This is the front page of today’s Le Monde:
Above the fold is a graphic image of the human suffering following the terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon. Jamie Kirchick draws our attention to the cartoon below the fold.
It is revolting. We’re scarcely a day away from the atrocity. The dead have not been buried yet. The wounded are still in the hospitals. The bomber has not been caught. We don’t know who did it. There are hardly words to describe the disgust I feel for this vicious smugness. The cartoonist practically mocks the victims.
Imagine if a day after the Paris Metro bombings, a mainstream newspaper had printed a cartoon mocking French culture and inferring that it was somehow to blame? Or, in light of revelations like this, a cartoon of some of the victims of the bombing tied to Inquisition-style racks operated by Gauloises-smoking gendarmes.
How did it all become so nasty?
UPDATE:
Memri has published an interview with an Egyptian cleric, Sheik Murgan Salem, a self-proclaimed friend to Al Qaida. He has a special message for France:
I think that it was done by people resentful of the policy and arrogance of America and Europe. It is not just teh Americans. The Americans have passed their arrogance over to France. France, which led the first Crusade, is now leading the war against Islam and the Muslims. They must taste the bitter retribution for their deeds. This is not a threat, but a warning of what might happen to them. The France in particular, and to America and the entire West. Because the [French] are leading the war against us… France has accepted the banner of arrogance and enmity to Islam, so it will taste what it deserves.
What will Le Monde print if this man is right and soon, in Paris, there is French blood on the streets and French limbs in the gutters?
