It was a sight beholding in its rancid hypocrisy. It was a veritable bonfire of the hypocrisies. The world leaders in attendance numbered about 40, so they said. They had converged on a certain city in Europe called Paris to mourn the victims of the attack on a certain satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 7th in the late morning.
The attack was paralleled by another attack on a kosher shop by Amedy Coulibaly a French national of Cameroonian origin and his French wife Hayat Boumeddiene of Algerian origin that killed 4 hostages. The world “leaders” were accompanied by crowds that we are told numbered into the millions. They had all gathered to mourn the victims of the terror attacks and to show their “unity” against terrorism.
Among those world leaders were three presidents from Francophone Africa, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali, Ali Bongo of Gabon and the funniest of all Yayi Boni of Benin who was seen crying at the march.
After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, Yayi Boni of Benin declared a day of mourning in Benin. It must have been such a touchingly pathetic sight, people in his emotional and spiritual homeland of France had been killed, so he had to declare a day of mourning in Benin.
In Africa, we began to ask, where was the day of mourning for the victims of Boko Haram in the neighboring country of Nigeria where his fellow Africans were been killed by terrorists funded by his father and mother – his beloved France? Benin is just but a stone throw away from Nigeria, but the African victims of Boko Haram will receive no dignity of remembrance from the likes of Mr Yayi – ‘France is my mother’ – Boni.
The attacks on Charlie Hebdo and on the kosher shop have so many unfathomable coincidences that it begins to develop a planned structure of sequential actions. Charlie Hebdo was a newspaper that was well guarded by French police and the security services.
On the day of the attack, there was only minimal police presence. The attackers came in and did their grisly deed killing the few policemen present and the journalists at the publication. They then got away in a black Citroen where they conveniently dropped an ID. The getaway black Citroen car was abandoned near the exact kosher shop that was then attacked by Mr. Coulibaly and his wife Ms. Boumeddiene
Amedy Coulibaly is killed in the “rescue” operation in the kosher shop while his wife manages to escape from the shop undetected. The much vaunted French security services who know the color of the underpants that Yayi Boni of Benin wears everyday could not hunt down Ms. Boumeddiene. She manages to leave France a country in south-western Europe and go literally all across Europe to Turkey where she crosses from vast Turkey into Syria.
The current situation at the Turkish-Syrian border is a veritable chaos with thousands of refugees and Jihadi fighters crossing paths as they move in opposite directions. Among this huge crowd, she is identified as Ms. Hayat Boumeddiene and is allowed to cross into Syria probably with a smile. What happened to electronic real time update of border and immigration controls to prevent something like this from happening?
It gets much stranger and stranger. The French police officer investigating the attack on Charlie Hebdo decides out of his solidarity with the victims and his commitment to freedom of speech and to western values to commit suicide in his office right at work. What a French Viva La France patriot!
The sequence of events outlined creates a pattern which reeks of something strange. In the intelligence world, one can create the needed conditions for people who are bent on committing terrorism to do it if it serves a purpose. You lessen security, you throw in hints of easily accessible targets, and you facilitate the ease of acquisition of guns and materiel for the attacks. You might even have a double agent planted in the operation.
Ms. Boumeddine seemed to have played that role to a hapless and misguided Amedy Coulibaly. The professionalism of her escape to Turkey indicates someone highly trained and not the doings of a working class girl from the French ghettos.
In France and in the rest of the western world, it was okay for Charlie Hebdo to insult the sensitivities of Muslims. But in that same France, one cannot dare to caricature the holocaust. You can and will go to jail for that. You cannot insult the sensitivities of Jews and their national trauma, but it is okay to insult the sensitivities of Muslims. We might as well sing a paean to European free speech.
That same magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had fired a cartoonist Maurice Sinet, otherwise known as Siné, a French political cartoonist. His work is noted for its anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, anti-clericalism and anarchism.
In 2008, Siné’s article and cartoons in the magazine Charlie Hebdo relating to a former French President, Jean Sarkozy’s marriage to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, Jewish heiress, which touched off a controversy, after journalist Claude Askolovitch, a Jew, described them as anti-Semitic. Siné was charged with racial hatred.
Charlie Hebdo’s editor, Philippe Val, ordered Siné to write a letter of apology or face termination. The cartoonist said he would rather “cut his own balls off,” and was promptly fired. Both sides subsequently filed lawsuits, and in December 2010, Siné won a 40,000-euro court judgment against his former publisher for wrongful termination.
In all of this is it disturbing that how Charlie Hebdo’s stepping upon and all over the sensitivities of 1.5 billion Muslims is not inciting racial hatred?
Siné also reported a death threat posted on a site run by the Jewish Defense League. The text said “20 centimeters of stainless steel in the gut, that should teach the bastard to stop and think.” Siné is a great lover of jazz, and has illustrated several books on jazz as well as record covers.
Another satirist, the French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, whose father is from Cameroon; his mother, France, has also been arrested in the past on charges of anti-Semitism and as we write has been arrested again for a Facebook post he wrote in regards to the Charlie Hebdo killings. Dieudonne cannot express his views no matter how irreprehensible they might be to some people, but Charlie Hebdo can. I guess the pigs in George Orwell’s animal farm have come home to the pigsty.
Some pigs are more equal than others.
Today millions of people in the western world all say they are Charlie Hebdo (Je suis Charlie Hebdo). But they are not Charlie to the thousands of victims of the attacks of Boko Haram in Nigeria?
Free speech? Democracy? Western values? For whom? By whom? France and its ilk can continue to believe their lie. But they pull the wool over nobody’s eyes.
Feckless African buffoons like Yayi – ‘my mother is France’ – Boni are not Charlie either for the Boko Haram victims of terrorism on Africa soil. Let Yahi Boni and his ilk go hawk their tears on the streets of Paris.
We in Africa mourn for our victims. Let each people mourn their dead – we all die. We respect the right of every people to mourn their own tragedies. We reserve for ourselves the right to mourn our own and only our own.
So, go to hell Yayi Boni! Go to hell Ibrahim Boubacar Keita! And go to hell Ali Bongo!
The maddening part of all of this is that Keita’s Mali and Boni’s Benin inherit some of the most revered history of Africa’s great past – the Mali Empire and Dahomey. Their inability to lead in the 21st century is connoted by this insensitivity away from the 1000s of victims of Boko Haram and in favour of only 12 dead in France.
It is stupefyingly painful to call these three mocks, African leaders. They shame us, they shame our continent, they shame our heritage and the shame our humanity. The Victims of Boko Haram deserve tears too. We will continue in our libations as Africans until their deaths are revenged to the fullest, and their lives honoured in continued remembrance of the atrocity of sustained imperialism on our Motherland.
The three monkeys – Boni, Bongo and Keita – show Africa where their allegiances lie,with France and with Jews.That much they have made clear to us and all Africans.
The problem with African heads of state is simple – they are tools of the West, that’s all.
We always have a problem with sheep like Boni, Keita and Bongo. They are just sheep really. Let them love their white people. I believe they think they can be white – white as snow- so the saying goes.
The UN went into Haiti and infected Human Beings with cholera – more than 6,000 dead ad over 700,000 infected. And the UN continues to deny and refuse to compensate Haitians. The West has been killing Black people for centuries but 12 die in Europe and we are suppose to mourn?
The US has also infected West Africans with Ebola and they deny it. Also 7,000 dead there with several infected.Yes, the West continues to kill Africans and we are to mourn 12 people who hate Muslims? Really?
Africans must pray that these three – Boni, Bongo and Keita catch Ebola, go to the West for treatment and die! That would be sweet!
The West is pathetic. Take Cuba for example. For more than 50 years relatives of Cubans outside Cuba could only send a max of $2,000 years to their family in Cuba. Why? Everywhere you look they are trying to destroy people. Now 12 die in France and we are suppose to care? My God who are these people?
Jesus – we all know France, especially, that same country that is complaining is supplying Boko Haram with weapons to kill fellow Nigerians. We all know that in Africa. The world is a very very very dirty place. The same France!
France is the country that supports the state of Israel that continues to kill and oppress Palestinians in their own land. Is that not terrorism? Israel goes so far to occupy Palestinian lands and kill the natives. But that is not terrorism? Nobody cares about Palestinians right? The West cannot blow a trumpet of Democracy when they continue to support a rogue state that Israel is. There is blood on France’s hands too.
It is time for Africa to move away from the one party rule system. The popular government style of democracy must be done away with. Africa needs stronger states, stronger parliaments, stronger local governments and an independent Judiciary. All African states must be federal with strong localization of power. Then idiots like Boni, Keita and Bongo will not be able to win power in Africa any longer. But our dear friends in Europe and America will vehemently oppose this direction for Africa of course!
France should learn some civilization from Africa and the Arabs and stop funding Boko Haram in Nigeria, at least stop supplying them with weapons, and stop supporting the so-called less harmful terrorists groups in Syria. France should do that for a change. But I doubt it. They are too hideous!
Ebola is the fault of the USA to stop a flourishing African population, Boko Haram a ploy by the West to destabilize Africa’s biggest economy – Nigeria. Both are reasonable assertions. I coudn’t see it any different. The writing is on the wall but what would Africans do about it?
This picture says it all. All those white faces around him and he is the only black person. He should have said where am I? A KKK meeting?
Boko Haram shall go down and so to shall all those who provided them with weapons!
I curse Boko Haram with the curse of the Valley of the Dead. They will suffer in hell. That dream of meeting 72 virgins in heaven will turn to the nightmare of sucking on the rod of thunder and lightening. They together with their French, and Western, funders will rot in eternal hell. No one will remember them. No one will talk about them when they are all dead, dead, dead and gone. May the curse of the Valley of the Dead be upon Boko Haram. May they die, die die in the sleep!