Terrorism

[Rayvin 5131]

Jeez, the guy is a muslim as well. Fair play for speaking his mind at least...

[Park Life 71]

http://www.newsweek.com/french-gunman-met-sarkozy-crazy-security-blunder-298392

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-hebdo-attackers-kids-france-radicalised-paris

Edited January 13, 2015 by Park Life

[Happy Face 29]

 

IN SOLIDARITY WITH A FREE PRESS: SOME MORE BLASPHEMOUS CARTOONS

 

Defending free speech and free press rights, which typically means defending the right to disseminate the very ideas society finds most repellent, has been one of my principal passions for the last 20 years: previously as a lawyer and now as a journalist. So I consider it positive when large numbers of people loudly invoke this principle, as has been happening over the last 48 hours in response to the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

 

Usually, defending free speech rights is much more of a lonely task. For instance, the day before the Paris murders, I wrote an article about multiple cases where Muslims are being prosecuted and even imprisoned by western governments for their online political speech – assaults that have provoked relatively little protest, including from those free speech champions who have been so vocal this week.

 

I’ve previously covered cases where Muslims were imprisoned for many years in the U.S. for things like translating and posting “extremist” videos to the internet, writing scholarly articles in defense of Palestinian groups and expressing harsh criticism of Israel, and even including a Hezbollah channel in a cable package. That’s all well beyond the numerous cases of jobs being lost or careers destroyed for expressing criticism of Israel or (much more dangerously and rarely) Judaism. I’m hoping this week’s celebration of free speech values will generate widespread opposition to all of these long-standing and growing infringements of core political rights in the west, not just some.

 

Central to free speech activism has always been the distinction between defending the right to disseminate Idea X and agreeing with Idea X, one which only the most simple-minded among us are incapable of comprehending. One defends the right to express repellent ideas while being able to condemn the idea itself. There is no remote contradiction in that: the ACLU vigorously defends the right of neo-Nazis to march through a community filled with Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois, but does not join the march; they instead vocally condemn the targeted ideas as grotesque while defending the right to express them.

 

But this week’s defense of free speech rights was so spirited that it gave rise to a brand new principle: to defend free speech, one not only defends the right to disseminate the speech, but embraces the content of the speech itself. Numerous writers thus demanded: to show “solidarity” with the murdered cartoonists, one should not merely condemn the attacks and defend the right of the cartoonists to publish, but should publish and even celebrate those cartoons. “The best response to Charlie Hebdo attack,” announced Slate’s editor Jacob Weisberg, “is to escalate blasphemous satire.”

 

Some of the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo were not just offensive but bigoted, such as the one mocking the African sex slaves of Boko Haram as welfare queens (left). Others went far beyond maligning violence by extremists acting in the name of Islam, or even merely depicting Mohammed with degrading imagery (above, right), and instead contained a stream of mockery toward Muslims generally, who in France are not remotely powerful but are largely a marginalized and targeted immigrant population.

 

But no matter. Their cartoons were noble and should be celebrated – not just on free speech grounds but for their content. In a column entitled “The Blasphemy We Need,” The New York Times‘ Ross Douthat argued that “the right to blaspheme (and otherwise give offense) is essential to the liberal order” and “that kind of blasphemy [that provokes violence] is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it’s the kind that clearly serves a free society’s greater good.” New York Magazine‘s Jonathan Chait actually proclaimed that “one cannot defend the right [to blaspheme] without defending the practice.” Vox’s Matt Yglesias had a much more nuanced view but nonetheless concluded that “to blaspheme the Prophet transforms the publication of these cartoons from a pointless act to a courageous and even necessary one, while the observation that the world would do well without such provocations becomes a form of appeasement.”

 

To comport with this new principle for how one shows solidarity with free speech rights and a vibrant free press, we’re publishing some blasphemous and otherwise offensive cartoons about religion and their adherents:

 

Is it time for me to be celebrated for my brave and noble defense of free speech rights? Have I struck a potent blow for political liberty and demonstrated solidarity with free journalism by publishing blasphemous cartoons? If, as Salman Rushdie said, it’s vital that all religions be subjected to “fearless disrespect,” have I done my part to uphold western values?

 

When I first began to see these demands to publish these anti-Muslim cartoons, the cynic in me thought perhaps this was really just about sanctioning some types of offensive speech against some religions and their adherents, while shielding more favored groups. In particular, the west has spent years bombing, invading and occupying Muslim countries and killing, torturing and lawlessly imprisoning innocent Muslims, and anti-Muslim speech has been a vital driver in sustaining support for those policies.

 

So it’s the opposite of surprising to see large numbers of westerners celebrating anti-Muslim cartoons - not on free speech grounds but due to approval of the content. Defending free speech is always easy when you like the content of the ideas being targeted, or aren’t part of (or actively dislike) the group being maligned.

 

Indeed, it is self-evident that if a writer who specialized in overtly anti-black or anti-Semitic screeds had been murdered for their ideas, there would be no widespread calls to republish their trash in “solidarity” with their free speech rights. In fact, Douthat, Chait and Yglesias all took pains to expressly note that they were only calling for publication of such offensive ideas in the limited case where violence is threatened or perpetrated in response (by which they meant in practice, so far as I can tell: anti-Islam speech). Douthat even used italics to emphasize how limited his defense of blasphemy was: “that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended.”

 

One should acknowledge a valid point contained within the Douthat/Chait/Yglesias argument: when media outlets refrain from publishing material out of fear (rather than a desire to avoid publishing gratuitously offensive material), as several of the west’s leading outlets admitted doing with these cartoons, that is genuinely troubling, an actual threat to a free press. But there are all kinds of pernicious taboos in the west that result in self-censorship or compelled suppression of political ideas, from prosecution and imprisonment to career destruction: why is violence by Muslims the most menacing one? (I’m not here talking about the question of whether media outlets should publish the cartoons because they’re newsworthy; my focus is on the demand they be published positively, with approval, as “solidarity”).

 

When we originally discussed publishing this article to make these points, our intention was to commission two or three cartoonists to create cartoons that mock Judaism and malign sacred figures to Jews the way Charlie Hebdo did to Muslims. But that idea was thwarted by the fact that no mainstream western cartoonist would dare put their name on an anti-Jewish cartoon, even if done for satire purposes, because doing so would instantly and permanently destroy their career, at least. Anti-Islam and anti-Muslim commentary (and cartoons) are a dime a dozen in western media outlets; the taboo that is at least as strong, if not more so, are anti-Jewish images and words. Why aren’t Douthat, Chait, Yglesias and their like-minded free speech crusaders calling for publication of anti-Semitic material in solidarity, or as a means of standing up to this repression? Yes, it’s true that outlets like The New York Times will in rare instances publish such depictions, but only to document hateful bigotry and condemn it – not to publish it in “solidarity” or because it deserves a serious and respectful airing.

 

With all due respect to the great cartoonist Ann Telnaes, it is simply not the case that Charlie Hebdo “were equal opportunity offenders.” Like Bill Maher, Sam Harris and other anti-Islam obsessives, mocking Judaism, Jews and/or Israel is something they will rarely (if ever) do. If forced, they can point to rare and isolated cases where they uttered some criticism of Judaism or Jews, but the vast bulk of their attacks are reserved for Islam and Muslims, not Judaism and Jews. Parody, free speech and secular atheism are the pretexts; anti-Muslim messaging is the primary goal and the outcome. And this messaging – this special affection for offensive anti-Islam speech – just so happens to coincide with, to feed, the militaristic foreign policy agenda of their governments and culture.

 

To see how true that is, consider the fact that Charlie Hebdo – the “equal opportunity” offenders and defenders of all types of offensive speech - fired one of their writers in 2009 for writing a sentence some said was anti-Semitic (the writer was then charged with a hate crime offense, and won a judgment against the magazine for unfair termination). Does that sound like “equal opportunity” offending?

 

Nor is it the case that threatening violence in response to offensive ideas is the exclusive province of extremists claiming to act in the name of Islam. Terrence McNally’s 1998 play “Corpus Christi,” depicting Jesus as gay, was repeatedly cancelled by theaters due to bomb threats. Larry Flynt was paralyzed by an evangelical white supremacist who objected to Hustler‘s pornographic depiction of inter-racial couples. The Dixie Chicks were deluged with death threats and needed massive security after they publicly criticized George Bush for the Iraq War, which finally forced them to apologize out of fear. Violence spurred by Jewish and Christian fanaticism is legion, from abortion doctors being murdered to gay bars being bombed to a 45-year-old brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza due in part to the religious belief (common in both the U.S. and Israel) that God decreed they shall own all the land. And that’s all independent of the systematic state violence in the west sustained, at least in part, by religious sectarianism.

 

The New York Times‘ David Brooks today claims that anti-Christian bias is so widespread in America – which has never elected a non-Christian president – that “the University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality.” He forgot to mention that the very same university just terminated its tenure contract with Professor Steven Salaita over tweets he posted during the Israeli attack on Gaza that the university judged to be excessively vituperative of Jewish leaders, and that the journalist Chris Hedges was just disinvited to speak at the University of Pennsylvania for the Thought Crime of drawing similarities between Israel and ISIS.

 

That is a real taboo – a repressed idea – as powerful and absolute as any in the United States, so much so that Brooks won’t even acknowledge its existence. It’s certainly more of a taboo in the U.S. than criticizing Muslims and Islam, criticism which is so frequently heard in mainstream circles – including the U.S. Congress – that one barely notices it any more.

 

This underscores the key point: there are all sorts of ways ideas and viewpoints are suppressed in the west. When those demanding publication of these anti-Islam cartoons start demanding the affirmative publication of those ideas as well, I’ll believe the sincerity of their very selective application of free speech principles. One can defend free speech without having to publish, let alone embrace, the offensive ideas being targeted. But if that’s not the case, let’s have equal application of this new principle.

 

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-charlie-hebdo-cartoons/

 

All the cartoons referrred to available in the original article.

 

One of the few articles I've seen defend freedom of speech for ALL, even when it comes to mad shithead clerics and that, absolutely spot on imo.

[Park Life 71]

You're in trouble now HF.

[aimaad22 4019]

Dear liberal pundit,

 

You and I didn't like George W Bush. Remember his puerile declaration after 9/11 that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"? Yet now, in the wake of another horrific terrorist attack, you appear to have updated Dubya's slogan: either you are with free speech... or you are against it. Either vous êtes Charlie Hebdo... or you're a freedom-hating fanatic.

 

I'm writing to you to make a simple request: please stop. You think you're defying the terrorists when, in reality, you're playing into their bloodstained hands by dividing and demonising. Us and them. The enlightened and liberal west v the backward, barbaric Muslims. The massacre in Paris on 7 January was, you keep telling us, an attack on free speech. The conservative former French president Nicolas Sarkozy agrees, calling it "a war declared on civilisation". So, too, does the liberal-left pin-up Jon Snow, who crassly tweeted about a "clash of civilisations" and referred to "Europe's belief in freedom of expression".

 

In the midst of all the post-Paris grief, hypocrisy and hyperbole abounds. Yes, the attack was an act of unquantifiable evil; an inexcusable and merciless murder of innocents. But was it really a "bid to assassinate" free speech (ITV's Mark Austin), to "desecrate" our ideas of "free thought" (Stephen Fry)? It was a crime - not an act of war - perpetrated by disaffected young men; radicalised not by drawings of the Prophet in Europe in 2006 or 2011, as it turns out, but by images of US torture in Iraq in 2004.

 

Please get a grip. None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech. We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.

 

Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers? I didn't think so (and I am glad it hasn't). Consider also the "thought experiment" offered by the Oxford philosopher Brian Klug. Imagine, he writes, if a man had joined the "unity rally" in Paris on 11 January "wearing a badge that said 'Je suis Chérif'" - the first name of one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. Suppose, Klug adds, he carried a placard with a cartoon mocking the murdered journalists. "How would the crowd have reacted?... Would they have seen this lone individual as a hero, standing up for liberty and freedom of speech? Or would they have been profoundly offended?" Do you disagree with Klug's conclusion that the man "would have been lucky to get away with his life"?

 

Let's be clear: I agree there is no justification whatsoever for gunning down journalists or cartoonists. I disagree with your seeming view that the right to offend comes with no corresponding responsibility; and I do not believe that a right to offend automatically translates into a duty to offend.

 

When you say "Je suis Charlie", is that an endorsement of Charlie Hebdo's depiction of the French justice minister, Christiane Taubira, who is black, drawn as a monkey? Of crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs that must make Edward Said turn in his grave?

 

Lampooning racism by reproducing brazenly racist imagery is a pretty dubious satirical tactic. Also, as the former Charlie Hebdo journalist Olivier Cyran argued in 2013, an "Islamophobic neurosis gradually took over" the magazine after 9/11, which then effectively endorsed attacks on "members of a minority religion with no influence in the corridors of power".

 

It's for these reasons that I can't "be", don't want to "be", Charlie - if anything, we should want to be Ahmed, the Muslim policeman who was killed while protecting the magazine's right to exist. As the novelist Teju Cole has observed, "It is possible to defend the right to obscene... speech without promoting or sponsoring the content of that speech."

 

And why have you been so silent on the glaring double standards? Did you not know that Charlie Hebdo sacked the veteran French cartoonist Maurice Sinet in 2008 for making an allegedly anti-Semitic remark? Were you not aware that Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet in 2005, reportedly rejected cartoons mocking Christ because they would "provoke an outcry" and proudly declared it would "in no circumstances... publish Holocaust cartoons"?

 

Muslims, I guess, are expected to have thicker skins than their Christian and Jewish brethren. Context matters, too. You ask us to laugh at a cartoon of the Prophet while ignoring the vilification of Islam across the continent (have you visited Germany lately?) and the widespread discrimination against Muslims in education, employment and public life - especially in France. You ask Muslims to denounce a handful of extremists as an existential threat to free speech while turning a blind eye to the much bigger threat to it posed by our elected leaders.

 

Does it not bother you to see Barack Obama - who demanded that Yemen keep the anti-drone journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye behind bars, after he was convicted on "terrorism-related charges" in a kangaroo court - jump on the free speech ban wagon? Weren't you sickened to see Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a country that was responsible for the killing of seven journalists in Gaza in 2014, attend the "unity rally" in Paris? Bibi was joined by Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, and David Cameron, who wants to ban non-violent "extremists" committed to the "overthrow of democracy" from appearing on television.

 

Then there are your readers. Will you have a word with them, please? According to a 2011 YouGov poll, 82% of voters backed the prosecution of protesters who set fire to poppies.

 

Apparently, it isn't just Muslims who get offended.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Mehdi

 

Edited January 13, 2015 by aimaad22

[Park Life 71]

Paris (AFP) - The head of a French far-right satirical magazine was fined 10,000 euros ($12,500)on Thursday after his publication compared the country's black justice minister to a monkey.

A Paris court handed down the fine to Jean-Marie Molitor, boss of the Minute weekly for making insulting racist statements in public.

In November, the weekly featured on its front cover a picture of Justice Minister Christiane Taubira with headlines that read: "Crafty as a monkey" and "Taubira gets her banana back".

The text was deliberately ambiguous: the term "crafty as a monkey" in French can be used as praise while getting your banana back is roughly the equivalent of recovering the spring in your step.

Taubira herself described the newspaper's words as "extremely violent" and "denying she belonged to the human race".

 

 

 

Edited January 13, 2015 by Park Life

[Park Life 71]

It's a really funny satarical magazine apparenlty. Jesus Wept.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Park Life

[Monkeys Fist 41536]

They want shooting for that, mind.

[Park Life 71]

Quite a good and balanced Panorama on iplayer. Worth a watch.

[Park Life 71]

They want shooting for that, mind.

I'd never heard of the magazine tbh and was farily shocked by those covers. You have to ask yourself if that would be allowed/tolerated in England.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Park Life

[Dr Gloom 21596]

As brave a statement as that is, the terrorists are dead - this will only piss off other potential terrorists.

 

That said, I fully support their right to publish, and can totally understand their thinking.

 

it's absolutely the right thing to do. it's actually quite a sympathetic portrayal of the prophet compared to others that they have done.

 

anyone offended by that wants to have a word with themselves.

 

vive free speech.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Dr Gloom

[Dr Gloom 21596]

Typically subtle comments here from a cloggie...

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/charlie-hebdo-mayor-rotterdam-tells-4970496?ICID=FB_mirror_main

 

 

true fucking right. if they hate liberty and freedom let them move to syria or whereever and see how they like it.

[ChezGiven 0]

Dieudonne, the outspoken muslim comic who had to buy his own theatre so he could perform is 'offensive' comedy show has been arrested for a facebook post.

 

Freedom of expression my arse.

 

However, there are important differences. A muslim shop owner from Slough was interviewed anonymously by radio 4 this morning. When told the newspaper would run with another image of the prophet he was disgusted and said there would be consequences. When told that the cartoon said the terrorists were forgiven, he said 'oh, i see' but still insisted it was offensive to show the prophet.

 

This notion of 'showing an image of the prophet is offensive' is a contemporary interpretation of the religion and also fundamentally a load of shite. What sort of spiritual movement bans images on pieces of paper of a man who was a prophet? Historical images of the prophet flourished hundreds of years ago. The modern interpretation is not only tenuous but also, from the perspective of anyone with the ability for rational thought, a bit stupid. How can the production of an image relate in any shape or form to the fundamentals of morality and spirituality? It simply doesnt.

 

Charlie Hebdo wanted to lambast the imposition of a rule on a foreign culture. How does the religion of Islam have the right to dictate what images are presented in France's newspapers? France is a secular state so its legal and moral framework is based on consequences of actions (consequentialist morality being the only coherent form that allows our laws to function in a meaningful way - e.g. a hostage disarmed and killed Coubilaly. Under religious laws (thou shalt not kill), the hostage should be punished. Thats why all legal systems are consequentialist and essentially secular). There are NO consequences of putting an image of the prophet on a piece of paper. There ARE consequences of people using tenuous interpretations of scripture to generate a sense of offence that invokes killing for producing that image.

 

The freedom of expression debate is complicated and i dont believe it is an absolute right. I would not walk up to the biggest and hardest looking lad in a bar and start taking the piss and expect to not be hit because of 'freedom of expression'. The issue is one of values and morality and ultimately, there is going to be an element of subjectivity in determining how the rules in these instances should work. My subjective view is a group of individuals who are prepared to issue death threats, provoke violence, issue fatwahs against the production of an image are morally inferior to those who wish to lambast the archaic notion of non-consequentialist morality - i.e. religion.

Edited January 14, 2015 by ChezGiven

[NJS 4289]

My understanding of the image thing was it was specifically invented to stop inappropriate representations. In other words they invented the rule so they could punish the act the rule was designed for.

 

I suppose its like Christians objecting to the Bjorn Borg-esque depictions of Christ on the basis of him being Semitic but the churches have always been happy for Europeans to project themselves onto JC.

[Park Life 71]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50nPlLUQ1K0

[Park Life 71]

Dieudonne, the outspoken muslim comic who had to buy his own theatre so he could perform is 'offensive' comedy show has been arrested for a facebook post.

 

Freedom of expression my arse.

 

However, there are important differences. A muslim shop owner from Slough was interviewed anonymously by radio 4 this morning. When told the newspaper would run with another image of the prophet he was disgusted and said there would be consequences. When told that the cartoon said the terrorists were forgiven, he said 'oh, i see' but still insisted it was offensive to show the prophet.

 

This notion of 'showing an image of the prophet is offensive' is a contemporary interpretation of the religion and also fundamentally a load of shite. What sort of spiritual movement bans images on pieces of paper of a man who was a prophet? Historical images of the prophet flourished hundreds of years ago. The modern interpretation is not only tenuous but also, from the perspective of anyone with the ability for rational thought, a bit stupid. How can the production of an image relate in any shape or form to the fundamentals of morality and spirituality? It simply doesnt.

 

Charlie Hebdo wanted to lambast the imposition of a rule on a foreign culture. How does the religion of Islam have the right to dictate what images are presented in France's newspapers? France is a secular state so its legal and moral framework is based on consequences of actions (consequentialist morality being the only coherent form that allows our laws to function in a meaningful way - e.g. a hostage disarmed and killed Coubilaly. Under religious laws (thou shalt not kill), the hostage should be punished. Thats why all legal systems are consequentialist and essentially secular). There are NO consequences of putting an image of the prophet on a piece of paper. There ARE consequences of people using tenuous interpretations of scripture to generate a sense of offence that invokes killing for producing that image.

 

The freedom of expression debate is complicated and i dont believe it is an absolute right. I would not walk up to the biggest and hardest looking lad in a bar and start taking the piss and expect to not be hit because of 'freedom of expression'. The issue is one of values and morality and ultimately, there is going to be an element of subjectivity in determining how the rules in these instances should work. My subjective view is a group of individuals who are prepared to issue death threats, provoke violence, issue fatwahs against the production of an image are morally inferior to those who wish to lambast the archaic notion of non-consequentialist morality - i.e. religion.

 

The moment he got banned from French telly.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Park Life

[ChezGiven 0]

Thanks for posting the Newsnight interview/

However, don't you think youtube videos, clearly made with strenuous efforts to edit dialogue, with awful faux-emotional music playing over the top are the sort of things we should be censoring?

[Park Life 71]

Thanks for posting the Newsnight interview/

However, don't you think youtube videos, clearly made with strenuous efforts to edit dialogue, with awful faux-emotional music playing over the top are the sort of things we should be censoring?

It's the only one with subtitles.

 

Even funnier is that I have been self-censoring as the mods will know...I put a post up about him a couple of days ago and took it down. So glad you mentioned him.

 

btw Mike Tyson was refused entry into the UK in 2013.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Park Life

[ChezGiven 0]

We were discussing him over breakfast, she spat her croissant at me when i brought him up.

[Gemmill 43274]

Parky reprising his role as the Jew Hunter.

[wykikitoon 19491]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/13/lse-student-daniel-wickhams-epic-twitter-takedown_n_6461208.html

[Park Life 71]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/13/lse-student-daniel-wickhams-epic-twitter-takedown_n_6461208.html

Tragic stuff.

 

Cameron saying "No conversation can be private". He's chomping at the bit to add more snooping laws to our portfolio. UK is already one of the most watched countries on earth.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Park Life

[NJS 4289]

As I said on the politics thread, if he tried to ban encryption it would be stopped by the banks at the very least.

 

He might think he can get some easy votes by threatening WhatsApp etc but beyond that it would it would make the UK a pariah for businesses worldwide.

[Dr Gloom 21596]

any follower of any religion is a fair target for ridicule. it's all a load of mumbo jumbo nonsense.

[Meenzer 15199]

In which liberalism creates fundamentalism.

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/01/slavoj-i-ek-charlie-hebdo-massacre-are-worst-really-full-passionate-intensity