Yesterday, 12 cartoonists from the racist, imperialist French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were slaughtered at their offices by apparent “Islamic extremists.” The event is being broadcast as a terrifying oriental aggression on the West’s Right of Free Speech, and we’re all meant to bow our heads in remembrance to stupid men who drew and published vicious harmful things.
There will be all kind of “consequences” and “justification” analyses from left and right. Like, here’s why “al-Qaeda” (cool to see them back out with a new single after ISIS has spent the last year topping the charts) attacked, says Juan Cole. Don’t take this distraction bait.
Who fucking cares about this or that tactic or battle when this is, yes, a clash of civilizations. But not in the way liberals claim: the forces of enlightened modernity against benighted barbarism. Countries who drop bombs into caves whose purpose is to suck the oxygen out of and cauterize shut the lungs of all in its path don’t get to label anything barbarous. No, it’s but a pin prick of resistance against the Western beast — whether it was a result of political calculus, street-level rage, or some mixture of the two. Resistance, on the part of those who identify as victims of a global conspiracy to destroy, downgrade, devalue, destitute their values and customs and completely obliterate any power not yet rendered unto Caesar.
And that’s my actual interest here. Not useless questions about the immediate attack, not “why oh why!?” or “to what end!?” or “what next!?” punditological handwringing but real observations on just what exactly our morality is based. Just how much degradation and humiliation do colonized peoples have to endure? They’re defenseless in the face of waves of murder, torture, plunder, and then if that’s not enough, their centuries-enduring tormentor says it’s morally more righteous, better than they are, because it values, inherently, its right to say terrible shit in favor of destroying their civilizations above their right to fight against it? And forget fighting: the right to express their own similarly (in a very small way) violent opinion? Tarek Mehanna translated al-Qaeda materials and is in jail for 17 years. Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated by drone in Yemen for the crime of saying mean things about America on YouTube. For good measure, his 16-year-old son was also evaporated. Javed Iqbal got 5 years in prison for broadcasting Hezbollah’s TV station inside the US. There were no #IAmTarekMehanna campaigns because nobody gives a fuck about a Tarek Mehanna.
All the power, all the power in the world is stacked against the victims of empire, and undisentanglable from this is the lack of power to make their case in defense. Maybe the assholes at Charlie Hebdo weren’t the politically worst that could be found — lots of reminders that they have “left-wing origins” — but they proudly made themselves figureheads of European menace against Muslims. So, in a global dirty war with the odds stacked dramatically against them, do we need to get bent out of shape because some Muslims, driven to the brink in a very psychological war, punished one manifestation of this all-inundating imperial mire of which a huge, integral part is propaganda?
Propaganda also helps the cultural mop-up job after events like this. Western Muslims, especially of the journalist class, routinely fall over themselves to condemn anything any Muslim does in the world. The latest attack provided new colonized supplicant fodder:
I’m expected now to insert some boilerplate about the tragedy of lost lives and the pain of the cartoonists’ families. But with a limited amount of political attention, I can’t find the space to give too much of a shit about this racist trash. Would Andrew Breitbart’s heart exploding be any less welcome on the left if al-Qaeda blew it up and not one too many cheeseburgers? Same for the journalist scum who plumped America for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. If Judith Miller found herself at the wrong end of a Kalashnikov, would I suddenly cease loathing every fiber of that horribly shitty collection of cells because they mercifully were made to stop their mitosis? Nah. If Dick Cheney ended up too close to a directed EMP, I wouldn’t condemn this “terror” attack despite him never, after all, having physically lifted a finger against his victims.
Check out these dumb, unoriginal, trite cartoons in response to the massacre. They are exactly the kind of simplistic, idiotic thinking that helps delete all background and make it so that history began yesterday. As if Western Civilization’s mighty pens were the only missiles pointed at Muslims. The West is just minding its own enlightened business and these jihad crazies come and assail our absolute greatest right. It’s what makes it possible for us to identify firstly with the dead cartoonists and not the millions of people, many their own countrymen, whom they proudly and routinely made feel less than human in a very real way. This matters because this dehumanization carries with it other consequences including death.
On a complimentary note, you could always count on the Free Speech religionists centered around the Great Infodad to shovel plenty of coal into the liberal #JeSuisCharlie train. From Wikileaks
to Freedom of the Press Foundation
to First Look’s earnest gaggle of also-rans
the priggish moralism of the Greenwald star system never disappoints.
The WikiLeaks tweet is an excellent example of why, by the way, we can love and appreciate a real act of whistleblowing and not be required to sign on to the whistleblower’s specific politics. Tarzie said it best:
Snowden’s political philosophy illustrates a problem with whistleblowers: they’re the kind of people who get into the sort of deep, dark places from which whistles customarily get blown. Places that are uniquely attractive to patriots, ultra-conformists, imperialists and sociopaths. Ellsberg was deep inside the war bureaucracy after hanging out in Vietnam with his mentor, notorious psychopath Edward Lansdale and other thugs. Manning was an Army Intelligence Analyst in Iraq. John Kirakou had spent a decade in the CIA before blowing the whistle on torture. Snowden has spent his entire working life in various arms of the security apparatus. I appreciate their service to the truth, but with all due respect, these are not my kind of people.
Unless they significantly repudiate their past lives, some residue of what took them into Empire’s belly is going to stick. This would be fine, were some of them not also inclined to offer opinions on how the world should work, and their admirers exceptionally inclined to take them seriously because of their heroic deeds.
The point is, “mere” words aren’t benign. Politics is run on words. Wars are launched on words. It matters who is using them. We should defend the right of the powerless to rail against their tormentors. The powerful — and this includes people using words in support of powerful people — don’t need or deserve our support.
—-
The title, some may have already realized, is an homage to the as-it-happened critical coverage of the Snowden spectacle by Tarzie before anyone else I knew was doing so. That he turned out to be SO prescient is as absolutely stunning as his pillorying has been relentless. He was also ahead of his time in attacking the sacrosanct ideal of Free Speech with no consequence — for power only, of course. He doesn’t get nearly as much recognition for this as he deserves, all done against a torrent of Twitter-troll pigshit and smear campaigns from quite on high.
h/t @lorenzoae for tweeting the names of persecuted Muslims and Sam Husseini for collecting the “pen” cartoons.
UPDATE:
Here’s a discussion of whether or not the attack can be considered “resistance.”
100 Flamingos 
So… no freedom of the press to publish cartoons? Who, in your mind, decides what is allowable/not allowable to publish?
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I would engage with this but I can’t imagine you actually read it, if this is your take.
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Bob, how about common fucking sense and good taste? Even the fact that the law doesn`t forbid something doesn`t mean that you should do it. There is no law against farting on the public transport. So go ahead. Who is to decide that you shouldn`t ease your bowels? And if, as you are gassing everyone in the bus, some cheeky bastard tries to limit your rights to have a healthy digestive system you tell `em : Who are you to make decisions about MY health?!
What happened in France is a bad thing and those “jokes” weren`t something to kill for, but making heroes out of those assholes is appaling. The entire world has lost their minds.
FUCK THOSE CHARLIE HEBDO MORONS
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My goodness that is a great rant and I totally agree. So much about this, and the reactions to it, make one despair. It’s only briefly mentioned that the gunmen were first radicalized by the bloodfest of Iraq, then Syria, where incidentally our lawless governments are supplying arms to men such as these to fight against Assad.
It has a name: blowback.
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Blowback is bullshit. This is out-and-out false flag attack.
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Fuck terrorists and fuck Charlie Hebdo too
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YES YOU ARE RIGHT, LOOK AT THE PICTURES THAT THE FUCKING CHARBIE BITCHES WROTE
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Before terrorists attack them, nobody had to look at them, this newspaper was very confidential.
Now everybody has to look at them to protect free speech, writer and cartoonist.
Why are you using insults and capital letter, this doesn’t make your statement more true !
Have a good evening
Victor (from Paris)
vr@opio.fr
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Hear, hear. And fuck cancer too, goddammit.
Teasing aside, I’m wondering what people think the appropriate response of a horribly fucked over people to a steady stream of bigotry from all sides should be? Relatedly, why, exactly, is there a burden on fucked over people to be “proportional” in their response to disproportional abuse?
Finally, even though this was likely the act of terrorists, was it really an act of terrorism in the strict sense? Isn’t terrorism the use of violence against complete innocents to force a political result, in the way that say, sanctions and shock and awe are terrorism? Can racist propagandists be considered innocents? Or am I getting the customary definition of terrorism wrong? It seems to be morphing into meaning any act of horrible violence against unarmed people, which seems to render it an entirely unnecessary word.
I raise these questions not to justify the attacks — oh mercy no, that would be SICK — but just curious why the free speech crew entirely disobliges itself of addressing how variable access to speech platforms renders free speech absolutism akin to the free market religion — advantageous entirely to the haves, disadvantageous to the have nots. Any suggestions on what people who don’t have the means to campaign in their defense on the scale they’re being campaigned against are supposed to do? Is property destruction ok? Because that was tried in 2011 and it didn’t work. Or am I to assume that the silence on this matter infers ‘Suck it up. Freedom is messy.’ If so, I don’t really think that’s adequate.
Oh, while I’m here: nice one, Sassy. One of your best yet and thanks for the kind words.
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“why, exactly, is there a burden on fucked over people to be ‘proportional’ in their response to disproportional abuse?”
“It’s just words, calm down.” Of course, it’s words that ratify to the public the very real policies that destroy the lives of billions. If people would think about how mad they get when someone says something cruel, and then put that in context of unfathomable death, destruction, poverty, dehumanization over centuries, “just words” can be a sort of programming that direct the devastation.
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If Hebdo were alive, they would tell you that they are avowedly anti-racist, with sympathies with communists, anarchists and other parts of the left. Huge enemies of the xenophobic French far right, as you know. They published many images containing sentiments that I suspect you’d agree with and find funny. Should we deem these dead people racist because we’re English-speaking and we failed to “get” the satire, and reacted instinctively? Because they caricature racist caricatures as a means to denounce racism (as ineffective or controversial as that is)? That would seem to be the worst kind of cultural ignorance. All I’m suggesting is let’s not delete all background and erase their nominal anti-racism. But seriously, we should take the time to research what Charb claimed his views were – egalitarian and pro-immigrant – before labeling them as imperialist. I’ll allow you the effect of certain speech and its connection to oppression.
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Yeah, I’ve seen lots of stuff pegging them all over the map, so I’m not really interested in this “deep nuance” argument considering how many French people do not see it.
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pretty clear you don’t dig nuance yeah
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Charlie is alive (will be published next week) and not racist indeed.
In a normal world their cartoons should be seen only by people who desire to do it and buy their newspaper.
“Thanks” these terrorists attacks their cartoons are spread all over the world, that’s it !
You have the right to have different opinion but I am sure in France, people stating Charlie has imperialist and racist could be sued in front a judge for calomny. Maybe (and paradoxally US law are more keen to free speech but less to blasphema (which doesn’t exists in French law)).
Regards
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Isn’t it hypocritical of french folks to decry attacks on free speech when their own law constricts free speech? If they are so eager to defend free speech, which would be good, shouldn’t they change their own law?
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Hi Paul,
Well, I am not responsible for the law of my country, but indeed I am part of the people who want to accept them or try to change them through legal ways.
I think in France the only law against free speech are the law against racism or pedophily.
But in USA you have law against blasphema, which we don’t have.
Then I think there is also law against calomny, for sure they are sometimes implemented when news are wrong and newspaper needs to explicitely say they are wrong.
I think law in France and US on free speech are not one sided more pro-free speech in one country.
Nevertheless I think pretty harmful for Charlie Hebdo to be designed as racist, homophobic and over all imperialist newspaper.
I have demonstrate with one and half million people today, there were black, yellow, muslim, believer, non-believer, woman, men. Any inform people know Charlie Hebdo is not racist.
I have been tonigth to a three and half hours TV show about free speech. I didn’t agree with all of what has been said, but again nothing was for me incorrect news or statement.
I think there is a difference between insults, free speech, wrong statement and racist statement.
The last one is the worst. For me the third one can be enforce by having to state a correct statement. I think Sassy Sourstein should do this.
I don’t know in which world you want to live, but I still didn’t get it, and people on this blog and forum seems to make huge mismatch between stuff that haven’t the same importance.
Victor
vr@opio.fr
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Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons are polemic, unsophisticated and offensive for the sake of being offensive. The cartoons provide no insight or witty analysis, but reflect an adolescent fascination with smutty images and garnering attention by trying to offend as many people as possible.
Self-righteous, unapologetically confrontational, and firm believers in never backing down, it’s little wonder the artists of Charlie Hebdo attracted the attention of extremists with similar values. It’s as though the purpose of Charlie Hebdo is to stare down and enrage as many extremists as possible; the more extreme the better.
The best possible outcome would be an exchange of angry words. The worst possible outcome has already come to pass. It’s difficult to argue that any of these outcomes made the world a better place, but merely provided a forum for people with mutual dislikes to spit their vitriol at one another.
Freedom of speech is a great human freedom but it’s a legal principle, not one of the immutable law of physics. What actually protects your right of freedom of speech is the other person you’re talking to. If your freedom of speech is violated by another person, you’ll suffer the consequences and the legal system is powerless to do anything except clean up the mess after it happens, assuming the case even makes it to court. If freedom of speech is an absolute right, I should be able to walk up to anyone on the street and tell them how great it was to screw their wife last night. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if I eventually ended up in hospital and the legal system would have provided zero protection from that fist hitting my face. Legally speaking my freedom of speech was violated: it is my legal right to walk up to anyone and tell them how great it was to screw their wife and what our favourite position was. Practically speaking, I was behaving like a jerk who was looking for trouble and relying on an abstract legal principle to protect me from the actions of another person reacting to my words was wishful thinking. That’s simply not how people or the world works, whatever the law may say about the matter. If that wasn’t true, robberies and murders would never happen because they’re against the law.
Nor is freedom of speech an unlimited right. If I drew cartoons which trivialised the Holocaust or questioned its validity, most of us would agree this would be an abuse of my freedom of speech and should not be allowed.
This is why I disagree that the murder of those twelve people in Paris had anything to do with freedom of speech. Those people never deserved to be shot in cold blood by a pair of extremists. But that doesn’t mean that those twelve people were martyrs to the cause of free speech, although they themselves probably thought of themselves in that way. They were the creators of a divisive and hate-filled publication who were brutally murdered by a pair of lunatics. But that what happens when you bait extremists, one day someone might take the bait and you may be surprised to learn that the extremists are willing to go to greater lengths than you thought possible to make their point. And for what reward? To prove to yourself that you’re tough enough to stare the rest of the world down and say whatever you like? Being able to mouth off however you like is a nice idea but it’s not how the people or the world works. Trying to prove otherwise is a fruitless endeavour and a moot point, especially if you’re dead.
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thank you.
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Thank god thats all it takes. No bullshit come off the walls and listen with ears not mouths
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Fuck Charlie hebdo and Fuck all the so called “Muslims” condemning the attack. Whenever the religion of Islam is mocked or insulted it is “freedom of fuckin speech” by some idiots. On the other hand, when a cartoonist just made fun of Judaism, he was fired because of “antisemitism”. Muslims are being killed everyday in Syria by Assad and Google did not put a black ribbon or pay $300,000. Muslims were butchered in Egypt, 1200 were killed in a single day (100 times the victims of charlie hedbo) and Obama, Ban ki moon, etc. said nothing. Now Muslims all over the world are required to condemn the attack even if their religious leaders, teachings are severely insulted. As for the Charlie Hedbo crew members who were killed, ROT IN HELL.
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I’m not a muslim and I am not charlie. Je ne suis pas Charlie. A bunch of sad French morons died for their right to publish racist cartoons. Now the hypocrisy, as we all have to wallow in pity and grief as this was an attack on “journalism” “western liberalism” “freedom of speech”. No it was just racists and their cartoons, they took their chances and “hahaha” it’s not very funny any more. All the outpouring of sorrow and emotion, how about all the millions of innocents killed, including children, for “western liberalism” “freedom” and “democracy”. This is bullshit and a set up for the great clash of civilisations the “western liberals” want to bring about as their great “liberal” economies, where slavery &child labour were once legal all turn to shit. Happy bombing and killing folks. Fuck Charlie and fuck the sanctimonious bullshit;.
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Hi Sassy Sourstein,
Your blog entry start with a false statement.
Charlie Hebdo is neither imperialist, nor racist.
Please look at the law attack they had to face, most of them come from the catholic church and the extreme rigth party.
http://dw-lemonde.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/MQVra/1/
(the complete article : http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-22-ans-de-proces-en-tous-genres_4551824_3224.html)
Charlie Hebdo are just anarchic, left wing people that draw PG-rated cartoon.
Please contact me to give you more evidence of what I am telling, I think it is wrong to make incorrect statement.
Kind Regards
Victor Reutenauer
+33(0)609094354
30 Rue Charlot
75003 Paris
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Seroiously mon-sewer, we are drowning in sanctimony. Your pillar of free speech and journalism is puerile merde, stop believing your own press, Most of the people who have read and understood the above blog post are not interested in dead charlie’s attacks on anyone left right or racist. Charlie don’t surf mon-sewer. And Victor just because you post your address don’t make you right, fuck off.
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You have no idea of what you are saying YOU ARE NOT GRENCH AND DON’T FUCKING KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT OUR COUNTRY SO SHUT THE FUCK UP INSTEAD OF ASSAULTING PEOPLE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOI ARE TALKIMG ABOUT !!!!
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why are you trying to shut him up? Why are you telling him to “shut the fuck up”, trying to silence someone practicing freedom of speech? Guess freedom of speech is all good when its you (or someone you like/agree with) doing the talking. Such a little hypocrite;]
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Thank you Alexia for your support !
Ces americains pretendument anarchistes et anti-imperialistes me font bien rire.
J’essaie de contacter des proches des survivants de la redaction pour connaitre leur position sur ce genre de point de vue.
J’imagine que sur le fond ils n’ont que faire des critiques et interpretations de quelques ignorants outre-atlantique et laisseront le “free speech” s’autoreguler.
Victor Reutenauer
vr@opio.fr
PS : Je ne comprends pas tout a leur vocabulaire et leur discours me parait trop entaché de haine et d’insultes pour comprendre notre position : Je suis Charlie, je suis policier, je suis Juif !
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“how much have they to take?”
As much as they are willing to give. Let’s not forget that they shat on De Gaulle when they were burying the guy. They were offensive pretty much to anybody, but no single person tried to *kill* them for it. If people are disturbed by it, they can choose not to read it, but if they do, then having a weak rectum doesn’t give their butthurt little selves the right to try to censor them, let alone intimidate them, let alone kill them. Any other position is quite simply insane in a democratic society: free speech and the right to free expression have been conceived to protect controversial thought, if it was something that did not offend anyone, and that no one would have had any incentive to suppress, then there would be *nothing* to protect there.
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Another person who can’t read but sure likes to write.
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With *they* I obviously mean satyrists (and anyone else that wants to engage in the very important job of criticizing religion). If jews and popists were all right, then I can’t see why muslims should be exempted -once again, you don’t have to like it, but then again, no single person is enough to decide whan another person *has* to read-.
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“Another person who can’t read but sure likes to write.”
Another person who sure can read and write, but who couldn’t produce a cogent thought to save his life (not that the sniveling coward would ever willingly risk it, as it demonstrates to be only capable to hold up one side of a socratic debate if the other side lays dead on the ground, the body yet to cool down).
At least in Austria and Italy, there exist laws against nazi propaganda. The examples shown are not really representative, as for example Tarek Mehanna was involved in conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes (not that I would expect intellectual courage, let alone intellectual honesty, from *this* crowd).
One could argue that there is a difference in that publicizing an armed organization or inciting mobs to violence, or any form of propaganda by fascist or neonazi terrorist groups might be the preparatory stage preceding actual application of such doctrines (such as the one shown phisically today). One might also make the case, as Chomsky does, that such things actually haven’t reduced the prevalence of nazism and fascism in the public discourse in Europe, and that the US system, where everything is allowed under the first amendment, is superior.
You will note that the journal’s satire was aimed at taking powerful figures (who controls huge crowds and mobs, has enourous resources, and evidently the ability and willingness to retaliate violently) down a peg or two. And why should religion any exception to the rule? As they said, why should papists and rabbis be okay, but mullhas be out of the question?
We had an example of shining courage in the form of people willing to “stand on their feet rather than die on their knees”. They were physically treatened by arson, but still chose to show that the hard won right to criticize religion, right expressed beautifully by Voltaire (the play “Mahomet”, and I quote from the Wiki article: “The play is a study of religious fanaticism and self-serving manipulation based on an episode in the traditional biography of Muhammad in which he orders the murder of his critics.[1] Voltaire described the play as “written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect to whom could I with more propriety inscribe a satire on the cruelty and errors of a false prophet”.[2]”). They fully upheld the rights conquered with blood in 1897.
Of course, we also had to see the exhalted, medieval rabble.
In the middle, the pathetic, parasitical crowd of apologists, who of course show their “cowards” in being “contrarian” and going after corpses who can’t defend themselves anymore, before their bodies is even cold. Of course, secure in the knowledge that *they* aren’t really risking any form of retaliation -zero backlash, except the knowledge that they will have to live with themselves, but that, I suppose, would only serve as a deterred for someone with an actual conscience-.
Nor they should, and that is thanks to the right of freedom of expression that they enjoy. A right that people like the artists from Charlie Hebo made sure was something more than a sentence on a paper.
I would say that I find the latter a worm much more contemptible than the former -their collective physical courage amounting to barely the tip of one of the journalist’s little finger-.
“How long will the have to put up with it?”
As long as there exist people willing to callenge their absolute claims and mock them as they make a fool out of themselves. When they are all killed off and nothing remains but the slobbering, moronic ass kisser, who clearly desire nothing more than to be a slave, then we will have successfully undone the French Revolution and returned to the medieval past some people so clearly long for. Hopefully, someone actually willing to put the much spitted upon “freedom of expression” to the actual test will always be around to set back such an outcome, but I frankly don’t expect this crowd to have any part in it.
To conclude, the journal regularly mocked christians, jews, muslims. Note *muslims*. No, it is not a substitute for *Arabs* (in fact, Turks are not arabs, nor are Indonesians, and Chechenia is inhabited by caucasians -like the Boston Marathon guys-). It’s actually *exactly* the religious sphere that is mocked about it, because that crowd apparenly was able to remembered that the pernicious combination of king and church, the collusion of temporal and spiritual power, the unwillingness to separate the Church from the State, to keep the two magisteria apart, was a big part of what the French Revolution was about.
Equally heinous crimes are committed in other countries -today Boko Haram used a ten years old as a suicide bomber, for example-, but in this case we had people actually killing French citizens for holding an opinion, and expressing it in a manner that was deemed profane. Well, too tough, but the freedom of expression, as an idea, was conceived exactly with that in mind, and one might be as blasphemous as to think up as “Piss Christ”, and would be expected the State to protect him or her if the Church decided that, well, that guy or gal is due a good flogging and burning at the stake.
The willingness to relativize, to pander to Terror by immediately becoming, unprompted, an apologist even for the most vile act, shown by these vile cowards (I will make a wild guess that under the same conditions as the artists of the journal they would be much less willing to externate with such “keyboard warrior” bluster and bravado), actually disgusts me far more than the mere murder -worse than the person that shot the man on the ground, is the person that can look at that and come up with an excuse before the body has become cold-. A slavish wish to surrender your mental faculties and to live as a slave -a betrayal of the Enlightment and of all the painstakingly made conquests made over the years, to put religion in the sphere of things that could be judged by man-.
Just to be clear, I repeat the “fuck you” of the journalists’ relatives. No one cares if the vile murderers have a weak rectum, or if they had a sob story, no matter how egregious. The Londoners under the bomb were the ones that opposed the bombing of Dresden. Similarly, you had Orwell “Revenge is sour” (http://orwell.ru/library/articles/revenge/english/e_revso) depicting the way that a normal human being reacts when he is victim of a tort. A sob story does *not* give you the right to do *absolutely anything*. To make an example, it’s one thing to attack Assad’s forces. To attack a dictator’s soldiers is both ethically defensible and tactically useful. The international community was certainly not in favor of the dictator before the ISIS clusterfuck. Another thing is destroying Yazidi villages, selling human beings -specifically, young females- as slaves. What tactical purpose does it have? The partisans fighting fascists (Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy) did not go out of their way to hit Spanish children in a school, or random German civilians in a cafe, for example. Those acts are not only ethically unwarranted, but also tactically useless, they are mere cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and the fact that the enemy might have very well done those things does not endow you with any special right to do the same, particuarly since they are not even defensible from an utilitarian point of view (in cases where a cost/benefit analysis might make sense, as in the usage of information obtained from breaking Enigma), but simply serve the purposes of sating a sadist’s preverse appetites. Actually, some say that they *do* serve a purpose (terrorists organizations competing for publicity). I will let anyone imagine for themselevs exactly what sort of individual would deem an HD video of a terrorist’s child with severed heads in his hands to be “cool”. Sadists with a decapitation fetish. So, if to the “what about this completely useless atrocity, would it be warrented?” the answer is “yes, because they did/would do it to us”, I can only say that we are dealing with an insane sadist that does *not*, I repeat, does *not*, have a valid case. It’s one thing when it’s incidental, a few rotten apples in a movement, it’s quite another where it’s there is an istitutionalization of the most brutal practices, where unwarranted slaughter serving no tactical purpose whatsoever is actually being held up as not only warranted, but honorable.
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To be quite explicit, I get the message that the smear campaign is bad etc., etc. I also get that people actually being killed because of cartoons is something I deem worse than that. And that Freedom Of Expression is the reason we aren’t living as downtrodden barbarians, and that such freedom was made to protect things that would be deemed offensive, otherwise it would *need* no protection. So, to the sob story and whining, I say a resounding “fuck you”.
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I’m glad you posted this last comment because your “fuck you” is far less insulting to me than the 1000+ words of crap you posted before it which assumed I just, gosh, maybe hadn’t considered those basic-ass bromidic points. Maybe you’re right man, Islam is kinda bad? I guess I just never ever considered it! Isn’t discourse *great*?
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By the way, it would be one thing to incite mobs to, say, go after people (they way they did with the Satanic Verses, for example). Or, for that matter, the same fascistic way that they threatened with arson and murder someone with a different opinion. To make an example, recently the Jewish shops were targeted by extremists during the protest for the Gaza conflict, pharmacies were burned, etc. Thousands of Jews emigrated towards Israel as a result. That’s something physical. But if Charlie Ebo chose to print a cartoon denigrating a rabbi (as they did many times), they would have had a right to do that, like they had a right to mock De Gaulle while they were burying him, despite the fact that relatives or friends might suffer. Those are words, and the old saying that “words hurt more than swords” has clearly been uttered by someone that never met a sword, as the dead artists might attest. So, if the situation is tought for muslims in France, I can only say that the police should prevent any material harm and discrimination, but that they can not control what people think about their religious doctrine, nor should they -after all, if there is something that supersedes even freedom of expression is freedom of thought, and a sob story does not give you special rights, let alone dictatory power, like the ability to control what others are allowed to think or say because you don’t want to be offended, and you would prefer a more welcoming atmosphere… sorry, but the French State is not you private garden where you can decide who stays and who is being a nuisance and should shut up or get kicked out-. Mocking cartoons obviously do not equate to convincing a mob to assault their communities, therefore it shouldn’t be treated the same way -at best, they elicited a laugh, at worst, it pissed people off-. Again, if one is dumb enough -not- to notice that they essentially mocked everyone, and no one else reacted like a whiny, spoiled child that couldn’t get the desired toy, then they clearly had issues -likely a weak rectum-, but that doesn’t mean that such whining should make people tiptoe around the topic (they should thank God that they are not in the US, and do what American Jews do when neonazis exercise their first amendment: without the protection of special european laws, they simply suck it up and behave like reasonably adults). Jokes *don’t* maim. Jockes *don’t* kill. Jokes are *not* responsible for war. And even if warmongering propaganda was a risk, any sane person would prefer to take that risk and keep his right of free expression, rather than surrender it and submit himself or herself to someone else’s judgment as far as what he/she can think/say out loud. In other words, any sane person that can accept the gifts of the French Revolution knows that he is not a slave, not the mere toy of a divinely appointed king, and doesn’t surrender such faculties to anyone but himself. Lese majeste? Whiny bitching? Only a slave would self censor to appease someone who, with arson and the threat of murder, certainly doesn’t strike anyone sane as a subject of discrimination worthy of anyone’s pity. Dangerous mob rule, as in the cases of other pictures and the Satanic Verses, is a more likely assessment, something that should be met with disgust and scorn. And, by the way, an actual “action”, that the State has to prevent, very different by mere jokes, that the State has no business messing with (closing the journal when they mocked De Gaulle was a shameful day for France). In the end, one would do well to ask of such people in the business of being “offended” and speaking for a “community”, who appointed them emperors of the worlds, chief censors, last deciders of what is right and wrong to joke about. Particualrly, if they openly admit, without shame, that they deem people’s *feelings* as more important than someone’s flesh and blood, recently spilled, you have to doubt their integrity, in addition to, of course, their sanity. Maybe they don’t have entirely nice motives, or entirely sane brains. Only dictatorships prohibit satire, and no man is good enough to be another man’s censor and master. I would therefore consider free speech and actual dead bodies as incalculably more important than perceived and virtual offences by who knows whom, after (how do we rate their importance? I think that there are actually more muslims than jews, not sure about christians, but they mocked all three groups, not sure what this means in terms of groups that should be protected… and what does it mean, after all? Do we censor anything by Voltaire on Mohamed? His works? Do we sell the Divine Comedy with the Inferno part edited, because we deem muslim populations to be so “unprepared” to face the horror of reading the account, as in some muslim countries? Note that homosexuals have no problems reading about their bits. Why should they be treated as “special needs” children or disabled people, when they are adults and, from their own admission, religiously mature?After 9/11 they made a picture with a plane and a banker shouting ‘sell’, I think that as far as grievances go that might have offended many more people -including me, but rather than whine or put pressure or anything of the sort, I simply didn’t buy the isse… not so difficult, see?-).
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“…if Charlie Ebo chose to print a cartoon denigrating a rabbi (as they did many times)”
PLEASE give me a link to all these cartoons. I’ve been hunting for them in vain. So far I’ve managed to find ONE anti-semitic cartoon – that one depicted Hitler and dates back to 1978.
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“Islam is kinda bad”
No, any religion is bad when it is put before human beings -then you have the witch hunts, or the murder of cartoonists-. It is also not ideal to mix the two separate magisteria of State and Religion. Such was the case with the Curch and the King before the French had their revolution.
“Just how much degradation and humiliation do colonized peoples have to endure? They’re defenseless in the face of waves of murder, torture, plunder, and then if that’s not enough, their centuries-enduring tormentor says it’s morally more righteous, better than they are, because it values, inherently, its right to say terrible shit in favor of destroying their civilizations above their right to fight against it?”
If they are not pathetic little losers, none, as they will simply close the journal. If they are, an endless amount, and that’s a good thing, since the only moron that would be so profoundly and deeply offended by a cartoon as to think about, and possibly carry out, murder, clearly deserves to be mocked and ridiculed at the very least.
Note that we have heard repeated time and time again that the majority of muslims are intelligent moderates that put things into perspective and don’t assault innocent cartoonists. I take this as its face value, and therefore add that the lunatics that perceive as personal degradation and humiliation any insult towards their religion will have to suck it up, and put up with it as long as cartoonists with a spine will be around.
Their historical sufferings have exactly zero relevance in this discussion, because, quite simply, someone that is emotionally and mentally unstable enough to consider a cartoon as an offence and humiliation grievous enough to be pushed into a homicidal rage -regardless if they chose to act on it or not-, simply has no business running around outside a mental institution. Pandering to his or her delusions would be obviously insane -and normal people usually don’t indulge lunatics’ delusions-.
As for the principles of free speech and separations of Church and State being superior to obscurantism and clerical bullying, I take it as something that is self evidently true. It is, for example, what enables one to live in a democracy, something that it seems to be considered of low value around here. By the way, one should point out that the cartoonists are not “centuries long tormentors”, they were not responsible for colonialism -nor does the victim of colonialism get endowed with additional rights because of his or her suffering-, and that simply by something being “tradition”, it doesn’t mean that it is not backward and idiotic.
If for “right to fight against it” you mean proclamations for Jihad, once again (“And forget fighting: the right to express their own similarly (in a very small way) violent opinion? Tarek Mehanna translated al-Qaeda materials”), again, it must be pointed out that the conviction was for conspiracy to commit murder. Once again, there is a difference between printing a joke mocking circumcision, and reprinting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not that the latter would be illegal in all countries (I think in Austria and Italy they take the view that fascist propaganda has to be combated, but that is not the view, for example, in the US).
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Did someone ever spit into you mother’s face in front of you? Posted nude pictures of your sister on the internet? Took a shit on your grandfather’s medals?
Charlie Hebdo “journalists” did all that professionaly for years. They even got paid.
Therefore today I am – Syrian;
I am – Odessite burned alive in Trade Unions House;
I am – Palestinian boy suffocating beneath ruins of my own house in Gaza;
I am – Jewish granny killed by unguided rocket;
I am – five years old Arseny, torn to pieces by mortar shell launched by Ukrainian army in Slavyansk. Last thing I’ve seen before I went blind – my mother dying to let me live for six more hours;
I am – cab driver, mechanic, miner, factory worker from Donetsk protecting my family from Ukrainian neonazis invasion;
I am – tortured Guantanamo adbuctee. No lawyer, no trial – my relatives don’t even know I’m still alive;
I am – Cuban rotting away in secret CIA prison in a random country. Maybe it is even yours, I do not know;
I am – teenager killed by USA cop without warning, because cop “felt threatened”;
I am – one of the innocent French policemen killed on 7th of January.
But I am NOT your fucking Charlie!
Not today, not ever.
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I AM a black American poet. May I repost this poem? I am gutted, bearing my own bloody and beating heart. Inspired!
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In light of this, I should probably point out that I regard the firing of Siné almost as much of a shame as the closure of the paper during the De Galle funeral. On the other hand, the counterpunch article linked is obviously insane if it thinks that outright criticism of religion is endorsed in the French political climate. I encourage anyone to witness the last days’ proceedings and restate that assumption (obviously, I don’t take suppressing material from terrorist organizatinos as an example of suppressing muslim’s attempts to “defend their culture”, as the claim is exactly that islam and terrorism are different things). Not only, as they correctly claimed, criticism of christianity and judaism were endorsed, and only criticism of islam suppressed, but it was only the latter that earned them physical threats (if the mobs we have seen last Summer are any indication, there is certainly no “Jew-friendly” political correctness at work in France, therefore we can safely consider the firing as a judgment call the journal made by itself… which one might not like, but which is legitimate, since the point here is about self censorship: the journal has to have *a* message, not broadcast all and any possible messages -it doesn’t have to feature jokes both in favor and against popists, for example-). They were threatened with arson, put under protection and actually murdered, for fuck’s sake, so it seems to me that it was indeed a case of standing up against censorious forces. They were true to their line, *this* is freedom of expression, and this doesn’t change simply because counterpounch didn’t like their line, and would have preferred a different one -a popist might have a similar opinion, but the fact that they didn’t present the pro-catholic case in their work doesn’t mean that they suppressed freedom of expression, but that the journal’s message didn’t involve anything of the sort-. I seriosuly ask any intellectually honest person to repeat without laughing that Hitchens’ or even Fallaci’s (the partner of Greek hero Alekos Panagulis) position on religion is “mainstream”. Indeed, that was the point when they brought up the whole “danish cartoons” or “satanic verses” controversy -a stream of propositions aimed at protecting the religious from being “offended”-. No, this bs talk about “not offending” the religious is what is mainstream. I still think that the firing was wrong, but frankly, to pretend that, say, Chomsky’s position is underrepresented in the average American campus is simply delusional. With “freedom of expression” we mean that the paper had one line, that it followed it, received threats, continued. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t self regulate, but it meant that if they decided that something was fit for print, it would be printed regardless of external complains or death treats (and they did not avoid the one topic that upped the stakes to lethal levels, so how would you go about persuading anyone that they “caved in to political pressure” on the other points? Maybe they simply did not have counterpounch’s same ideas, which are not exactly what I would call “not mainstream”, and certainly not something that the site would have to defend with their life on the line).
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Ask french cartoonist Siné about freedom of speech in Charlie Hebdo:
“The cartoonist Siné came under sharp criticism and was sacked from his magazine after accusing Jean Sarkozy of converting out of ambition and is being sued by the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA).”
The full story is available on wikipedia, go and search.
Freedom of speech. Yeah. Whatever. Je ne suis pas Charlie (et je ne suis pas Le Pen).
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Hey Sassy, what would you say about Muslim mobs acts of intimidation whenever Islam is caricatured or criticised in India. after all, India is not a colonizer but part of the colonized. Why not admit that Islam has a problem with blasphemy (in a manner similar to fascist, totalitarian ideologies).
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I don’t know man, what would you say about the fact that it’s not a colonized/colonizer binary and Hindus have spent plenty of time rampaging through Muslim streets and burning their houses down and raping and killing them and stealing their properties and kristallnachting their businesses? All Indians aren’t just co-equal victims of empire, but YOU know that. You just wanna play like Muslims are uniquely psycho and I’m not having it so fuck off.
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I believe understand the argument given, and I’ll try condensing it down – a bunch of suck-ups from the higher echelons of power jump on the sob-sob-sob train so conveniently rolling up to the platform, 12 provocators biting an extremist bullet, the usual crybabies and “speech-defenders” crawl out from every crack, despite being non-seen and non-heard on any other given day when thousands die in Neocolonial games all over the Third World. Obviously the 12 provocators are the purer Aryans and are absolutely worth more on a human scale than you and me. You have the right to show regret over valuable lives lost my dear subhuman, because today, “You are Charlie”, you are allowed to be impersonating the extra-valuable caricaturist provocateur, see?
But it is nevertheless extra worth noting some of the immoral political faces seen locking arms in Paris yesterday: Netanyahoo, a diehard neocon running a murderous Apartheid state that no sane, civilised person on this planet could ever approve of. Hollande, a fellow that hates poor people, that just recently had a single-digit popularity rate and desperately, DESPERATELY needed to improve it (tinfoil hat alert), while his country just recently tore down the Libyan state and is busy recolonialising the Uranium mines in Mali. Poroshenko, president of Ukraine, a fellow that came to power in an antidemocratic overthrow, that shells his own cities and oversees neonazi detachments repressing nonconforming Ukrainians and making assault sprees into the nonconformant Donetsk Republic.
I am sure one could find more conspicuous figures there that should TAKE A LOOK IN THE GODD-MN MIRROR and SHUT THE F-CK UP about Charlie-Whatever. But those are quite enough for some reeking reflexes.
The problem is simple, really. The human flock has degraded into simple Pavlovian reflexes where certain patterns of reaction have been carefully engraved into the petty minds of the median TV-oogler and Peer-Pressure-Forum-surfer. Nowadays all the puppet master need to do is pulling a certain card out of the hat and the dogs start drooling, rolling over or gawking in unison. At least those “qualified” for even such a demeaning level of political perception.
Go to Paris and see the empty shining eyes of all the “Je suis Charlies” while they drone out their “citizen responsibility”. Oh, mind you, I am sure they “mean well”. They certainly like to “think” they do. If they only could think more than one step ahead.
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Very well written. God bless you for this work.
Hebdo and his filthy work rot in the grave now… He could have made cartoons perhaps lampooning the real murderers of the world, but he instead was a zionist prick.
Je ne suis pas Charlie.
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Well he wasn’t a he, but thanks.
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You have literally no idea what you are talking about and I am so hurt as a French girl to read what you’re saying!
Those guys that you mentioned as racist are not racist at all yes they draw and made fun of the Muslim but they did it with the Jewish and Christian too ! They were just saying what everyone think out loud but you obviously don’t know that because you never read it !
Those guys were innocent they were not only drawing for Charlie hebdo they draw cartoons for kids I grow up with those cartoons !
The terrorists who did that also killed a policeman which was also Muslim when he was betting them to not kill him but they did, so this is not all about religion !
Yes my all country is grieving because what happen was horrible they attacked the freedom of expression and by doing this they also attack the whole country !
You have no idea what you are talking about and don’t even know the whole story or what was and is going on in France ! So you should shut the Fuck up when you don’t know everything
What happen here was and is an historical event and JE SUIS CHARLIE , JE SUIS POLICIER, JE SUIS JUIFS !!!!!
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“So you should shut the Fuck up when you don’t know everything”
You should shut the fuck up when you don’t know ANYTHING. “JE SUIS POLICIER” isn’t gonna get you much sympathy in these pages, dingbat.
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As an ex-Muslim and now Christian I find it ironic when portions of the left weigh-in isolating muslim terrorists as freedom fighters and replacing a discussion about Islam with a discussion about western and Christian Imperialism. Firstly, Islam has a dire history of Imperialism itself and I suspect this doesn’t register for the left because the majority o people it massacred throughout its history were ethnic, and often Muslim. the attacks on westerners are minor by comparison so of course, the left only considers the balance of white deaths caused by Muslims against ethnic deaths caused by whites. Western Imperialism is racist and satanic and Charlie Hebdo was a part of that. But they also insulted all faiths on not only a regular basis but on a militant, extreme basis. they were killed not just as a result of their participation in Western Imperialism but as a result of their attack on the faith of billions of people worldwide. But o course, their satanic propaganda will never be discussed in that context by writers like this fidiot, who professes to separate himself from right-left politics while spouting exactly the same partial drivel everybody else on the left spews out. Militant atheism better watch the fuck out because while the Catholic church will sue cunt-factories like Charlie Hebdo, muslims will slaughter them. And if you’re stupid enough to separate the matter out from religion then you clearly have an agenda and are dong exactly what you accuse others on the left of doing. You’re fitting the attack into your Noam Chomsky paradigm as suits you, downplaying any facts that thwart that effort. Yeah, well how do you then explain the Muslim slaughters in Nigeria and Pakastani slaughters huh? Were those Muslim murderers freedom fighters as well??? Sick of hearing insipid pretentious little leftwing anarchists and the like telling me why my race and religion do things and talking about the ‘magic black man’ who couldn’t possibly have any ability to act like an Imperialist or indeed, understand his own motivation you patronising cunt. These guys told us why they attacked Charlie Hebdo and to then negate their own assertion that it had a great deal to do with religion is just patronising filth and we’ve fucking had enough of it. And as far as homogenising goes, also sick of leftwing white tards homogenising Christians and the west while bitching about homogenisation of Muslims. there is always a degree of homogeneity, particularly if a group has a standard text, particularly a religious text. that doesn’t mean every Muslim is responsible for everything a Muslim does, but i’d really fucking like to hear the same argument made about Christians, many of whom are like myself, ethnic, foreign immigrants from a background of poverty. Cocksuckers like you are monumental hypocrites and I can tell you now, I don’t want people like you defending me or my people. Go fuck yourself.
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You’ve definitely mischaracterized my meaning. If we accept the official story that these guys attacked CH (there are doubts about what precisely happened) and only because of blasphemy, that still doesn’t impact my point which is that people are justified in fighting back. It’s actually somewhat separate. It’s also a discussion of how idiotic is this idea of absolute free speech no matter who is harmed, and I don’t mean JUST disembodied hurt feelings because it’s all wrapped up in who runs shit and for whose benefit.
Talking about historic imperialism is stupid as hell. Let’s also complain about italians’ predilection for ruling the world while we’re at it. It’s only been 1500 years, after all. You can just as easily talk about the Crusades as the “barbarian” West’s first and successful push at empire and colonization (after Rome I guess). I guess Mongolians have “issues” as well, no? Let’s have a chat.
As for communal violence in your two cherry-picked Muslim countries, that happens the world over where instability and poverty and subversion are present. What’s wrong with the Hindus, man, why do they have to kill thousands and burn down whole villages over some bullshit? What’s wrong with Hutus? Maybe they all have some sort of deep-seated ISSUES.
Anyway any discussion that acts like imperialism isn’t an intellectually cleansed and much more deadly example of smaller-scale pogrom-like violence isn’t worth engaging in a forum such as this.
I’m statistically more likely to be murdered by a cop than an Islamic fundamentalist so I’m not really trying to hear people “warn” me about who would kill me how if only they could, cuz they can’t.
As for homogenization/collectivization, I do NOT and have not done this, certainly not here. I was exploring the possibility of righteousness of reaction against CERTAIN targets depending on what their individual culpability is in the empire’s victimizing of others. I think it should be a high bar but again, I’m not here to circumscribe people’s resistance. I’m not about to advocate for my own potential death in some kind of attack but this IS a philosophical exercise, not a fucking manifesto.
Anyway this is the best comment on here even if parts are stupid, thank you for the froth.
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People talk too much about religions and fighting over them on this planet. If the people would have been told science as much as they talk about religions, they had discovered Andromeda Galaxy already:) Anyway, maybe their discussions on religions, has been profit for the species of Andromeda:)
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sigh, so true, ….problem is, in the most honest defintion of the word “religion”:
Religion equates to a belief in a particular way of living. As to that word “Science,” it also falls under that word “Religion.” Its [Science™’s] ‘practise’, generally has only been mostly allowed when some powerful entity can make an outrageous profit on the backs, and MISERY, of others.
Science™ has certainly shown itself to be every bit as corrupted as those other “Religions.”
sigh.
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Actually, even if it is a little bit philosophical, thanks to your explanation between science and religion word-meaning relationship on people mind’s.
By the way, a friend of mine from Andromeda Galaxy has sent me urgent message. It says that:
“Don’t intervene between the discussions of Earthlings about religions. We are living freely without the mankind. Don’t attract attention on us!”
I’ve got the message and stopped speaking:)
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migarium,
I’m reading your January 10, 2015 post ( https://unnecessarynewsfromearth.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/the-freedom-of-speech-for-whom/ ):
The freedom of speech for whom.
I wish I could do much, much more than that.
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To addend the last comment I posted, which isn’t currently showing (I failed to take into consideration that, over the internet, you likely wouldn’t get my meaning), when I noted – as regards to reading your January 10, 2015 post (https://unnecessarynewsfromearth.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/the-freedom-of-speech-for-whom/ – The freedom of speech for whom:
I meant that I wished I could do something, versus just read it it in horror, to change that reality.
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Thank you diane
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You’re welcome, dear.
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Charlie Hebdo was and is a rag, the journalistic equivalent of a second or third rate porno magazine. Regardless of this there is no justification for responding with violence to their inflammatory BS. The firebombing was inexcusable and the murders are beyond inexcusable. You are right that the Muslim world and civilians in certain Muslim countries have been done great wrongs with the wars and their bombing campaigns, but that was not the alleged purpose behind these attacks. Attacking civilians of Western countries is not a valid response to the middle eastern wars, most of the civilian population in the west abhors these wars and many have tried in vain to stop them.
Here is the problem. Islam is not really a religion, or if it is it also more than a religion. Islam brings it’s own set of social rules and political structure. The framework of Islam is not compatible with non-Islamic countries and by it’s very nature never can be. Muslims can never fully integrate into non-Muslim societies and their will always be tensions, tensions which will invariably lead to violent conflict, between Muslims and the non-Muslim natives in countries which receive large volumes of Muslim immigrants. It is for this reason, and in the interest of peace for everyone, that Europe, North America and other predominantly non-Muslim countries should immediately begin rejecting Muslim immigration (or at the very least dramatically curtailing it).
It is irrelevant weather or not most Muslims are peaceful and refrain from violence against those whom offend them (and there will always be someone to offend them). They are almost as irrelevant to the discussion as non-Muslims are. Except that the so called peaceful Muslims, many of whom share the sentiments of their violently inclined counterparts but lack their capacity to inflict harms on others, provide material support to these types of criminals and also provide them with communities to fade into and hide in after perpetrating attacks like the ones recently seen in Paris. It is for this reason that non-Muslim nations should rightly cast a weary eye upon Muslim enclaves which spring up around them, like the so called ‘no go zones’ observed in the French capital.
Charlie Hebdo lampooned Jews and Christians as well. I looked over the latest issue they released after the attacks and saw a cartoon mocking Christ. As a Christian the image was deeply offensive to me, and not understanding french I don’t know what the caption was saying. If I did understand it I’m certain I would have been more offended than I already was. Simply the manner is which Christ was drawn was offensive and certainly blasphemous. In spite of this offense I would never consider an act of violence or destruction, be it against property or persons, as an appropriate response.
Islam demands that it’s adherents abide by a set of laws specific to Islam, laws governing certain aspects of speech and behavior. As long as Muslims demand that the non-Muslims around them also submit to these laws, there will always be a conflict and peaceful coexistence is impossible. That’s what these attacks boil down to. ‘Offending the prophet’ is illegal under Islamic law and punishable by death. These non-Muslim cartoonists violated these laws and were murdered because of it.
I am not a bigot, and I have no ill will towards the Muslim world. However, if this is the behavior they exhibit when offended (the degree of offense is irrelevant), I don’t want them around me and I hope my countrymen join me in refusing their presence in our communities. Muslims need to get it through their heads that their religious laws and edicts don’t apply to us non-Muslims. If they can’t respect that then we should all join together in disrespecting them, and zealously prosecuting perpetrators of violence in the name of Islam.
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“Attacking civilians of Western countries is not a valid response to the middle eastern wars, most of the civilian population in the west abhors these wars and many have tried in vain to stop them.”
Well that’s a lie. Most Western civilians either believe they are justified or are indifferent, probably to a much greater extent than Muslims who think the CH attack was justified. So, Muslims really have a problem with Westerners and their violent daily official massacres and thefts and subversions. If I were them I’d immediately ban all Western citizens from living anywhere near them. Why risk it?
Your diminution of the devastation imperialism causes and elevation of this or that quite minor attack, considering scale and who among the respective “communities” supports it is all I need to know about how serious your analysis is.
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01/13/15 Anti-Islam ads back on S.F. Muni buses — this time featuring Hitler
01/16/15 By Shailja Patel, Nairobi, Kenya – The Funny Papers – Rape Cartoons are a Riot, Aren’t They?
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Sorry, I messed up the link code on the second piece, corrected:
01/16/15 By Shailja Patel, Nairobi, Kenya – The Funny Papers – Rape Cartoons are a Riot, Aren’t They?
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