Two rather disturbing events took place last week.
The first one we all know about: 12 people were gunned down by the extremist nitwit Kouachi brothers at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. It’s been widely reported and condemned. For a while everyone became Charlie and marched in solidarity with those dastardly French who dared satirise the relevance of a paedophile prophet who’s been dead for some 1400 years — or indeed any religious figure.
Almost as absurd is the ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper Hamevaser; it photoshopped away all females featured in a photo of 40 world leaders at the following Sunday’s demonstration for unity in the French capital as part of their policy to not publish pictures or even names of women.
As an amateur ex-cartoonist with a leaning towards twisted single-panel drawings of the offensive type myself, the mindless murder of the cartoonists felt like a stab into my own heart and an insult to my non-religious convictions.
