posted January 09, 2015 05:39 PM            

My heart goes out to you and your country.
I thought of you immediately when I heard of the terrorist attack.

God bless the French and all who has such atrocities inflicted on them.

posted January 09, 2015 06:13 PM            

Six major European newspapers (from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Poland) have published a joint declaration against the attempted intimidation of journalists each in their own language. Here is the English version:

quote:

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/07/europa-newspapers- declaration-charlie-hebdo-attack

A joint declaration from the Europa partnership of newspapers:

The attack on Charlie Hebdo on 7 January in Paris and the odious assassination of our colleagues, fierce defenders of freedom of expression, is not only an attack on the liberty of the press and liberty of opinion. It is an attack against the fundamental values of our European democratic societies.

Freedom to think and freedom to inform had already been targeted in recent months by the execution of other journalists, American, European or from Arab countries – kidnapped and killed by Islamic State. Whatever one’s ideology, terrorism refuses the search for truth and rejects independence of spirit. Jihadist terrorism, more so.

Refusing to give in to threats after the publication, almost 10 years ago, of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, Charlie Hebdo magazine had not changed its culture of irreverence one iota. Similarly, we European newspapers, regularly working together as part of the Europa group, continue to promote the values of liberty and independence that are the foundation of our identity, and which we all share.

We continue to inform, to inquire, to interview, to comment, to publish – and to draw – about every subject that appears to us legitimate, in a spirit of openness, intellectual enrichment and democratic debate.

We owe it to our readers. We owe it to the memory of our assassinated colleagues. We owe it to Europe. We owe it to democracy. “We are not like them,” said the Czechoslovak Vaclav Havel, a victorious opponent of totalitarianism who became a president. That is our strength.

(Europa Partnership: Le Monde, the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais, la Stampa, Gazeta Wyborcza)

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posted January 09, 2015 07:44 PM            

Attorney General, Eric Holder, will be going to Paris for talks on terrorism.

quote:

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Attorney General Eric Holder will travel to Paris this weekend for high-level meetings on terrorism, aides said Thursday.

Mr. Holder will attend a meeting of European officials led by the French Interior Bernard Cazeneuve, aides said, and the talks will center on terror threats, the security risks of people returning from foreign battlefields, and countering homegrown violent extremism.
Over the past year, U.S. Justice Department officials have had a number of meetings with European officials to discuss security threats stemming from people from Western countries traveling to Syria to fight with jihadist groups, and then returning home. Thousands of Europeans are believed to have traveled to Syria to fight, according to security officials.

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posted January 10, 2015 11:16 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Randall:
You guys didn't play around--found them fast and killed them.

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posted January 11, 2015 04:42 PM            

The question is, who is actually threatening freedom of speech? The clip in this link was shown on "most trusted" Fox news, and others.... in varying degrees of wholeness. Despite the "warning - graphic" notices, there is no blood and a very good question posed.

Is it terrorists...or "Homeland Security" that is really threatening our liberties here?

Text for video-challenged readers.

I have no opinion on this yet except to note that Fox, who showed the complete clip including fatal gunshot, and are baying for muslim blood and more guns...havent seemed to notice the idiosyncracies...

i don't like comparing heads to watermelons but how is there no blood and how does a news station not notice?

posted January 12, 2015 07:27 PM            

this article I think gives good insight in why the murder of 5 cartoonist of charlie hebdo has such a big impact on french society and what are the stakes for France :

PARIS — Wednesday was the day when Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, “Soumission” (Submission), hit the bookstores. It has been all Houellebecq all the time lately, as shrewd marketing from his publishing house made sure that this provocative book on France becoming an Islamic republic in 2022 would get prime-time coverage — and draw maximum controversy.

So Wednesday began with Mr. Houellebecq on morning radio, explaining that, contrary to what he said in 2010, Islam is not “the dumbest religion” after all, and that there is “space for negotiation.” Asked whether his novel was intended to scare people, he replied: “The scariest part of the novel is actually the part before the Muslims come to power.”

To Mr. Houellebecq, the “terrifying degree of contempt” in which, in his view, politicians, judges and journalists are now held in France, is much scarier than electing a decent Muslim president.

Mr. Houellebecq’s light and, at the same time, terribly serious comments were still resonating when, three hours later, two heavily armed men entered the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo and perpetrated the worst massacre Paris has witnessed in decades, killing 12 people. It soon became clear that the attackers had acted to punish those free spirits who not only dared to publish, almost 10 years ago, the cartoons of Muhammad printed in a Danish newspaper that had sparked deadly protests, but never backed down after.

So much for “space for negotiation.” A nation in shock soon forgot Mr. Houellebecq’s niceties about the advantages of “moderate Islam.” Radical Islam had taken over the news. Again.

An American colleague has asked me whether the attack on Charlie Hebdo was comparable to 9/11. There is a big difference: While this attack came as a shock to the French because of the target and the high number of casualties, it did not come exactly as a surprise. We have been living with this threat for a long time now.

We have witnessed other hideous terrorist crimes, like Mohammed Merah’s killing of seven people, including three children at a Jewish school, three years ago in three separate attacks in southwestern France. We’ve had journalists and NGO workers kidnapped and assassinated in Syria and Africa. We know that the involvement of French armed forces in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Africa and the Middle East — an involvement that enjoys broad popular support — makes us a target for revenge. We are wary of the success of the Islamic State’s recruiting campaigns in our mosques, which have sent more than 1,000 young French jihadis to the Syrian and Iraqi battlegrounds.

Yet we also have a big, quiet and nonradicalized Muslim community living among us. Islam is the second religion in France, behind Catholicism. France is home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe, as well as the biggest Jewish community. So in order to try to keep everybody reasonably happy together, we have promoted secularism, giving way to a new motto: Liberté, égalité, fraternité, laïcité.

This is the country where Muslim girls and Jewish boys can’t wear a veil or a yarmulke in public schools. Or where a couple is politely asked to leave if the woman declines to uncover her fully veiled face, as required by the law, during a performance of “La Traviata” at the Paris Opéra. It does not make us popular in the Arab world, but somehow it works at home: Muslim schoolgirls attend classes unveiled, and the couple left the Opéra without protesting.

But France is also the country of Charlie Hebdo. The 45-year-old satirical newspaper is quintessentially French, in its provocative irreverence, its not-so-tasteful yet very witty humor, its refusal to spare any taboo. The popularity of its cartoonists — the ones who were sprayed with bullets on Wednesday — extended well beyond Charlie Hebdo. They had created legendary characters for teenagers’ comic books and the gray pages of enlightened newspapers; they were regular guests on TV.

But the eccentric team at Charlie Hebdo stubbornly stood its ground when it started to receive threats after publishing the Muhammad cartoons. In 2011, after another devastating front page headlined “Charia Hebdo,” the newspaper’s offices were destroyed in an arson attack. The journalists moved over temporarily to Libération, then to new offices. Unbowed, however, they did not change a thing, giving equal treatment to rabbis, priests, imams, sports figures and politicians.

“It may sound a bit pompous, but I’d rather die standing than live on my knees,” the newspaper’s editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, who was known as Charb, told Le Monde two years ago. On Wednesday, he died standing.

In a moving tribute on French TV, Robert Badinter, a former justice minister who led the fight to abolish the death penalty in 1981, said that these cartoonists, our beloved bad boys, were “true heroes” because they had been “soldiers of freedom.”

This is why the French are in shock. This is not blind terrorism. It is terrorism targeted at the heart of the French identity: Mohammed Merah targeted Jewish schools and Muslim immigrants who had joined the French Army because they were symbols of our diversity. The attackers on Wednesday targeted Charlie Hebdo because it is a symbol of our freedom.

So what should we do, torn between “moderate Islam” and “radical Islam”? How should we deal with Islam? The attack on Charlie Hebdo “is not only a crime, it is a trap,” warned Mr. Badinter. The trap, of course, is to confuse the two. Just like Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, who immediately stoked fears of “Islamic fundamentalism” as if it applied to the whole French Muslim community, and as if it were the principal issue.

We are obsessed with the rise of Islam. Like Mr. Houellebecq, French intellectuals can debate Islam and secularism for hours. “Le Suicide Français” (The French Suicide) — a book by Éric Zemmour, a political essayist whose views have been compared to those of Ms. Le Pen — has topped the best-seller list.

Yet we have been unable to have a rational national conversation about integrating Islam into our core values. If there is a lesson to learn from Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses,” from the murder in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh, from the saga of the Muhammad cartoons and from the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s “soldiers of freedom,” it is that radical Islam can only be fought with the support of moderate Islam.

It is a long battle. But we are well- equipped for it, as long as we hold firm to our values. Unbowed. Without taboos. Just like Charlie Hebdo.

[URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/opinion/sylvia-kauffmann-charlie-hebdo-and-the-assault-on-french-identity.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage® io]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/opinion/sylvia-kauffmann-charlie-hebdo-and-the-assault-on-french-identity.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage®io [/URL] n=Marginalia&pgtype=article

posted January 14, 2015 05:02 PM            

I am not your regular french intellectual who has read all the big philosopher of the enlightenment, and neither the writers before nor those after in fact. I just heard a radio program though that explained why voltaire (1694-1778) was already asking the religious to give space for the non believer, asking THEM to be tolerant. he did so with the catolics at a time when it could send you in jail to not be considered pious enough.

in 1905, our republic voted a law to separate religion from the state, creating a laic state. meaning you can obviously follow your religion, but it is a private matter. and before to be a believer of any religion, you are a Citizen. being a Citizen is above your religious ideas and is devoid of religious content. it is on this basis that french citizens are equals. it was a law originally created to keep away the catolic Church from getting too involved with the republic and the french politics.

therefore France has a tradition of "laicité" after suffering from relgious war for centuries (esp between catolics and protestants). but without those wars, the catolic Church had been essential in building France throughout centuries. it was very linked with the popes during the middle ages. France was considered the eldest "daughter" of the catolic Church, defending the pope for example. but with enlightenment, with voltaire, and later the revolution, France got a more rpublican tradition, until it got rid of any religion all together. for example for french people, pledging on the bible in court or like your president when taking office is just impossible to consider.

anyway, some old hippies of the 60's like the cartoonists who got killed last week ( VERY famous, and old, 2 of them around 80) carried this idea of laicity.

they used to portray every religious, or bigots, every politicians, everyone in fact. but it has always been tolerated because of our tradition of freedom of speech. now some radical muslim don't tolerate the caricature of Mahomet. too bad, cause the cartoonists didn't want to be told what they could and couldn't draw.
some association or religious groups took charlie hebdo to courts when it republished cartoons of Mahomet initially published in danemark. charlie hebdo wanted to show support to this newspaper and maintained those danish cartoons of Mahomet. then they did some more, just to show they could. and our justice gave them the right to do so, because according to the french court, charlie hebdo used to publish cartoons taking the **** of all the religions, not just islam, and therefore couldn't be considered to call for religious hatred, besides, it is obvious that charlie hebdo is in favor of absolutely no religion, just laicité, and not war but fun.

more than 4 million people went in the street on january 11th. today 3 million copies were sold when normally I think it is around 60 000.

it is funny to think that the 2 killers died in a printing house outside of paris.

what is sure, it's that if they wanted to stop french people to caricature islam they got it wrong. they managed to put all the people not just the racists against radical islam. the racists obviously were already against it. now it is everyone. the big challenge is to avoid to lump together moderate and radicals. some like marine lepn with her party, the front national, are very happy, they didn't like charlie (charlie didnt' like them either) and they hate muslims and foreigners.

posted January 14, 2015 07:02 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by AcousticGod:
I've encountered a few people that seem to think that if only people weren't religious we wouldn't have these problems. I tend to think that's an over-simplification of the issue, and it frustrates me.

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you are right, and I do think that atheism can be as fundamentalist as religion. but we've had our share of religion in France. europe has been Under the rule of Church for almost a thousand year.

in France, religion is everywhere. every village has its catolic Church.

you are likely to have a Church tower in sight if you are walking in the countryside.

we are 60 millions and 5 millions are muslims and 500 000 jewish. France is home of the largest muslim and jewish comunity in europe.

during the debate for the gay wedding, the catolic fondamentalists demonstrated in masses.

this is to say that France is tolerant with religion, however the mainstream of french citizens, although baptised because catolic by tradition (like me) , many do not consider belonging in one religion. just many consider themselves atheist.

personnally I am spiritual but I do not think the catolic Church is my guide within spirituality. I make my own choice, and I believe.

the point is that in France religion is a personal choice that can impose itself only to those who consent it. and to garantee that, we have a republic that keeps away the religious from the "res" (thing) "publica" (common). so everyone is equal. and anyone can believe and pray his own god at home or in their Church.

it does create a new situation where people have to find new reasons to uphold love, fraternity, and compassion. but believing that being a member of a Church is guarantee of that is an illusion too. although you say being "religious", not bein from a religion...

I prefer to say spiritual, to avoid the reference to established religions that do not correspond to my nature.

posted January 16, 2015 06:33 PM            

http://www.salon.com/2015/ 01/16/5_times_the_right_out_over_blasphemous_depictions_of_christianity_partner/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Meanwhile the "free speech" rhetoric looks like a sham in many ways. Tho he forced his way into the Solidarity photo op, Netanyahu and Israel are in a lather about a Gerald Scarfe cartoon that criticizes Israel's gaza strategy/treatment and deciding "what action to take" against his publishing source in England

posted January 17, 2015 07:51 PM            

in the article, it says that france's action in mali was neo colonial, but as far as I know, it was asked by the mali's people because their army was overwhelmed by jihadists. those jihadists had benefited from the weapons of lybia, after the fall of gadaffi. they were marching on the capital. I agree that neo colonialism is still present, but it doesn't need to be with weapons nowadays, economic neo colonialism is enough. however in this instance, France just answered the calls of the mali's population.

further in the article, it is mentioned in a fox news type of way, that France had ended free speech a little while ago by banning pro palestinian demonstrations. well it is a bit far fetched to say that because only one demonstration was banned. in a previous demonstration in the same neighboorhood some demonstrators had pretended to kill jews with fake kalachnikovs. it is not mentioned in the article.
besides, only this demonstration on july 19th was banned, but this article is not correct when it says démonstrations, with an S, as if many had been banned.

I agree that it would be wrong to adopt a patriot act if it means cultivating fear, though some aproppriate measure may be needed and to a certain extent some measures will inevitably be taken, just to reassure the most scared. but I also hope the events of last week will help discuss things through.

it has been a tremendous shock here because those guys killed in charlie hebdo were famous, and they were those in favor of tolerance toward moderate islam. they took the **** of radical of all kinds, and of all religions.

everyone has realised some issued had been buried Under the carpet for too long. and there will be those who want more restrictions, and more discrimination towards muslims of France (10 %) but there is also a big chunk of moderate french citizens who appreciated the work of the cartoonists and want to be faithful to their memory, therefore cultivate republican tolerance for moderate muslims.
France will also have to discuss about religion, where they stand, and explain to the new comers our laic tradition.

those are the real debates that have already taken place and that will probably change our country more than a patriot act.

it is important to remember that France has a colonial history mainly in africa, and many people of those former colonies have come to live in France.

things will evolve for the best I think since France tradition rose on january 11th, with 4 millions french (out of 60) marched to comermorate the values of charlie hebdo's killed cartoonists, and to claim their attachment to laicité.

posted January 24, 2015 04:34 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Catalina:
Well I will be happy if those articles are wrong! I have no doubt that the millions of French people marching meant it. However I feel many of the leaders in the photo were there for more cynical reasons.

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I agree, sadly

posted January 31, 2015 07:13 PM            

just having a look back and....

still can't believe this happened !

all we'll be fine in the end, that's what I learned from this place.........

thanks randall for this place

posted February 08, 2015 12:38 PM            

My prayer is that every French Citizen must re-look the excessive freedom of speech given to the citizens, especially immigrants.

Why should anyone who hates the RIGHT of Charlie Hebdo to draw what they want ever be permitted to enter France?

Can a Jew permit anti-Semitism to be a valid as per Freedom of Expression

Can any Democrat permit a political party that vows to end democracy to stand for elections?

Likewise, no sane Human should permit 10th Century hearsay teachings of radical Islamism in the name of Freedom of Expression. Islam and Islamism are polar opposites. Even the peaceful Islam and moderate Islam has to be re-interpreted to keep pace with the 21st Century.

It is the duty of every Frenchman and European [whose country has a sizable Muslim population] to learn about the difference between moderate Islam and Radical Islamism, to make banning Radical Islamism a practical reality.

Example of Moderate Islam = King Abdullah of Jordan. He is leading the air strikes on IS Caliphate because they are anti-Human. Islam came to help the little guy and the oppressed slaves, not to enslave through terror.

Radical Islamism is the ultimate insult to the Human Race. I know this for I have studied it in depth. It is evil. Everyone who does not accept them are to be eliminated without trial, that is what they think and follow as seen in IS Caliphate.