petitefrancaise

So,most of you know that I lived in France for quite some time - 11 years and my littlest regards herself as french since she was born there.

It is immensely distressing to hear that people have been killed for doing their job. Their job is political satire, a much needed resource in France because the mainstream (mostly tv) media do such a poor job of interrogating politicians. The magazine is on a par with the British "Private Eye".

I turned off NPR in disgust this morning when the talking heads started interviewing a woman from "Pen" an organisation dedicated to helping journalists and freedom of speech. These morons were suggesting that Charlie Hebdo had it coming to them and they knew it since there had been a policeman outside their main door since 2012.

Why on earth would they talk this way? Is it because the USA puts it's head above the parapet to fight aainst these extremists and has to take extreme measures to protect itself? The US embassy in Paris is a bomb-proof fortress at the end of the Champs Elysee and London is even more so.

I am saddened by this attack, not just because of the lives lost but because I fear that the extreme right will win the next French election because of it. The far right in France are already strong and getting more support every year, Europe will change.

Feeling sad this morning folks.

Pulaski

There is a cancer in a number if countries that politicians seem unwilling or unable to deal with, and people are increasingly sick of it. Something will have to change.

Hotscot

It is very sad...
There's not any easy solution.

My own feeling is that there should be zero tolerance for any extremism. Particularly from any group that denies equality between men and women.

Safety or surveillance? I suppose that's one of the issues.

Certainly from my passing reading, the UK doesn't seem to be able to control who comes and goes. Looks like a shambles.

hoffage123

The problem is these are splinter groups that try to take ownership of a much larger faith community/claim to represent them when they carry out their heinous acts - you take one group down, another one forms; this works across all faith/no-faith but ideology groups. There is also the issue of media representation. Look at Anders Brevik for example, or Timothy McVeigh. The media represents them as the lonely outlier, instead of encompassing the whole of Christianity. They do the opposite for those extremists who claim to commit acts in the name of Islam, compounding the problem and giving them (in their own perverse minds) legitimacy to continue doing so.

These extremists need to be recognised for what they are - outliers. Everyone who is normal of all faiths or none, need to work together to curb them. Division is exactly what they want, so they can continue their calumny and awful behaviour.

Hoffage

Sally Redux

Absolutely terrible.

Unfortunately our interventions have aided Islamic extremism and bred more hardliners.

Mrs Danvers

I hope they manage to catch the murderers. Seems like they had a well planned escape. Not sure if Paris has as much CCTV as London does.

Very sad.

Sally Redux

Very true.

The same thing is seen in extrapolation from Rotherham child abuse.

Michael

In Europe, Muslim clerics openly spew hate for the west but with McVeigh, that was an underground secretive organization. In the US, I suspect if a Muslim cleric openly spewed the same hate, there likely would be a few armed men visiting his mosque.

dunroving

Very sad, and sickening.

On R4 this evening on the way home they interviewed a French journalist who said one of the murdered editors was Muslim.

Nutek

John Cleese.

John Cleese & Bill Maher Debate Political Correctness, Muse 'You Can't Make Jokes About Muslims, They'll Kill You'

Sally Redux

All Muslims will kill you. Right.

petitefrancaise

The centre of Paris has been placed on "alerte attentat" which means that extra police/armed forces are on patrol, school/universities have restrictions concerning access to the buildings (nothing parked outside) and the students will have no activities outside of the school building. The primary focus of this level of alerte is protection of the population, which suggests they are afraid of something else happening. Perhaps a backlash against the Muslim community? I don't know.

In Toulouse in 2012 (?) we had alerte "ecarlate" which is basically martial law so that they could catch a gunman who had shot and killed children going to a jewish school. This was the first time they had imposed this level in France since the second world war. I was living there at the time and it was kind of reassuring but also scary that before you knew it , you had no right of movement. My kids were locked into school all day and no-one could get to them. Armed soldiers on the street corners of my very small, quiet medieval town. They had the right to close down all public transport, close all roads, all flights could be cancelled and anyone could be stopped, questioned and taken to the police station with almost no reason. They caught the guy and he was "shot trying to escape" which we all thought was a good ending.

The fact that they haven't imposed alerte ecarlate in Paris suggests that they don't think these killers are there anymore.

Nutek

Wonder how The Life of Brian would go down if they switched out the religion in question.

Pulaski

The difference is that the overwhelming majority of the "Christian community" (whatever that means) are as repulsed by the likes of M Veigh and Brevik, and in the US many Christians are fully supportive of the death penalty for such heinous acts, where as the muslim community is apparently (very obviously) at least passively tolerant of the terrorists in their midst, and It is well documented that certain mosques have supportive groups of like-minded individuals, and neither islamic leaders or the muslims who attend those mosques seem to be even trying to do anything to excise the cancer in their midst nor even to distance themselves from such extremist groups.

The analogy goes all the way to "the top of the house", where the Pope and other Christian leaders call for peace, out reach and reconciliation, whereas the Mad Mullahs of Tehran and other muslim leaders with a public platform often have a very different message to convey.

Nutek

Possibly they are clean away, but hopefully not.