When I first saw the news about Charlie Hebdo, I concluded very quickly that it was some sort of staged event, a “false flag”. The basic story, that disgruntled Muslims had shown up in the middle of Paris with Kalashnikovs and a rocket propelled grenade launcher to settle their grievances towards some cartoonists struck me as something out of fantastical fiction. Once I saw the cheesy Hollywood B film dialogue -- "Allahu Akhabar! The Prophet is avenged!” — that nailed it for me. I said sarcastically to whoever would listen: “What is it with that B film dialogue? Were the guys who staged this on a tight budget? Couldn't they hire better scriptwriters?” I also wondered whether these were the same ones who wrote the scene in Abbottabad (later denied) in which denied) in which Osama Bin Laden had used a woman as a human shield.
