JE NE SUIS PAS CHARLIE
The Extremely Dark and
Unexamined Underside of the Charlie Hebdo Affair
John Chuckman
We hear much about bloody events in Paris being an attack upon
western traditions and freedom of the press, and I am sorry but such claims are
close to laughable, even though there is nothing remotely funny about mass
murder. It certainly is not part of the best western tradition to insult the revered
figures of major religions. You are, of course, technically free to do so in many
western countries – always remembering that in many of them, a wrong target for
your satire will get you a prison term for “hate crimes” - but it does represent
little more than poor judgement and extremely bad taste to exercise that particular
freedom. What Charlie Hebdo does is
not journalism, it is sophomoric jokes and thinly disguised propaganda. Hebdo’s general tone and themes place it
completely outside the mythic tableau of heroic defender of free speech or
daring journalism, it being very much a vehicle for the interests of American
imperialism through NATO.
Of course, the best western traditions don’t outlaw what
garments or symbols people may wear for their beliefs, as France has done. Note
also the history of some of the politicians making grandiose statements about
freedom of the press. Nicolas Sarkozy was involved a number of times in
suppressing stories in the press, even once getting a journalist fired. Sarkozy
is a man, by the way, who took vast, illegal secret payments from the late Muammar
Gaddafi and from France’s richest heiress to secure his election as president. David
Cameron had police seize computers at Guardian
offices and allows Julian Assange to remain cooped in the Embassy of Ecuador to
avoid trumped-up charges in Sweden. Cameron is also best buddies with Rupert
Murdoch, the man whose idea of journalism appears to be what he can dredge up
to exchange for what he wants from government. His Fox News in the United
States enjoys a reputation for telling the truth only by sheer accident. Barack
Obama is a man transfixed by secrecy and ready to use all of his powers to
punish those who tell the truth, a man who holds hundreds in secret prisons, and
a man who regularly oversees the extrajudicial execution of hundreds and
hundreds of people in a number of countries.
The parade celebrating the good things of western tradition
- which Obama missed but which saw now-potential presidential candidate Sarkozy
shove his way to the front - also included such luminaries as the Foreign
Minister of Egypt’s extremely repressive government, which, even as the
minister marched proudly, held innocent journalists in prison simply for
writing the truth. The Prime Minister of Turkey was there celebrating, a man
who has put a number of journalists in jail. Celebrating rights and freedoms
also was King Abdullah of Jordan who once saw a Palestinian journalist
sentenced to hard labor for writing so simple a truth as that the king was
dependent upon Israel for power.
We shouldn’t forget, too, that Israel targeted and killed a
number of journalists in its Gaza invasions, that the United States’ forces in
Iraq targeted and killed a number of journalists, and that “NATO” deliberately targeted
Serbia’s state television service with bombing, killing many civilians. Free
speech and western traditions, indeed.
There are more doubts and questions in the Charlie Hebdo affair than there will
ever be answers. In part this is because the French security forces silenced
witnesses, killing three assumed perpetrators in a display which seems to say that
Dirty Harry movies are now part of French
training programs.
And then we have the sudden death by apparent suicide of a
police commissioner in charge of the investigation just as he was writing his
report alone at night, an event which received little mainline press coverage.
A man in his forties in the midst of likely the biggest case of his career just
decides to kill himself?
We should all be extremely suspicious of a trained killer, seen
as being informed and exceedingly efficient at his work, leaving behind his
identity card in an abandoned car. It really is a touch more serendipity than
we would credit in a mystery story. We should all be extremely suspicious of men
so obviously well trained in military techniques, about men who were well
informed about schedules at the offices they attacked, and about men heavily
armed in the center of Paris. People serving in notorious killer outfits like
America’s SEALs or Britain’s SAS rarely achieve such complete success as twelve
victims, all shot dead, and an easy get-away.
And just to add to the confusion we have the video of one of
the armed men shooting a police officer lying on the sidewalk. The armed man,
face covered, lowers his AK-47 to within a couple of feet of the victim’s head
and fires. The head goes down, but we see no blood. Have you ever seen photos
of someone shot in the head with a high velocity weapon? That’s what the
Zapruder film is about, and the results are more like an exploding pumpkin than
a death at the end of a stage play. Even the propaganda-ridden BBC now has
expressed doubts about the video.
We need to be more than suspicious about anyone or any event
which has any connection with ISIS. ISIS is one of the terror groups assembled,
armed, and supplied by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States for the deliberate
and wanton destruction of Syria. The two brothers killed in Paris both fought
in Syria. It certainly would be easy enough for someone to have obtained an ID
card there from one of them. Remember, the excesses of ISIS we all read about -
at least those that aren’t clearly staged propaganda stunts such as video of a
hostage beheading - are the direct result of assembling large bands of
cutthroats and fanatics, arming them, and setting them loose to terrorize
someone else’s country.
It is the simplistic view of ISIS that the involved intelligence
services want us to have that it is a spontaneous fanatical rebellion in favor
of one extreme interpretation of Islam. Despite many recruits for ISIS holding what
are undoubtedly genuine fanatical beliefs, they almost certainly have no idea
who actually pays their salaries or provides their equipment – that is simply the
way black intelligence operations work. And those participating in such
operations are completely disposable in the eyes of those running them, as when
the United States bombs some in ISIS who perhaps exceeded their brief.
Every society has some percentage of its population which is
dangerously mad, and if such people are gathered together and given weapons, their
beliefs are almost beside the point, except that they provide the targeting mechanism
used by those doing the organizing.
We should all be extremely suspicious about any event when a
man such as Rupert Murdoch is quoted afterward saying, “Muslims must be held responsible
for jihadist cancer,” as he was in The
Independent. In case you forgot, Murdoch is a man whose news organizations for
years lied, stole, and violated a number of laws to obtain juicy tidbits for
his chain of cheesy mass-circulation newspapers. Murdoch also is a man who has
had the most intimate and influential relationships with several prime
ministers including that smarmy criminal, Tony Blair, and that current mindless
windbag and ethical nullity, David Cameron. Publicity from large circulation
newspapers, which can swing at a moment’s notice from supporting to attacking
you, plus campaign contributions buy a lot of government compliance. Murdoch also
is one of the world’s most tireless supporters of Israel’s criminal excesses.
And speaking of David Cameron, Murdoch’s made man in
Britain, David felt compelled to chime in on the Hebdo publicity extravaganza with, “Muslims face a special burden
on extremism….” Now, why would that be? No less than Murdoch’s creepy words,
Cameron’s statement is an indefensible thing to say.
Who has a special burden for the massacre of students at
Columbine High school in Colorado? Who has a special burden for Israeli Baruch Goldstein
who murdered 29 Palestinians as they worshipped? Do Noweigians bear a special
burden for Anders Breivik, who shot 69 people, mostly children, perhaps the
most bizarre mass murderer of our times? Does the American Army bear a special
burden for Timothy McVeigh’s horrific bombing in Oklahoma City, killing 168, he
and his associates having met in Fort Benning during basic training, two of
them having been roommates? Perhaps, in both these latter cases, Christianity
bears a special burden since these people were exposed to that religion early
in life? As was Hitler, as was Stalin, as was Mussolini, as was Franco, as was Ceaușescu,
as was Pinochet, and countless other blood-drenched villains?
The late Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, was
responsible for a great many murders, including about a hundred people bombed
in a terror attack on the King David Hotel. He also was responsible for the
assassination of the distinguished Swedish diplomat, Count Folke Bernadotte, and
he started the invasion of Lebanon which eventually left thousands dead, but
you’ll have a hard time finding him described anywhere as a “Jewish terrorist”
or finding prominent people asking who has a special responsibility for his extraordinarily
bloody career.
There is something hateful and poisonous in conflating the
religious background of a criminal or mentally unbalanced person and his
violent crime. We seem to do this only in cases involving violent men with
Muslim backgrounds. Why? How is it possible that even one decent Muslim in this
world has any responsibility for the acts of madmen who happen to be Muslim?
This gets at one of the deep veins of hate and prejudice in western society
today, Islamophobia, a vein regularly mined by our “free” press and by our ‘democratic”
governments. Our establishment having embraced Israel’s excesses and
pretensions, we have been pushed into worshipping the mumbo-jumbo of Islamic
terror, a phenomenon virtually invented in Israel and perpetuated by Israel’s
apologists as a way of stopping anyone from asking why Israel does not make
peace, stop abusing millions of people, and return to its recognized borders.
Well, we do have an entire industry exploiting every event which
may be imagined as terror. I read an interview with the great cartoonist,
Robert Crumb, who happens to live in France. When asked if any other
journalists had approached him on the topic of controversial cartoons, he said that
there weren’t any journalists in America anymore, just 250,000 public relations
people. That is precisely the state of American journalism. It digs into nothing,
at least nothing of consequence, working full time to manage the public’s
perceptions of government and its dreadful policies, from murdering innocents with
drones and remaining quiet on the many American and Israeli atrocities of
recent decades to manipulating fears of “terrorism” and saying little about such
domestic horrors as the many hundreds of citizens shot dead by American police
every single year.
The French government is reported to have been quite
concerned about Benjamin Netanyahu showing up at the Paris march and making volatile
speeches, and they specifically asked him not to come. At first, Netanyahu’s
own security service, Shin Bet, agreed that he should not go because the parade
in the streets represented a difficult security situation. But neither the host
government’s formal request nor the security service’s concerns can stop a man
like Netanyahu. France was advised he would come, and the French made their displeasure
clear by saying they would then also invite Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestine Authority
to the parade, which they did.
Netanyahu not only marched for the cameras at the front rank
of a parade where he had no business, he made arrangements with the families of
four Jewish victims for an all-expense-paid showy funeral in Jerusalem. None of
the victims was even an Israeli citizen, yet at this writing they have all been
buried in there with pomp and plenty of publicity. But Netanyahu didn’t stop
there, he went on to make speeches that the French and other European Jews
should leave their countries riddled with anti-Semitism and come to Israel,
their true homeland. In diplomatic terms, this was what is termed unacceptable
behavior which in almost any other case would get you thrown out of a country. In
ordinary terms, it was outrageous behavior, much like seeing a seriously
drunken guest loudly insulting his host at a party to which he was not even
invited.
The ineffectual current President of France, François
Hollande, sent notice to Jerusalem that the four dead shop victims were being
awarded the Légion d'Honneur, France’s
highest honor. The nation’s highest honor, founded by Napoleon over two hundred
years ago for exceptional contributions to the state, awarded for the act of being
murdered by thugs? Simply bizarre.
I don’t pretend to understand everything involved in this
complex set of events, but it is unmistakable that we are being manipulated by
a number unscrupulous and unethical people who use murder victims and the
public’s natural sympathies for them as board pieces in some much larger game.
There is even a trivial side to these bloody events with
many Parisians carrying signs which read “Je suis Charlie,” surely the kind of
asininity posing as deep feeling that long has been established in the United
States where Walmart teddy bears and plastic flowers with cheap slogans are
regularly tossed in piles here and there as memorials to this or that. Perhaps
Euro-Disney has had a more devastating influence on French culture than I
realized.
