Charlie Obama

Anthony Freda

– Artist’s Website –

I must admit, I was swept up in the tribal, Islamophobic reaction to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.

As someone who creates provocative, politically charged imagery, this event hit home.
I never thought I was in a dangerous line of work.
The idea that some people are willing to kill and die over an image is beyond my comprehension.
No image can be as offensive as the realities of war and torture that the establishment creates and then attempts to hide from us via censorship.

There Are zealots who are intolerant of Western traditions of satire, and they are willing to use violence and coercion to impose their medieval views upon us, but there are other important issues that this event dredges up to the surface that have been largely ignored.

I know I am not the only one floored by the stunning hypocrisy of leaders like Obama using the opportunity to tell us that violence is never the answer.
He is slaughtering civilians all over the world and routinely uses the threat of even more violence to achieve his aims. ( “Everything is on the table”)
I know I am not the only one who sees the hypocrisy of a president blathering on about free speech while he uses the Espionage Act more than all previous administrations combined to silence dissent and imprison those who risk everything to expose the crimes of government.
I did not see the marches for John Kiriakou, the only man to be imprisoned over the illegal CIA torture program, because he Exposed the crimes.

When I saw Bibi leading the march in Paris, I felt duped.
Would Bibi and Sarkozy have weaved their way to the front of the march in Paris if Charlie Hebo’s cartoons had exposed Their lies and war crimes?
The idea that Netanyahu, a known war criminal, murderer of journalists and destroyer of human rights cares about free speech is tough to swallow.
He cares about consolidating western power against Islam, defining Israel as a permanent victim and stopping the west from recognizing Palestine.
He is a opportunist who jumped at the chance to cynically use this event to promote his agenda. He cares Nothing about free speech.

Who has benefitted from these murders?
The overall impact of the Charlie Hebdo Affair has been to prop up the establishment’s agenda of endless war, illegal surveillance and a global police state.
( Even though that model, already in place, did Nothing to stop the attack.)
This tragedy also plays into the global planners hands by dividing people even further along religious and cultural lines and fomenting tribal hatred.

Charlie Hebdo was obsessed with insulting religion using racist and puerile imagery in a
needlessly divisive and mean-spirited manner. They attacked all of the Abrahamic religions with glee.
I will defend their right to publish their work, no matter how pointless or offensive. They had a right to freedom of expression, and it’s repulsive that they were executed for exercising that right.
It’s inexcusable barbarism.

I wish they had used their platform to expose the lies of the ruling elite that seek to inflame the war of civilizations, but they chose a different agenda.
Ostensibly, and according to the mainstream narrative,they were champions of free speech,
but in actuality they were propagandists for the war mongers.

The whole sad tale is as not black and white as I first saw it, and it makes me
believe their is very little hope of this clash of civilizations ending well so long as ‘divide and conquer’ and hypocrisy rule the day.