11 dead in French satirical magazine shooting

[Warspite]

This sounds so "wars of religion" period christian thinking.  The only problem with this is, given the timeline, it will be a hundred more years of reformation killing of everyone in sight before some sort of logic begins to prevail.

And to think, we missed all of history's major wars of religious schism, reformation and consolidation.  But now we get to watch Islam attempting to wrestle control of itself, with apostates on one side and heretics on the other, backed by nation states.  I mean, really now;  other than the occasional ethnocentric massacres here and there on the undercard, you just don't get ringside seats to heavyweight title bouts of religion like this anymore.

I wouldn't be so smug. At least us Euro balls of light are barely a generation away from the destruction and misery wrought by the great ideological plagues that are nationalism and totalitarianism. Barbarism is for me the same whether the cause under which it is committed is a crescent, cross, swastika or hammer and sickle.

[Duque de Bragança]

Unconfirmed reports that suspects have been localised in Northern France, in the Aisne, near Villers-Cotterêt, while refuelling at a petrol station.

[Liep]

Unconfirmed reports that suspects have been localised in Northern France, in the Aisne, near Villers-Cotterêt, while refuelling at a petrol station.

That could just be your average Belgian fuel thieves.

[Brazen]

From the BBC:
A local television station, BFMTV, reports that the main entrance points to Paris have been blocked by police, and the car with suspects in is believed to be to the west of the city.

[Brazen]

Unconfirmed reports that suspects have been localised in Northern France, in the Aisne, near Villers-Cotterêt, while refuelling at a petrol station.

The two main suspects in the Islamist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris are said to have robbed a service station in the north of France.

They stole food and petrol, firing shots as they struck at the roadside stop near Villers-Cotterets in the Aisne region, French media report.

France has observed a minute's silence for the 12 people killed at the office of the satirical magazine.

Earlier in the day, a gunman shot dead a policewoman in southern Paris.

A second person was seriously injured in the attack in the suburb of Montrouge, after which the gunman fled.

It is unclear if the attack is related to the pursuit of prime suspects Cherif and Said Kouachi.

According to the manager of the service station that was robbed on the RN2 road in Aisne at about 10:30 (09:30 GMT), the attackers fit the description of the two men, and were heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

They are said to have driven off in the direction of Paris in a Renault Clio car, apparently the same vehicle hijacked in Paris soon after the Charlie Hebdo attack.

According to French commercial channel BFMTV, police are monitoring all of the main entry roads into the capital.

[Sheilbh]

Apparently Houllebecq's under heavy police guard.

[Martinus]

Apparently Houllebecq's under heavy police guard.

What did he do this time?

[Liep]

Apparently Houllebecq's under heavy police guard.

What did he do this time?

A book about the French being so afraid of being politically incorrect that they united against Le Pen and just elected whatever wasn't her and ended up with a muslim president. Hilarity ensues.

[Grey Fox]

Not just Muslim, Sharia law crazy president.

[Sheilbh]

Apparently Houllebecq's under heavy police guard.

What did he do this time?

Read all about it:
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/02/scare-tactics-michel-houellebecq-on-his-new-book/

[Martinus]

I was joking.I know about the book.

[PDH]

Eh. We keep hearing how Islam needs a reformation but I think it's a red herring. They have gone through several reformations, each creating a more monstrous form of the religion than the one before it (and in that, it's not so different from Christianity). What Islam needs is Enlightenment.

The Reformation led to at least 150 years of the worst religious violence that Christianity saw - it was no hold barred fanatical actions, both small scale and large.  In the end, Christianity had to figure out how to look at itself not simply tear itself apart.

The problem with the long view is people seem to think the Reformation was a modernizing movement, when it was really a "back to roots" movement to get rid of all the non-essential trappings of the Church.  The end result was fanatics who were killing other fanatics for that best of reasons - because God demanded purity.

[Warspite]

I think the Islamic world needs economic development and more mature political institutions, rather than a reformation, but since I was trained as a political scientist and economic historian I would say that, wouldn't I?

This why I think it is very important progress in Indonesia and Tunisia is not derailed; these are the best two models for the Egypts and Syrias out there. And Qatar could possibly learn a thing or two from how Singapore conducts itself.

[mongers]

Not sure what to make of this article, since I don't know much about French politics, but worth a read as it's from someone close to the events of yesterday:

Agnès Poirier

Published: 08 January 2015

I was reading a review of the French writer Michel Houellebecq's latest novel, Submission (Soumission) yesterday morning when an intriguing picture popped up on my computer screen. Fellow journalists seemed to have taken refuge on the rooftop of their offices at Charlie Hebdo. Taken refuge from what? Fire? Flooding? I went back to the Houellebecq review. Submission depicts life in an imaginary France, in 2022: a French Islamist has just won the presidential elections with the backing of the liberal Left and Right. France is refounded as an Islamist Republic.

Then another picture came up on my screen: two armed men in a street of the 11th arrondissement of Paris, near my office. Black-clad and wearing balaclavas, they were shooting at policemen in front of Charlie Hebdo's offices. Houellebecq and his controversial fiction would have to wait.
......

Now France has a big problem on its hands. To be blunt, France has had a problem for 25 years. Successive French governments of both Left and Right have undermined key French republican values — above all secularism — and let the poison of sectarianism creep in. Call it appeasement — and appeasement never yields any results. For years, the French and their governments thought they could somehow buy peace by closing their eyes to the resurgence of fundamentalism of all kinds (Muslim but Jewish and Catholic too) and refusing to speak plainly.

During his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy came up with a law banning the full veil, to no effect: by then it was already too late for this. With the largest Muslim community (six million people) as well as the largest Jewish community (600,000) in the Western world, the French should have known better.

When the far-Right Front National suddenly proved to be one of the very few political parties in France actually to speak plainly of Islamism, we all buried our heads in the sand, refusing even to debate it. That was a terrible mistake. Marine le Pen's party came first in the European elections last May and now sets the terms of the debate. She almost has a monopoly on the subject, because French democrats haven't had the courage to rise to her challenge on the subject. Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists were the only ones to see clearly and to say it loudly with their cartoons. Now they are dead.

In fact, the space for calm and intelligent public debate in France has shrunk considerably in the past decade or so, stuck as we are between the hysterical but politically astute far-Right and the blind liberal Left and Right, who accuse everyone of religionphobia as soon as the word Muslim, Jew or Catholic is uttered. The French should remember their ugly 16th-century Wars of Religion, and their huge achievement in separating the State from the Church in 1905, the modern basis of the principle of secularism so central to French democracy.

What way forward for France now? We have to go back to the Republic's generous and inclusive basics — and show the door to everyone who doesn't accept them. We should read Voltaire again too: "intolerance cannot be tolerated".

If you do tolerate it, you reap war in your street and your most outspoken and talented writers and artists need around-the-clock police protection. Michel Houellebecq was given such protection just two hours after Charlie Hebdo's attack.

The French must wake up: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité are not just beautiful words carved on old buildings. It is a daily fight. It may even be a war.

Agnès C Poirier is a French political commentator

Full article here:

http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/agns-poirier-now-france-faces-a-daily-battle-for-libert-egalit-and-fraternit-9964903.html

[Malthus]

310 post in just 11 hours, who knew languish wasn't dying. 

All it takes is a horrible tragedy to make us spring into life. Sort of like vultures.