Yossarian wrote:

@Swirl, the Sacco cartoon isn't arguing that what these nutjobs did was right or even justifiable, but rather reminding us that we do, as a society, seem to value the freedom to offend Muslims more greatly than the freedom to offend other groups, and that this attack didn't happen in a vacuum. Of course people shouldn't be able to censor public speech just because they're offended by it, but ignoring the wider context surrounding the group that you're offending with your speech is at best insensitive.

Kow wrote:

Funny how people used to think globalisation was great because it seemed to be one way - all our nice ideas of free markets and coca cola were foisted on those who should have been grateful to get them. Now that it's clear it's a two way flow and we might be getting some of that foisting now, we're not too keen any more. Fact is the world is changing and we're going to have to think about our ideas, principles and how we look at that world, because it ain't going away any time soon.

Facewon wrote:

Very easy to think that our own reality, societal circumstances/norms are intractable brute facts that have always been thus.

Kow wrote:

Where are these Romany cartoons then?

Kow wrote:

It's actually very hard to really see that your world is an entirely subjective creation and its rules, fundamentals and pillars are in no way universal. It's easy to discuss but very difficult to genuinely see without spending a lot of time in other places.

Charlie Hebdo, they print so many insulting cartoons about Muslim extremists, you know, geez, they just kept at it, you know…but that wasn’t the only people they insulted, they insulted everybody. The Pope, the President of the country, everybody! They were merciless, to everybody. It was a really funny magazine. They just didn’t hold back towards anybody. You know, they didn’t let anybody off the hook, which was good.

I read everywhere that Charlie Hebdo was a racist journal, that they had it coming.
1. It was not. NO ONE, I repeat literally NO ONE in France ever considered Charlie Hebdo as racist. We might have considered the drawings tasteless, but NOT racists. For the very simple reason that WE FUCKING KNOW OUR POLITICS. So, when you see the covers of the journal out of context and without understanding french, you’re seeing maybe 10% of what there’s to see.

(W)e do not conflate religion and race. We are the country of Voltaire and Diderot: religion is fair game. Atheists can point out its ridicules, and believers have to learn to take a joke and a pun. They are welcome to drown us in return with sermons about the superficiality of our materialistic, hedonistic lifestyles. I like it that way. Of course, the day when everybody confuses “Arab” with “Muslim” and “Muslim” with “fundamentalist”, then any criticism of the latter will backfire on the former. That is why we must keep the distinctions clear.  (…)
Few people even know today that there was a period, beginning in the mid-ninetieth century to the mid-twentieth century, called the Nadha (Rebirth, or Renaissance), which saw a wide-ranging process of secularisation from Morocco to Turkey. Few people care to remember that, in the 1950s and 60s, women wearing the veil were a small minority in Tunis, Algiers and even Cairo. This does not mean that they were not Muslims, mind you. Just as in the West, where a lot of Christian girls started having sex before marriage or taking the pill, principles were evolving, with some inevitable tensions. (…)

It is on the ashes of the Nadha that fundamentalism as we know it emerged. I say “emerged”, because we should not be fooled by the fundamentalists who claim to restore Islam in its original purity. The ideology they promote – literal, violent, legalistic, narrow-minded, other-worldly – is a radical novelty in the history of Islam. It is the dramatic perversion of a culture. (…)

(W)e are all aware of the fact that the attack on Charlie Hebdo will be exploited by the Far right, and that our government will use it as an opportunity to create a false unanimity within a deeply divided society. (…) We are all trying to find the narrow path – defending the Republic against the twin threats of fundamentalism and fascism (and fundamentalism is a form of fascism). But I still believe that the best way to do this is to fight for our Republican ideals. Equality is meaningless in times of austerity. Liberty is but hypocrisy when elements of the French population are being routinely discriminated. But fraternity is lost when religion trumps politics as the structuring principle of a society. Charlie Hebdo promoted equality, liberty and fraternity – they were part of the solution, not the problem.