11 dead in French satirical magazine shooting

[Berkut]

They dressed as sluts. Gotcha.

No, obviously you don't.  They knew there was a substantial risk in publishing and they took it.  Ignoring that fact undermines the bravery of publishing in spite of the risk.  B4 is simply taking the flip side of the argument.  He does not view it as bravery but stupidity.  His point is that even if one were to view it as bravery one cannot forget the decision to publish was made knowing it would put people at risk.

I don't think he is correct that their decision to publish was wrong - as I said I defend it.  But he has a point that the decision did have consequences.

All actions have consequences. But it is a more or less accepted rule in our society that one does not point that out when someone is murdered or raped because it comes very close to blaming the victim (which B4 is actually doing explicitly). 

The rule you speak of has no role in a free and democratic society.  B4's right to say uncomfortably things should be defended just strongly as the right Charlie had to do the same.  I would hate to live in a society where it was the done thing not to say things just because it might upset people.  Isnt that exactly the point all those who laud Charlie are making.  Don't you see inconsistency of your position?

There is no inconsistency here at all.

Marty isn't demanding that 11B shut up, or suggesting that any kind of force, legal or otherwise, ought to be used to stop him from speaking his mind.

He is just not agreeing with him.

There is no connection between the general concept of freedom of speech and criticizing speech.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah thought that too, who was the ranking American, an under secretary or American ambassador to France?

It's a disgrace. As Fareed Zakaria put it, this is what Vice-Presidents are for

No argument from me. CB is a very peculiar kind of publication. Mainstream publications don't need to reprint their content in order to defend it.

I agree. I don't think it's worth reprinting it to make a point. As the Art Goldhammer piece makes clear this sort of cartoon is a part of an old French tradition. It's more like Viz than satire in this country and, no wonder it gives dowager Countess like Americans the vapers.

But shouldn't they publish it for context? These cartoons are part of a news story. It seems to me that it's like writing about an art exhibition without reproducing any of the art, or writing about anti-semitic cartoons in the Middle East without showing them. The story doesn't make sense without them.

The reason to reprint the cartoons isn't to defend that content, it's to explain an act of terrorism in response to them.

In terms of offensiveness I have far more trouble with the number of papers (every British one I think) which used the photo of the policeman about to be killed on the pavement.

Mohammed on the cover.

I quite like that. Particularly the way they've taken on their own sacralisation.

But it does demonstrate, at least to me, an attempt to grapple with conflicting ideas.  (As opposed to the other sound byte quoted in the link, which is a pure and simple attempt at moral equivalence.)  This internal debate in the Muslim community on how to think about satire of Islam could end up being the great upside of this attack.

Is the issue satire and offensiveness or blasphemy? I'm not sure it's clear yet.

[Martinus]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/11/al-jazeera-leak-charlie-hebdo-emails

So, to the "moderate Muslims" at Al Jazeera this is just a clash of two extremisms, one with guns and one with pens...

#theyjustdontgetit

Marty there are plenty of non-muslims working at AJ.

I also expect some fall out from this with possible resignation, because that position isn't reconcilable with the support for their own imprisoned journalists.

I know that there are non-muslims at AJ. The articles presents it as a divide between Western journalists and journalists who are Muslim/are from Muslim countries though.

[Martinus]

I don't know, I think it's a basic test of being able to function in society.  If what someone says, no matter what it is, is considered justification to kill then you don't make the cut.  As horrible as this tragedy is it's better to have agitators like CH then to stay quiet and build up a thin skinned population that is likely to become extremely dangerous on a flimsy pretext.

What proof do we have that having agitators prevents this thin skinned population?

Because social exposure to something increases tolerance to it. That's the entire premise behind LGBT movement, for example.

[Martinus]

So the crude offensive speakers are both hero (even if unintentional) and pest, and which aspect predominates depends on circumstance.  What the killers in Paris did was to put the pest-like aspect into perspective as less significant and bring to the fore the heroic quality; in that sense they ironically but predictably frustrated their own purpose.

Exactly. That's the point I was making about these cartoons now becoming a symbol of something else.

[Sheilbh]

Zizek on the subject. As Tim Stanley put it as ever a random assortment of ideas: some good, some bad, most unjustified. But interesting and right on liberalism and how Islamism has risen as the secular Gods failed in the Muslim world:

Slavoj Žižek on the Charlie Hebdo massacre: Are the worst really full of passionate intensity?
How fragile the belief of an Islamist must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a weekly satirical newspaper, says the Slovenian philosopher.

BY SLAVOJ ZIZEK PUBLISHED 10 JANUARY, 2015 - 21:31

Now, when we are all in a state of shock after the killing spree in the Charlie Hebdo offices, it is the right moment to gather the courage to think. We should, of course, unambiguously condemn the killings as an attack on the very substance our freedoms, and condemn them without any hidden caveats (in the style of "Charlie Hebdo was nonetheless provoking and humiliating the Muslims too much"). But such pathos of universal solidarity is not enough – we should think further.

Such thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with the cheap relativisation of the crime (the mantra of "who are we in the West, perpetrators of terrible massacres in the Third World, to condemn such acts"). It has even less to do with the pathological fear of many Western liberal Leftists to be guilty of Islamophobia. For these false Leftists, any critique of Islam is denounced as an expression of Western Islamophobia; Salman Rushdie was denounced for unnecessarily provoking Muslims and thus (partially, at least) responsible for the fatwa condemning him to death, etc. The result of such stance is what one can expect in such cases: the more the Western liberal Leftists probe into their guilt, the more they are accused by Muslim fundamentalists of being hypocrites who try to conceal their hatred of Islam. This constellation perfectly reproduces the paradox of the superego: the more you obey what the Other demands of you, the guiltier you are. It is as if the more you tolerate Islam, the stronger its pressure on you will be . . .

This is why I also find insufficient calls for moderation along the lines of Simon Jenkins's claim (in The Guardian on January 7) that our task is "not to overreact, not to over-publicise the aftermath. It is to treat each event as a passing accident of horror" – the attack on Charlie Hebdo was not a mere "passing accident of horror". it followed a precise religious and political agenda and was as such clearly part of a much larger pattern. Of course we should not overreact, if by this is meant succumbing to blind Islamophobia – but we should ruthlessly analyse this pattern.

What is much more needed than the demonisation of the terrorists into heroic suicidal fanatics is a debunking of this demonic myth. Long ago Friedrich Nietzsche perceived how Western civilisation was moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion or commitment. Unable to dream, tired of life, he takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security, an expression of tolerance with one another: "A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. 'We have discovered happiness,' - say the Last Men, and they blink."

It effectively may appear that the split between the permissive First World and the fundamentalist reaction to it runs more and more along the lines of the opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural wealth, and dedicating one's life to some transcendent Cause. Is this antagonism not the one between what Nietzsche called "passive" and "active" nihilism? We in the West are the Nietzschean Last Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the struggle up to their self-destruction. William Butler Yeats' "Second Coming" seems perfectly to render our present predicament: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." This is an excellent description of the current split between anemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. "The best" are no longer able fully to engage, while "the worst" engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism.

However, do the terrorist fundamentalists really fit this description? What they obviously lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the US: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers' way of life. If today's so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist's search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated, by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation.

It is here that Yeats' diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: the passionate intensity of the terrorists bears witness to a lack of true conviction. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a weekly satirical newspaper? The fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists' conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true 'racist' conviction of their own superiority.

The recent vicissitudes of Muslim fundamentalism confirm Walter Benjamin's old insight that "every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution": the rise of Fascism is the Left's failure, but simultaneously a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, dissatisfaction, which the Left was not able to mobilize. And does the same not hold for today's so-called "Islamo-Fascism"? Is the rise of radical Islamism not exactly correlative to the disappearance of the secular Left in Muslim countries? When, back in the Spring of 2009, Taliban took over the Swat valley in Pakistan, New York Times reported that they engineered "a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants". If, however, by "taking advantage" of the farmers' plight, The Taliban are "raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal," what prevents liberal democrats in Pakistan as well as the US to similarly "take advantage" of this plight and try to help the landless farmers? The sad implication of this fact is that the feudal forces in Pakistan are the "natural ally" of the liberal democracy...

So what about the core values of liberalism: freedom, equality, etc.? The paradox is that liberalism itself is not strong enough to save them against the fundamentalist onslaught. Fundamentalism is a reaction – a false, mystifying, reaction, of course - against a real flaw of liberalism, and this is why it is again and again generated by liberalism. Left to itself, liberalism will slowly undermine itself – the only thing that can save its core values is a renewed Left. In order for this key legacy to survive, liberalism needs the brotherly help of the radical Left. THIS is the only way to defeat fundamentalism, to sweep the ground under its feet.

To think in response to the Paris killings means to drop the smug self-satisfaction of a permissive liberal and to accept that the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict – a vicious cycle of two poles generating and presupposing each other. What Max Horkheimer had said about Fascism and capitalism already back in 1930s - those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep quiet about Fascism - should also be applied to today's fundamentalism: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism.

[Martinus]

I disagree that these guys are culpable for the shooting in any legal or morale way.  I will accept that offensive behavior has some consequences though I think it can only be limited to "protest behavior",  such as the aforementioned defecation in a postal repository.  I had suggested a punch in the nose, but I retract that.  I think should only be acceptable when some jerk gets in your face and starts insulting you.  For instance if someone were to come up to garbon, calling him a fag and making monkey sounds, I think the law could look the other way if he garbon kicked this guys ass.  If this guy just published a magazine that was racist and homophobic I don't think garbon could go over and kick the editors ass.

Yeah, as I said before, a (proportionate) violent response to a provocation can only be excused if the response is immediate and, for all purposes, near-automatic. If response involves a plot to commit violence, it is never an excusable response to a provocation.

[Martinus]

If you can't accept that there is a link between what was published and the attack then I am not sure what can be done to remove that logical block.

Of course  there's a link. But even if it was a stupid decision to publish the cartoons in light of the known risk, that doesn't make CH morally culpable for the murders, and it certainly shouldn't make the magazine liable to other victims of the attacks for civil damages.

I agree.  And that is a very good counter argument to the claim made by B4.  My simple point was ignoring the link, whether one admires the decision to publish or not is a bit daft.  Indeed asserting there is no link devalues the heroic quality of the act because if they were not aware of the danger they were putting themselves in by publishing then there can be no heroism.

I think the point is that discussing that link is intellectually infertile, so to speak - it does not contribute anything to a discussion, as every action carries some sort of a risk (as Yi points out, operating a convenience store carries a risk of it being robbed) and allows people like B4 to argue moral or legal culpability.

[Martinus]

Woohoo, I have the same poetic associations as Zizek! 

[Martinus]

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Newspaper Edits Female World Leaders Out of Charlie Hebdo March

by Tina Nguyen | 1:16 pm, January 12th, 2015

Yesterday's historic march across Paris included over 40 world leaders expressing solidarity for France after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but if you read this Haredi newspaper, you'd believe that none of them were women.

The image that ran on the front page of the Israeli newspaper The Announcer edited two female world leaders out of the image, originally provided by wire service GPO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. A third woman in a blue scarf who we can't identify was also photoshopped out.

[Tamas]

[Grey Fox]

What's the issue here?

[Warspite]

What's the issue here?

Cynical people don't actually know what crowds look like from above.

[Eddie Teach]

What's the issue here?

Cynical people don't actually know what crowds look like from above.

Typically they don't look like a hundred bigwigs who are cordoned off from the masses by security.

[Liep]

What's the issue here?

Cynical people don't actually know what crowds look like from above.

Typically they don't look like a hundred bigwigs who are cordoned off from the masses by security.

And nothing suggests that the bigwigs thought it looked like they walked with the rest of the masses as they walked a completely different route. Besides there were aerial cams that filmed it all live so there really is no issue.