Twelve people, including two police, were killed in France when unknown gunmen attacked the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo today.
Some forty people were killed in Saana, Yemen, today in a bomb attack on people who were hoping to enlist with the police. These forty people and the many more wounded in the attack will get much less headlines than those killed in France.
Videos (1, 2) from the attack in Paris show the attackers in black clothing and behaving as if they had at least some military training. They were armed with automatic weapons and, according to the police, with a rocket launcher. At least two attackers are still on the run. We do not yet know the motive of the attackers, but I consider the following more likely than a false flag attack.
In 2011 the magazine Charlie Hebdo was one of those that printed the Mohammed caricatures, a crude and insulting attempt to smear the prophet and all Muslim as terrorists. In 2012 the magazine continued the campaign depicting the prophet Mohammed as naked, attention seeking gnome.
Unlike U.S. "liberals" most of the world does not consider free speech as an absolute right. Indeed like screaming "fire" in a filled theater, insulting the believe of other people is likely to get you hurt in most parts of the world. To claim such insults should not matter is itself an insult in that it declares one culture, that of absolute free speech rights, to be superior to other values. It is indecent.
That the Charlie Hebdo satire was indecent and insulting does not justify the murderous attack, but explains the probable motivation of the attackers. It is deeply wrong to kill people for their speech. But it is also wrong to insult others for no good reasons, be it profit or "free speech" worship.
The attackers in Paris are believed to be militants who pretend to be true Muslims fighting for their believes. The state of France under its presidents Sarkozy and Hollande has empowered and supported such pretenders in their attacks on the people and governments of Libya and Syria. In Syria Jihadi fighters of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra are using U.S. supplied anti-tank missiles. A German air defense regiment is defending their areas of retreat in Turkey against Syrian government attacks. While it supports Jihadis in Syria France is now deploying an air craft carrier to the Persian Gulf to attack the Islamic State in Iraq. The last point could also be the actual motive of today's attack.
The fundamentalists were cheered on by "western" politicians when they attacked civilians in Tripoli and Aleppo. When they attack in countries which cater to "western interests" or within "western" countries these attacks are seen as hostile and used to justify another lurch to the extreme right, to war and towards more totalitarian states.
Unless they push for saner, less aggressive policies the average people in the middle, no matter their believes, are the ones losing in this war.
