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Deadly Jihad Hits Paris Satire Mag ‘Charlie Hebdo’ – 12 Dead, 11 Injured in ‘Terror Attack’
21st Century Wire says…
France finally got its ’9/11 moment’ today, when at least two gunman dressed in black and armed with Kalashnikov rifles, stormed the offices of a magazine, killing two police/security personnel and 10 journalists, and injuring 11 others during the raid.
The attack is said to have taken place in the middle of an editorial meeting of the political magazine known as ‘Charlie’, killing its editor Stephane ‘Carb’ Charbonnier, 47, and 9 other editors and staff. Charbonnier had received death threats in the past and is said to have been ‘living under police protection’ until today.
The two masked assailants (see image above) opened fire in the office, and then exchanged fire with French police as the attack spilled over on to the street, before staging their get-away by car, which is said to have been manned by another separate driver. Their car was later found abandoned on the Rue de Meaux, where a second car is said to be hijacked.
Authorities still cannot confirm whether or not the attack was carried out by ‘an official’ terrorist organization. The gunmen’s escape seems to be as well-planned as the attack itself, with gunmen still ‘on the run’, prompting what French authorities are calling the largest man-hunt in the nation’s history.
The near 50-year-old french magazine located in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, has gain media attention recently for controversies regarding its political cartoons poking fun at the prophet Mohammed. Their offices we already fire bombed in 2011, on the magazine’s editors were said to be on ‘al Qaeda’s most wanted list’, with police and security regularly stationed at their building as standard. This didn’t deter today’s however.
The company’s website is adorned with a new splash page containing only two words, “Je Suis Charlie” (translated, ‘I am Charlie’), and already variations of this are the trending #hashtags on Twitter, as social media erupts around this latest international news event.
INSTANT SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN: Magazine appears to have launched its social media drive around this slogan in ‘real time’.
The magazine, published weekly, is no stranger to controversy, and was the center of national debate around what Muslims claimed was its antagonistic Islamic cartoons nearly a decade ago. Charlie Hebdo’s February 9, 2006 edition entitled, “Mahomet débordé par les intégristes” (‘Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists’), showed a cartoon on the cover with Prophet Muhammad in tears, saying “C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons” (“it’s hard being loved by jerks”). They also reprinted the twelve cartoons from Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy and added some new cartoons of their own.
“The French President Jacques Chirac condemned ‘overt provocations’ which could inflame passions. “Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided”, Chirac said. The Grand Mosque, the Muslim World League and the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF) sued, claiming the cartoon edition included racist cartoons.[9] A later edition contained a statement by a group of 12 writers warning against Islamism.”
“The suit by the Grand Mosque and the UOIF reached the courts in February 2007. Publisher Philippe Val contended “It is racist to imagine that they can’t understand a joke” but Francis Szpiner, the lawyer for the Grand Mosque, explained the suit: “Two of those caricatures make a link between Muslims and Muslim terrorists. That has a name and it’s called racism.” (Source: Wiki)
Today’s Paris attack is believed to be France’s deadliest since 1961, when right-wingers from the campaign, ‘Keep Algeria French’, bombed a train, killing 28 and wounding several others.
Over in Washington DC, CNN’s Dana Bash pressured Department of Homeland Security boss, Jan Johnson, with the usual war on terror rhetoric, “Are you considering raising the terror threat level in this country?” Johnson would not answer this question. Oddly, he went on to give a long-winded minute diatribe about how DHS needs ‘more funding’ to upgrade equipment and ‘pay higher salaries’ to DHS officers.
Whatever this attack was, it was designed for maximum political effect, and will certainly be shaping the global conversation surrounding media, speech and freedom thereof. No doubt, US politicians and media heads will be keen to streamline talking points from this latest French tragedy – alongside the White House’s recently fabricated ‘North Korean-Sony Hack Hoax‘ – where US media anchors and gov’t officials fashioned a patriotic-style narrative around the Sony story, insisting that it was “a defining moment for free speech in America”.
Once the dust settles from day’s events, look for US media, followed by politicians, to bind these two stories together, behind a rallying cry similar to, “we will not be intimidated”.
Currently, neither French police, nor international security officials, know exactly who carried out today’s attack on the French magazine, and admit that information is “sketchy” and “almost nonexistent” as to who the real perpetrators were.
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21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.
Source: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/01/07/deadly-jihad-hits-paris-satire-mag-charlie-hebdo-12-dead-11-injured-in-terror-attack/
