Join the discussion about Charlie Hebdo - closed

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You know the history of Iran? US toppled a democratically elected leader in '53 and who gave weapons to Saddam , including chemical weapons to use on Iranians

Rushdie isn't American, so I'm going to stick with the provisional idea that maybe it WAS about the novel.  And by extension, the possibility that maybe this WAS about some drawings.

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By the way USA has never called for the death of people it did not like or assissinate them for the ideas, work/words, right?

Completely irrelevant to the Rushdie fatwa.  And Charlie Hebdo, for that matter.

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Least pause to consider how it is that mainstream opinion so quickly decides that certain violent deaths are more meaningful, and more worthy of commemoration, than others

Or even worthy of discussion.  Evidently babble has one thread about Boko Haram, consisting of seven posts.

That's for sure. Millions murdered there, and far more cases of sexual violence than Boko Haram has perpetrated. But the Congo (or the two Congos; a good friend of mine is from Brazzaville) doesn't fit into the "Islamism" account.

http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-context-of-Charlie-Hebdos-cartoon-depi...

I think Unionist hit the nail on the head (not the way Escobar did) back when he pointed out that no one here was putting CH under the microscope before they got slaughtered - that was left to those who probably got the context a bit better.

I know almost no one here is openly saying they deserved it, and it is certainly okay to analyze them, but there is still something icky and boneheaded about picking apart something that is frankly, absurdist, because it doesn't align with our doctrine or serve our cause in the way we want it to. Or the need to point out what they must have been doing wrong or not well enough. It is an exercise better left to censors and dictators, IMO.

And really icky simply because they were unfortunate enough to become a target.

Here. Analyze this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRslKeT0EmQ

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You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don’t, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person’s obscenity is another person’s art.

Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.

http://cbldf.org/2015/01/neil-gaiman-responds-to-charlie-hebdo-attack/

The dust-up on the current yesterday morning was interesting. I actually agree with the fellow from cbc who questioned why they should do something they wouldn't have done before just because of themurder. That said, I have no problem with those who decide to do so.

Interesting piece on newsroom emails inside al Jazeera. I can't post it because I am on a cellphone, but I will do so later, and it is worth reading.

I've just recently created an account here (rec'd a/c approval earlier this week) in the hopes of finding a sane discussion forum where one can discuss issues without being attacked by right-wing trolls who contribute nothing but lies and insults at all our major media sites.  I was moved to log in and type my first post here after reading an article in the Politics section of CBC's website entitled, "Charlie Hebdo Shooting: Politicians join debate over publishing cartoons".  Quoting BC CPC MP Dan Albas, it was clearly 100% political and anti-CBC.  Mr Albas criticized no other Canadian media (most have refused to publish them) and said that he hasn't rec'd one single voter communication in support of CBC's stance but many against.  I immediately fired off an email to Hebdo stating my disgust with his attempt to score political points from the tragedy and further the right-wing anti-CBC agenda.  Hopefully, many others have, or soon will, help ensure Albas receives more than one dissenting email or phone call.  [email protected]

Sorry I couldn't supply a link to that CBC article -- this is my first post here and my usual copy-and-paste method didn't work. I'll explore a bit and figure out how I can do so in future.

Sorry for the double post, trying to figure out how to delete one.

pookie wrote:

I wonder how many of the anti-hebdo columnists and pundits quoted above castigating it and its contributors actually knew about the publication, any more than we did, before this event?

Agreed - and I tried (clumsily) to make a similar point above, for which I got (mostly justifiably) slammed.

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In any event, here's another take by Quebec journo Martin Patriquin.  

Yeah, but let me know what you think of this:

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/4351672/French-c... cartoonist Sine on trial on charges of anti-Semitism over Sarkozy jibe[/url]

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Maurice Sinet, 80, who works under the pen name Sine, faces charges of "inciting racial hatred" for a column he wrote last July in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The piece sparked a summer slanging match among the Parisian intelligentsia and ended in his dismissal from the magazine.

"L'affaire Sine" followed the engagement of Mr Sarkozy, 22, to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of an electronic goods chain. Commenting on an unfounded rumour that the president's son planned to convert to Judaism, Sine quipped: "He'll go a long way in life, that little lad."

A high-profile political commentator slammed the column as linking prejudice about Jews and social success. Charlie Hebdo's editor, Philippe Val, asked Sine to apologise but he refused, exclaiming: "I'd rather cut my balls off."

Mr Val's decision to fire Sine was backed by a group of eminent intellectuals, including the philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, but parts of the libertarian Left defended him, citing the right to free speech.

Charlie Hebdo fired Sine - and he was prosecuted - for a fairly harmless if stupid crack about Jews and their influence. Yeah, if someone said that on babble, I'd ask for the mods to rein them in. But this is babble.

I'm still conflicted, as I said before. But never will I try to blame the victims for a terrorist attack on them... no more here than 9/11. And I'm not going to vaunt the merits of Charlie Hebdo either, given their double standard.

Hate to repeat an obvious truth, but we should approach this incident just like Sunera Thobani approached 9/11 (and got blasted for it by the powers that be) - by talking about root causes. I can think of a number that would bear examination: The treatment of immigrant populations in Europe. Western aggression and war crimes against the people of various Asian and African countries. And yes, also though only contextually, the brain-dead ignorance and xenophobia automatically generated by the "ideologies" of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and other religions, with only lamentably still-few exceptions among various enlightened branches thereof.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/julian-vigo/jesuischarlie-racism_b_6435038....

Now a few days after the horrific attack in Paris, hashtag #JeSuisCharlie floats about the Internet as a neo-liberal nod of solidarity to those who were killed in the attack. While I see its good intentions, in the big picture this hashtag serves as a demonstration of alliance with that coveted icon of western identity: freedom of speech.

But make no mistake, the reasons the perpetrators carried out this attack were more complex than simply freedom of speech. For what is pitifully lacking in most every media representation of the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo is the historical background of what this attack was about.

More to the point, what the media fails to discuss is what being Muslim in France means and how the superficial and all-too-familiar echo of "they hate our freedoms" reduces the violence to a familiar tone of the dudes in the black hats are again going after those in the white. Neither fictionalizing the situation into simplistic tropes nor creating a vacuous environment where any explanation that touts the word "hate" repeatedly will suffice to get to the heart of what is going on on in France, or in Europe for that matter.

Let's go back to October and November of 2005 with the civil unrest in Clichy-sous-Bois following the electrocution of two boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré who were being pursued by the police, fearful of more of the police checks that Arab youth in France are regularly subjected to.

The situation of civil unrest there after the revelation of these boys' deaths resulted in a public outcry and "riots" which quickly spread to various parts of the country. In the end, very little was done to settle the deepening feelings of distrust of both the police and the larger systemic manifestations of racism felt by most every Arab and North African second generation immigrant under the age of 50. The fact is that France is a country full of Fergusons and its government has done very little to recognize this.

Whoa! Image inserted was very large. Please point me to the "how-to" stuff here.  'Babblers helping Babblers' (I think it was called) may take far to long to seach for what I want/need to know.

Paste it in, then click on it before you post. You can click on it and pull it smaller with your cursor.

(edit): Figured it out... good.

That said, CH has certainly made fun (sometimes nasty and in very bad taste) of Judaism, and of Jews. Also in that Spiegelman article.

I don't like that many define "semite" as only Jews (and ALL Jews) as the cartoon I posted illustrates.  To many, muslim = only Arab and Arabs are semites.

@Unionist.

I find your sanctimonious "conflict" in this instance rather nauseating. I am also happy that Pookie made the comment she did because she is far more tactful than I am.

Charlie Hebdo is a French media outlet that writes "IN FRENCH".  So by your logic that only people who complained about the racist cartoons in the paper before the attack are the only ones entitled to be "ANGRY" or "SHOCKED" after the attack.  This means that all ENGLISH only speaking Canadians are NOT entitled to hold ANY opinion whatsoever because they were unaware of the existance of the publication beforehand, so only a select segment of the global population are entitled to have an opinion or be SHOCKED at the images coming forward now.

Secondly, if anyone but YOU dared mention CONGO, they would have been REMINDED by YOU, the THREAD INTEGRITY POLICE, about sticking to the topic at hand and not drifting off topic.  So YOU pick and choose who is entitled to be upset about whatever, who is welcome to have an opinion on any given topic, and you define the terms and conditions of other peoples' entitlement to be offended, shocked, or enraged.  I call this sanctimonious entitlement.

More than 25 years ago, a university boys newspaper published sexist and obscene cartoons of women.  One cartoon in particular showed a caption of nude women at a bar with very large breasts sitting on bar stools which were erect penises with elated expressions on their faces, and the male bar tender staring down with excitement at their breasts. The Status of Women in our province launched a public campaign to have this newspaper shut down. Many males at the university, of course, defended the paper claiming it was their freedom of speech which was being attacked by the Status of Women, and that they were entitled to print whatever they wanted without outside censorship.

By your logic, only people who knew about the newspaper on campus before this incident were entitled to be angry and have an opinion, so all people who never went to university because they never had the grades, the financial status, or the career desire to do so were not allowed to have an opinion because they were not there beforehand to be angry like some women in the Status of Women who did take action.  And, by your logic, only the Status of Women can have an opinion because they were the only ones who took action to start with.

I guess some censorship is  justified and others is not. We'll just have to ask Unionist and Timebandit to make those decisions for us.

Thats all I have to say.  I'm ready to be banned from this discussion board.

Actually some of us were aware of CH before, and regardless, we have a right to opinion.

Misfit, I appreciate your lengthy attack, but maybe you missed what I wrote in reply to pookie:

Unionist wrote:

Agreed - and I tried (clumsily) to make a similar point above, for which I got (mostly justifiably) slammed.

In other words, I was retracting my over-the-top attack on those who were choosing this moment to slam Charlie Hebdo for the first time.

And in case you missed that, I said the same thing to NDPP:

Unionist wrote:

And I regret using the expression "particularly horrifying" - that's not actually what I meant. I mostly agree with what you've said here.

Misfit wrote:

I find your sanctimonious "conflict" in this instance rather nauseating.

You could try retracting your insult, or some Gravol. As you wish.

@ unionist. I am not retracting my insult yet because I am still very angry, and I am not taking Gravol, but thank you for your treatment advice. I would genuinely like to know exactly where you do stand on censorship. The Status of Women successfully lobbied to shut down a student newspaper that was mysogynist if and promoted rape culture. The Muslim group behind the shooting of the journalists had very clearly expressed their boundaries of what they considered to be unacceptable and offensive. The shooting is a shocking and extreme form of censorship, but given the incidents in the last, no one is really surprised either becAuse those boundaries were previously articulated and well known.

Do you support censorship? And if so, when is it ok?

Maybe you could answer those questions yourself, Misfit. It would help to give some context to your anger.

Jacob, I'm not the one who brought up Congo, Darfur, and English speaking peoples' anger which prompted my comment in the first place. Unionist originally put a context on other peoples' entitlement to anger. Now I merely asked for more input from him.

Misfit wrote:

Jacob, I'm not the one who brought up Congo, Darfur, and English speaking peoples' anger which prompted my comment in the first place. Unionist originally put a context on other peoples' entitlement to anger. Now I merely asked for more input from him.

I can respect the fact that you didn't have a clue as to why I mentioned Congo and Darfur. All I can say is, try reading what I said again, then quote the words that you found disturbing or offensive, so we can all figure out what you're talking about.

What confuses me now is where you saw me mention "English-speaking people" and their "anger". Have you confused me with someone else? Hi, my name is Unionist.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Hm.

Well never mind that the vast majority of Muslims are not calling for such a ban,

If Christians demand that a movie like The Last Temptation of Christ, Dogma, Priest, or The Exorcist or not be shown? Are we bound to obey their demands?

Are you seriously suggesting the state should enforce religious rules? Might get complicated.

No, but no need to honour that which is produced with the specific intend of offending vulnerable groups rather than communicating a political message. Charlie seems to be tabloid journalism in cartoon form. Of course everyone condemns the murders but that doesn't mean we should elevate what they did or reprint it.

Pondering wrote:

No, but no need to honour that which is produced with the specific intend of offending vulnerable groups rather than communicating a political message. Charlie seems to be tabloid journalism in cartoon form. Of course everyone condemns the murders but that doesn't mean we should elevate what they did or reprint it.

What a fucking mulberry bush. What do you mean elevate? And you might want to check back through this thread and see who has done most of the reprinting right here.

While we're at it, maybe you can do an inventory of who is actually claiming offense here. I see a lot of claims used as a foil, more often than not by people who aren't actually from those presumed vulnerable groups.

(Maybe we chould clarify if pissed off fundamentalist Christians count as vulnerable)

And even those who are only represent a cross section of it. There is a fair bit of evidence upthread that there are many from those cultures who think otherwise.

And none of those presumed slights have anything to do with the stated reason why extremists have attacked people for presenting images of their prophet.

You don't like their style of humour? So what, and what does it have to do with this attack?

I can tell you what offends me... speaking about the Muslim community as if they are one and the same as these fundamentalist attackers, and the paternalistic assumption that their religious values - those who are religious - is going to trump their respect for media (not to mention their presumed sense of humour and political sensibilities).

4 Reasons Why 'Je Suis Fatigue' From Islamophobia - by Khalisha K Stevens

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/4-reasons-why-je-suis-fatigue-fro...

"Guilty by association, all 1.6 billion of us."

If Paris Killers Had Western Media On Their Side  -  by David Swanson

http://warisacrime.org/content/if-paris-killers-had-western-media-their-...

PARIS, France -- At least 12 foreign militants were believed to have been killed in a freedom fighter gun strike in the North Paris tribal region on Wednesday, a Liberation security official said..."

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Oh, I think freedom of speech carries with it a responsibility to not be offensive when you are called out for being offensive to a minority or marginalized group in society, especially when caricatures perpetuate negative and derogatory stereotypes against people are least able to represent or defend themselves.

While that might be nice (the same as if everyone were just polite, all the time) freedom of speech carries no such responsibility.  It's for the law to say when speech goes too far, not finger waggers.

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And if Muslims say that images depicting their prophet is strictly forbidden and you know that you are hurting people by doing so, then the pictures are not funny, just stop it.

And if Christians say that me exclaiming "Jesus fucking Christ" when I bang my thumb with a hammer is offensive, do I have to stop that too??

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No, but no need to honour that which is produced with the specific intend of offending vulnerable groups rather than communicating a political message.

That's right.  No need to honour it.  Why are so many acting like someone has a gun to their head saying "LAUGH at these cartoons, or face the consequences!"?

When a joke is just dumb, we feel no overbearing pressure to laugh.  Who's telling you that you have to LAUGH at any of this??

This seems to be a popular straw man.  "Are Muslims just supposed to LAUGH when someone disparages the Prophet????"

Answer:  no, they totally don't have to, and neither do you.  Does that relieve the burden any?

That's Canadian to the power of two.

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I feel quite confident in saying that the majority of Christians would not find the cartoon of the Holy Spirit sodomizing Jesus who is sodomizing God amusing and acceptable.

How important is it that they find it amusing?  Or "acceptable"?

What if they say, do or find things "acceptable" that *I* don't?  Do they have to stop, and are they going to?