Charlie Hebdo normally prints 60,000 copies a month, but they are planning a run of three million for the next issue. Clearly, this incident has galvanized France behind the magazine and profits are about to explode. I’m not a fan or avid follower, but from what I can ascertain, the magazine delights in pushing buttons and sacrificing sacred cows. In fact, it reminds me of the Radical Republicans in Congress who baited slave owners with a tone so harsh and insulting that Charles Sumner was beaten senseless with a walking stick on the Senate floor. Now Sumner was certainly in the right on the issue, but did he have to make it such a personal attack as to provoke violence? In hindsight it appears the Radicals who took over Congress wanted to manifest a bloody Civil War, not negotiate a peaceful settlement.
State terror is a game few people get into and it usually starts with a school somewhere preaching jihad. When Russia was our enemy and trying to quell a rebellion in Afghanistan, the CIA created many jihad schools, always through their proxy, the Pakistan ISI. We gave millions in tax dollars to print jihad training books. This indoctrination is best if it begins early in life, starting in elementary school, so I don’t think it’s correct to entirely blame the patsies who get sucked into this operation, since most have been carefully mind-controlled and may even be under hypnosis when fomenting their evil deeds.
Here’s another other important detail about state terror operations: they usually come as false flags, and when they do, media coverage will be particularly intense, as well as any anti-terror laws that have been prepared in advance, and possible invasions of any offending countries, which in this case would by Syria.
Terror is not an effective tool for ending persecution or conflict and really only serves to manifest blowback on its perpetrator. If ISIS did create this incident, ISIS will suffer greatly, and the incident has only served to galvanize most of the world against ISIS, so when the leaders of ISIS are hanged the world will celebrate. And I hate the fact a jihad group has stolen the name of the Egyptian Goddess of Magic.
How different this all could have been if Muslim activists had responded in a less violent manner, although I’m confused how masked gunmen could stroll into a magazine everyone knew was a jihad target. Why weren’t appropriate security measures taken to safeguard the staff? Like a steel door between them and the outside world, as well as armed security watching that door.
ISIS wouldn’t exist today had we not invaded Iraq and destroyed its social fabric. Before we showed up, Iraq was one of the most prosperous Muslim states, and now it is the most chaotic. After 9/11, practically every known jihadist in the world was rendered to a secret CIA torture site, and the worst offenders sent to Guantanamo Bay for a decade or more of continuous torture. No doubt some of these unfortunates are now running jihad training camps somewhere, and you’d be naive to think these camps aren’t all well-penetrated by double agents from a variety of sources. Of course, the most feared are the Mossad, and Israel has double agents in every Muslim jihad group of any size. But I have a sense the Mossad, CIA and MI6 share information and probably work hand-in-glove on monitoring this jihad movement, something they’ve invested considerable time and money in building up because the best way to penetrate any jihad group is to offer them guns or money. So please don’t pretend that the tens of thousands of spooks operating with the most high-tech equipment and limitless black budgets cannot keep track of a few hundred jihadists capable of manifesting attacks on the West. The perpetrators of this incident were high enough on the watch list to merit constant observation, so why does French intelligence act like they were off the map?
I’d urge Muslim activists to take a different path and respond to Charlie Hebron-type ridicule with cartoons, or even cream pies, not bullets. In the early 1970s, Tom Forcade was called to testify at a Congressional hearing on obscenity, and ended his brief statement by throwing a pie in the face of the chief commissioner. This was a very successful media statement against obscenity laws. Very soon afterwards, Jean Michel Basquiat imitated Forcade’s stunt at a City-As-School graduation ceremony, but substituted a cardboard box filled with shaving cream, which he dumped on the principle’s head. These are appropriate reactions to being insulted by a cartoon. Killing innocent people, on the other hand, guarantees complete isolation from civilized society.
So this is why I hold judgment on who might have fomented this evil deed. It could have been true-believing jihadists mistakenly believing it was beneficial to their cause. Or it could have been exteme right-wing elements of Gladio up to their old tricks again.
For those who support Palestinian rights and seek to find a non-violent solution to our current global mind game, I’d suggest building a non-violent Muslim rights alternative to jihad. I remember when there was a pro-Palestinian-rights peace movement inside Israel. If only someone could find a way to turn all this terror into love, alternative solutions to violence would be within reach.