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.
Jemand
Clark tried this game with me when I expressed opposition to limitless mass-immigration, claimed I have some personal dislike of foreigners. When he’s been found out he starts calling you “angry” and when he was a moderator would delete and allow posts in such a way that made it look as though you were getting angry for no good reason. You buried him over his support for that link Technicolour posted so he’s doing his usual trick of coming back at you with his “it looks like you have something personal against…”, “why are you so angry?” routine. He always does this when he’s been found out.
@ Clark
Maybe someone set a computer clock wrong
Ha! When it serves the Imperial interest, all sorts of hypotheses are seen to be reasonable and well worthy of consideration.
Of course Bing may mis-date stuff that they cache, although in fact, people naturally investigated whether the cached Newton Bee page was misdated, and the answer from MicroSoft techies at Redmond, Washington is “No.”
Of course you may wiffle waffle your way around that, but since neither of us have the power to subpoena witnesses, this seems about as far as one can reasonably take the discussion.
@ Clark
Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists should just pause for a minute and think “how will I be affecting survivors and victims’ loved ones if I’m wrong, and he really was murdered?”
Clark I wish you no personal disrespect, but if we are to have an intelligent debate you’ll have to lay off the emotional distraction.
It is both absurd and immoral to place such considerations above concern for the truth. And the truth is not established by calling people conspiracy theorists or other names. In fact, those who yell “conspiracy theorist,” pretty label themselves as either simpletons, incapable of attempting to analyse events for themselves, or stooges of the imperial elite.
CanSpeccy, 6:06 pm:
So which is it? He’s a crap actor who doesn’t know when he’s going on air, and the TV station weren’t using their standard ten second delay system to prevent unscheduled incidents? Or a normal person wouldn’t feel the need to calm themselves before talking to a TV camera showing them to potentially hundreds of millions of people?
“This certainly confirms the point I made yesterday that there was a mysterious lack of blood in the video of the shooting. Quite unlike what one sees in the Zapruder video of Jack Kennedy’s murder. Note both the lack of rifle recoil and the absence of any Newtonian reaction in the body of the man supposedly being executed by a shot to the head.”
________________
The above bit of onanism from Canspeccy reminds me a little of the thousands of posts on the Al-Hilili thread all busily analysing the evidence from a distance of hundreds of miles and written by people expert in nothing at all and certainly not in ballistics, forensic medicine, criminology, nuclear energy or even geo-politics.
Why do they do it?
If I were unkind, I’d say they’re narcissistic, show-off wankers who have nothing better to do than construct elaborate theories – probably retired or unwaged.
On the other hand, and to be more charitable, they’re probably just like little boys, always looking for a little mystery and pretending they’re Sherlock Holmes.
As a good Christian, I feel sorry for them.
And do these actors live in a secret enclave? Actors have friends and family, too;
“Oh hello Pete, I saw you on the box the other night, playing that Robbie Parker for the Sandy Hook faking. Wish I could get some of that work, it pays better than my toothpaste commercials”
If there was a lot of blood then they’d be saying it was fake blood, as they did with Michael Adebolajo.
Actors notoriously spend half their time drunk and gossip like crazy.
I don’t think we should assume that no one was killed.
False flag doesn’t mean no one was killed.
Plenty killed during Gladio.
==========================================
These Charlie Hebdo cartoons certainly constitute an offence in the UK.
That’s obvious.
You simply don’t have free speech in UK despite the pretence.
I’d like to see the courts clogged up with all sorts of people claiming all sorts of offence, because this law is a scumbag law, mostly used by the police to subdue political dissent, though they’ll use it for anything that takes their fancy.
Something like 20,000 cases in the past few years apparently.
Conspiracy theorising is NOT research; it’s Internet browsing plus imagination.
If you want to do this seriously you have to get down to the records office, search people out and interview them, lodge Freedom of Information requests, etc. etc.
Conspiracy theories are Internet crowd-sourced, but the “rules” are the opposite to the boring ones at Wikipedia. Every source is considered reliable, original “research” is encouraged, contradictory evidence can be removed no matter how well supported…
RIP the four innocent people killed today in France.
And “rot in hell” (if that exists !) to those Radical Islamic scum that were swept (too late) from this earth…..
…should have been done earlier. Hindsight is a great thing. But not possible.
“But keeping to the Charlie Hebdo (or Je Suis CIA LIE, as some have called it)”
Another hallmark of the conspiraloon. Changing letters round to make “CIA”, as in al-CIAeda. Usually found in the comments section of an Alex Jones blog and quite demeaning for a university lecturer.
I can’t agree we should desist from discussing these issues on grounds of good taste, or for fear of offending people. Fuck good taste. That’s how they keep you in your box. They said the same thing about those who questioned the official narrative of 9/11, accused them of disrespecting the people who died. Really? If you ask me it’s a good job for the official narrative that the dead can’t speak. We have seen so many massacres in recent years, they have become almost routine, and yet so much of what one sees appears extremely dodgy, phoney, fake, staged; it really is like living in the Matrix. I am grateful to the people who have the balls to say the unsayable.
Mmm, perhaps instead of attacking Clark for approving of this link:
https://medium.com/@asgharbukhari/charlie-hebdo-this-attack-was-nothing-to-do-with-free-speech-it-was-about-war-26aff1c3e998
those charming players – and how glad we are that they are here to protect us against violence, with their own fulminating violence bubbling behind their sentences – might like to read the link and comment on the content.
@Clark : “If you want to do this seriously you have to get down to the records office, search people out and interview them, lodge Freedom of Information requests, etc. etc.”
Yeah, but that would take hard work. Far better to look at a YouTube video, which links to endless others all offering the same doubt & discredit slurs against victims. No awkward questions are asked, and every half-wit who states a “fact” is taken at his word.
As it happens, getting FoI out of Sandy Hook’s coroner is no longer possible. Why? Because they had been inundated with such requests, by the thousand, that they decided they should no longer devote such resources to answering legions of nut-jobs, who’d simply declare anything from the coroner a fake, because he was obviously in on the scam.
As a result, the nut-jobs shriek and blather about the failure of any more FoI requests to be answered. “See? See!?! We told you it was fake!”
Is this “what happened in France” forum…or “we wear tin foil hats” forum ?
@KoWN : “I am grateful to the people who have the balls to say the unsayable.”
You mean like this freak:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2628377/Sandy-Hook-truther-tells-victims-mother-daughter-never-existed-shooting-hoax-vandalizing-playground-named-little-girls-honor.html
Yup, it sure takes some balls to carry on like that.
“I am grateful to the people who have the balls to say the unsayable.”
what, like “this was a hoax”? Honestly, it’s like Icke: the facts are that the humans on this planet are often being run by people interconnected by either family connections or mutual financial interests; and then he goes and makes the whole thing look stupid by adding adds giant lizards to the mix.
Of interest in this particular case is that the people concerned were apparently ‘radicalised’ by the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘Radicalised’ is a stupid word also; what this means is that they were driven insane by Western policy. Why would anyone want to distract from that, I wonder.
(extraneous ‘adds’)
Oh now we’re wankers according to Habba-Iwannabumfuck-upchuck.
If without an argument, Habby’s always handy with an insult.
“‘Radicalised’ is a stupid word also; what this means is that they were driven insane by Western policy. Why would anyone want to distract from that, I wonder.”
Because it’s in UK/US interests for people to think that.
I know this is a big ask, but you may have noticed that that’s precisely the line that the British govt has been pushing for quite some time now.
Gove’s effort in schools was the latest effort. Now they want to monitor nurseries.
You’re simply accepting the line the govt wants you to accept, and given what we know that’s probably a mistake.
Technicolour
Actually, yes, just like David Icke. I agree the lizard schtick is bloody annoying, and I wish he wouldn’t, in fact I rather suspect he doesn’t believe it himself any more. But the thing is he is right about a lot of stuff. He was publishing the truth about jimmy Savile thirty years ago when to utter such thoughts was pure blasphemy. By contrast, this tweet resurfaced on Twitter this week to much amusement, Alastair Campbell on the death of Jimmy Savile:
‘Sad to hear of Jimmy Savile’s death. Majorly helped me out when I was on the Mirror a couple of times. Amazing charity man too.’
Ha ha. Give me the heretics any day.
Canspeccy, you posted this link:
http://www.insanemedia.net/memory-hole-the-dawn-hochsprung-file/4717
You are computer-competent, so why haven’t you deconstructed it yourself? Are you capable of honesty? If so, show me.
Ha Ha Ha….thats brilliant.
David Icke is right about a lot of things !!!!!!!!
Yeah…. like his choice of shrink ?
@ Clark (Defender of the Imperial Faith)
Conspiracy theorising is NOT research; it’s Internet browsing plus imagination.
If you want to do this seriously you have to get down to the records office, search people out and interview them, lodge Freedom of Information requests, etc. etc.
Yes Clark, while all you have to do is raise irrelevant emotional issues, dismiss any actual evidence as a software fuck-up by Microsoft, and accept whatever the corporate-owned mass media tell you.
The logical implication of what you are saying is interesting, though. You are asserting that what is available in the public domain via the media or the Internet is fundamentally unreliable and, furthermore, it is impossible to draw any valid conclusions by consideration of what is available in the public domain. From that it follows that our supposed democratic form of government is a fraud since no one knows anything significant about what is going on. It also follows from your premises, that whatever you believe about public affairs is just as much bollocks as what anyone else believes.
Are you capable of honesty? If so, show me.
Why don’t you go and do what habby is lusting to do with the back end of Pussy Riot bitch instead of being such a tosser here.
That last remark intended for the tosser Clark.
“Jemand, it’s difficult to discuss with you because you seem so angry”
Coward. Hypocrite. Collaborator.
Jemand; “However, your suggestion that ALL blame lies with military excursions into the Middle East, is not correct. What it has done, is accelerate what normally takes centuries to accomplish like in other parts of the world. As you know, much of South East Asia has been colonised and dominated by this medieval Arabic culture. You wouldn’t be so naive to think that the means by which they came to dominate and displace indigenous people and culture was peaceful, would you? For guidance on how they conduct themselves, please refer to Africa”
Seems you’re making progress Jemand, in accepting that Western military meddling in the Middle East, is responsible for turning many moderate Muslims into extremists, but you seem to quibbling over percentages, so yes for sure it not responsible for ALL, as there will always be a tiny minority in any group that are extremists.
Can’t see how you hold up the example of South East Asia and talk about domination/displacement of indigenous people, especially when you consider what happened to the aboriginals of where you now are, but hey at least they all weren’t hunted to extinction as in Tasmania; combining the French colonial period, with the US onslaughts on Viet-Nam/Cambodia/Laos, South East Asia experienced utter long lasting devastation & a monstrous total genocidal death count; if we consider the near extinction that the Spanish brought to the people of the New World, and then the near genocide of the North American Indians, I think this all throws the record of the “medieval Arabic culture” into a very minor league, in fact I reckon that Great Britain’s record does that all by itself.
Jemand; “Furthermore, Western misdeeds do not explain the violent conflict that has raged between Shia and Sunnis for centuries. You would have that thought that the “religion of peace”, being both of them, would have peacably tolerated each other’s minor differences. Wouldn’t you agree?”
There was no raging violent conflict between Shia and Sunnis in the modern period, you need to go back a couple of hundred years for that; of course all that changed once the West took an interest in the Middle East, with their Divide & Rule policies.