Among the cartoons:
One cartoon shows jihadists talking with one saying: "We must not touch people from Charlie Hebdo." The other jihadist responds: "Otherwise, they will pass for martyrs, and once in heaven, they are going to steal all our virgins!"Meanwhile:
Another shows Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious leaders huddled around a globe at the Vatican. "I keep the western sector, you keep the eastern sector," the caption says.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility Wednesday for last week's deadly rampage at France's Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper -- and said the attack was years in the making.And — to be filed under: how not to sell free speech values to those who haven't bought them yet:
AQAP commander Nasr Ibn Ali al-Ansi... praised that attack, saying it was revenge for Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. And according to the video, the late Anwar al-Awlaki masterminded the attack before his death in 2011. If true, that means the planning for the massacre started at least three years ago....
Controversial French humorist and actor Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, better known as simply Dieudonne, was arrested in Paris, accused of publicly supporting terrorism, multiple French media reported. One Facebook post read: "You should know tonight that as far as I am concerned I am Charlie Coulibaly" — an apparent reference to Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed four hostages at a Parisian kosher grocery store Friday.What idiocy!
ADDED: As the lead-in to that last quote should cue you, my "What idiocy!" refers to the arrest.
AND: Why did CNN (at the second link) use the word "masterminded"? The 9/11 attacks can be said to have been "masterminded," but the Charlie Hebdo massacre was on the level of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Maybe CNN is just buying the hype in the terrorist's video.
Posts
69 comments:
"All who "have proclaimed 'I am Charlie' should know that this also means 'I am secularism.'""
If I am Charlie, am I also his favorite color and his preferred omelette? Of course not, I am not physically Charlie, I am not everything Charlie, I am with Charlie in this particular area of focus for public concern.
Personally, I think this new fad of re-purposing "Ich bin ein Berliner" is stupid, self-aggrandizing, and more than a little empty, but it is not a complete embrace of the person or organization being supported.
I am most certainly not 2 Live Crew.
Idiocy: that there is a finite pool of certified "Virgins" available to those radical islamists who have been reduced to their component molecules. That might apply in the western cultures but Islam? Go figure.
Ah, but protecting free speech is also about protecting such idiocy. People who haven't "bought into" the idea of protecting speech they don't like need to grasp that.
I can't stand flag burners (intentional ones, I don't mean the guy who was a bit negligent at his 4th of July BBQ) and think it's idiotic and disrespectful to burn the American flag. But if I can't defend an idiot's right to do that, then what I'm really defending is a standard that says "everyone defend the speech you like and let's see what happens." Then you just have to hope that your own preferences are the same as those with the power to protect them.
Maybe people from totalitarian societies (or some of today's college campuses) don't grasp this yet. But they'd better learn if they wish to function in free societies without getting the vapors.
".. the late Anwar al-Awlaki masterminded the attack before his death in 2011."
Why is the word "masterminded" used here?
The 9/11 attacks can be said to have been "masterminded," but what masterminding was involved here. It's like saying the Newtown massacre or the Aurora theater shooting was masterminded.
"h, but protecting free speech is also about protecting such idiocy. People who haven't "bought into" the idea of protecting speech they don't like need to grasp that."
Was I not clear enough?
I'm calling the arrest idiocy.
You realize the finite number of virgins is a joke, right?
Brando, I am far less offended by flag burners then I am about businesses that fly the flag but then leave it out at night or in the rain orlet it get tattered. The first is freely exercising the rights that that flag represents, the second is co-opting the flag for financial gain and otherwise disrespecting it casually.
Ann Althouse said...
".. the late Anwar al-Awlaki masterminded the attack before his death in 2011."
Why is the word "masterminded" used here?
That was my thought too. This took years of planning?!? I've cooked up more complicated schemes between the 6th and 7th beers.
I think it's a fair enough point. It would be more accurate to say "I stand with Charlie" to make the point that one may disagree vehemently with the things that Charlie Hebdo embraces, while still supporting their right to publish these ideas.
I'm definitely not a secularist but I am a pluralist.
"This took years of planning?!?"
The 3 years business relates to the time of Anwar al-Awlaki's death.
CNN should be more careful about how it passes along material from the terrorist's video. Give us the direct quotes and the added facts that are useful (like the time of Anwar al-Awlaki's death). Don't muddle this stuff together as if you're buying that there were 3 years of planning! You don't know that. You know the claims that are made in the video, not whether they are true, and the hype is only hype. (Don't say "masterminded" outside of a quote!)
Don't say more than what you specifically know, and keep a professional distance between your reporting and al Qaeda's reporting.
I can't believe such obvious advice on how to write a news report needs to be stated.
Seems obvious what the Charlie editorial means, namely, "Come on folks, after all, there are no deities. "
No Allah, so no Prophet to offend.
No God the Father, so no God the Son who has saved you. You weren't in need of saving, anyway.
No Jehovah. Your own tenacity insured your tribe's survival, Baron Munchhausen-like.
The Charlie editorial is right in that, which makes the whole thing even more tragic, and I bet you thought that wasn't possible.
Dieudonne M'bala M'bala. I knew I recognized that name. Tony Parker got in hot water last year for doing the "quenelle salute" with Dieudonne, which is a sort of sly Nazi salute.
One conservative blogger has managed to connect Charlie Hebdo to Lena Dunham and, um, salad-tossing as it's called. Which seems to me to focus weirdly on the dirty bath water while ignoring the clean conservative talking points baby such an environment enables.
Maybe CNN is just buying the hype in the terrorist's video
Two-hundred and fifty thousand people in public relations
- R. Crumb
Althouse,
Could it be that the terrorists gave al-Awlaki credit precisely because he's dead? Sort of a yeah we did it but the guy on our end is already dead so no need to drone us. OK?
I can't believe such obvious advice on how to write a news report needs to be stated.
Ibid.
The arrest of Dieudonne is unfortunately unsurprising. The repressive urge is always there. The greater the stress, the more the urge. This is why the statists are so dangerous. Give government the power and it will use it, and not in the benign ways they (pretend to?) imagine.
Correct, rehajim.
Ann Althouse said...
".. the late Anwar al-Awlaki masterminded the attack before his death in 2011."
Why is the word "masterminded" used here?
The 9/11 attacks can be said to have been "masterminded," but what masterminding was involved here. It's like saying the Newtown massacre or the Aurora theater shooting was masterminded. "
Not really the same thing ,Ann. Aurora and Newtown were the acts of lone gunmen.Whos planning may have been haphazard. Paris and the twin towers were co-ordinated attacks by groups of people that had to be, uh, co-ordinated. So Newtown and Aurora had to, I presume, have some sort of leader otherwise the raids would not have come off as well as they did.
It was obviously a shout out to their hero, the guy they claimed was the real motivation for the attack, his execution by Obama, without trial BTW. Not colonialism, but a specific act by Obama enraged these guys, as explained by them to a guy they car jacked.
I think even Hadji can use metaphors.
Tim in VT,
Yeah yours was the other possibility that occured to me. Sort of an "I am Sparticus" moment to go along with all the I am Charlie stuff.
"PARIS (AP) -- France ordered prosecutors around the country Wednesday to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism, announcing that 54 people had been arrested for those offenses since the Paris terror attacks.
The order came as Charlie Hebdo's defiant new issue sold out before dawn around Paris, with scuffles at kiosks over dwindling copies of the satirical newspaper fronting the Prophet Muhammad.
Like many European countries, France has strong laws against hate speech and especially anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust. In a message distributed to all French prosecutors and judges, the Justice Ministry laid out the legal basis for rounding up those who defend the Paris terror attacks as well as those responsible for racist or anti-Semitic words or acts.
Among those detained was Dieudonne, a controversial, popular comic with repeated convictions for racism and anti-Semitism."
Here we go.
AQAP commander Nasr Ibn Ali al-Ansi... praised that attack, saying it was revenge for Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. And according to the video, the late Anwar al-Awlaki masterminded the attack before his death in 2011. If true, that means the planning for the massacre started at least three years ago....
You and AP are buying in to rubbish.
1. The Nov 2 2011 attacks was because of the Nov 3 (dated) edition of CH which featured "Charia Hebdo" (a reference to Sharia law) and "guest-edited" by Muhammad, depicted Muhammad saying: "100 lashes of the whip if you don't die laughing."
2. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Sep 30, 2011, BEFORE the first issue was known.
3. certainly, if he died before they planned the fire bombing in 2011, he didn't mastermind an attack subsequent to that.
AQ is attempting PR and the AP is its minion...
AND: Why did CNN (at the second link) use the word "masterminded"? The 9/11 attacks can be said to have been "masterminded," but the Charlie Hebdo massacre was on the level of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Maybe CNN is just buying the hype in the terrorist's video.
Perhaps you think that the verb "mastermind" praises and you object. Hitler was a mastermind and employed masterminds. Maybe we need a new term "masturmind" to describe the furtive pleasure the creeps derive.
Oh and, R. Crumb nailed it as rehajim stated.
They are doing all this to have their cake and eat it too, heading off Le Pen while avoiding biting the bullet of immigration reform. Though perhaps that's beyond repair.
Thrashing at this point.
"how not to sell free speech values to those who haven't bought them yet..."
Hard to sell something to a person who doesn't place any value in what you are selling.
They will, however use the parts of it that may be useful to them as long as you are giving it away for free.
I am Laslo.
"Mastermind" is just a glorified way of saying "planned". You could say you planned a nice dinner party, but you probably didn't "mastermind" a dinner party unless you intended to hunt and kill each of your guests, one by one.
Ann Althouse said...but the Charlie Hebdo massacre was on the level of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
Assuming there's a spectrum of operational complexity/planning/coordination from something like a random impulse shooting by an individual (a crime of passion) to a large long-term operation like the 9/11attacks, you can say the Charlie Hebdo attacks are closer to the Shandy Hook shooting than they are to the 9/11 attacks. The Charlie Hebdo attack is definitely not "on the level" of the Sandy Hook shooting, though, by any metric that comes to mind (solo vs coordinated, logistics of obtaining weapon, ideological motivation (sending message for partially political ends) vs personal animus/insanity, plan for escape vs none (other than suicide), etc). I take your point that based on the information we have now the term mastermind may be a bit grandiose for the planning involved, but the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Sandy Hook attack aren't really on the same level.
Brando said..."Mastermind" is just a glorified way of saying "planned". You could say you planned a nice dinner party, but you probably didn't "mastermind" a dinner party unless you intended to hunt and kill each of your guests, one by one.
In this example, I would say that "masterminded" is not glorified so much as ironic. To say that something was "masterminded" necessarily implies that it required a mastermind to plan (a mastermind is not necessarily evil, just several cuts above the average) as opposed to a mere pedestrian mind. A dinner party might be the result of a mastermind, but few dinners parties require a mastermind.
Ann Althouse said...but the Charlie Hebdo massacre was on the level of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
Only if you think it was complete luck that scheduled the attack for the exact time that CH held an in-person weekly staff conference so that all the targets were in the same room. and
that they were just lucky that when they showed up at the locked door, they could put a gun to the head of a little girl and get her mother to code them inside. and
they were lucky and could approach the two police guards without alarming them
It looks like the government and most likely the populous of France are not really interested in protecting free speech, which would include unpopular speech, but in not getting shot while enjoying speech that they support.
Coming soon to the United States, hate speech regulation that is needed to protect free speech.
@CJW - "Could it be that the terrorists gave al-Awlaki credit precisely because he's dead? Sort of a yeah we did it but the guy on our end is already dead so no need to drone us. OK?"
Kind of like blaming the verbal sexual harassment you receive on a dead Senator?
Idiocy: that there is a finite pool of certified "Virgins" available to those radical islamists who have been reduced to their component molecules. That might apply in the western cultures but Islam? Go figure.
Yeah well about those 72 virgins . . .
Je suis Larry Flynt? Non? Porqoui?
To be even clearer, while the arrest of Dieudonne is, in fact, idiocy, so was his comment.
I don't think the fact that he's a sub-human hate machine should be criminalized, but he is a sub-human hate machine, and that's also important to note.
"What idiocy!"
Freedom of speech is a negative freedom. But what about freedom from irresponsible speech and its terrible consequences?
True freedom is freedom from fear.
I am the new, more responsible Charlie. I am a Charlie who must think before he speaks.
Another shows Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious leaders huddled around a globe at the Vatican. "I keep the western sector, you keep the eastern sector," the caption says.
Since Lenny Bruce was mentioned a few posts earlier ... This was part of one of Lenny's routines. It's begins the third chapter (and is named Religions, Inc.) in The Essential Lenny Bruce.
"Don't say more than what you specifically know..."
That would leave a LOT of dead air time on CNN.
Over the years, after hearing any number of self-professedly "freedom loving" Europeans and others proclaiming their belief in the central importance of free speech, it's become clear to me that, to the degree there is a shared interpretation of and protection of free speech in the United States, it really is unique in the world. If one is looking for valid examples of American exceptionalism, one might start with freedom of speech. Many of my European colleagues truly are baffled by America's "simplistic" absolutism on the subject.
Some of this is surely cultural, but some of this surely is due to our Bill of Rights. In my youth, I had been inclined towards some of arguments made at the time of their drafting that the first ten amendments were more or less superfluous, since a limited government would only be able to do what it was specifically enabled to do by the original Constitution. How fortunate we are that enough of the Framers believed that more precautions were required!
As a layperson, it's particularly interesting to me that even today, so much of what is reviewed by SCOTUS seems to revolve around the Bill of Rights, as opposed to the more "fundamental" (so to speak) constitution. I'm not sure it would be fun to speculate about how different the country's law might be without it.
@Bob Boyd
Free speech fundamentalists and constitution fetishists are becoming increasing popular epithets among those who are frustrated that a document written over 100 years ago by dead white males is slowing the march of PROGRESS towards the correct side of history where the proletariat shall cast of the chains of false consciousness and prosper under the benevolent guidance of a technocratic elite who got all A's in high school and got into an Ivy League university.
Forward!
Except maybe that C in phys ed, but that doesn't count, really.
Hey! Muffins!
All who "have proclaimed 'I am Charlie' should know that this also means 'I am secularism.'"
Indeed.
Imagine killing people because they made fun of Santa Claus.
Ridiculous analogy?
Evidence for the existence of Santa is exactly equal to evidence for the existence of God, whether you call god Allah or Yahweh.
"You can't prove 'he' doesn't exist", is the best retort available to believers. That and 'strength in numbers', as if you can multiply a falsity by a sufficient quantity to make it a truth. Sophistry.
This is the damnable tragedy of the murders. That they were done for essentially the mocking of a Santa-like entity. A wish. A baseless hope.
That's what All who "have proclaimed 'I am Charlie' should know that this also means 'I am secularism.'" means.
Many takers left? The Charlie folks know the answer, and they are mocking you for your fair-weather sympathies.
I don't think any of these terrorists function at the level of a James Bond villain. On the other hand, an unarmed cop arriving by bike at the scene of a massacre doesn't function at the level of a James Bond hero.....,,,There's all this talk about backlash against Muslims. It does seem that they're still going to considerable trouble to migrate to France. By contrast, the Jews, in record numbers, are emigrating from France. Whatever backlash the Muslims are sensing, it is the Jews who are being lashed and murdered.
@Ralph Hyatt
Shhh.
Listen.
Can you hear that sound?
That is the sound of millions of desperate souls, the poor unfortunates who, sadly, weren't so great in school. They cry out to us from every corner of this world. They are crying for someone who was very good in school (or at least someone who works for someone who as very good in school) to come and run their lives for them.
That haunting sound is what animates the Progressive. It is the thing that drives him to do what he does, to make those great personal sacrifices Progressives are famous for.
"Imagine killing people because they made fun of Santa Claus.
Ridiculous analogy?"
I bet Santa gets hate mail. Even death threats.
Of course those people never get what they want for Christmas ever again.
@Bob Boyd
It is the burden that everyone who was very good in school must shoulder.
The rest of us can only look on with grateful adoration.
If only we had understood the importance of following directions, sitting quietly, and turning in homework on time, then perhaps we might have been so exulted.
@ Ralph Hyatt
My parents couldn't afford apple polish. Remember how the price spiked back in the seventies? I think it was petroleum based in those days. I'm sure its much greener now.
Anyway, I can't help but wonder what might have been.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...This is the damnable tragedy of the murders. That they were done for essentially the mocking of a Santa-like entity. A wish. A baseless hope.
Is that the tragedy? I mean, Oswald didn't kill JFK in the name of a God but the fact that he was motivated by ideology and not religious fervor doesn't make the assisination less tragic, does it? I understand your belief that religion is built on a lie and therefore bad actions taken on behalf of religious belief are doubly wrong, but many non-religious ideologies are built on lies, too (Stalinism, etc). Also I question whether your use of the term "damnable" is intentionally ironic.
someonehastosayit: "This is the damnable tragedy of the murders. That they were done for essentially the mocking of a Santa-like entity."
Well, that lets the Maoist purgers off the hook for a "damnable tragedy".
Their killing of 60 million is probably just a "statistic", maybe a tragedy, but certainly not a "damnable" one.
Thank goodness it wasn't done in the name of religion!
Bob Boyd: "But what about freedom from irresponsible speech and its terrible consequences?"
I find this type of question uttered publicly to be terribly irresponsible.
I should Bob Boyd would have the good taste and sense not to utter it publicly again.
If he decides to do so, perhaps something could be done statutorily to help "persuade" Bob his ideas are irresponsible.
Sorry Drago. I lost my head.
But having read many of your comments, it seems to me you could benefit from a good brisk nudging yourself.
Well, we Bobs have to stand together, you know. It's a tough world for us Bobs.
I think Bob Boyd was being a little facetious, Drago.
The title of this blog post, "all who 'have proclaimed "I am Charlie" should know that this also means "I am secularism" is troublesome. "The first victims of Islamic extremism are the Muslims."
Hey, editor, you've got plenty of reason to be mad and sad and all that. Maybe you should take a few minutes before claiming that Muslims are the worst offended by the deaths of your colleagues.
Drago said...
someonehastosayit: "This is the damnable tragedy of the murders. That they were done for essentially the mocking of a Santa-like entity."
Well, that lets the Maoist purgers off the hook for a "damnable tragedy".
Their killing of 60 million is probably just a "statistic", maybe a tragedy, but certainly not a "damnable" one.
Thank goodness it wasn't done in the name of religion!
It was also damnable, of course, and for the same reason - it was done in service to a lie, a phantom, a supposed utopia (heaven) that was available to man on earth, via socialism, in this case.
So if you think you have caught me in an inconsistency, think again.
Suspending Reason, Logic, Evidence, whether for an in-this-life utopia, or an after death utopia, makes all these tragedies damnable.
HoodlumDoodlum said...
Also I question whether your use of the term "damnable" is intentionally ironic.
Question no longer. My use of the adjective 'damnable', selected from many alternatives, was intentionally ironic. Everything I write is intentional. How about you?
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...Everything I write is intentional.
The adverb "intentionally" in the sentence I wrote modified the word ironic. No one asked whether everything you wrote was intentional; I asked whether one thing you wrote was intentionally ironic. Now whether the message one communicates is always intentional (as opposed to the message one intends to communicate)--that's another question altogether, and an honest answer that has to be no, not everything I communicate is always intentional.
HoodlumDoodlum said...
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...Everything I write is intentional.
The adverb "intentionally" in the sentence I wrote modified the word ironic. No one asked whether everything you wrote was intentional; I asked whether one thing you wrote was intentionally ironic. Now whether the message one communicates is always intentional (as opposed to the message one intends to communicate)--that's another question altogether, and an honest answer that has to be no, not everything I communicate is always intentional.
But the whole point of your snark was an attempt at a "gotcha moment". An attempt to imply that I would criticize religion-based violence, but not secular-based violence.
Or perhaps it was an intent to drop my criticism into an 'or' bucket, rather than the 'and' bucket that it is in. Meaning, implying one either criticizes religious violence (as I was in this case), or one criticizes non-religious violence. But of course, one should criticize both, as I am happy to do.
Anyway, you succeeded in temporarily changing the subject to my supposed motives, and thus kept yourself from addressing my challenge (lack of evidence for God = lack of evidence for other fantasies that you, I presume, have no problem with). But I noticed, anyway.
So, a corollary of Charlie's "secularism" is a requirement to adopt the fairytale of spontaneous conception, colloquially known as stork's delivery. Will the rationalizations and corruption of science never end? It's a story told to children with a pretense of scientific authority.
I don't think secularism means what they think it means. For one, there is no practical separation of society and religion (i.e. moral philosophy). Charlie was a representative of the Liberal Church that maintains an atheist faith (i.e. unacknowledged universal and extra-universal claims), a libertine (i.e. degenerate) popular religion, and an authoritarian state religion. Charlie was a left-wing acolyte.
Why do you believe it is foolish to arrest self professed murderers? Or are we simply supposed to not take it seriously?
Surely you are aware many countries in Europe have sometimes stringent hate speech laws,and supporting and calling for the murder of innocent people certainly qualifies.
Is your position that if one supports free speech, one cannot support any restrictions on speech whatsoever?
"It's like saying the Newtown massacre or the Aurora theater shooting was masterminded."
A highly inapt comparison. Lone nut vs. group of religious fanatics with apparent connections to AQ and/or ISIS operatives, having somehow obtained illegal weapons, knowing all the targets would be in a single room, and with a successful (in the short run at least) getaway plan.
n.n said...
Charlie was a representative of the Liberal Church that maintains an atheist faith . . .
Hope you are not claiming that atheism is also an example of 'faith', in the same way that faith in a deity is.
Atheism is simply the application of reason (in this case, there must be evidence to an assertion of the existence of something, especially a thing of certain defined attributes) , to the 'world' of religion.
I'm betting that, based on reason, you are an atheist as to the existence of leprechauns, for example.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said... An attempt to imply that I would criticize religion-based violence, but not secular-based violence.
You've misunderstood me, Someone. I thought the word choice of "damn" was funny but didn't know if you meant it to be. I didn't imply you wouldn't critique non-religious violence, but pointed out that you could be understood as implying that religious-based violence is in some ways worse (or more tragic, etc) than non-religious violence. If that's not your position, very well, but that's certainly what it sounded like you meant (and once again we're back to what's communicated vs what's intentionally communicated).
I didn't take anything in your post as a "challenge" and so I didn't address it as such--I haven't made a statement here on whether I consider belief in God equivalent to belief in Santa Claus, so you're presuming without any evidence (which is a bit, shall we say, presumptuous). To be honest I don't think that question is particularly important in the context of this story (because I don't think this violence would be justified even if the ideological/religious beliefs of the perpetrators was correct, and also probably because I don't think those beliefs are in fact correct).
The Charlie assassins murdered the actual people they were pissed off at. Unlike these assholes who are bullied by the football team, then go into the school cafeteria and shoot a bunch of girls.
SomeoneHasToSayIt:
Faith is simply an affirmative statement about phenomenon outside of the scientific domain (i.e. strictly limited in time and space). Atheism a simplistic philosophy based on a single [unacknowledged] article of faith: rejection of theism.
As for leprechauns, they may or may not exist, they may or may not have existed. Since their existence cannot be confirmed in the scientific domain, their disposition cannot be established. Claims about the past are reduced to faith with the passage of time (a uniformitarian assumption is an article of faith or gross simplification), and claims about the present and future may be regarded as philosophical constructs, awaiting improved skill and knowledge to test their veracity.
The neutral faith is agnostic. It precludes any affirmative statements about universal and extra-universal phenomenon, and generally anything outside of the scientific domain. The theistic faiths are actually preferable to atheism, when they acknowledge articles of faith, and distinguish between the scientific and other domains.
I'm not sure that this Dieudonne fellow is a "humorist" or a "comedian," even though he's referred to as such in these various accounts. (And I'm not sure that jailing him is in any way proper or productive.) There seems to be a vast gulf between what the French think of as humor or comedy or satire and what we think of humor or comedy or satire. (And nothing I've heard of Dieudonne's stuff-- translated to English-- makes any sense or sounds in the least bit funny... which is not to say it isn't, but either the translation's not working or his idea (and his fans' idea) of "funny" is radically different from ours. Ace of Spades quoted from a blog today. He ran the words of a French immigrant to America on the subject of French humor:
"First off, French humor in general is far more rude and crass than American humor. We're not nearly as prudish as Americans in general are, and culturally much more confrontational than Americans, who already are a very confrontational bunch by world's standards.
"Evidently, it's impossible to give a proper comparison or point of reference in the American pop culture, especially being an immigrant that knows very little about American pop culture."
This Dieudonne might be more of what is known as a "provocateur" than a comedian. Again-- no reason to throw him in the slammer, but news accounts of his activities might be a little less confusing if we keep that in mind.
n.n said...
[insert bunch of sophistic nonsense]
You're too far gone. Not even going to try to reason with you.
Atheism a simplistic philosophy based on a single [unacknowledged] article of faith: rejection of theism.
Atheism isn't a philosophy at all.
Moreover, since you've already noted that theism itself requires an act of faith, it obviously doesn't require faith to reject theism. It requires a lack of faith.
Why do you believe it is foolish to arrest self professed murderers?
Sure, you can arrest them for the murders they committed.
If you meant to say "advocates of murder" instead of "self-professed murderers", on the other hand, I'd just observe that everyone who has ever vocally supported a war has advocated murder. I guess you could lock all those billions of people up, but who would guard them?
Dieudonne's arrest is no more an assault against general free speech than Al Capone's arrest was an assault against general taxpayer rights. Imagine in the US that tens of thousands of gay men had been intentionally impaled on broomsticks, and a clever, charismatic comedian goes around making amusing praises of broomstick and invents a kind of broomstick salute that goes viral. I'm not saying one can't defend him or his gay-mocking counterpart, but a truly principled defense would defend all hate speech regardless of context. Is that what you believe?
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