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New Islamists win again.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/12/media/charlie-hebdo-magazine-publish/index.html

A freaking story from one of our major news outlets about Charlie Hebdo's cover and they still refuse to show it. Scott, tell me again how the First Amendment has survived?
New Holy Cow. The NY Post is more responsible than the NY Times?
http://nypost.com/2015/01/12/charlie-hebdo-lives-again-with-new-issue/

That cover should be the home page of every single news outlet in all of Western civilization.
New Why?
Having freedom of expression doesn't mean one should be required to print stuff. That's sorta the opposite of freedom, isn't it?

Should the NYTimes be required to print the Westboro Baptist Church placards on the front page to show they support their right to say stuff??

You're being weird about this topic, IMHO.

Cheers,
Scott.
(DeLong had it on his blog, FWIW.)
New Here's why.
To demonstrate clearly that you can't be intimidated. That in this country, murdering someone over an idea or image is not tolerated. To say to the Islamic Cultists, "You lose."
New I actually agree with mmoffit on this one
Not for the same reason, though.

When there is a news story about a painting, they show a picture of the painting. When it's a story about a terrorist beheading someone on camera, they show a still from the video.

I'm not talking about incidental footage that illustrates a story, I'm talking about cases where the image itself is the story. In those cases, they virtually always show the image, even if partially redacted.

It's a fine line between showing an image because it is offensive, and showing an image even though it's offensive. But for a reader to be adequately informed, in order for them to understand, "This is what people were killed for," the story must include the image.
--

Drew
New Understood, but I disagree.
It doesn't look like the NY Times showed "piss Christ". And they didn't show Donohue's response with an Obama doll - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/arts/art-shock.html?_r=0#/#finale

Anyone can find the Charlie Hebdo cover (or "piss Christ") if they want. It doesn't need to be everywhere for people to support their right to publish offensive material.

Similarly, the magic hex string of characters that had to do with some sort of key to a notorious DRM - anyone could find it if they wanted. It doesn't mean that everyone needs to put it in their .sig.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Hmm ... this is interesting
Terrorists depend on publicity to spread fear.

"Lone gunman"-types sometimes do it specifically to become famous.

Shock art sometimes shocks purely as "click bait".

In all these cases, displaying the shocking thing may be giving someone exactly what they want. I wouldn't want our media to be so easily manipulated. See "Black Mirror - The National Anthem" for a perfect example of where that leads.

In this case I would still have run the picture, because the story was about the violent reaction. I would not have run the picture if the story were, "Here is a magazine trying to offend Muslims."
--

Drew
New Yup.
One of the things that seems to infuriate the Right about Obama is that he doesn't "let his Luther out". We all know that little kids do lots of bad things for attention, also too.

If the Charlie Hebdo cover were pulled from Google and the rest of the Internet, then publishing it everywhere would make sense. We'd be fighting censorship on our end, too. As it is, publishing the cover on American papers and blogs doesn't really affect anything in a positive way. It's not going to make ISIL or AQAP change their behavior. (Just like Sullivan changing his blog color to green didn't change anything in Iran's protest.) But it might make the situation worse (e.g. by feeding into skin-heads tendencies).

Sometimes not doing something is the best response.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Re: It's not going to make ISIL or AQAP change their behavior.
No. But it would let them know that we haven't changed ours.
New Re: Understood, but I disagree.
No-one died for Piss Christ.

Twelve people died for the Charlie Hebdo cover.

It's craven and cowardly to take the advert hits and sales that will come as a result of publishing the Charlie Hebdo story without publishing what the actual fuck those twelve people died for.

New Yes, seems quite the ostrich position: both vulgar and vulnerable.
New Yeahbut...
We've been talking about "the cover" - the reason cited for the attack was "disrespecting the prophet" and the like. It wasn't one particular cartoon, AFAIK, though I haven't checked carefully...

Charlie Hebdo apparently republished the Dutch cartoons in 2006 and the firebombing was in 2011. They've been a target of the violent kooks for a long time.

12 people died there because they were shot-up by deranged gunmen who used religion as a reason. We shouldn't necessarily take their proclaimations as the truth, though. Perhaps they are looking for ratcheting up of laws against Muslims in France and the EU that they can point to as "western attacks on Islam" and thereby increase recruitment. Thus feeding into their desire to make this a religious conflict will help their aims....

The post-attack cover was certainly newsworthy, but I don't see not publishing it as being cowardly or selling out or something. There were were reasonable reasons not to, and it was easily available elsewhere. I doubt that the NY Times's traffic changed much as a result of their reporting.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New You're reaching and you know it :)
New Danish, not Dutch.
New A rare subject heading indeed. ;0)
New The Charlie Hebdo paper is selling out like crazy.
BBC:
Normally Charlie Hebdo prints 60,000 copies but the run increased steadily this week - from one million to three million to five million.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New With fundamentalists, idiocy abounds!
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New Tilt!
New So what did you think of the New Yorker cover in 2008?
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7518349/charlie-hebdo-racist/in/7271890

French satire is a complex and above all *local* thing. I'm not surprised I didn't grasp it until now. You would have trouble understanding the political cartoons in the Sydney Morning Herald, for instance, unless you were familiar with Australian politics.

Wade.
New I understand that. And the article contains BS.
But, to me, it is entirely irrelevant if I understand the satire in any Charlie Hebdo cartoon or article. What is relevant is that the Islamists think they have special rights to dictate to everyone what can and cannot be said or drawn. You either stand up to that kind of tyranny or you live under it.

Edit:

"The elevation of such images to a point of high principle will increase the burdens on those minority groups," as Matt put it. "European Muslims find themselves crushed between the actions of a tiny group of killers and the necessary response of the majority society. Problems will increase for an already put-upon group of people."


Oh, the poor fricking babies! All they have to do to not be "put-upon" is quit Islam. That is, quit being associated with a lunatic, murderous cult.
Expand Edited by mmoffitt Jan. 14, 2015, 09:50:50 AM EST
New so the first ammendment is tango uniform?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New You mean it isn't? Where's the Hebdo drawing on CNN/NY Times/etc. sic nauseum.
New Thanks.. principled and illuminating.
As to Charlie Hebdo principles beneath oft-mixed metaphors, I liked their essay re a Nov. 11 2011 cover, here.
It's easy to adopt simplistic polarities about their work (or doubt even? the above POV of their perceived sentiments, ) 'Throwing out baby with the bathwater', comes to mind. Onion layers.. but nothing like transparent as The Onion.

The charge of siding with the bullies, (those piling-on these newly arrived folk with some at-odds mores that jar French culture) seems valid, as does the necessity of Hebdo Opposites meantt. (This addresses all us un-acculturated. The Positive is advanced in the 11/'11 essay. Put it all together and por moi, two aspects result:

Yes, Charlie Hedbo's style is confounding even to many countrymen and Francophiles, thus "flawed". How normal.
Yes also, a prime Principle withstands all these nuances, especially by '15. Islam's extreme mores contain more contain duties with the force of Commands to the faithful: enforced by the many Capital-punishments allegedly via their Prophet: for blasphemy ... (right unto--even trying to Leave Islam!)

That Principle and its philosophy of ~democratic, secular Rule requires that Speech is not to be curtailed except in those obvious matters like yelling Fire! Hurt feelings or ridicule are prices for that freedom.

The more impoverished the Muslim, the harder it seems for such to Grok this POV and then to See: that Islamics may believe what they like (or will bear) but they can't coexist, out-numbered, out-gunned on the same planet. If the hugely powerful Leaders prove unable to curb-the-Dogma of the young, broke, restless (and intentionally-ignorant) of these un-tenable tenets? the rest of the planet won't tolerate perpetual religio-assassinations, Period, IMO. Irresistible Forces/Immovable Objects? (Hardly; plain old material physics does it, as always.)

Seems just another day in the ongoing saga: Just How many One-True-Gods does it Take? to screw-up daily liff for Everyone? (One seems too-many.)


So. Much. ƒeare inculcated-from-birth.. in most-all these Corporate religions. And militancy: Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War ... meet Ahmed: he'll see that and Raise You.
No wonder the species is sociopathic unto psychopathic: we gots The Nukes to daily remind us that we are deranged-at-core.

Does anyone imagine that next, 'we' shall all handle this impasse with charity, wisdom and panache?
(Line up here: in this 1950s telephone booth.) And bring your Dark theological-Energy with you.
New More on Charlie and France...
Balloon-Juice:

29 Chris says:
January 15, 2015 at 1:04 pm
@Amir Khalid:

Not everyone is a free-speech absolutist.


And the French certainly aren’t, and neither is most of Europe.

That’s the thing. There are already more or less stringent laws in much of the continent against anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, Nazi slogans et al – and people like the leaders of the FN have been successfully sued and fined under them. If I’m raised in that society as part of a marginalized group (e.g. French Muslims), I’d be more than a little inclined to wonder, if X, Y and Z are banned because they offend and demean Jews, why isn’t the same being done for things that offend and demean my group?

I, personally, very much prefer the American position on free speech – e.g, “if this offends you, if it’s sick and wrong and racist, you’re welcome to sulk, write a letter to the editor, start a boycott or write your own counter-cartoons, but we’re not shutting it or fining it just because it’s offensive.” But that’s not the way things work in France. In that light, there’s something disingenuous about the whole “we support free speech!” movement that’s sprung up around Charlie Hebdo.


Yup.

Cheers,
Scott.
New In a perfect world ...
You should be allowed to say whatever offensive, insensitive thing you want so long as:

* It doesn't incite people to commit a crime
* It doesn't violate someone's privacy
* It is true

There's probably some others, but these are enough to see that there's so much devil in so many details that we're never going to get close to a perfect world.

The third point is the one that I think we miss most egregiously. I believe in England truth is a defense against slander charges? I often wonder why the opposite isn't pursued.

Campaign commercials are routinely shown to be factually incorrect, but we (meaning Congress) have carved those out as explicitly allowed to be lies. Commercials for other products routinely torture the facts, but the only time you see that in court is when one company sues another.
--

Drew
New Interesting.
Under your (1), Charlie's drawing could be banned.
New Remember that "devil in the details" bit?
"Incitement" is not pissing someone off. It's naming people or groups who should have violence done to them. Or to a lesser degree suggesting to people that they vandalize something.
--

Drew
New The Continental way
Now that we're on the map too, I'd like to add some background as to where this festering boil originated.

France is more complicated due to its colonial history in northern Africa, but Belgium provides a nice baseline: before WW2, there was no muslim population to speak of. After the war, a large contingent of Turks was imported to work in the coal mines*. These folks worked hard, started families, and were mostly secular. But they were foreigners, so the cops kept a close eye on them, as in "papers please" at every street corner. Got to make sure they don't rape our wimmens and rob us blind.

Some time after that, a migration from northern Africa started up. Most ended up in menial jobs, but these folks were more pronounced religious than the Turks.

As the second generation grew up, most of the boys found work in the mines as well. They also worked hard and islam was limited to a few makeshift mosques. But they were still foreigners so the cops kept an eye on them, same way as they did with their parents. And here the resentment started to grow. These kids only connection to their "country of origin" was their parents. They grew up in Belgium so did not understand why they were singled out.

This continued on with the third generation and then the bottom dropped out: the mines closed overnight. For the first generation, this was not much of a problem as most were close to retirement age. The younger ones, however, suddenly found themselves in a hole they could not get out of. No one wanted to see them in the nice neighborhoods and unemployment went through the roof.

And with that, so did the resentment and the problems and the influx of hardline islam. Which the white side of course took as vindication that the darkies were indeed all criminals. The politicos tried to defuse the situation by finally switching to citizenship by birth and naturalized all volunteers of generation 2 & 3, but it didn't really help much at all.

The thing about the laws mentioned is that they ban speech, which is pretty obvious, but not actions. The burden of proof there is on the victims. One of the largest employment agencies got caught marking their files "white applicants only" and got off scot-free; no action was taken against the customers at all. Most native small employers act the same way. If they get denied housing or employment, nothing will happen because it is word against word. If they take a camera and/or a witness, it is an illegal sting operation and again nothing happens.

To date, newspapers are careful to report the perpetrators of crimes as "allochtoon" (of foreign origin, even if they are born Belgians) or not. Unemployment runs 2.5x that of the caucasian population. (Which segues into Peter's comment about a subsistence society, which they are pretty much living in.)

I'm actually quite surprised that the situation hasn't gotten out of hand any worse than it already is.

* Following a number of horrible accidents, the Italian government had had enough and recalled their contingent that had been sent as war reparations.
New Thanks for the confirmation of what I thought was the case.
Not that it was that different here in years of the past and continues in part today especially in non-urban areas.

The biggest positive here is that the Caucasians are more diverse in their origins and tend to forget their origins with successive generations. Also, there is some diversity in houses of worship, if any, that people attend. These factors reduce the we/they thinking.

Unfortunately, when it comes to race, it's a horse of another color. :)
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New Re: on the map...
It certainly sounds like something big was nipped in the bud today.

:-(

Thanks for the interesting history. Here's hoping our leaders find a way to solve this problem without even more innocents dying.

Cheers,
Scott.
     Islamists win again. - (mmoffitt) - (29)
         Holy Cow. The NY Post is more responsible than the NY Times? - (mmoffitt) - (14)
             Why? - (Another Scott) - (13)
                 Here's why. - (mmoffitt)
                 I actually agree with mmoffit on this one - (drook) - (10)
                     Understood, but I disagree. - (Another Scott) - (8)
                         Hmm ... this is interesting - (drook) - (2)
                             Yup. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                 Re: It's not going to make ISIL or AQAP change their behavior. - (mmoffitt)
                         Re: Understood, but I disagree. - (pwhysall) - (4)
                             Yes, seems quite the ostrich position: both vulgar and vulnerable. -NT - (Ashton)
                             Yeahbut... - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                 You're reaching and you know it :) -NT - (pwhysall)
                                 Danish, not Dutch. -NT - (CRConrad)
                     A rare subject heading indeed. ;0) -NT - (mmoffitt)
                 The Charlie Hebdo paper is selling out like crazy. - (a6l6e6x)
         With fundamentalists, idiocy abounds! - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
             Tilt! -NT - (mmoffitt)
         So what did you think of the New Yorker cover in 2008? - (static) - (4)
             I understand that. And the article contains BS. - (mmoffitt) - (2)
                 so the first ammendment is tango uniform? -NT - (boxley) - (1)
                     You mean it isn't? Where's the Hebdo drawing on CNN/NY Times/etc. sic nauseum. -NT - (mmoffitt)
             Thanks.. principled and illuminating. - (Ashton)
         More on Charlie and France... - (Another Scott) - (6)
             In a perfect world ... - (drook) - (2)
                 Interesting. - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                     Remember that "devil in the details" bit? - (drook)
             The Continental way - (scoenye) - (2)
                 Thanks for the confirmation of what I thought was the case. - (a6l6e6x)
                 Re: on the map... - (Another Scott)

Hard to keep track of who to shun.
104 ms