Up to speed: supplied by my friend Francois Dufour, co-founder of Playbac, which publishes daily newspapers for children
Waste not words of reproach, as so many international statesmen have done, about the assault on democracy, the affront to decency, the barbarity of low-life criminal assassins for whom displeasing words or images are reason enough to commit mass murder.
Waste not your tears. I shed some of my own watching the TV5Monde news coverage and ensuing round-table debate from London tonight.
Solidarity/solidarité avec tous mes confrères, consoeurs français après le carnage chez Charlie Hebdo. Moi aussi, je suis Charlie
— Colin Randall (@salutsunderland) January 7, 2015
The people - I use the term reluctantly - who set out to annihilate a low-circulation satirical magazine, killing its staff and contributors plus two policemen doing their jobs in the process, care nothing for principles of democracy, freedom of expression or humanity.
The very word "democracy" has become a subject of hate for Islamic State activists and apologists. These are characters who believe raping enemy civilians' wives and sisters is a justifiable perk for jihadist warriors, the Geneva Convention a twee middle-class non-starter.
Today, I described Charlie Hebdo to one BBC radio station's listeners - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnewcastle - as a small institution of French journalism. Not many people buy it but everyone knows of it. It is, by turns, very funny and incisive and very silly and disrespectful.
But that disrespect is shared between targets as diverse as politicians, Catholicism, Judaism, business, royalty and, yes, Islam. Sometimes they hit nails on heads. Sometimes the joke falls flat.
I thought the cartoon they ran immediately after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was tasteless. But tastelessness was part of the stock in trade. Were I a royalist, I might have been deeply offended. But to the extent of wishing to engage in a massacre ...?
That is why there really is no point in resorting to words of anger, however angry we feel. I hope good French Muslims will turn in the evil ones in their midst, if they have the means or knowledge of doing so. I pray that rotten far-right politicians do not profit by a single vote from the revulsion of reasonable people.
But, in whatever way they can, let all who adhere to good, strong European values, whether or not they succumb to tears, stand shoulder to shoulder against the irredeemable monsters who would slaughter cartoonists, cops and writers, godlessly in the name of Allah.
And rather than rage against innocent Muslims, for whom such atrocities are a betrayal of their faith just as they are a betrayal of humanity, urge them to support all the more loudly those in their midst who exclaim that these acts are "not in my name".
RIP the victims of Paris whose last tweet was this cartoon ...
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