Saw the video. One of the cops gets wounded and falls on the street (might not even have been armed since some French police don't carry weapons), they run over, the cop cries for mercy, the terrorist shoots him in the head with a single shot as he runs past. Then they turn around and leave.

Latest update : 2015-01-07


Famed French author Michel Houellebecq has insisted that his novel “Submission”, which envisions a France ruled by a Muslim government, is not a racist scare story. Nevertheless the novel, which hits bookstores Wednesday, has sparked a media storm.

“Submission”, which is released in French on Wednesday, has been the subject of intense debate in recent weeks, particularly for its portrayal of Islam.

In 2001 Houellebeck described Islam as “the stupidest of all religions”, a position he has since vocally distanced himself from.

But his latest book has stirred criticism from all quarters and been widely attacked by the French media, politicians, and on social media. France’s Muslim community accuse the author of inciting Islamophobia in a country with Europe’s biggest Muslim population.

The book's publication could not come at a more sensitive time as France is currently undergoing a fierce debate on Islam and national identity.

Leading the barrage is Laurent Joffrin, editor-in-chief of left-leaning newspaper Libération, who argues that the novel “will mark the date in history when the ideas of the far-right made a grand return to serious French literature”.

“This is a book that ennobles the ideas of the [far right anti-Europe and anti-immigration] National Front (FN) party,” he added.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right FN, weighed into the highly-charged debate, stating, “What is very interesting about this book is that it is a fiction, but a fiction that could one day become reality…”

While, philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, a member of France’s prestigious Academie Française, described Houellebecq as a man, “with his eyes wide open and who is not intimidated by political correctness”.

Profound changes to French society

“Submission” is set in 2022, at the end of a hypothetical second mandate for unpopular Socialist French President François Hollande, who is beaten in the first round of a presidential election by far-right FN leader Marine Le Pen and the fictional Mohammed Ben Abbes, who leads France’s first “Muslim Fraternity” party.

The French electorate, wary of seeing the FN take power, vote for Abbes, a Muslim moderate whose election provokes immediate and profound changes to French society.

Women change the way they dress and leave the workplace in droves to look after families, solving France’s unemployment problem, while the book asserts that the resulting increased conversion to Islam kills freedom of thought in an increasingly patriarchal society. It also imagines a France where polygamy is authorised, and universities are made to teach the Koran.

In a long interview with France Info (in English on the Paris Review), Houellebecq insisted his novel was not right-wing “provocation”.

“I accelerate history, but no, I can’t say that the book is a provocation—if that means saying things I consider fundamentally untrue just to get on people’s nerves,” Houellebecq said. “I condense an evolution that is, in my opinion, realistic.”

“Yes, the book has a scary side. I use scare tactics,” he added. “Actually, it’s not clear what we are meant to be afraid of, [white far-right] nativists or Muslims. I leave that unresolved.”

‘A Muslim party makes a lot of sense’

And while Houellebecq freely admits that his vision of a future France is “not very realistic” because Islamic political unity in France “is the most difficult thing to image”, he insists that Muslims are dangerously unrepresented in mainstream French politics.

Muslims, he says, are “very far from the left and even further from the Green Party” while “one doesn’t really see why they would vote for the right, much less the extreme right which utterly rejects them”.

“For those reasons, it seems to me, a Muslim party makes a lot of sense,” he said.

Houellebecq, best known in the English-speaking world for his 1998 novel “Atomised” and his 2001 “Platform”, a story about a French couple who create a sex tourism business in Thailand that falls victim to Muslim terrorists, said he had read the Koran while researching his latest novel.

“The Koran turns out to be much better than I thought, now that I’ve reread it — or rather, read it,” he said. "The most obvious conclusion is that the jihadists are bad Muslims ... an honest reading will conclude that a holy war of aggression is not generally sanctioned, prayer alone is valid."

Sweden hit by third mosque arson attack in a week










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© TT News Agency/AFP | Swedish police said a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a mosque in Uppsala, on January 1, 2015


STOCKHOLM (AFP) -
Swedish police were hunting Thursday for at least one suspect following what is believed to be the third arson attack on a mosque in a week.

"Someone threw a firebomb, a Molotov cocktail at the building," Torsten Hemlin a spokesman for Uppsala police told Swedish news agency TT, adding that the bomb did not set the mosque in eastern Sweden alight.

"They also wrote some vulgar racist words," he said, adding that no one was in the building at the time of the attack.

Police in Sweden's fourth largest city Uppsala were alerted by passers-by who reportedly saw a man throw a burning object at the mosque at around 0430 GMT.

"The crime has been classed as attempted arson, vandalism and incitement to hatred," the police said in a statement appealing for eyewitnesses to come forward.

Thursday's attack came just three days after a late night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in southern Sweden which police suspect was also arson.

On Christmas Day five people were injured when a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of a mosque in Eskilstuna, east of the capital Stockholm.

The country's leftist Prime Minister Stefan Loefven called the Christmas attack a spurt of "hateful violence" and said Sweden would "never tolerate this kind of crime".

According to the anti-racism magazine Expo, there have been more than a dozen attacks on mosques in Sweden in the last year.

The attacks come as debate intensifies in the country over immigration and the integration of asylum seekers in the traditionally tolerant Nordic country.

Last month the far right Sweden Democrats -- which doubled its support to 13 percent in September elections -- came close to bringing down the left-green government over its liberal refugee policies, further boosting its support in opinion polls.

Killing people over a fucking cartoon.

Islam really is still stuck in the dark ages.

How do we deter these lunatics without causing unnecessary pain to their potentially innocent families?

Any moderate muslims in France are going to cop it as a result of this.

I worry about the families who won't see their loved ones again because the barbaric acts these Islamists do.

It's becoming far too frequent in western countries.

Do such critical spoofs on Islam provoke stronger, or more prolific reactions from readers?

No, actually not. We have found it's far easier to anger Christians or fans of Michael Schumacher.

I hope people start tweeting cartoon images of Mohammed in solidarity.

#freedomofexpression

Brilliant. Just pure brilliance.

Lets do more of the things that have been an antagonist for such attacks.





Sometimes i swear. Theres a difference between idiocy and freedom of expression.

Heard they arrested the three guys responsible . Two brothers and another guy . Didnt say their names or ages

3 suspects identified in deadly attack on Paris newspaper

PARIS -- French police officials identified three men as suspects in a deadly attack against newspaper offices that killed 12 people and shook the nation on Wednesday.

Two officials named the suspects as Frenchmen Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, who are brothers and in their early 30s, as well as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn't immediately clear.

One of the officials said they were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. A witness of Wednesday's shootings at the offices of weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo said one of the attackers told onlookers, "You can tell the media that it's al Qaeda in Yemen."

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive and ongoing investigation. No arrests have been confirmed in the hunt for the attackers.

CBS News' Elaine Cobbe reports that, according to witnesses, two armed and masked men walked into the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and opened fire in the entrance hallway, killing people as they saw them. The gunmen reportedly sought out members of the newspaper's staff by name during the rampage through the 2nd floor office, which lasted between five and 10 minutes, according to witnesses.

It was France's deadliest terrorist attack in half a century.

Shouting "Allahu akbar!" as they fired, the men also spoke fluent, unaccented French in the military-style noon-time attack on Charlie Hebdo, located near Paris' Bastille monument. The publication's depictions of Islam have drawn condemnation and threats before -- it was firebombed in 2011 -- although it also satirized other religions and political figures.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shootings, which also left 11 people wounded -- four of them critically -- and was condemned by world leaders as an attack on freedom of expression. Supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) praised the attack.

CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that U.S. intelligence is working with the French authorities in trying to determine who's behind the attack.

"While it is true that Charlie Hebdo magazine has been the subject of violent extremist threats over the past several years, none has been recent nor can they be immediately linked to this attack," a senior U.S. intelligence official told CBS News. "We are working with our intelligence community and foreign partners in identifying the perpetrators of the attack as well as monitoring for threat reporting that might warn of a subsequent attack."

President Francois Hollande said it was a terrorist act "of exceptional barbarism," adding that other attacks have been thwarted in France in recent weeks. Fears have been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis returning from conflicts in Syria and Iraq will stage attacks at home.

Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

During Cherif Kouachi's 2008 trial, he told the court, "I really believed in the idea" of fighting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. He said he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-suspects-identified-in-deadly-attack-on-paris-newspaper/

Good. Kill them.

Brilliant. Just pure brilliance.

Lets do more of the things that have been an antagonist for such attacks.





Sometimes i swear. Theres a difference between idiocy and freedom of expression.

Brilliant. Just pure brilliance.

Lets do more of the things that have been an antagonist for such attacks.

Sometimes i swear. Theres a difference between idiocy and freedom of expression.

I hope people start tweeting cartoon images of Mohammed in solidarity.

#freedomofexpression

+1

Ill start on this forum

That is such backwards logic it's not even funny. Your solution to dealing with the problem is to say that people doing drawings simply shouldn't do it? I know you're a Muslim but I'm sorry, that is plain stupid.

If you think that drawing a cartoon is being antagonistic, then maybe it's time to have a look in the mirror - Because you are part of the problem.

And sorry, but freedom of expression protects the speech and opinions of idiots and minorities. If you'd rather live in a country where the unintelligent and minorities have no voice, I can think of a fair few that might be up your alley - they even hate cartoons!

Brilliant. Just pure brilliance.

Lets do more of the things that have been an antagonist for such attacks.

Sometimes i swear. Theres a difference between idiocy and freedom of expression.