Charlie Hebdo: Gun attack on French magazine kills 11

Started reading Looming Tower thanks to this thread (h/t to Ward for the free link). Wright is such a great storyteller, the kind of writer I find myself trying to sneak in another page of every chance I get -- in the elevator, in the hallway, etc.

Looming tower is amazing

I read Going Clear and Thirteen Days in September (not quite as gripping but the subject matter is drier) and I devour pretty much anything he writes in the NYer.

I may try to read everything he's done, although the twins book doesn't sound that interesting to me.

Wasn't sure where to put this, so, France beheading attack: Suspect Yassin Salhi kills himself

"Prosecutors regarded Salhi as a militant Islamist, but the delivery driver maintained that he was motivated by a grudge against his employer."

"His head - reportedly bearing Arabic inscriptions - had been hooked on to factory railings, alongside two flags, also with Arabic writing on it."

weird

Also weird that someone I know knows someone who got a phone call from his brother saying, "I'm off work today, one of our driver's just beheaded my boss."

Every saud has a killer lining

dude was that necessary

Not even defensible tbh let alone necessary

Man shot in Paris on Charlie Hebdo anniversary

Shot while trying to enter a police station while yielding a knife, according to reports.

... and wearing a suicide vest... allegedly.

... fake suicide belt apparently, guy was no genius obv.

http://hurryupharry.org/2016/04/03/charlie-hebdo-on-brussels/
^ Interesting analysis of latest controvercial piece

https://interc.pt/2wpsGdq

Greenwald OTM

If only I could figure out how to use 700 words to say "Piers Morgan and his ilk are mendacious idiots"

He probably is OTM, but I also just feel like I didn't really get the *lack* of nuance to their humor until it targeted a subject I understood better. Like I thought there was more going on in the other covers and I didn't understand the context. Now I doubt it.

'je suis charlie' being embraced as a slogan by brainless right-wingers is one of the funnier things i've lived thru

Beyond the ~offensive~ layer, that Texas cover was just really dumb and didn't make sense.

Well, there's a reason the vast majority of people in the world, francophones or not, had never heard of this publication before January 2015. It's not exactly Mad Magazine

I don't necessarily disagree with his overall point, but it seems kind of silly for GG to assert that the reaction to this new cartoon has vindicated him, say that "the examples are far too numerous to comprehensively cite", and then quote Piers Morgan, James Woods and the fucking Prison Planet guy rather than anyone quoted in his original article.

one of GG's best in a while imo

that's like saying "this turd didn't float"

Loving that shift in response from PM and others though