Obama Gets Bum Rap on Paris

Lots of folks are hammering Obama for not going to Paris for the march this past weekend. I think he is getting a bum rap. There was no excuse for the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. But the event turned into a Parade of Political Hypocrites with a vanload of repressive politicians hijacking the event to burnish their own image. It was a farce to see so many enemies of the media parading like devotees of freedom of speech. Here is an excellent cartoon by Guido Fawkes that captures the sordid records of some of the lead participants.

Here’s a Democracy Now episode with Jeremy Scahill discussing the hypocrisy.

Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com had a hard-hitting column that also nailed this issue very effectively.

Here is an excellent piece by Robert Fisk in the Independent on how the roots of last week’s terrorist attack stretch back to the brutal civil war in Algeria that began in 1954.

I don’t recall any big hullabaloo in France after the French government killed boatloads of civilians in its unprovoked bombing campaign against Libya, joined by Britain and later by the U.S.  And few people are holding the French government culpable for the civil war that they helped unleash in Syria.