COMMENT We must look at the Charlie Hebdo incident as of two seemingly interconnected but in reality separate issues.

Precisely because of this, I have to call what happened in Paris on Jan 7, 2015 as an ‘incident’ (and not yet a terrible tragedy), at least until we can separate the two issues and examine each carefully and objectively without being swept or stampeded mindlessly into emotional outpourings of sympathy and solidarity with the French language news weekly as we have seen in the recent ‘Je suis Charlie’ march involving millions of Europeans and their overseas supporters.

The two issues would be firstly, the massacre of 19 people in Paris (12 at Charlie Hebdo’s office)  and secondly (and as I will show, separately) the claimed ‘freedom of expression’ by the magazine...