Gun attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo kills 11

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Tiger

So people hammered one group so we could hammer another. Logical or eye for an eye?

The point is no one cowed out of fear of the Catholics or hung out this mythical "respect their religion" to stop magazines and satirists from hammering them.

Yet somehow it's happening now for a different religion.

What it makes me think is that the "respect for religion" argument is a load of ####.

[polak]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Let's face it. Islam as a whole is not ready for the type of satire directed at christianity or judism. Why? A huge portion of muslim population of the world don't live in western liberal democracies, where the population is used to religion being pushed to the sidelines and general free thinking and criticism is a part of every day life. Until that happens, which could take a long, long time, its always going to be a hot issue.

I doubt it ever happens. Most of the population doesn't want it to happen.

We need to stop assuming that everyone wants to be in the same boat as us. All we can do is hope that we can facilitate an option to leave that place for those that want too. Honestly, in my ideal world (and maybe this is offensive, I don't know) we would practice almost complete isolation with the countries in the middle east that refuse to adhere to 100% seperation of church and state. We will never be on the same page or able to understand how the other side justifies what they are doing. Hearing about the religious antics just angers us and breeds hate and fear. All I would like to see in terms of western intervention is somehow ensuring the freedom to leave these countries for those that want to.

Obviously that won't do anything to fight terrorism (besides maybe pacifying the groups that are against western intervention) but I don't think the interaction of our two very different worlds produces anything but negative results.

All of this is obviously uninformed opinion.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fighting Banana Slug

Firstly, I never once used the work coward. I don't know where that is coming from. Holier than thou? I am expressing my point of view and that is about it. I feel strongly about freedom of speech, and I think I have been entirely consistent with that view on this and many other subjects.

We are all targets because limitations on free speech affect everyone. We are having an exchange of ideas now that is likely not possible if those radicals have their way. Offensive and harmful are two different things. There are certainly limits to freedom of speech, causing harm is certainly one of them. Causing offense is not.

To be clear, this is not the same as being at risk of being shot or blown up, or living in fear of being shot or blown up, which is really what I think we are talking about here. So is your solution is not to print? Do you really think that solves anything? I think not.
Reprinting should start the dialogue, not end it.

Sorry, I was quoting you, but directing that part at the myriad of social media posts calling the western press cowards. Should've been more specific.

As for freedom of speech, yes it should be protected. I don't see the need for reprinting that to uphold it. Let's ignore religion. Let's say a woman is raped, and a newspaper prints a story about how the woman was a slut and asked for it. Feminists barge in and shoot a bunch of people at the newspaper. Should we reprint the story?

[Flamenspiel]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I am sure it suits the extremists and terrorists just fine to increase publication. They want to bring the fight to as many fronts as possible. I see their attacks, including the one on Charlie Hebdo, less as a silencing tactic and more of an invitation to escalate. Increasing publication just feeds into that.

The best response is for everyone to go about their business like they did a week ago. If people/media were not going to publish the images on January 6th because they are in bad taste, then they shouldn't today just out of spite. Changing our behavior at all gives them power.

The media was not publishing because they were afraid of the consequences, bad taste is not a decision point for media. It could be physical fear, it could be for the protection of their employees in the middle east, or it could just be fear of the commercial implications.

Some of the international news organizations even admitted that prior to the killings in Paris, it was thought that a local paper like Charlie Hebdo was safe because they did not have a mideast bureau and had no interests or employees to protect.

The fact is that the status quo was a change in behavior(a censored press), and they did have all the power. The idea is to change that and get back to discussing and writting about ideas, rather then killing for them. So its an escalation towards a free press, besides that the new cover is completely benign, a very positive message.

[Igottago]

Originally Posted by polak

I doubt it ever happens. Most of the population doesn't want it to happen.

We need to stop assuming that everyone wants to be in the same boat as us. All we can do is hope that we can facilitate an option to leave that place for those that want too. Honestly, in my ideal world (and maybe this is offensive, I don't know) we would practice almost complete isolation with the countries in the middle east that refuse to adhere to 100% seperation of church and state. We will never be on the same page or able to understand how the other side justifies what they are doing. Hearing about the religious antics just angers us and breeds hate and fear. All I would like to see in terms of western intervention is somehow ensuring the freedom to leave these countries for those that want to.

Obviously that won't do anything to fight terrorism (besides maybe pacifying the groups that are against western intervention) but I don't think the interaction of our two very different worlds produces anything but negative results.

All of this is obviously uninformed opinion.

The people that don't want it to happen are the people that are using their religious ideology as a means to cling to power. The Arab spring is an example that there is a thirst for freedom.

No one will ever live in complete isolation, that's just not reality. And its never been western policy to simply leave those parts of the world alone.

[Tiger]

Originally Posted by nik-

The point is no one cowed out of fear of the Catholics or hung out this mythical "respect their religion" to stop magazines and satirists from hammering them.

Yet somehow it's happening now for a different religion.

What it makes me think is that the "respect for religion" argument is a load of ####.

So I guess what you're saying is we didn't learn from past mistakes, so we should learn from present mistakes, therefore, we should do the same thing in the future and wonder why nothing changes.]

I'm not saying don't hammer religion, government, etc. I'm saying it can be done productively without offending large masses of people.

[Fighting Banana Slug]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Sorry, I was quoting you, but directing that part at the myriad of social media posts calling the western press cowards. Should've been more specific.

As for freedom of speech, yes it should be protected. I don't see the need for reprinting that to uphold it. Let's ignore religion. Let's say a woman is raped, and a newspaper prints a story about how the woman was a slut and asked for it. Feminists barge in and shoot a bunch of people at the newspaper. Should we reprint the story?

Short answer: yes.
Firstly, the premise of the original story should be open to criticism and debate. Secondly, no matter how you feel about the provocation in the original story, the feminists should be held accountable for their action.

I don't mean to sound glib in all of this. These are tough questions, but I honestly think we make a mistake by avoiding the issue under the cloak of "respect" of the religion or ideology. It is really important to have an open debate.

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by Igottago

While I do think its very important, maybe more important than ever, to satirize religion, and Islam in particular, I also question the motives of some of the people beating the freedom of speech drum. I think some people are using it as an opportunity to basically pile on a group of people and ethnicties they don't really like. Its becoming a bit of a cover for opportunistic bigotry.

Let's face it. Islam as a whole is not ready for the type of satire directed at christianity or judism. Why? A huge portion of muslim population of the world don't live in western liberal democracies, where the population is used to religion being pushed to the sidelines and general free thinking and criticism is a part of every day life. Until that happens, which could take a long, long time, its always going to be a hot issue. And there are a whole series of political and cultural issues that come into play with allowing that to take place.

The very idea that the religion is open to criticism just isn't true in parts of the world. So the options are
a) be as inflamatory as possible and hope they don't get angry and just "get it", while at the same time irritating a lot of people that aren't extremist
b) be a bit more diplomatic and senstive while espousing the values of democracy and free thought, and hope that in time, those values become a larger part of the societies that are the biggest offenders of religous extremism.

I think some people on both sides of the issue want nothing more than open hostility at all costs, they are not open to a real solution. Those are the voices that need to be drowned out by people of reason.

And I actually think the latest Charlie Hebdo cartoon does a great job of tackling the sensitivity and complexity of the issue. Its a defense of free speech, a satire of Islam, and displays some level of sensitivity at the same time.

The problem with this thinking is that quite a few of the terrorists are born and raised in liberal thinking democracies. The fact is these people are raised in western liberal democracies with institutions that support critical thinking and they in turn decide to go ahead and commit acts of terror regardless.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Igottago

The people that don't want it to happen are the people that are using their religious ideology as a means to cling to power. The Arab spring is an example that there is a thirst for freedom.

No one will ever live in complete isolation, that's just not reality. And its never been western policy to simply leave those parts of the world alone.

I dunno. It turned out that many of the participants in the Arab spring actually just ended up trying to install fundamentalist governments.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Igottago

The people that don't want it to happen are the people that are using their religious ideology as a means to cling to power. The Arab spring is an example that there is a thirst for freedom.

No one will ever live in complete isolation, that's just not reality. And its never been western policy to simply leave those parts of the world alone.

Hell, it's not just leaving them alone, it's actively and stubbornly undermining free elections, democracy and secular thought in favour of hardline despotism.

Just look at the lengths western society will go to recently:

A western nation has militarily occupied an arab muslim nation for over a decade.

It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to not acknowledge that and incorporate that into an understanding of 'why do they do this'.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Tiger

So I guess what you're saying is we didn't learn from past mistakes, so we should learn from present mistakes, therefore, we should do the same thing in the future and wonder why nothing changes.]

I'm not saying don't hammer religion, government, etc. I'm saying it can be done productively without offending large masses of people.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying "respect the religion" didn't come up when it was Catholics being hammered because no one was afraid of them. Now that there's fear of violence, all of a sudden "respect" comes out of the woodwork, making it a load of bull####.

Every religion should be treated the same in people's willingness to mock their stupidity. Claiming you shouldn't do it out of respect for the religion isn't about respect at all. It's about fear of reprisal which makes it a hypocritical response and therefore unworthy of the respect it demands.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Hell, it's not just leaving them alone, it's actively and stubbornly undermining free elections, democracy and secular thought in favour of hardline despotism.

Just look at the lengths western society will go to recently:

A western nation has militarily occupied an arab muslim nation for over a decade.

It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to not acknowledge that and incorporate that into an understanding of 'why do they do this'.

It's not that simple. Qutbism, the root of modern terrorism, exists whether we're on their soil or not. Western presence is the great current excuse. If "we" left, it would just be something else.

[fulham]

Originally Posted by blankall

I dunno. It turned out that many of the participants in the Arab spring actually just ended up trying to install fundamentalist governments.

This exactly, We were naive in thinking that the Muslim World wanted our freedoms, equality and liberal democratic values, We cheered as dictators got toppled one by one, only for them to replaced by more radical islamic leaders. Egypt voted in a hardline Islamic Party, that has been deemed a terrorist group by many other islamic countries. Mubarak was hated in Egypt for being too liberal in his relationship's with the west and Israel.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fighting Banana Slug

Short answer: yes.
Firstly, the premise of the original story should be open to criticism and debate. Secondly, no matter how you feel about the provocation in the original story, the feminists should be held accountable for their action.

I don't mean to sound glib in all of this. These are tough questions, but I honestly think we make a mistake by avoiding the issue under the cloak of "respect" of the religion or ideology. It is really important to have an open debate.

No one is saying they shouldn't be held accountable. That's not the issue I'm discussing.

Whether or not to print an offensive item to prove a point is the issue. Mainstream press typical steers clear from offensive items as a rule. They aren't changing because of this

[gargamel]

Originally Posted by nik-

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying "respect the religion" didn't come up when it was Catholics being hammered because no one was afraid of them. Now that there's fear of violence, all of a sudden "respect" comes out of the woodwork, making it a load of bull####.

Every religion should be treated the same in people's willingness to mock their stupidity. Claiming you shouldn't do it out of respect for the religion isn't about respect at all. It's about fear of reprisal which makes it a hypocritical response and therefore unworthy of the respect it demands.

It's not just that. Liberals (myself included) have always been more comfortable questioning and/or mocking the religion of the majority than the religion of a group of people that is already marginalized in our Western societies.

To some extent, I think that's a good thing, but no belief system should be above criticism or even ridicule as long as we're careful to target the belief rather than the people who believe it.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by nik-

It's not that simple. Qutbism, the root of modern terrorism, exists whether we're on their soil or not. Western presence is the great current excuse. If "we" left, it would just be something else.

But do we think that decades of interference in the muslim world deters or promotes the idea of the corrupt west?

Does invading a country help or hurt the cause?

Well, we know the answer:

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

"Our involvement in Iraq, for want of a better word, radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam," she said, before immediately correcting herself by adding "not a whole generation, a few among a generation".

The ex-MI5 chief said she shared her concerns that the Iraq invasion would increase the UK's exposure to terrorism with the then home secretary David Blunkett, but did not "recall" discussing the matter with Prime Minister Tony Blair.

MI5 did not "foresee the degree to which British citizens would become involved" in terrorist activity after 2004, she admitted.

"What Iraq did was produce fresh impetus on people prepared to engage in terrorism," she said, adding that she could produce evidence to back this up.

"The Iraq war heightened the extremist view that the West was trying to bring down Islam. We gave Bin Laden his jihad."

The latest terrorism assessment paints a portrait of a global war in which Iraq is less the central front of actual combat than a unifying battle cry for disparate extremist groups and even individuals. "It is just those kinetic actions that lead to the radicalization of others," a senior counterterrorism official said earlier this summer. "Surgical strikes? Nothing is surgical about military operations. They tend to have impacts, affects."

That description contrasts with Bush's emphasis this month on offensive military action in Iraq and elsewhere as the United States' principal road to victory in the global war.

"Many Americans . . . ask the same question five years after 9/11," he said in a speech in Atlanta earlier this month. "The answer is yes. America is safer. We are safer because we have taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we are on the offensive against our enemies overseas. We're safer because of the skill and sacrifice of the brave Americans who defend our people."

But "a really big hole" in the U.S. strategy, a second counterterrorism official said, "is that we focus on the terrorists and very little on how they are created. If you looked at all the resources of the U.S. government, we spent 85, 90 percent on current terrorists, not on how people are radicalized."

More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day. As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically — from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009. Further, over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from the local region threatened by foreign troops, which is why 90 percent of suicide attackers in Afghanistan are Afghans.

Israelis have their own narrative about terrorism, which holds that Arab fanatics seek to destroy the Jewish state because of what it is, not what it does. But since Israel withdrew its army from Lebanon in May 2000, there has not been a single Lebanese suicide attack. Similarly, since Israel withdrew from Gaza and large parts of the West Bank, Palestinian suicide attacks are down over 90 percent.

Some have disputed the causal link between foreign occupation and suicide terrorism, pointing out that some occupations by foreign powers have not resulted in suicide bombings — for example, critics often cite post-World War II Japan and Germany. Our research provides sufficient evidence to address these criticisms by outlining the two factors that determine the likelihood of suicide terrorism being employed against an occupying force.

The first factor is social distance between the occupier and occupied. The wider the social distance, the more the occupied community may fear losing its way of life. Although other differences may matter, research shows that resistance to occupations is especially likely to escalate to suicide terrorism when there is a difference between the predominant religion of the occupier and the predominant religion of the occupied.

Religious difference matters not because some religions are predisposed to suicide attacks. Indeed, there are religious differences even in purely secular suicide attack campaigns, such as the LTTE (Hindu) against the Sinhalese (Buddhists).

It's really easy, and painfully idiotic, to label a billion people as a 'community' that is violent. It's harder to take responsibility for one's own actions that contribute to radicalization.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

But do we think that decades of interference in the muslim world deters or promotes the idea of the corrupt west?

Does invading a country help or hurt the cause?

Well, we know the answer:









It's really easy, and painfully idiotic, to label a billion people as a 'community' that is violent. It's harder to take responsibility for one's own actions that contribute to radicalization.

Oh don't get me wrong, it absolutely inflames the situation and hatreds. I'm just saying leaving isn't the cure. Even though I do think we should leave.

[Canuck-Hater]

I encourage everyone to listen to this. Its from last Sunday, they had professor Paul Rogers on CBC radio and he really added some context to the attacks in Paris.
http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/p...Ids=2647163312

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Flamenspiel

The media was not publishing because they were afraid of the consequences, bad taste is not a decision point for media. It could be physical fear, it could be for the protection of their employees in the middle east, or it could just be fear of the commercial implications.

Some of the international news organizations even admitted that prior to the killings in Paris, it was thought that a local paper like Charlie Hebdo was safe because they did not have a mideast bureau and had no interests or employees to protect.

The fact is that the status quo was a change in behavior(a censored press), and they did have all the power. The idea is to change that and get back to discussing and writting about ideas, rather then killing for them. So its an escalation towards a free press, besides that the new cover is completely benign, a very positive message.

Of course bad taste is a decision point for the media. It's exactly why most mainstream media sources refrain from printing material that would be considered offensive. Sure, there could be commercial implications that affect their decisions, but the same is true for Charlie Hebdo. If they weren't making money, I doubt they would have been as provocative as they were. And the new cover of Charlie Hebdo is completely irrelevant. NAMBLA could publish something with kittens in a basket, but it wouldn't make it worth distributing.

Don't confuse a censored press with one that is just self-moderated. Remember that freedom of speech also includes the freedom to not speak.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

But do we think that decades of interference in the muslim world deters or promotes the idea of the corrupt west?

Does invading a country help or hurt the cause?

Well, we know the answer:









It's really easy, and painfully idiotic, to label a billion people as a 'community' that is violent. It's harder to take responsibility for one's own actions that contribute to radicalization.

I question a lot of the research. There are terrorist attacks inside Israel because Israel built a physical barrier which prevents them.

There was a suicide attack in a Lebanon 2 days ago. 7 people died in a cafe. I really don't get how they can conclude that 90% of attacks are anti-american. Most occur in places like Yemen.

Syria is also by far the biggest mess, and western troops never set foot there.

Looks like some pretty selective research to me. Maybe all attacks against religious minorities line #####e Muslims are really attacks Americans? But of a stretch.