generalspeaking

Deadly Satire

"I just went to get my daughter from daycare. As I got to the front door of the building, two masked, armed gunmen brutally threatened us. They wanted to enter, go up. I typed in the code."
Corinne Rey, Charlie Hebdo cartoonist

"As we progressed into the office, we saw that the number of casualties was very high. There was a lot of people dead on the floor, and there was blood everywhere."
Wandrille Lanos, TV reporter

A woman picking up her child from daycare, how perfectly pedestrian. Taking her child with her, a little girl who would be given paper and pencil to doodle with as her mother, a professional cartoonist, carried on with her work at Charlie Hebdo, until it was time to leave for the afternoon, and head for home together, the close of the working day. Only, that isn't what happened, the expected; the unexpected intervened.

Armed and intent men embarked on a slaughter they intended to carry out in military fashion recognized the woman for who she was, and commandeered her intent, turning it to their advantage to bypass the building's security code system to allow them to enter the office that she would forbear on this occasion from entering with her vulnerable child; her child's very presence ensuring the mother's vulnerability. How could she refuse to do as they bid her to?

And so the masked, black-clad men with machine guns that intercepted Corinne Rey as she approached her newspaper's office forced her to punch in the security code. They obviously knew well what they were doing, were practised in expediting such an event where every second counted, to enable them to carry out their plan of vengeance against the unprepared and the innocent. They delivered the message of who they were and what they represented, those commandos of Allah.

Al-Qaeda had put a bounty on Charlie Hebdo's editor, Stephane Charbonnier, whom they charged with blasphemy. The senior staff were present, something evidently known to the intruders, that an editorial meeting would be taking place, a weekly event, so everything was planned and timed with inside knowledge; how gained? They sought out particular journalists and cartoonists by name; meticulous in their savagery. Their Kalishnikov rifles were put to use, killing, wounding. Allahu Akbar!

"It lasted five minutes", said Ms. Rey. There were witnesses from neighbouring news outlets, seeing the gunmen, hearing shots, some running away in panic to protect themselves, others alerting police, others using their cellphone cameras. Once their work within the building was concluded the jihadis ran outside to the black Citroen in which they had arrived. First, though, they fired at a police officer downing him, then shooting him point-blank in the head; dead a Muslim patrolman assigned to duty.


As an arriving police car attempted blocking the road before the Citroen, it was sprayed with gunfire. The attackers were supremely co-ordinated, well precision-trained and triumphant, calling out "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad". "An act of indescribable barbarity has just been committed today in Paris. Measures have been taken to find those responsible, they will be hunted for as long as it takes to catch them and bring them to justice", vowed President Hollande.

Thousands of French citizens gathered on the streets of Paris, some holding pens aloft symbolizing freedom of expression, quietly expressing their outrage and anger with the massacre. In contrast to those who celebrated with congratulatory tweets and praise for the gunmen, Said and Cherif Kouachi and Hamyd Mourad, good French citizens loyal to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Labels: Atrocities, Cartoons, France, Islamists, Journalists, News Media

posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 09, 2015