You'll have to excuse me from this "Je Suis Charlie" stuff

Right at the beginning I have to say that I haven't actually seen what the French cartoonists are supposed to have drawn, and for which they died, so I am assuming that it was supposed to be funny. And as Charlie Hebdo is alleged to be a satirical publication (and since it is French) I assume that to mean it just takes the piss out of stuff.

Now let me also say that I believe wholeheartedly in freedom of speech. If you have an opinion about something, you must be free to express it without fear of retribution or penalty. But I am utterly against any kind of hypocrisy in the way that freedom is applied.

So let us imagine that Charlie Hebdo was a UK based publication and that its main subject was cartooning the black community or gay rights or some other minority. Let's face it, Charlie Hebdo would certainly not have got past the first publication before it was closed down. So where would the cries for freedom of expression have been then? Muffled under the "incitement to racial hatred" and "discrimination" laws, that's where.

I am not suggesting that the Jihadist's response to the Charlie Hebdo piss taking of the Muslim religion was anything less than evil murder. But nor do I believe that taking the piss out of someone's religious beliefs can be equated to freedom of expression in this age of political correctness gone mad.

If you give some people the right to do that then you must give others the right to take the piss out of blacks, gays, transgenders, the Irish, Welsh or whatever on a public forum. Where would it end?

In an ideal world of course you could do that with impunity. But we're stuck with discrimination laws and "yuman rights" etc so you cannot. So are we supposed to believe that the Muslim faith is some kind of under class to which the normal laws do not apply?

The sloganising of Je Suis Charlie strikes me more like a call to facism rather than support for freedom of speech.

I don't believe that sloganising or mass protests, like the one in Paris over the weekend, ever work or have any real significance. The simple truth is that terrorists do not speak the same language as the rest of us. They only understand violence and that is the only way they will be stopped.

As for "Je Suis Juif" Isn't it only a few years since Tony Blair's jingoistic slogan suggesting that; "We're all Palestinians now" after some Israeli atrocity in Gaza.

So for these reasons and many more - Non, je ne suis pas Charlie. Nor am I "Juif"