Fuck the bastards. Go surf!
Charlie Hebdo is everywhere today and it is a giant bummer. The way people are responding to the despicable tragedy is uplifting and the Je Suis Charlie solidarity is warming but, in the end, it is a giant bummer. It is 12 dead, executed in a Parisian office. It is widows. It is sadness.
I have traveled much in the Middle East. In Yemen, the country that hosts Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, for whom the gunmen allegedly shouted they were carrying out their mission. And in Syria, where they were allegedly fighting. And I have defended Islamic Fundamentalism, from time to time, as the only true alternative discourse left. But there is nothing left to defend. It is shit. It is empty and it is shit.
There are wonderful Muslims, and many of these will get rolled through the mud on behalf of their religious brothers’ actions. And that is a bummer too. The far-right anti-immigrant political parties in Europe are going to go berserk and the fissure between secular and Islamic will continue to widen.
Charlie Hebdo was, of course, a satirical political/culture publication, not an empty, meaningless surf one, but, on some level, media is simply media. Writing funny, or sometimes not so funny, is something I understand. It is something Derek understands. And the murder of funny, sometimes not so funny, writers is very bad. Killing women and children is worse, but killing cartoonists and scribes is gutless too.
And what is an appropriate response? There is no appropriate response. We may as well go surfing. It is empty and meaningless but it is fun. And that is one Islamic Fundamentalism will never be.
Suck it, fucking bastards.
well chas, ask yourself who is truly benefitting from this. Mariano Rajoy, italien PM, is asking for an european secret service already, continuing to cut our freedom as citizens. you have a critical mind, use it. i was hoping for a better artical from you. cheers
…no, no, free from any kind of stinky sarcasm… x
Well in that case I declare my never dying love for y’all
…MA Kocher, who knew you had such formidable chops!
I wish it weren’t so impossible to tell if this was sarcasm or not…
I think that Al’Qaeda and their ilk will rue the day that they pulled this off. Americans like to give the French a lot of shit for being “cowards” or whatever, but look at how fast they rolled over the militants in Mali last summer. The Foreign Legion is no joke, the French Army in general is no joke. Drag the French further into combating Islamic terror and you’ll have them start taking a closer hand in their former colonies, i.e. Lebanon, the African francophone nations, etc, and more importantly cracking down on the huge amount of money that flows out of France and the rest of the EU into terror-tied charities, etc.
It’s a different type of war, but someday we may see this as being as significant a contribution to the eventual defeat of global terror organizations (as in terror organizations who have the ability to strike outside their home regions/nations) as Pearl Harbor was to the eventual defeat of the Axis powers.
The French Army also invented PARKOUR, which is generally no joke at all.
Educate me, because I thought parkour was a big joke…
When you kill people for being satirical in a country renowned for its satire it’s a dark day. Best fucking article on here in a minute. Bravo.