syria. Oh yeah; killing civilians in Tripoli or Aleppo is perfectly all right. But don’t do that in Paris.
So this, in the heart of Europe, is what blowback feels like. This is what people feel in the Waziristans when a wedding party is incinerated by a Hellfire missile. In parallel, it’s absolutely impossible that the oh so sophisticated Western intel network had not seen blowback coming - and was impotent to prevent it (how come the scapegoats du jour, the Kouachi brothers, were not in the gallows?)
Of course the ultra-elaborate Western counter-terrorism expert network - so proficient at strip-teasing us all at every airport - saw it coming; but in shadow warland, portmanteau “al-Qaeda” and its myriad declinations, including “renegade” Daesh/ISIS/ISIL, are used as much as a mercenary army as a convenient domestic threat “against our freedoms”.
**Who profits? **
US Think Tankland, also predictably, is busy spinning the drama of an “intra- Muslim” split which provides jihadis a lot of geopolitical space to exploit - all this sucking the Western world into a Muslim civil war. This is absolutely ridiculous. The Empire of Chaos, already during the 70s, was busy cultivating jihadi/Kalashnikov culture to fight anything from the USSR to nationalist movements all across the Global South. Divide and Rule has always been used to fan the flames “intra-Islam”, from the Clinton administration getting cozy with the Taliban to the Cheney regime - helped by Persian Gulf vassals - advancing the sectarian Sunni/Shi’ite schism.
Cui bono, then, with killing Charlie? Only those whose agenda is to demonize Islam. Not even a bunch of brainwashed fanatics would pull off the Charlie carnage to show people who accuse them of being barbarians that they are, in fact, barbarians. French intel at least has concluded that this is no underwear bomber stunt. This is a pro job. That happens to take place just a few days after France recognizes Palestinian statehood. And just a few days after General Hollande demanded the lifting of sanctions against the Russian “threat”.
The Masters of the Universe who pull the real levers of the Empire of Chaos are freaking out with the systemic chaos in the racket they so far had the illusion of controlling. Make no mistake - the Empire of Chaos will do what it can to exploit the post-Charlie environment - be it blowback or false flag.
The Obama administration is already mobilizing the UN Security Council. The FBI is “helping” with the French investigation. And as an Italian analyst memorably put it, jihadis don’t attack a vulture hedge fund; they attack a satirical rag. This is not religion; this is hardcore geopolitics. Reminds me of David Bowie: “This is not rock’n roll. This is suicide.”
The Obama administration is already mobilized to offer “protection” - Mob- style - to a Western Europe that is just, only just, starting to be diffident of the pre-fabricated Russian “threat”. And just as it happens, when the Empire of Chaos mostly needs it, evil “terra” once again rears its ugly head.
And yes, I am Charlie. Not only because they made us laugh; but because they were sacrificial lambs in a much nastier, gruesome, never-ending shadowplay.
Pepe Escobar’s latest book is Empire of Chaos. Follow him on Facebook. He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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