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Blue_In_AK

(46,436 posts)
Mon Jan 12, 2015, 11:46 PM Jan 2015

Charlie Hebdo and the hypocrisy of pencils.

I'm just going to throw this out here for discussion. I think some valid points are made.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to copy the cartoon in question from my iPad, but it depicts two Armed and masked Arab terrorists with a hail of sharpened pencils raining down on them like bombs,


http://m.redflag.org.au/article/charlie-hebdo-and-hypocrisy-pencils



<snip>

It was not pencils and pens – let alone ideas – that left Iraq, Gaza and Afghanistan shattered and hundreds of thousands of human beings dead. Not twelve. Hundreds of thousands. All with stories, with lives, with families. Tens of millions who have lost friends, family, homes and watched their country be torn apart.

To the victims of military occupation; to the people in the houses that bore the brunt of “shock and awe” bombing in Iraq; to those whose bodies were disfigured by white phosphorous and depleted uranium; to the parents of children who disappeared into the torture cells of Abu Ghraib; to all of them – what but cruel mockery is the contention that Western “civilisation” fights its wars with the pen and not the sword?

<snip>

In the days ahead, a now tired and exhausting theatre of the absurd will continue to play out its inevitable acts. The Western politicians who lock up their own dissidents and survey the every movement of their citizenry will go on waxing lyrical about freedom of thought. Muslim leaders of every hue will continue to denounce a terrorism they have nothing to do with, and will in turn be denounced for not doing so often or vigorously enough. The right will attack the left as sympathisers of Islamist terrorism, and demand we endlessly repeat the truism that journalists should not be killed for expressing their opinions. They will also demand that we accept that white Westerners, not Muslims, are the real victims of this latest political drama.

Meanwhile, Muslims in the West will, if they dare to walk the streets, do so in fear of the inevitable reprisals. And pencils aren’t what they will be afraid of.







28 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Charlie Hebdo and the hypocrisy of pencils. (Original Post) Blue_In_AK Jan 2015 OP
K/R and here's the pic, Blue: NYC_SKP Jan 2015 #1
I'm not seeing it, SKP Blue_In_AK Jan 2015 #2
Try a reload, or copy and paste this URL... NYC_SKP Jan 2015 #6
Blue beat me to it, so I edited this post. merrily Jan 2015 #3
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but pencils they really hurt me? Fred Sanders Jan 2015 #4
One of the best reads I've seen on the topic. NYC_SKP Jan 2015 #5
Is it really a contest between the pen and the sword? merrily Jan 2015 #7
The article begs the question, "OK, the pen won. Now what?" NYC_SKP Jan 2015 #8
Won what? Those who risked their lives for freedom of expression died. merrily Jan 2015 #9
The final paragraph says it all, doesn't it? This Latoff cartoon, KingCharlemagne Jan 2015 #10
Attack all ideologies you disagree with except one! oberliner Jan 2015 #13
How are you defining "Islamophobia"? Donald Ian Rankin Jan 2015 #26
Can't get Red Flag's page to load yet but I think I know which cartoon you mean... countryjake Jan 2015 #11
That's the one. Thank you. Blue_In_AK Jan 2015 #14
Another article blaming the cartoonists for their murder oberliner Jan 2015 #12
now that's some good satire! Desert805 Jan 2015 #15
That's not what I personally take from this editorial, Blue_In_AK Jan 2015 #16
I have no objection to putting it out there for discussion oberliner Jan 2015 #17
Yep. What a total load. BlueStater Jan 2015 #18
This message was self-deleted by its author ProudToBeBlueInRhody Jan 2015 #20
Holy shit ProudToBeBlueInRhody Jan 2015 #22
Kick. (nt) NYC_SKP Jan 2015 #19
Bull, Muslims have been the most harmed by jihadists frazzled Jan 2015 #21
Huge K&R CrawlingChaos Jan 2015 #23
Actually, Muslims in France are at less risk than Jews there cali Jan 2015 #24
Do you have any statistical evidence for that, or just anecdata? Donald Ian Rankin Jan 2015 #25
i don't have links right now but it's something i read a few times JI7 Jan 2015 #27
Just what I've been reading over and over the last few days cali Jan 2015 #28
 

NYC_SKP

(68,644 posts)
6. Try a reload, or copy and paste this URL...
Mon Jan 12, 2015, 11:56 PM
Jan 2015

and add the .jpg part:

redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/backups/styles/node-detail/public/field/image/pencils.

Fred Sanders

(23,946 posts)
4. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but pencils they really hurt me?
Mon Jan 12, 2015, 11:54 PM
Jan 2015

Pencils can cause mental carnage , but bombs and guns do the real killing.

 

NYC_SKP

(68,644 posts)
5. One of the best reads I've seen on the topic.
Mon Jan 12, 2015, 11:54 PM
Jan 2015

Kind of calls it the way I've been seeing it.

"masked and armed Arab terrorists (is there any other kind of Arab?)"

Yeah, I'm also wonder what, after we've all adopted our avatars or gotten our Je Suis Charlie hats, anyone is really going to do.

And I'm always a little bit tiffed when the media (and 40 world leaders) are all a-titter when a few white folks are killed in a Western city but scores or hundreds of deaths on the African subcontinent don't make a dent in the news.

We are so predictable.

Anyway, thank you for finding and for sharing this article.

merrily

(45,251 posts)
7. Is it really a contest between the pen and the sword?
Mon Jan 12, 2015, 11:57 PM
Jan 2015

Long before the Bill of Rights, before the Magna Carta, we had the idea that the ability to speak one's truth was worth dying for. And, there were always those who used force and weapons of various kinds to make sure people did die for speaking out. It's not either/or.

 

NYC_SKP

(68,644 posts)
8. The article begs the question, "OK, the pen won. Now what?"
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:16 AM
Jan 2015

The freedom of expression wins out, now what?

What does that freedom mean to tens of millions who have lost friends, family, homes and watched their country be torn apart?

How do satirical cartoons make life for little Palestinian or Syrian or Iraqi children one whit better?

merrily

(45,251 posts)
9. Won what? Those who risked their lives for freedom of expression died.
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:40 AM
Jan 2015

Despite threats, they had to hire their own security. No one who failed them has apologized--as if an apology would fix their deaths, anyway.

A bunch of people who would not give up air conditioning or a good manicure for freedom of speech, let alone their lives, are claiming to be Charlie, without even thinking about what that would actually mean. (Thanks to Lawrence O'Donnell for that reality.)

So, far, it's been one bunch of people showboating, "full of sound and fury," another bunch questioning whether Charlie's skirt was too short Charlie crossed some kind of disrespecting religion line, and another bunch agreeing with the murderers, and governments seeming poised to exploit this by cracking down even further on their own general populations, even though they don't know what to do with the info they do get. (As 911, the Boston marathon and this incident ALL tragically demonstrated, lack of info is not the problem as far as prevention goes--and that is based on just what was made public after these incidents.)

I will wait for results that actually produce benefit the 99% before I decide who "won."

 

KingCharlemagne

(7,908 posts)
10. The final paragraph says it all, doesn't it? This Latoff cartoon,
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:49 AM
Jan 2015

Last edited Tue Jan 13, 2015, 01:41 AM - Edit history (1)

published in 2012, also says it all:

 

oberliner

(58,724 posts)
13. Attack all ideologies you disagree with except one!
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:55 AM
Jan 2015

Religious philosophies, more than any others, ought to be subjected to the most rigorous of critical thinking.

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
26. How are you defining "Islamophobia"?
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 04:32 AM
Jan 2015

It's a word that gets massively overused in an attempt to silence criticisms that are not merely "legitimate" but valid and important.

There are an awful lot of very, very critical and rude things about Islam that it is not merely justifiable to say, but wrong to deny.

countryjake

(8,554 posts)
11. Can't get Red Flag's page to load yet but I think I know which cartoon you mean...
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:50 AM
Jan 2015

Mark Knight’s cartoon for The Herald Sun.

Is this it?




How about these drones of Freedom?:

 

oberliner

(58,724 posts)
12. Another article blaming the cartoonists for their murder
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:52 AM
Jan 2015

"It is a great testament to the enduring humanism of the Muslim population of the world that only a tiny minority resort to such acts in the face of endless provocation."

Absolute garbage.

Blue_In_AK

(46,436 posts)
16. That's not what I personally take from this editorial,
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 12:58 AM
Jan 2015

but, as I said, I put this out for discussion.

 

oberliner

(58,724 posts)
17. I have no objection to putting it out there for discussion
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 01:01 AM
Jan 2015

My contribution to the discussion is that I think this person is completely off base and has missed the point entirely and is essentially excusing the actions of these murderers.

Certainly he is not the only writer espousing a variation on this particular perspective, but I find it quite odious.

It seems like there is literally nothing a Muslim could do that wouldn't essentially be the fault of "white Westerners" based on the argument he is putting forward.

BlueStater

(7,596 posts)
18. Yep. What a total load.
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 01:01 AM
Jan 2015

"Thank you for not brutally murdering me because I made fun of something you liked. What a great person you are!"

Response to oberliner (Reply #12)

frazzled

(18,402 posts)
21. Bull, Muslims have been the most harmed by jihadists
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 02:00 AM
Jan 2015

Take a look at Syria and Iraq recently: tens of thousands raped, murdered, beheaded because they don't subscribe to the right brand of religious ideology, and are considered "infidels." Hundreds of thousands (millions) displaced. Or just the other day in Nigeria, when a ten-year-girl had a bomb strapped to her back and killed 19 people and scores of others in a marketplace. Or last week, when Boko Haram massacred up to 2,000 people in one town, establishing their "Islamic Caliphate."

You can't look this in the eye and then shift the conversation elsewhere. Extremist ideology committing violent acts is just what it is. To try to shift the conversation elsewhere is to be complicit in these murders. Silence is death. Empty rhetoric abets the carnage.

CrawlingChaos

(1,893 posts)
23. Huge K&R
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 04:15 AM
Jan 2015

Not surprisingly, it doesn't seem to be getting much traction here, where outrageously selective outrage seems to be the order of the day.

 

cali

(114,904 posts)
24. Actually, Muslims in France are at less risk than Jews there
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 04:19 AM
Jan 2015

Obviously, no one should be at risk. Not Muslims or Jews or anyone else.

2015

Four Jewish hostages are murdered in cold blood at a kosher supermarket in Paris.[18]

2014

Jan. 26, 2014: Video footage captures anti-government protestors shouting “Juif, la France n’est pas a toi”—“Jew, France is not yours”–at a demonstration in Paris.[19]

March 2, 2014: A Jewish man is beaten on the Paris Metro by assailants who reportedly told him “Jew, we are going to lay into you, you have no country.”[20]

March 10, 2014: An Israeli man is attacked with a stun gun in the Marais district.[21]

March 20, 2014: A Jewish teacher is attacked leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris. After breaking his nose, the assailants drew a swastika on his chest.[22]

May 9, 2014: A number of antisemitic scrawlings were found across the Alsace region in eastern France. Stars of David and the words « Juden Raus » were written on a car near the
synagogue in Saint-Louis in southern Alsace. Other antisemitic graffiti was discovered in nearby Huninge as well as in Village-Neuf, both close to the German and Swiss borders.[23]



May 15, 2014: A Jewish woman was attacked at a bus stop in Paris’ Montmartre district by a man who shook her baby carriage and said, “Dirty Jewess, enough with your children already, you Jews have too many children, screw you.”[24]

May 16, 2014: A dozen inscriptions were found in Toulouse including: "SS", "Hitler burned 6 million Jews and forgot half" and "Long live Palestine".[25]

May 25, 2014: Two Jewish brothers who were dressed in traditional Jewish clothing were attacked near a synagogue in Créteil. One of them suffered severe injuries to his eye. They were attacked by two men who were armed with brass knuckles.[26]

June 9, 2014: Two Jewish teenagers and their grandfather are chased by an ax-wielding man and three accomplices as they walk to their synagogue in the Paris suburb of Romainville on Shavuot.[27]

June 10, 2014: A Jewish teen wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit is attacked with a Taser by group of teens at Paris’ Place de la République.[28] In Sarcelles, two Jewish teens wearing yarmulkes are sprayed with tear gas.[29]

Main article: 2014 Sarcelles riots

In July 2014, dozens of young men protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza (following the Operation Protective Edge) briefly besieged Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue in Paris and clashed with security.[30] Accroding to Serge Benhaïm, the president of the Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue, noone inside the building itself was attacked.[31]

July 14, 2014: Bastille Day celebrations in Paris turn violent. Anti-Israel rioters attack the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue.[32]

July 20, 2014: anti-Semitic rioting in Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris. In November a 27-year-old man was convicted of arson for having deliberately set fire to a kosher grocery store.[33]

Sept. 2, 2014: Two French teenage girls are arrested for plotting to blow up a synagogue in Lyon. A Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence source said the teens were “part of a network of young Islamists who were being monitored by security services.”[34][35]

Nov. 12, 2014: A kosher sushi restaurant in Paris is firebombed.[36]

December 2, 2014: "A Jewish woman was raped in an apparent anti-Semitic attack in Créteil, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris," according to Ynetnews.[37] The rapist told the woman that he was raping her "because you are Jewish."

2013

During November, 2013, a new phenomenon had spread. Fans of the antisemitic comedian Dieudonné responded to his request and started to get pictures of themselves making the 'quenelle salute', a backwards Nazi salute, next to Jewish or Israeli places, Or even next to group of Jews.[38]

On September 16, 2013, a 20-year-old French national of Moroccan origin called Ohr Hatorah school in Toulouse and told a secretary, “I am Mohammed Merah’s cousin and I’m coming over tonight to kill you.” That threat was not the first one of this youngster, and he was arrested.[39]

On September 10, 2013, France’s ultranationalist National Front party suspended one of its municipal candidates, Francois Chatelain of Neuville-en-Ferrain, for posting anti-Israel photos and anti-Semitic statements.[40]

On September 13, 2013, in Paris a group of Jewish boys were attacked by a gang of teenagers who called them “dirty Jews” and said “Hitler didn’t finish the job.”[41]

April 23, 2013 - Paris - A rabbi and his son were stabbed near the Beth-El synagogue by an Iranian man who had recently escaped a psychiatric hospital. The attacker stabbed the rabbi in the neck causing light injuries, while the rabbi's son was lightly cut when he came to his defense.[42]

March 12, 2013 - Lyon - A fake bomb was found near the Hillel Center, a Jewish institution in the city.[42]

January 3, 2013 - Toulouse - Anti-Semitic slogans, including a swastika alongside the words "SS" and "get the f*** out", were graffitied on a local chapter of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. The incident occurred less than a year after a terrorist killed a rabbi and three students at a Jewish school in the city.[42]

2012

October 9, 2012 – Avignon – The plaque at the entrance to the Jewish cemetery was smashed.[43]
September 19, 2012 – Sarcelles – A firebomb was thrown into a Kosher supermarket by two masked assailants, causing at least one injury.[43][44][45]
August 7, 2012 – Paris – A 17 year-old Jewish girl was severely beaten and insulted with antisemitic remarks by an 18 year-old Arab girl in a Paris suburb.[43]
July 20, 2012 – Paris – A synagogue was desecrated for the third time in 10 days.[43]
July 5, 2012 – Toulouse – A 17-year-old student of the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school was assaulted on a train going from Toulouse to Lyon.[43]
June 2, 2012 – Lyon – Three Jewish youth wearing skullcaps were assaulted while walking to a Jewish school for Shabbat services.[43]
March 26, 2012 – Paris – A 12-year-old Jewish boy was beaten outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Paris by youths reciting antisemitic slogans.[43][46][47][48]
March 19, 2012 – Toulouse – Four Jews were shot and killed at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school by an armed terrorist on a motorcycle, later identified by authorities as Mohammed Merah.[43][49]

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_21st-century_France

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
25. Do you have any statistical evidence for that, or just anecdata?
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 04:26 AM
Jan 2015

It strikes me as a surprising claim, and I certainly don't think your list of incidents demonstrates it.

 

cali

(114,904 posts)
28. Just what I've been reading over and over the last few days
Tue Jan 13, 2015, 04:50 AM
Jan 2015

Anti-semitic hate crimes have exploded in France the last few years.

<snip>

More recently, acts of anti-Semitism in France have soared, jumping to 427 incidents in the first half of 2014 — a 91 percent increase over the same period in 2013. Consider just the past three weeks: On Jan. 1, a fire was started in a building next to a synagogue in a suburb of Paris, along with graffiti of a swastika and the word “anti-Jewish.” On Christmas Day, bullets were fired at a kosher restaurant while it was closed. Three days earlier, projectiles were fired into the office of a Paris rabbi.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hollande-calls-crisis-meeting-10000-extra-forces-sent-to-protect-people-of-france/2015/01/12/63610982-9a34-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html

There's a reason so many of the troops and police assigned to guard sensitive spots in France have been assigned to protect Jewish Schools and Synagogues.

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