There is no question to which the answer is to wander round killing people. It takes a few words or keystrokes for any right thinking person to condemn the killings in Paris today. But that really doesn’t take us very far.
It is impossible to stop evil from happening. Simple low tech attacks by individuals, a kind of DIY terrorism, cannot always be pre-empted. If you try to do so universally, you will end up even further down the line we have gone down in the UK, where people are continually arrested and harassed who have no connection to terrorism at all, often for bragging on websites. These non-existent foiled terrorist plots are a risible feature of British politics nowadays. Every now and then one hits the headlines, like the arrests just before Remembrance Day. Their defining characteristic is that none of those arrested have any means of terrorism – 99% of those arrested for terrorism in the UK in the last decade – possessed no weapon and no viable explosive device.
In fact the only terrorist in the last year convicted in the UK, who possessed an actual bomb – a very viable explosive device indeed, was not charged with terrorism. He was a fascist named Ryan McGee who had a swastika on his wall and hated Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims with no weapons are locked up for terrorism. A fanatical anti-Muslim with a bomb is by definition not a terrorist.
I am assuming that the narrative that Charlie Hebdo was attacked by Islamists is correct, though that remains to be proved. For argument, let us assume the official narrative is true and the killings were by Muslims outraged at the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Mohammed.
It is essential to free speech that it includes the freedom to offend. That must include the freedom to offend religious belief. Without such freedoms, the values of societies would freeze. Much social progress has caused real anguish and offence to some people. To have stopped Charlie Hebdo by law would have been wrong. To stop them by bullets is beyond any mitigation.
But that doesn’t make the unfortunate deceased heroes, and President Hollande was wrong to characterise them as such. Being murdered does not make you a hero. And being offensive is not necessarily noble. People who are persistently and vociferously offensive are often neither noble nor well-motivated. Much of Charlie Hebdo‘s taunting of Muslims was really unpleasant. That they also had Christian and other targets did not make this any better. It is not Private Eye – it is a magazine with a much nastier edge. I defend the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish whatever it wants. But once the shock dies off, I do hope a more realistic assessment of whether Charlie Hebdo was entirely admirable or not may be possible. This in no way excuses the dreadful murders.
The ability to say things that offend is an important attribute of a free society. Richard Dawkins may offend believers. Peter Tatchell may offend homophobes. Pussy Riot offended Putin and the Orthodox Church. This must not be stopped.
But that must cut both ways. Abu Qatada broke no British laws in his lengthy stay in the UK, but was demonised for things he said (or even things newspapers invented he had said). Most of the French who are today in solidarity for freedom of expression, are against people being able to express themselves freely in what they wear. The security industry who are all over TV today want to respond to this attack on freedom of expression by more controls on the internet!
I condemn, you condemn, we all condemn, and so we should. But the amount of nuanced thought in the mainstream media is almost non-existent. What will now happen is that conservative commentators will rip individual phrases from this article and tweet them to show I support terrorism. The lack of nuanced thought is a reflection of a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism which has poisoned public life in modern western society.
I doubt there would have been such an outpouring of emotion and 24/7 news coverage if instead of ten people who work in the “media”had been murdered, the victims worked in some industrial unit that processed food products for example. This was pointed out yesterday on Jeremy Vines Radio 2 programme by a contributor who accused the media of being mawkish such as they were over the death of Princess Diana and was he immediately shut up by JV.
Looking at the television footage of the siege taking place it is blindingly obvious of the naked fasicism of modern democratic countries when the police are armed to the teeth in war-zone military garb. It seems there is no shortage of police in France.
Says a lot:
https://medium.com/@asgharbukhari/charlie-hebdo-this-attack-was-nothing-to-do-with-free-speech-it-was-about-war-26aff1c3e998
Free press: USAID (CIA outlet) Jihad inspiring book, bought by Professor Dana Burde in 2013
National Public Radio, Q&A: J Is For Jihad DECEMBER 06, 2014 8:03 AM ET
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/06/368452888/q-a-j-is-for-jihad
Mary, 1:06 pm: I followed your link to beforeitsnews.com. The article purports to show that Katie Foley, sister of beheaded journalist James Foley, and Alex Israel, former classmate of the Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza, are actually the same actress. A picture shows video screenshots of each, side by side, and they do look very similar:
http://api.ning.com/files/g7CYaJh1SvJXxgGLf*qQV2AAVwArnLNLWcAmMh1516awWa8IZndQmZLXhBOeX22d1eJrezoF7QbNVEEKKYgDULQsRfkI2mD2/katiefoleylanzasister.jpg?width=750
So I went looking for the original videos from which they were taken, and I found this video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TKv4AzLr8w
These look to be different people to me.
@Mary: You’re seriously suggesting the Sandy Hook massacre was a “fake”? Why?
I can understand swivel-eyed gun-nuts denying that their precious little guns could ever have hurt anyone, but why would you want to do the dirty work for the US gun lobby?
Am I on pre-moderation?
Mary, up to now I have only looked at your first link, Katey Foley and Alex Israel. They are different people. It’s too easy to jump to conclusions because we want them to be true.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-foleys-sister-katie-foley-vs-lanzas-friend-alex-israel-not-the-same-person.4348/
Arbed, exactly.
[craigmurray.org.uk – no you’re not on pre-mod. The spam filter seems a bit hyperactive – this is 2nd false positive today. Submission time altered to bring this comment to front]
Paky, France has always been keen on arming their police. Over forty years ago when I was a child we were going on holiday in Europe. My mm warned me before we left that most French policemen would be carrying big guns, but that I shouldn’t be frightened of them. I still was anyway.
Oops, sorry Parky; sticky keyboard!
As well as my previous comment about Mary’s link, which says pretty much what Clark says, I am trying to find out what the financial state of affairs and popularity of Charlie Hebdo is.
At the time its offices were firebombed (2011) its finances were not in a very good state, probably because most French people, like English people with Private Eye, get fed up with the sarcasm, though I’ve never seen Private Eye stoop to the depths of Charlie Hebdo to get a laugh. This is what the Indy wrote at the time of the firebombing.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/another-fine-mess-for-the-bte-noire-of-french-satire-6256302.html
If this does turn out to be a hoax it could have been done as a fundraiser.
Google is donating $300000 to this racist slur or satirical magazine so it must like the editorial policy. And a print-run of a million has been set in motion for the next edition.
Strange that in the first cartoon here, from Wednesday: “il faut volier …” cartoon the rabbi’s mouth/tonsils form the ubiquitous Batman logo.
http://gawker.com/what-is-charlie-hebdo-and-why-a-mostly-complete-histo-1677959168
I think the deteriorated situation in France has become great, the people so disgusted and powerlessness in the face of their government’s lurch to the extreme right, the extreme rights conjunctive symbiosis with Zionism, its batting for another team, the seeming capture of government by forces inimical to their claimed, natural or aspirational ideals.
However much murderous neo-colonialism in Africa serves the domestic elite and the large nuclear-power lobby, the piggybacking of this on the the over-cooked repugnant ‘war on terror’, is transparently obvious opportunism, though perhaps its the other way round, which came first opportunity for desirous booty or desire to ingratiate themselves with the Anglo-American-Zionist zealots? The traditional left, not the PC left, but the collectivist, socialist left, free of dogmatic constraints, are leaving in droves, milling around other European capitals, to watch from a distance just how things pan out, only still just nominally French; you can’t move in Edinburgh without risking the pain of an accidental improbably long loaf in the goolies, as NHS A&E staff will attest. Something is rotten if the French, no longer want to be quite so French, just as the many immigrants put other components of their identity -Arab, Muslim, Jewish (which for some trump all else), many even now put provincial (no longer having in France its traditionally pejorative meaning) identities before le grand nation itself.
They were always great Europeans, as long as it was their European Union, on their terms with them in everlasting overall control; though successful in many matters of perceived national (i.e. self, or at least its own elite’s monopolies) interest, whilst telling the people it was self-sufficiency, and rejecting Anglo-American heresies like free trade (always a trojan horse for dependence, foreign control and formation of large combines) and now that these ‘protectionist’ anomalies are threatened by de-regulation and shrinking of the state urged from outside and within, by the right and by the financial sector, keen to make a killing, like our one time nationalised industries they defined for many the nation itself, more than flags or pomp, the idea of a European supra-identity too has paled, not least because it would or has further diluted a national identity already fast draining away.
The country has become culturally sterile, joining a club of which the UK is a founder member, these cartoons -sophisticated some say, or merely adolescent humour in the style of Viz, but gone on an unseemly crusade, are no match for long-dead painters and philosophers, like [insert long-dead painter or philosopher], are trading more than ever on the past, neither Sarkozy or Hollande had their own styles of chair, unless this will come posthumously, they weren’t even called Louis for pity’s sake, they have no idiosyncratic units of measure, and even the language could be said to be in a state of mortification.
English people with Private Eye, get fed up with the sarcasm,
Cancelled your subscription, did you? You’re bucking the trend.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/13/private-eye-top-news-magazine
And is there any other way to report the corporate, media and government sharp practice that it does? I’d say PE errs on the side of restraint.
Regarding Mary’s second link at 1:06 pm, and a video CanSpeccy linked to at 2:06 am:
What follows is highly personal; please treat it with respect.
In March 1993 I began a sexual relationship with a woman called Marion. In October that same year she hung herself. Before the hyenas start attacking me on the basis that I drove her to suicide, her crisis was related to losing custody of her son, who was born several years before Marion and I met.
It was me and a friend of Marion’s who found her. We weren’t the first to see her corpse; that duty fell to a police officer. But it was us that knew she wasn’t answering her door when she should have been, and it was us who called out the policeman who broke open the door to her flat.
Consequently, I knew of Marion’s suicide before any of her local friends found out.
A couple of days after her death – maybe the next day, I’m not sure, the memory is still traumatic – I was walking in the town where Marion had lived, and I encountered two friends of hers. After a few words with me one of them asked “and how is Marion?”
“She’s dead” I replied.
This person didn’t believe me. I repeated. I added more detail. They weren’t really believing me…
…But I was having great difficulty not to laugh. Laugh really hard. I felt a huge amount of shame that I felt like laughing, but I could barely control it. It seemed to me to be trying to burst out of me.
Eventually I had to break off conversation and walk on.
All my memories of this incident are vague, except my memory of the pent-up laughter, and a massive amount of shame.
I think this should be remembered when people present videos of people affected by tragedy who display “inappropriate” emotions, and thus get accused of being professional actors engaged in the creation of a hoax.
My mm warned me before we left that most French policemen would be carrying big guns, but that I shouldn’t be frightened of them.
Before my first visit to France, at about the same age, my father warned me that the French police were absolute bastards and I shouldn’t even ask them for directions. Fortunately, the need didn’t arise.
The person I was telling thought I was joking, but I wasn’t, it was true. He thought I was joking and he was smiling more and more, and I could hardly keep myself from laughing. I couldn’t convince him.
Or am I just a Jew, trying to fool the dumb goyim, eh? I don’t think I’m Jewish.
I’m really sick of some of the shit that passes for comment on here.
Komodo, you’re getting as bad as the trolls lifting a clause out of a post to try and discredit. I never had a subscription to PE but I used to buy it from time to time, and it amused me. I haven’t had a copy for yonks. So perhaps it is doing well.
My comment was really about Charlie Hebdo though I praised Private Eye for not sinking to those depths. You seem to have left that out! 🙂
Clark, I sympathise, or even empathise. I used experience similar feelings in Church when certain sombre rituals were taking place, and sometimes at funerals, an inexplicable desire to laugh out loud. So you’re not alone mate. It must have been difficult for you to share that honest emotion. Thank you for sharing.
Sorry I got angry. But these video clips purporting to prove that the nearest and dearest of people violently killed, and accusing them of fraud on the basis of a smile, or not actually crying… Sorry, words do not suffice.
…lifting a clause out of a post…
Moi? If you make vast unsupported generalisations you can expect specialist attention. Think of it more as a highlight than a lifted clause.
@Clark: ‘kinell, mate, that’s heavy stuff. Very sorry to hear it.
The response of an urge to laugh in a terribly inappropriate situation is quite common. At the age of 16, me and a few mates thought it was time for a meet-up and called an old school chum, his mother answered. We asked if this fellow was available to come out with us, she started crying. A gruff sounding bloke appeared at the telephone, demanded to know our business. He then told us he was a army sergeant, and our friend had died on his training course.
We went to break the bad news to another in our group, and he just laughed when we told him. Couldn’t keep a straight face. He felt terrible about it after, and had to keep explaining that he couldn’t help it to us all individually for months afterwards.
I myself got told of an acquaintance’s death in a motorcycle accident. Standing there in disbelief, the mate who’d informed me told me off : “It’s not funny, Glenn.” I didn’t think it was, but it must have looked that way.
There’s an air of unreality when someone suddenly dies, particularly in a shocking, unnecessary way. Who knows how anyone else’s countenance might betray a seemingly inappropriate look, while they’re reeling in shock.
Repost of excellent link from Technicolour:
https://medium.com/@asgharbukhari/charlie-hebdo-this-attack-was-nothing-to-do-with-free-speech-it-was-about-war-26aff1c3e998
Couldn’t resist the cheap shot at “conservatives”, I see. You are clearly standing up for freedom of speech here Craig and I fail to see how even your un-nuanced imaginary enemy could take it any other way. What a pity that so many non-Muslim Brits have also been arrested, for passionately voicing ‘heretical’ opinions online, and not a murmur of complaint about their right to free speech from the metropolitans who control this country. Indeed, LibLabCon politicians who denounce this attack on grounds of freedom of speech must be having a laugh.
John Goss and Glenn, thank you both.
People behave illogically when tragedy is inflicted upon them. All over the world, but particularly in Muslim countries, “Western” foreign policy is bereaving people in vast numbers, and destroying their homes, environments, countries and livelihoods.
Meanwhile, the media, particularly the corporate mass-media, are destroying any respect for the victims and those who loved them, and attacking and undermining their self-respect.
From Technicolour’s link:
BZ, I don’t need to explain my comings and goings. I have things to do, I have work, I have chores. But you choose to obligate me to answer loaded and disingenuous questions from someone who routinely ignores mine. Why is that?
[craigmurray.org.uk – delayed – spam filter false positive]
I live in a very rural part of south west France. In my nearest small town just about every shop has put something in its window to mark the Hebdo murders. Mostly ‘Je suis Charlie’, although the pharmacy has displayed the Mohammed cartoons.
One noticeable thing is the different reactions in the UK and France, both from the media and the people. In the UK there seems to be much more hysteria, despite the fact that the incident(s) happened on the other side of the Channel. The French media are known for being a bit slavish to the Establishment. Le Monde is a left-leaning newspaper. Here’s the front page of today’s online edition:
http://www.lemonde.fr/
And on it goes with not a scintilla of concern for the victims from Islamophiles on this blog.
Twin Hostage Situations Erupt in France
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting.html?_r=0
Another “false flag”? Or is that just a new way of avoiding facing the embarrassing truth and dealing with the internal mental conflict that comes with the naked truth being mashed into your face like a cream pie?
And for people like Clark, his intellectually challenged soul mate, Technicolour and good friend, Jew-hatin’ Mary, there are the elaborate attempts to dissociate these violent crimes from the teachings of a medieval cult and laying absolutely ALL blame squarely at the feet of those who deploy Western military aggression in Central Asia. It’s interesting that the Vietnamese never decided to take the war to the mainland USA nor Australia.
They really have no shame, these collaborating creeps. None at all.
Agree with much of what you say, but I do think these men are heroes even though you found them offensive. They were showing that we are in fact no longer free to offend – that Mohammed is being treated in an exceptional manner by the Western media because of fear. They were firebombed already, in case you’ve forgotten. They had every right to be appalled by militant Islam considering their own experience. And yes they might have been puerile, offensive and not to your or my taste. But that’s entirely irrelevant.
The fact that the rest of the media is so craven that it won’t publish any examples of their least offensive cartoons shows just how little freedom of speech we really have left.
Let’s hope this massacre pulls us back from this dire situation, instead of allowing the authorities to use it as an excuse to further attack our freedoms.
“A very similar view to Jemand’s: Alan Dershowitz*. Oh, yes.”
Connecting me to Dershowitz? The sleazy lawyer who hounded Norman Finkelstein out of academia and assisted in the acquittal of double murderer O.J. “How I Did It” Simpson?
I am not Alan Dershowitz, BZ. It’s a pity you have chosen a hostile course of engagement with me now, for unstated reasons. But don’t worry. I’ll get over it. Just like I got over the onanistic motives of most commentators here.