Saturday, January 10, 2015

Al Jazeera Fury over Global Support for Charlie Hebdo

"I am not Charlie" email reveals disagreement about how to handle reporting of Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Massacre too strong? I don't think so. [photo of office after charlie hebdo murders]

Al Jazeera English editor and executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr sent out a staff-wide email.

“Please accept this note in the spirit it is intended — to make our coverage the best it can be,” the London-based Khadr wrote Thursday, in the first of a series of internal emails leaked to National Review Online. “We are Al Jazeera!”
Well good for you. We all know you are not Charlie Hebdo. Nothing even close.
Khadr sent a list of suggestion on how anchors and correspondents should handle the slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office.
1) Ask if this is really an attack on free speech.
Yes. Next suggestion.
2) Discuss whether "I am Charlie" is an "alienating slogan." 
No. It is an empty slogan. But do, go ahead and be alienated. It is your nature.
3) Caution viewers against making this a free speech European values under attack, rather, portray the attack as "a clash of extremist fringes."
Take your caution about how to frame this and stuff it where the sun does not shine. That would be your butt.  It is not a particularly European value but it most certainly is codified American value. It seems unnatural at first, but it grows on you. It is the imposition of your values that is rejected. You want to live in the West then grow a pair and brace yourself for being offended. 
More blah bhah tautological blabity-blah we've all heard a million times except phrased exactly the same way instead of various ways. 
"A right to free expression in the face of oppression is not the same thing as the right to be obnoxious just because you can is infantile."
Khadr wants the monopoly on being obnoxious and offensive and infantile. Denied. That's the thing; you'll always find something to take offense. You are like little babies who are never happy with anything short of 100% submission and that is not going to happen, so suck it. You are infantile for justifying offense at something that is infantile. 
4) Baiting extremists is not bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well.
Yes it is. Because it shows how perfectly full of poo the whole lot of you are. You are so tender you cannot even take a little joke while simultaneously dishing it out all day long every day of the week, never missing a week in any given year, year in year out over centuries. You are out of your minds. 
5) Within a climate where violent response is a real risk, goading on principle virtually everyone agrees is pointless. It is pointlessly about you. 
Not so, Bozo. Since you are quite mad we must all comply? It is alway a climate where violent response is a real risk. Always! That is the point. You are demanding complete submission to your infantile murderous attitude. Protecting the prophet? He's dead. Knock it off already. 
His attitude did not go over so well with all Al Jazeera employees. 
Tom Ackerman in the U.S. sent his own email in response citing a NYT column stating such cartoons must be published so that radical Islamists must not be allowed to think their strategy can succeed.
No wait. What? Really? The NYT? That was by Ross Douthat. Well, wonders never do cease completely.
And that began an angry response from Qatar-based correspondents revealing a cultural rift at the network.
Qatar guy goes on about insulting 1.5 billion people and the chances of one or two of them moved to murder. And guessing about encouraging people to persist in insulting 1.5 billion people's most sacred icons then you must want more killings because in 1.5 billion there will always be some who do not abide by the laws nor care about free speech.
So? You keep saying 1.5 billion Muslims containing one or two crackpots therefore we must submit to your infantile values of religious sanctimony, imagining your argumentum ad populum, argumentum ad numerum is not fallacious. There are 2 billion Christians in the world and Iran and other insult them daily. And let's only mention the Jews whom your religion makes a religious duty of traducing, a properly sacred tenet as well.  Charlie Hebdo comically insulted all of those Christians and Jews and politicians and celebrities continuously. That is at the core of free speech. American citizens are insulted regularly. Demonized in fact, by your religion. Daily. Take your convoluted fallacies and stuff them.
I don't even know why I'm listening to this. My attitude has calcified. They will never get through to me and my kind. They seek submission and they are not going to have it. In fact, I am tempted to draw Mohammed doing something irreligious right now, but I find him an uninteresting subject. Keep it up and I must start drawing away just to find release from your "infantile" nagging. 
Nothing is sacred. Not even your crackpot prophet. And I don't care how many billions think otherwise.
This is all at National Review, where the author Brendan Bordelon puts [sic] in places where there is no mistake that I see. Maybe Bordelon just does not appreciate the way these guys talk. There are several. One after "making this a free speech 'European Values' under attack binary" 
Maybe he wanted the word "issue" in there. I do not know. 
Another [sic] after, "...where violent response -- however illegitimate -- ..."
Another [sic] after, "fools who don't abide by the laws or know about free speech."
Another [sic] after, "Salem later wrote. "it' snot..." Ha ha ha ha ha. That is my favorite [sic] I thought it was an improperly gooey [sic] but it snot.
I love [sic] it is my all-time favorite editing notation.
The Qatar-based guy continues, "What Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech it was an abuse of free speech in my opinion, go back to the cartoons and have an look at them!
No. I have no need to go back and try to be offended on your behalf. I have them memorized because they're so cute. It is not abuse of free speech. That is the very essence of free speech. Your opinion, Mr. Qatari, is unAmerican! It is highly offensive to me. This is very dear to me. My religion, as it were. It is enshrined in our national constitution. Our sacred text.  So shut up right now, all of you, forever,  or I might become so enraged that I feel an intense urge to go over there and kill you. 
See how that works?  
The Qatar guys caused the Al Jazeera woman from BBC, now a correspondent in Paris to email a "polite reminder."  *ding ding ding, red clanging railroad signal for something impolite*
#journalismisnotacrime
Ugh.
I want to smack her myself.  Her hashtag triggered a furious reaction from another Arab correspondent Omar Al Saleh.
Of course it did.
 "First I condemn the brutal killing." 
Of course you do. I sense a "but" coming on. Let's  hear the "but."
"But I am not Charlie." 
Well, duh. Charlie is dead. Your infantile touchy guys killed him. And now they are dead too. But your guys did not kill those who will follow Charlie and now their publication will print a million copies instead of the usual sixty thousand. That is an increase of 167%. An immense act of defiance supported by Google, Le Monde, France Télévisions, and Radio France, all urging other media outlets to join in offering humanitarian and financial support. (While support for so-called Palestinians is withdrawn) The Guardian.
This is what happens when you insist in a horrible way then persist in insisting that people shut up. 

58 comments:

edutcher said...

If Jazeera's mad, we must be doing something right.

Guildofcannonballs said...

1670% * 60,000 = 1,002,000

bagoh20 said...

Just once I would like to see one of those lying justifying clerics interviewed by the likes of our hidden gem Chip Ahoy - not the giant chocolate morsel-enriched cookie, but the colloquial, bottom-line point-elucidating cracker we all get to hear here. HERE HERE!

Unknown said...

So Al Jazeera is in "blame the victim" "uncovered meat" "you asked for it" mode.

Get in line behind the US press.

Unknown said...

Many in the media are cowards and they have no problem letting radical islamists win.

Christy said...

Well said, Chip

Leland said...

If he really wrote item 4, that is the key issue. If what Charlie did was offensive to all Muslims, including the moderates, then it was not a bait to the extremist. What I would like to see covered is the discussion of blasphemy laws in the UN with this attack in the backdrop. Have that coverage and then tell me this was just about extremist fighting each other.

Alas, the moment the shooters shot the cop and the delivery man; this was no longer an issue of vengeance for an offense. There were plenty of innocent people shot dead that had nothing to do with the publication. It was that action that supports the notion of Je suis Charlie. That action was then supported further by the hostage situation in the market.

Unknown said...

I media also want to push the "lone wolf" angle.

ricpic said...

Al Jazeera; Al Qaeda: what's the difference?

Moderate Muslim; Radical Muslim: what's the difference?

The fact that the good ones will not condemn the bad ones after the bad ones commit yet another atrocity tells you all you need to know.

Fr Martin Fox said...

"Nothing is sacred."

Chip, I love reading your thoughts, and I appreciate and agree with a great deal you say; but "Nothing is sacred" is not the right conclusion.

Is there not something we are fighting for? Isn't that sacred?

To go further: what is man? Are we merely the top of the food chain, nothing more?

Or is man made in the image and likeness of God? Is there a God? Do we even want there to be a God -- or do we prefer to be god ourselves, or prefer there be no god -- i.e., no transcendent truth to which we bind ourselves and which holds us accountable?

Can man live without the sacred? Do we want to?

Of course I think not; and I doubt you think that either, but I don't really know. It seems to me that killing the part of humanity that adheres to the divine, the sacred, is to kill something essential to man and to produce something deformed. I think if you look at those who deny God exists, nevertheless they will frequently admit a desire for transcendence.

So yes, something is sacred. And thus there must be a followup question: What?

Nor do I accept the formulation -- if this is what you meant -- that we must choose between freedom and the divine. On one level, it's true: if there is a God, there are boundaries, there is right and wrong. But then, that defines freedom as chaos, the rejection of all constraint. I don't accept that definition of freedom; few would.

So, simply put, I'm for freedom of speech, but I don't accept the notion that I must, therefore, be for desecration for it's own sake. So, on my blog, I didn't publish an image of Mohammed; I published an image of Christ.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time; just offer a nudge in a direction your better lights already point you to, I think.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

This is very dear to me. My religion, as it were.

Maybe then the Charlie Hebdo victims are martyrs of a sort.

You reward something, you tend to get more of it, and the idea is to convert wannabe martyrs into foot soldiers.

That's petty much how the game is played, so far as I can tell, but I also assume that Charlie Hebdo turns a decent profit.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

That evolutionary psychology lecturer said that the capacity for warfare and the capacity for religious experience are co-adaptive, IIRC.

I'm not so sure I understand his point, completely, but it's hard to argue with the claim that a widespread cultural belief in the divine and an afterlife would tend to produce better soldiers.

Still, I think the guy needs to reconcile all that with his claim that our Pleistocene forbears practiced raiding-style warfare, same as the chimps of today.

Other lecturers claimed that the ancient Greeks, for example, believed in an afterlife, but it was a wispy, shadowy sort of non-existence, hardly like getting to reunite with your loved-ones who died before you.

I'm pretty sure that the ancient Greeks fought a battle or two, but I could be wrong about that.

I wasn't there.

Unknown said...

"The Blasphemy we need"

I agree 100% with Ross Douthat, at the NYT. (thanks Chickl) when he says....

"We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could ... and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it’s the kind that clearly serves a free society’s greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesn’t depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it’s okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed."
-RD

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Osama Bin Laden is purported to have said Al Jazeera was the best of all the Islamic news networks.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The guy with the Jewish sounding last name gave the strongest pushback I thought.

"If a large enough group of someone is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more….liberalism doesn’t depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it’s okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed."

Unknown said...

I just re-read your magnificent post, Chip. Magnificent. Magnificent!

William said...

The Coptics in Egypt and the Christians in Palestinian Territories are being subjected to what has been called ethnic cleansing when done to Balkan Muslims. They're entitled to feel a little peevish. That filmmaker who Hillary said caused BenGhazi made a harsh depiction of Mohammed and has been jailed. He made his movie from the viewpoint of a man who considers Christianity the true faith and Islam a sham. It is ok with western intellectuals to mock Islam from the viewpoint that all religions are bunk, but, if you consider just Islam to be bunk, then you're a religious bigot and deserve prison.

Unknown said...

I think the Clintons deserve prison. They are walking talking grifting lying criminals.

Unknown said...

btw- is the film-maker still in prison?

The fact that he was jailed shows us without a doubt how anti-liberal Hillary and Obama are, and how their own political careers and ambitions trump free speech. The very oaths these leftwing pols take to protect Americans are merely a stumbling block if not an all out joke. The media who protect these same leftwing pols by insisting the lies are true, are just as illiberal and disgusting.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Christy said...

So, if the Jewish market hostage standoff was designed to save the murders in the printing facility, does that mean these guys don't have faith in their 72 virgins?

ricpic said...

So Schmendrik, do you agree with Al Jazeera and Obama that since those uppity infidels at Charlie Hebro slandered Mohammedreck they kinda had it coming?

I know this will be hard but try to answer without Alinskyite mockery. You're a lefty and since all lefties without exception harangue the rest of us with the legitimate grievances of the oppressed, including muslims, it follows that the massacre of Charlie Hebro employees was kinda sorta understandable. Right? Right?!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

No, of course I don't believe that anyone should be murdered for an opinion. Anyone who's read anything I've written knows this. The people storming those offices should have been shot on sight.

But of course, you are an illiterate hyper-partisan hack who doesn't read anything that I write and just projects onto me whatever you're too much of a pussy to say to the Muslims you're so afraid of directly.

ricpic said...

Be not by, bubbie.

Rabel said...

"The people storming those offices should have been shot on sight."

Cool. Here's the uncensored version of the Ritmo doctrine in practice.

AllenS said...

Seriously, is there any difference between Al Jazeera, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, ABCLSD, CBSBS, NBCPMS?

Unknown said...

French dudes with big guns.

I like.
Don't let Piers Morgan see that. He'll faint.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Bubbie?

Any other things you'd like to imagine I've said?

As I told you, stop being a pussy and go hold the anti-Muslim Brooklyn protest you wish you weren't too intimidated to hold, instead of attacking me or "leftists". Solidarity with the publisher is rampant across "leftist" France, and their forces took out more than you ever have.

You're just the typical New Yawk trash-talker who measures his manhood by the size of his tremendous mouth. But in your case, it's obviously the size of your anonymous keyboard. I doubt you'd ever say in real life the things you do here. Coward is ricpic's name, and this episode brings out his shame. Others are supporting free-speech, and ric attacks those who are doing so because he's the ultimate confused pussy. It detracts from his cowardly partisanship to actually identify the principle at stake, and who supports it or not.

He'd rather be a partisan than stand on principle. Asking him to identify his own beliefs scares the hell out of him. That's why he can't do it.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's good footage, Rabel. France needs more broadcasts like that.

Ricpic probably isn't sure which side of the gunfire he'd stand on, but that's ok.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Wow. Livelinks has some pretty extraordinary sponsored links. Check out this one I clicked on.

chickelit said...

Rhythm and Balls said...long–winded

Wasn't that your foible?

bagoh20 said...

In that video, as the first SWAT guy goes in, he's engulfed in a blaze of gunfire from all directions, and the rest of the guys behind him stop and pull back behind the walls leaving him to be the only guy to go in. He disappears and then a terrorist comes out only to be met by a hundred bullets fired into him at close range.

What happened to that one exceptional SWAT guy, brave enough to go in and stay in through the whole thing? If he's still alive, he needs a goddamned parade in his honor, and some explanations from the guy who didn't follow him, as I'm sure he was expecting. Could it be that they had one non-French guy on that squad, and they put him in the front? Maybe he was a cartoonist.

Rabel said...

la petite paille

Rabel said...

Here he is in the pre-op briefing.

Trooper York said...

You can't ban someone from giving an opinion on a thread about freedom of speech.

You don't have to agree and think that the person is insulting, rude and/or crude but if we are going to stick up for the cartoonists who mock Islam we have to stand up for people who mock us.

Father Fox can take care of himself. He knows the deal.

Trooper York said...

I associate with a bunch of Muslims. I think the only person here who knows more would be Aridog. Of course I could be wrong and would love to have other people talk about their experiences with so called "moderate Muslims."

The basic thing is that most of them are what you would call "moderate Muslims" and are not your typical radicalized jihadist types. You know what? They all seem to think that these cartoonists got what they deserved.

I understand where they are coming from. Because you know what? There are a bunch of people who I think should get what's coming to them. Michael Brown. Bill De Blasio. Harry Reid. Gruber. Chris Matthews. Hillary. Holder. Obama.

That doesn't mean I am going to pick up a gun or a bomb and go kill them. But if someone else did.....well I would be hard pressed to be sorry.

Face it. Muslims hate us. They hate everything about our secular western society. We should hate them right back. Good and hard.

Tolerance is for fools.

Trooper York said...

Now I would bet that Father Fox would tell me I was wrong and not being a good Christian. A good Catholic. He would be right.

But at a certain point you have to live in the real world. There is an expression that I have come to really appreciate. "It is better to just do something and apologize than ask for permission and get denied."

What these ignorant savages don't realize is that nobody is as good at killing people than Americans. We will bomb you and fry you and Hiroshima your slanty asses if you piss us off enough. We built this country on killing the Indians and stealing their stuff. The pussy liberals will all cry and moan about the injustice of it all but they are not giving their house back any time soon. So these terrorist can keep pushing and at a certain point the regular beer drinking football watching people are going to start paying attention. It is happening in Germany. The elites and the politicians and the media and the pussy liberal professors are all ready to surrender and accommodate but the sausage and beer drinking regular working class krauts are starting to get pissed. You remember what happened the last time that happened? This time it might be aimed at the Muslims instead of the Jews. What is happening in France is going to bring the same thing. There are a lot of tough French guys who are not going to put up with this shit much longer. There is a good chance they will be in the next government.

There are two extremes as we all know in any political spectrum. Every action brings a reaction. After Carter came Reagan. After Dinkins came Giuliani. The thing is that these morons are pushing the needle too far. The middle will start to lean toward the destruction of these people. They won't participate but they won't do much to stop it if it goes off.

The Muslims are not going to like the result.

ndspinelli said...

I'm pretty easy going by nature. That said, I see the non Muslim world coming to a tipping point. I am not a fan of the motto, "You're either w/ us or against us." If it's thrown in my face my usual response it, "Well, then I guess I'm against you."

The "moderate Muslims" are by their silence, cowardice, impotence, are giving their tacit approval to killers in their name. There will be a blowback coming and they will be getting hit w/ the shrapnel. I see it coming, and I see it soon. There will be blood. We have MUCH more firepower. We just have been unwilling to use it.

Trooper York said...

That's just the point Nick. Like I said nobody kills like Americans. After 911 the regular Americans who don't pay attention were engaged and the mighty liberals all went along. Check the record. They didn't fight all that hard when Bush went into Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem was that Bush was a pussy and didn't go far enough. The next President will not be so circumspect. If there is another 911 than all bets will be off. The gloves come off.

Trooper York said...

It's not just us. I can totally see a real reaction in Germany, France and England where the normal regular people will rise up and demand a response. Once you let the tiger loose you have no idea what will happen.

Or it can come from Russia. They are ripe for another revolution and they have their own problems with the Muslims in their midst. I tell you it will not be pretty.

It will make what we did in Iraq look like kisses from your sister.

ricpic said...

Regarding tolerance: there's a Jewish saying:

Mercy to the cruel is cruelty to the innocent.

Okay, tolerance does not exactly equal mercy...but it's close. ;^)

Trooper York said...

Loz arayn a khazer in shtub, krikht er afn tish.

ricpic said...

When that asshole Hollande said that massacring Charlie Hedbro had NOTHING to do with Islam he gave the game away that he is a fanatic adherent of one world socialism/humanism (Schmendrik's religion). What that means is that there will be no peaceful transfer of power away from the one worlders, who rule in every western nation. Any hope of survival in the war with Islam will require first ousting the anointed ones in the West. And that will mean civil war.

ricpic said...

My parents ate spare ribs at the Chinese, but like looking as though any minute they'd be caught!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Well Troop, by that rationale (4:33 comment, not the 4:27 comment which I thank you for) I guess it explains why free speech protections began in English colonies and not in Southern Europe.

If you believe in free speech you have to believe that the protected speech is allowed to be offensive.

Recently, George Galloway got assaulted for making one too many comments associating Israel with Hitler, and it's hard to see how he'd get much sympathy for that in America. But at the same time, whoever assaulted him will if convicted get a jail sentence and not much sympathy for that in turn. But hey - at least there's a bit more manliness and appropriate scope in fisticuffs than in RPGs. I think there's a reason they call them "fighting words", rather than "firing words".

It's all about living and dying by the sword, which they say the pen is mightier than. Of course, in the real world rows and physical rows will develop, which it's stupid to ignore. So I don't know what I'm saying apart from thank you England and American colonists for the legacy that this culture somehow allowed for in the way of nearly infinite speech rights.

If Muslims come to appreciate that it won't be by way of any other cultural imposition than what developed and led to a specific culture here in 1787.

Trooper York said...

We agree on the free speech aspects.

What I am warning of is the inevitable result of the jihadists pushing the envelope. The vast inert mass of the public can shrug a lot of horror off. It is after all just a TV show. But at a certain point it tips. The cause of these attacks can be cartoons, Jewish settlements, American bases in Saudi Arabia or whatever excuse they want to come up with. It doesn't matter.

A big enough attack will necessitate a response that will be devastating. The President will not always be a fellow traveler like Obama. In fact you can almost guarantee that the next President will try to be totally different in his response. Even if he or she is a Democrat.

ndspinelli said...

Trooper, Maybe the greatest war time leader, Churchill said, "There can be no peace w/o victory." Neither Bush understood this. These fanatics think they have won both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan. Again, I'm not a gung ho. But, I think a few tactical nukes would be prudent in the near future. Turn some ISIS and Yemeni terrorists to dust.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

When I was in high school, a few friends of mine in a region where there were a few Arabs/Chaldeans/what have you, thought it would be funny to make guttural sounds, ululations and occasional spitting noises over a speaker we installed in one of our cars.

The joke went on and on, until one day I stupidly got in trouble repeating the same act in the house of some Muslim kid that we were vaguely acquainted with. He was in a different room at the time, or so I thought. (Point was, I wasn't really thinking. When there's a standing joke often enough in your teenage cohort, you sometimes just slip into it for whatever reason).

We later lined up in his breezeway, and as one of them came to otherwise politely escort us out, he popped me with a pretty light sucker punch under the eye.

He asked what ethnicity what we all were, and how we would like it if he did what had been done. Then said, "I think it's time for you to leave."

We took off, but I doubt left with a better impression of whatever he felt he had to defend.

Sure, by law of the jungle rights, he was right. But it's still funny as hell to make fun of Arabic if you're a teenage kid, and that's that. He can't change that.

Sometimes I think the supposed Muslim edict of there being "no compulsion in religion" is meant to be interpreted as, "and no humor, either!"

The tragedy of Charlie Hebdo is, that if they were going to take one for the team, they should have made it funnier.

Russell Peters is uncommonly good at this.

Trooper York said...

They did what their talent allowed.

The unrelenting attack on Christian and Catholic imagery is something that we have dealt with for a long time. It is the price of living in a free society. Muslims do not want to live in that society. They want to live in a theocracy. They want to impose a theocracy. The problem with liberals is that whenever a Muslim kills someone they say we have to worry about the Christians and Jews and what they might do or say. You know what? They better start worrying.

Maybe not so much about us in America unless there is another 911. But they better start thinking about the Germans. Just saying. You can feel the ground shifting. It will not be good.

chickelit said...

But they better start thinking about the Germans

Laß einen Schwein im Stube, kriegt er auf dem Tisch

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I'm not worried about anything, and I'm not worried about offending anyone. The shift in German public opinion is fine, and it should be fine anywhere on that continent - long overdue in my book. If anything, I think it puts pressure on them to be more like America. Less obsessing about national languages and regulation of cheese varieties and more identification with common values.

I think this even goes so far as to make a 1st and 2nd amendment for them unavoidable. Their first problem is they let too damn many of them in - and hopefully that will change. But the other thing is that there's nothing better for proving the worth of your free speech rights than a solid gun right. That's right. You heard me right. While the British and whomever else want to fuss and hem and haw about policing inter-communal strife and who's more in danger of causing more "offense" to whom, there's nothing like an arms-bearing citizenry to assist the disgruntled new arrivals in learning the finer art of whose country this is. Less rioting, less vague threats, and more worry about being too impolite to the person simply protecting his right to his own person, expression and property. Violently storm the newspaper HQ (or anyone's property) with malicious intent and get blown away. Simple as that. The Euros and Americans distract themselves with this trifling talk of offense and communal strife. It's about speech rights and gun rights.

Am I becoming stronger on gun rights? Sure. But they're used to it where they come from, and Europe should get used to it, too. Gun rights or ostentatious curvy belt-daggers and scimitar permits. Take your pick. Think of it as lively cultural exchange on a more even playing field.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The cause of these attacks can be cartoons, Jewish settlements, American bases in Saudi Arabia or whatever excuse they want to come up with. It doesn't matter.

That's just because those are the distal causes.

The proximate causes are prohibiting alcohol (which prevents you from forgetting grievances), a "holy" book based on sacralizing tribal banditry, and the inevitable lack of any humor. And life in a harsh, desert environment.

I mean, let's face it. We don't expect scorpions to be amusing creatures. But they'd damned well better learn to be if they're going to move into the forests and vie with the monkeys.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I take back my 1:33 comment. This post by Chip is brilliant in its entirety and completely justified for its duration.

chickelit said...

@R&B: You're going through your "likable" stage again -- not seen since you spoke out against ISIS a few months ago.

AllenS said...

Conscience never won a war, you have to kill. -- AllenS

AllenS said...

You can Google what I wrote.

rcocean said...

The real answer would be some sort of Muslim anti-defamation league in France. The magazine we're discussing, "Charlie" published a mild anti-Semitic comment years ago. Pressure was applied and boom the author of the antisemitic "satire" was fired. And the publisher made sure no more offensive antisemitic "satire". The Muslims just have to be given the same Legal/financial weapons to enforce their views.

Aridog said...

rcocean said ...

The Muslims just have to be given the same Legal/financial weapons to enforce their views.

Sarcasm? Or why not declare all of Paris a "no go zone" where federal authorities are not permitted to enter. France and Sweden, among others in Europe are defeating themselves one piece of territory at a time.