Give them smart phones, cable tv, internet, sitcoms and McDonald's and THEY will change!!! This has been destroying cultures for decades now.
MESO-Rx
Anabolic Steroids
I'd Rather Die Standing Than Live on My Knees - Charlie Hebdo Pays the Price for Free Speech
- Thread starter CensoredBoardsSuck
- Start date
Give them smart phones, cable tv, internet, sitcoms and McDonald's and THEY will change!!! This has been destroying cultures for decades now.
O Beautiful, For Specious Guys...
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on America
February 20, 2015
The US media have had a fit of the vapors over Rudy Giuliani's suggestion that Barack Obama does not love America. As the Instapundit says, their reaction suggests that Giuliani hit a nerve.
For my own part, I am way beyond that. By the way, I'm growing rather weary of the cheap comparisons of Obama with Neville Chamberlain. The British Prime Minister got the biggest issue of the day wrong. But no one ever doubted that he loved his country. That's why, after his eviction from Downing Street, Churchill kept him on in his ministry as Lord President of the Council, and indeed made Chamberlain part of the five-man war cabinet and had him chair it during his frequent absences. When he died of cancer in October 1940, Churchill wept over his coffin.
So please don't insult Neville Chamberlain by comparing him to Obama. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, because conspiracies are generally a comforting illusion: the real problem with Obama is that the citizens of the global superpower twice elected him to office. Yet one way to look at the current "leader of the free world" is this: If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?
For example, he has spent most of this week hosting an international conference on something called "violent extremism". Whatever may be said of Munich, Chamberlain never hosted a three-day summit on "rearmament" in general whose entire purpose was to deny that "rearmament" and "Germany" were in any way connected. Yet that is exactly the message the United States government has just offered to the world - in between such eccentric side spectacles as Marie Harf, star of the hilarious new comedy Geopolitically Blonde, explaining her jobs-for-jihadis program, and the new hombre in charge of the planet's mightiest military machine having his woman felt up on camera by Joe Biden. Now there's a message to send to the misogynists of Burqastan about what happens when you let the missuses out of their body bags.
Here's John Kerry in The Wall Street Journal:
Wait a minute, "extremist violence"? How come the spell-check didn't catch that? Don't worry. The very next sentence is back on track:
By now you may be saying, "Oh, 'violent extremism', I get it. You mean..." Whoa, don't go there, girlfriend. "This is not true Islam," insists President Obama.
Roger Kimball observes:
But Obama has ambitions way beyond the Turks and Saudis. If the Islamic State isn't "true Islam", is the Taliban, our "partners for peace" in Aghanistan? Is "true Islam" the Iranian mullahs, our "partners for peace" in the Persian Gulf and beyond? How about the Houthi? They're our Iranian partners for peace's partners for peace in Yemen, and they were awfully sporting to let our diplomats flee without beheading them.
"Violent extremism" may have nothing to do with Islam, yet Obama's summit on "violent extremism" was oddly preoccupied with Islam, to the extent of according it a special deference:
But hey, what's so odd about that? "Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding," says the President. You might think that Islam has been entirely irrelevant to "the fabric of our country" for its first two centuries, and you might further think that Islam, being self-segregating, tends not to weave itself into anybody's fabric but instead tends to unravel it - as it's doing in, say, Copenhagen, where 500 mourners turned up for the funeral of an ISIS-supporting Jew-hating anti-free-speech murderer.
But President Obama knows better than you. So he organized a summit dedicated to creating and promoting a self-invented phantom enemy. Conveniently enough, the main problem with "violent extremists" is that its principal victims are Muslims. No, no, I don't mean the thousands of Muslims being slaughtered, beheaded, burned alive, raped, sold into sex slavery, etc, etc, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, and so on. The Muslims most at risk are right here in America. Just ask Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson:
I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security on the basic Thatcherite principle that if you create a government bureaucracy in order to deal with a problem you'll never be rid of the problem. But I underestimated the creativity of our rulers: The DHS was set up because 19 Muslims flew planes into skyscrapers and killed thousands of people. Thirteen years later, the head of the DHS thinks his department's priority should be to "give voice to the plight of Muslims" who have the misfortune to live in America.
How about "the plight of Muslims" who live in Muslim countries? As I wrote in 2006 in the very prologue of the highly prescient America Alone:
The "plight" of Muslim communities in America and the west is that they enjoy freedoms they could never dream of back in Somalia or Syria or anywhere else - but that they value those freedoms less than they value the pre-eminence of Islam. Canadian reader Sam Williamson wrote to me with what I thought was an interesting insight into the millions of "moderate Muslims":
If you were a "moderate Muslim", what would you make of an extraordinary week in which the global superpower has piled up a mountain of preposterous, mutually contradictory official lies all designed to flatter you: Islam has been part of the fabric of America since the 18th century, and yet the plight of Muslims in this country and the discrimination they face has never been worse. We are at war with the mysterious shadowy Empire of Violentia-Extremistan, which is nothing to do with Islam, yet necessitates the saying of Muslim prayers - and Muslim prayers only - at official US government events.
On The Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday, I pointed out that the French Government estimates that some nine thousand "Frenchmen" have volunteered to fight for ISIS. That is approximately half the total western deployment in Afghanistan of around 18,000 troops from some four dozen countries. It is larger than any French military deployment in the last half-century. That 500-strong congregation of mourners for the Copenhagen killer may not be the largest funeral turnout in Denmark's history, but it's similarly impressive.
And yet none of that could be discussed in Washington, at a summit arising directly out of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter.
I have quoted before my old friend Theodore Dalrymple on the purposes of lies in totalitarian societies:
We are at war with a depraved enemy, but we cannot be allowed to assert our moral superiority even to head-choppers, rapists, slavers and immolators. Thus the priority of Barack ("Hey, how 'bout those Crusades?") Obama has been to undermine our sense of probity, and make us not merely equivalent to but worse than our enemies. That was the purpose of this last week of Official Lies.
http://www.steynonline.com/6820/o-beautiful-for-specious-guys
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on America
February 20, 2015
The US media have had a fit of the vapors over Rudy Giuliani's suggestion that Barack Obama does not love America. As the Instapundit says, their reaction suggests that Giuliani hit a nerve.
For my own part, I am way beyond that. By the way, I'm growing rather weary of the cheap comparisons of Obama with Neville Chamberlain. The British Prime Minister got the biggest issue of the day wrong. But no one ever doubted that he loved his country. That's why, after his eviction from Downing Street, Churchill kept him on in his ministry as Lord President of the Council, and indeed made Chamberlain part of the five-man war cabinet and had him chair it during his frequent absences. When he died of cancer in October 1940, Churchill wept over his coffin.
So please don't insult Neville Chamberlain by comparing him to Obama. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, because conspiracies are generally a comforting illusion: the real problem with Obama is that the citizens of the global superpower twice elected him to office. Yet one way to look at the current "leader of the free world" is this: If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?
For example, he has spent most of this week hosting an international conference on something called "violent extremism". Whatever may be said of Munich, Chamberlain never hosted a three-day summit on "rearmament" in general whose entire purpose was to deny that "rearmament" and "Germany" were in any way connected. Yet that is exactly the message the United States government has just offered to the world - in between such eccentric side spectacles as Marie Harf, star of the hilarious new comedy Geopolitically Blonde, explaining her jobs-for-jihadis program, and the new hombre in charge of the planet's mightiest military machine having his woman felt up on camera by Joe Biden. Now there's a message to send to the misogynists of Burqastan about what happens when you let the missuses out of their body bags.
Here's John Kerry in The Wall Street Journal:
The rise of violent extremism represents the pre-eminent challenge of the young 21st century...
A safer and more prosperous future requires us to recognize that violent extremism can't be justified by resorting to religion...
Violent extremism has claimed lives in every corner of the globe, and Muslim lives most of all...
This summit at the White House and State Department will expand the global conversation and, more important, adopt an action agenda that identifies, shares and utilizes best practices in preventing and countering violent extremism...
Put simply, we are building a global partnership against violent extremism.
A safer and more prosperous future requires us to recognize that violent extremism can't be justified by resorting to religion...
Violent extremism has claimed lives in every corner of the globe, and Muslim lives most of all...
This summit at the White House and State Department will expand the global conversation and, more important, adopt an action agenda that identifies, shares and utilizes best practices in preventing and countering violent extremism...
Put simply, we are building a global partnership against violent extremism.
Success requires showing the world the power of peaceful communities instead of extremist violence.
Wait a minute, "extremist violence"? How come the spell-check didn't catch that? Don't worry. The very next sentence is back on track:
Success requires offering a vision that is positive and proactive: a world with more concrete alternatives to the nihilistic worldview of violent extremists...
We have to devote ourselves not just to combating violent extremism, but to preventing it...
We've combated violent extremism before...
The 20th century was defined by the struggle to overcome depression, slavery, fascism and totalitarianism. Now it's our turn. The rise of violent extremism challenges every one of us...
We have to devote ourselves not just to combating violent extremism, but to preventing it...
We've combated violent extremism before...
The 20th century was defined by the struggle to overcome depression, slavery, fascism and totalitarianism. Now it's our turn. The rise of violent extremism challenges every one of us...
By now you may be saying, "Oh, 'violent extremism', I get it. You mean..." Whoa, don't go there, girlfriend. "This is not true Islam," insists President Obama.
Roger Kimball observes:
"ISIL is not 'Islamic.'" Really? Was the Ayatollah Khomeini "Islamic?" How about Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan: is he "Islamic"? A few years ago, Erdogan told the world that the phrase "moderate Islam" is "ugly" because "Islam is Islam." Democracy, he said, is just an express stop on the train whose destination is Islam...
The Saudis, the biggest and richest Sunni nation? They torture bloggers for "insulting Islam," stone adulteresses, maim thieves, and treat women like chattel. Do they represent Islam?
The Saudis, the biggest and richest Sunni nation? They torture bloggers for "insulting Islam," stone adulteresses, maim thieves, and treat women like chattel. Do they represent Islam?
But Obama has ambitions way beyond the Turks and Saudis. If the Islamic State isn't "true Islam", is the Taliban, our "partners for peace" in Aghanistan? Is "true Islam" the Iranian mullahs, our "partners for peace" in the Persian Gulf and beyond? How about the Houthi? They're our Iranian partners for peace's partners for peace in Yemen, and they were awfully sporting to let our diplomats flee without beheading them.
"Violent extremism" may have nothing to do with Islam, yet Obama's summit on "violent extremism" was oddly preoccupied with Islam, to the extent of according it a special deference:
A Muslim prayer was recited at the start of the second day of the White House summit on "Countering Violent Extremism," but no other religious text was presented during the portion of the event that was open to the press.
Imam Sheikh Sa'ad Musse Roble, president of the World Peace Organization in Minneapolis, Minn., recited a "verse from the Quran" following remarks by Obama administration officials and Democratic members of Congress.
Imam Sheikh Sa'ad Musse Roble, president of the World Peace Organization in Minneapolis, Minn., recited a "verse from the Quran" following remarks by Obama administration officials and Democratic members of Congress.
But hey, what's so odd about that? "Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding," says the President. You might think that Islam has been entirely irrelevant to "the fabric of our country" for its first two centuries, and you might further think that Islam, being self-segregating, tends not to weave itself into anybody's fabric but instead tends to unravel it - as it's doing in, say, Copenhagen, where 500 mourners turned up for the funeral of an ISIS-supporting Jew-hating anti-free-speech murderer.
But President Obama knows better than you. So he organized a summit dedicated to creating and promoting a self-invented phantom enemy. Conveniently enough, the main problem with "violent extremists" is that its principal victims are Muslims. No, no, I don't mean the thousands of Muslims being slaughtered, beheaded, burned alive, raped, sold into sex slavery, etc, etc, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, and so on. The Muslims most at risk are right here in America. Just ask Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson:
We in the administration and the government should give voice to the plight of Muslims living in this country and the discrimination that they face. And so I personally have committed to speak out about the situation that very often people in the Muslim community in this country face. The fact that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and the Islamic faith is one about peace and brotherhood.
I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security on the basic Thatcherite principle that if you create a government bureaucracy in order to deal with a problem you'll never be rid of the problem. But I underestimated the creativity of our rulers: The DHS was set up because 19 Muslims flew planes into skyscrapers and killed thousands of people. Thirteen years later, the head of the DHS thinks his department's priority should be to "give voice to the plight of Muslims" who have the misfortune to live in America.
How about "the plight of Muslims" who live in Muslim countries? As I wrote in 2006 in the very prologue of the highly prescient America Alone:
In the 2005 rankings of Freedom House's survey of personal liberty and democracy around the world, five of the eight countries with the lowest "freedom" score were Muslim. Of the 46 Muslim majority nations in the world, only three were free. Of the 16 nations in which Muslims form between 20 and 50 per cent of the population, only another three were ranked as free: Benin, Serbia and Montenegro, and Suriname. It will be interesting to follow France's fortunes as a fourth member of that group.
The "plight" of Muslim communities in America and the west is that they enjoy freedoms they could never dream of back in Somalia or Syria or anywhere else - but that they value those freedoms less than they value the pre-eminence of Islam. Canadian reader Sam Williamson wrote to me with what I thought was an interesting insight into the millions of "moderate Muslims":
Hello Mark:
Suppose the moderate shoe was in the other foot:
You are a moderate Christian and there is a radical bunch at the far end of the spectrum of the faith that causing violence, even in your new country. Your faith is growing worldwide in numbers. You see other faiths abandoning their beliefs, and even making laws about where they may practice. But your religion is more welcomed. They say it strengthens the country. It's in their constitution. Other countries are asking you to come.
You are a moderate Christian and there is a radical bunch at the far end of the spectrum of the faith that causing violence, even in your new country. Your faith is growing worldwide in numbers. You see other faiths abandoning their beliefs, and even making laws about where they may practice. But your religion is more welcomed. They say it strengthens the country. It's in their constitution. Other countries are asking you to come.
So you can't help but see your faith gaining influence. In some places no shopping on the Holy Day laws are being re-introduced. In some public schools they are allowing Mass to be said in the cafeteria during the day. Offensive comments about our Church, Saviour, and Saints are being condemned. And items from other religions are being hidden or removed so we don't have to see them. Many people, including their wise teachers, professors, and prominent people in the papers and television are helping getting rid of many customs that we do not support as Catholics. Why even the other day a leader in government told the Prime Minister that it was wrong not to allow us to say the rosary during the Citizenship Ceremony.
Sure, we will condemn that bombing and those extremists if asked. They don't represent my beliefs. But looking at the future I'm thinking my family, my children and grandchildren are going to do better in this country when it's all Christians, and those wrong beliefs have left, and the atheists driven out, even if it is accomplished with some fear and violence. After all, ours is the one true religion and our people will once again be great.
Sam Williamson
If you were a "moderate Muslim", what would you make of an extraordinary week in which the global superpower has piled up a mountain of preposterous, mutually contradictory official lies all designed to flatter you: Islam has been part of the fabric of America since the 18th century, and yet the plight of Muslims in this country and the discrimination they face has never been worse. We are at war with the mysterious shadowy Empire of Violentia-Extremistan, which is nothing to do with Islam, yet necessitates the saying of Muslim prayers - and Muslim prayers only - at official US government events.
On The Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday, I pointed out that the French Government estimates that some nine thousand "Frenchmen" have volunteered to fight for ISIS. That is approximately half the total western deployment in Afghanistan of around 18,000 troops from some four dozen countries. It is larger than any French military deployment in the last half-century. That 500-strong congregation of mourners for the Copenhagen killer may not be the largest funeral turnout in Denmark's history, but it's similarly impressive.
And yet none of that could be discussed in Washington, at a summit arising directly out of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter.
I have quoted before my old friend Theodore Dalrymple on the purposes of lies in totalitarian societies:
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
We are at war with a depraved enemy, but we cannot be allowed to assert our moral superiority even to head-choppers, rapists, slavers and immolators. Thus the priority of Barack ("Hey, how 'bout those Crusades?") Obama has been to undermine our sense of probity, and make us not merely equivalent to but worse than our enemies. That was the purpose of this last week of Official Lies.
http://www.steynonline.com/6820/o-beautiful-for-specious-guys
Charlie Hebdo memorial vandalised in Paris four times in two weeks
A shrine in memory of 17 people killed in terrorist attacks in Paris last month is vandalised
People stand on the Place de la Republique in Paris which has become makeshift memorial for the 17 victims of the terror attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
By David Chazan, Paris
7:03PM GMT 22 Feb 2015
A shrine in memory of the 17 people killed in attacks by three Islamist gunmen in Paris last month has been vandalised, it emerged on Sunday.
It is the fourth time the makeshift memorial, consisting of flowers, notes and photographs, has been damaged in just two weeks, said Sabrina Deliry, head of a group called “17 Never Again”, which created the shrine in Place de la République in central Paris.
“We’re sickened and disgusted,” Ms Deliry said after finding the flowers and messages of peace kicked, torn and scattered.
“It’s not the wind or the rain that did it as even objects and messages that were covered have been vandalised,” she said.
“When this happened before, we repaired the damage without saying anything, but this is too much.”
Rémy Vialeret, another member of the group, which cleans the shrine regularly, lights candles there and covers handwritten messages in plastic, said previous attacks had caused less damage.
“This time, they wrecked everything,” Mr Vialeret said, explaining that wreaths, messages and drawings had been ripped up. He said the group had filed a police complaint.
The shrine became a place for Parisians and visitors to remember and mourn the dead. Passers-by often stop and read the notes.
It was set up in the days following the shootings at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket.
A policewoman was also killed in the street near a Jewish school.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...dalised-in-Paris-four-times-in-two-weeks.html
A shrine in memory of 17 people killed in terrorist attacks in Paris last month is vandalised
People stand on the Place de la Republique in Paris which has become makeshift memorial for the 17 victims of the terror attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
By David Chazan, Paris
7:03PM GMT 22 Feb 2015
A shrine in memory of the 17 people killed in attacks by three Islamist gunmen in Paris last month has been vandalised, it emerged on Sunday.
It is the fourth time the makeshift memorial, consisting of flowers, notes and photographs, has been damaged in just two weeks, said Sabrina Deliry, head of a group called “17 Never Again”, which created the shrine in Place de la République in central Paris.
“We’re sickened and disgusted,” Ms Deliry said after finding the flowers and messages of peace kicked, torn and scattered.
“It’s not the wind or the rain that did it as even objects and messages that were covered have been vandalised,” she said.
“When this happened before, we repaired the damage without saying anything, but this is too much.”
Rémy Vialeret, another member of the group, which cleans the shrine regularly, lights candles there and covers handwritten messages in plastic, said previous attacks had caused less damage.
“This time, they wrecked everything,” Mr Vialeret said, explaining that wreaths, messages and drawings had been ripped up. He said the group had filed a police complaint.
The shrine became a place for Parisians and visitors to remember and mourn the dead. Passers-by often stop and read the notes.
It was set up in the days following the shootings at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket.
A policewoman was also killed in the street near a Jewish school.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...dalised-in-Paris-four-times-in-two-weeks.html
WSJ columnist says ‘I’m almost grateful’ for attack on kosher supermarket that killed four
Middle East
Philip Weiss on March 5, 2015 37 Comments
Bret Stephens
Bret Stephens, the Wall Street Journal columnist, says he was “almost grateful” for the attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris in January in which four Jews were killed because it demonstrated that Europe has a problem with anti-Semitism.
Now with the attack on the kosher supermarket, I think [the anti-Semitism is] at last out in the open, and in that sense I’m almost grateful that this happened, that at last I think Europe is coming to recognize that it has a real problem with anti-Semitism that can’t be denied or can’t be passed off as a function of a reaction to Israeli policy.
Stephens, a neoconservative who is also deputy editorial page editor of the Journal, said the attacks on the supermarket and the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo proved that the rightwing understanding of terrorism is right: it comes out of a “clash of civilizations,” because Arab and Muslim societies have fundamental differences with the west on such core values as freedom of speech. The attacks disproved the leftwing view of radical Islamism: that these attacks grow out of western policies in the Middle East, from support for Israel to the invasion of Iraq.
Stephens makes his comments at minute 36 of this video broadcast on C-Span last weekend from a panel on the French terrorist attacks http://www.frenchamerican.org/events/qui-est-charlieat the French-American Foundation in New York (which http://www.frenchamerican.org/events/qui-est-charlieHere is the entirety of his analysis of the January 9 attack on the kosher supermarket, in which Muslim extremist Amedy Coulibaly killed four Jewish hostages before he was killed by police:
The attack on the kosher supermarket or the kosher grocery I think also ought to be an occasion for a certain amount of clarity. I started covering the Middle East when I was based in Brussels for the Wall Street Journal in the late 1990’s and early part of the last decade. And even then and especially after the outbreak of the so-called second intifada in the fall of 2000, I sensed that there was a great deal of anti-Semitism on European streets and it was anti-Semitism coming in both a kind of vulgar and high-tone variety, the vulgar variety which is the sort you would encounter if you walk through my largely Muslim neighborhood in downtown Brussels towards the canal but also a high-toned variety which typically went by the anti-Zionist catchphrases, but anti-Zionist catchphrases that had a weird reflection in traditional anti-Semitic tropes. Just to give you an example of what I mean, I’ll never forget shortly after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, The Economist had an editorial — one of their leaders, and the Economist is a serious magazine, maybe the best magazine in the world — there was a line that said Israelis are a superior people — I’m not sure if I’m quoting this exactly but I’m getting the spirit of it largely right– the Israelis are a superior people, their talents are above the ordinary, but they must curb their greed for other people’s land. And I thought, Boy, if that’s not an antisemitic trope: those clever Jews, superior, but greedy.
There was a great deal of that. It was very hard to sit in Brussels and have dinner time conversations with the class of commissioners and foreign policy people in Brussels and not get a great deal of this. So now with the attack on the kosher supermarket, I think it’s at last out in the open. and in that sense I’m almost grateful that this happened, that at last I think Europe is coming to recognize that it has a real problem with anti-Semitism that can’t be denied or can’t be passed off as a function of a reaction to Israeli policy.
Stephens’s comments are reminiscent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying in 2008 that the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. had been good for Israel. “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” he said, because these events “swung American public opinion.”
I recommend the entire conversation at the French-American Foundation. Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde and an opinion writer for The International New York Times, is fascinating. She says that French Jews were shocked by Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for them to move to Israel and that it was a “positive” sign that Jewish organizations at last broke with Israeli policy and rebuked Netanyahu.
Watching this panel on C-SPAN, I found support for my belief that Israeli actions are driving the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. If classical anti-Semitism has an implacable Christian religious character, if 19th and 20th century anti-Semitism had a sociological-reactionary character that was also implacable and bigoted, this anti-Semitism is focused on Israeli actions. No prejudice is justifiable, and anti-Zionists must be sure to distinguish between criticizing the Jewish state and criticizing Jews. But as Kauffmann makes clear, the identification by Jewish organizations of all Jews with support for Israeli actions is dangerous.
Thanks to Adam Horowitz for Netanyahu point.
Middle East
Philip Weiss on March 5, 2015 37 Comments
Bret Stephens
Bret Stephens, the Wall Street Journal columnist, says he was “almost grateful” for the attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris in January in which four Jews were killed because it demonstrated that Europe has a problem with anti-Semitism.
Now with the attack on the kosher supermarket, I think [the anti-Semitism is] at last out in the open, and in that sense I’m almost grateful that this happened, that at last I think Europe is coming to recognize that it has a real problem with anti-Semitism that can’t be denied or can’t be passed off as a function of a reaction to Israeli policy.
Stephens, a neoconservative who is also deputy editorial page editor of the Journal, said the attacks on the supermarket and the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo proved that the rightwing understanding of terrorism is right: it comes out of a “clash of civilizations,” because Arab and Muslim societies have fundamental differences with the west on such core values as freedom of speech. The attacks disproved the leftwing view of radical Islamism: that these attacks grow out of western policies in the Middle East, from support for Israel to the invasion of Iraq.
Stephens makes his comments at minute 36 of this video broadcast on C-Span last weekend from a panel on the French terrorist attacks http://www.frenchamerican.org/events/qui-est-charlieat the French-American Foundation in New York (which http://www.frenchamerican.org/events/qui-est-charlieHere is the entirety of his analysis of the January 9 attack on the kosher supermarket, in which Muslim extremist Amedy Coulibaly killed four Jewish hostages before he was killed by police:
The attack on the kosher supermarket or the kosher grocery I think also ought to be an occasion for a certain amount of clarity. I started covering the Middle East when I was based in Brussels for the Wall Street Journal in the late 1990’s and early part of the last decade. And even then and especially after the outbreak of the so-called second intifada in the fall of 2000, I sensed that there was a great deal of anti-Semitism on European streets and it was anti-Semitism coming in both a kind of vulgar and high-tone variety, the vulgar variety which is the sort you would encounter if you walk through my largely Muslim neighborhood in downtown Brussels towards the canal but also a high-toned variety which typically went by the anti-Zionist catchphrases, but anti-Zionist catchphrases that had a weird reflection in traditional anti-Semitic tropes. Just to give you an example of what I mean, I’ll never forget shortly after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, The Economist had an editorial — one of their leaders, and the Economist is a serious magazine, maybe the best magazine in the world — there was a line that said Israelis are a superior people — I’m not sure if I’m quoting this exactly but I’m getting the spirit of it largely right– the Israelis are a superior people, their talents are above the ordinary, but they must curb their greed for other people’s land. And I thought, Boy, if that’s not an antisemitic trope: those clever Jews, superior, but greedy.
There was a great deal of that. It was very hard to sit in Brussels and have dinner time conversations with the class of commissioners and foreign policy people in Brussels and not get a great deal of this. So now with the attack on the kosher supermarket, I think it’s at last out in the open. and in that sense I’m almost grateful that this happened, that at last I think Europe is coming to recognize that it has a real problem with anti-Semitism that can’t be denied or can’t be passed off as a function of a reaction to Israeli policy.
Stephens’s comments are reminiscent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying in 2008 that the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. had been good for Israel. “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” he said, because these events “swung American public opinion.”
I recommend the entire conversation at the French-American Foundation. Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde and an opinion writer for The International New York Times, is fascinating. She says that French Jews were shocked by Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for them to move to Israel and that it was a “positive” sign that Jewish organizations at last broke with Israeli policy and rebuked Netanyahu.
Watching this panel on C-SPAN, I found support for my belief that Israeli actions are driving the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. If classical anti-Semitism has an implacable Christian religious character, if 19th and 20th century anti-Semitism had a sociological-reactionary character that was also implacable and bigoted, this anti-Semitism is focused on Israeli actions. No prejudice is justifiable, and anti-Zionists must be sure to distinguish between criticizing the Jewish state and criticizing Jews. But as Kauffmann makes clear, the identification by Jewish organizations of all Jews with support for Israeli actions is dangerous.
Thanks to Adam Horowitz for Netanyahu point.
Charlie Hebdo's dead editor in posthumous attack on left-wing French intellectuals
Unity in wake of Charlie Hebdo attack put to test as slain editor publishes book from beyond the grave attacking France's intellectuals as "disgusting" for suggesting he should tone down satirical cartoons
French cartoonist Charb who was the publishing director of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo Photo: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters
By Henry Samuel, Paris
7:06PM BST 15 Apr 2015
Left-wing intellectuals in France who leapt to Charlie Hebdo's defence after the Paris terror attacks are guilty of "disgusting paternalism", the satirical weekly's slain editor claims in a posthumous book.
Stéphane Charbonnier's message from beyond the grave will rock the sense of national unity in the wake of the attacks in and around the French capital, which saw three terrorists gun down 17 people before being killed.
Charb, as he was known, finished Lettre Ouverte aux Escrocs de l'Islamophobie qui Font le Jeu des Racistes (Open Letter to the Fraudsters of Islamophobia who Play into Racists' Hands) just two days before he was among 12 killed in the first attack by Islamist extremists to "avenge" the publication of drawings of the Prophet.
The book accuses the media of fomenting hatred against the magazine and the former Right-wing French president Nicolas Sarkozy of "freeing up" racism in France.
It slams Islamists who apply the Koran to the letter as if they were "putting up Ikea shelves", and are ready to "cut the infidel's throats along the dotted line otherwise God will deprive me of Club Med in the afterlife".
But it saves its heaviest salvos for Left-leaning intellectuals, described as "ridiculous demagogues" for accusing Charlie Hebdo of going too far by publishing drawings of Mohammad. Many then joined mass street demonstrations after his death under the 'Je Suis Charlie' banner.
"The suggestion that you can laugh at everything, except certain aspects of Islam, because Muslims are much more susceptible that the rest of the population, what is that, if not discrimination?," it asks.
"It's time to finish with this disgusting paternalism of the white, left-wing bourgeois intellectual seeking to prove himself among the 'poor unfortunate undereducated'," it goes on.
Seeking to explain what he saw as intellectuals' condescension masquerading as solidarity, Charb writes: "Since I am educated, I understand that Charlie Hebdo is using humour. But out of respect for you [Muslims], since you haven't yet discovered second-degree humour, I will denounce these Islamophobic drawings that I pretend not to understand. I will put myself at your level to show that I love you.
"These ridiculous demagogues just have a huge need to be the centre of attention and want to satisfy their formidable fantasy to dominate others."
Charb's book, extracts of which are to appear in L'Obs, the weekly magazine on Thursday, risks adding fuel to an already fraught debate over the treatment of Islam and secularism in France. The magazine conceded that the late editor's stance was "both ultra brave but sometimes very bloody minded".
Charlie Hebdo defends the right to mock all religions, Islam included, but insists it targets Islamists rather than Islam as a whole.
Critics argue its drawings exacerbate discrimination against Muslims at a time when they already feel under attack from the rise of the far-Right Front National.
Charb insists that victims of racism in France will remain so whatever religion they choose to believe in.
He writes: "Those who accuse Charlie Hebdo's cartoonist of Islamophobia every time a figure in them has a beard are not only showing dishonesty or gratuitous bad faith, they are displaying support for so-called radical Islam."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...attack-on-left-wing-French-intellectuals.html
Unity in wake of Charlie Hebdo attack put to test as slain editor publishes book from beyond the grave attacking France's intellectuals as "disgusting" for suggesting he should tone down satirical cartoons
French cartoonist Charb who was the publishing director of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo Photo: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters
By Henry Samuel, Paris
7:06PM BST 15 Apr 2015
Left-wing intellectuals in France who leapt to Charlie Hebdo's defence after the Paris terror attacks are guilty of "disgusting paternalism", the satirical weekly's slain editor claims in a posthumous book.
Stéphane Charbonnier's message from beyond the grave will rock the sense of national unity in the wake of the attacks in and around the French capital, which saw three terrorists gun down 17 people before being killed.
Charb, as he was known, finished Lettre Ouverte aux Escrocs de l'Islamophobie qui Font le Jeu des Racistes (Open Letter to the Fraudsters of Islamophobia who Play into Racists' Hands) just two days before he was among 12 killed in the first attack by Islamist extremists to "avenge" the publication of drawings of the Prophet.
The book accuses the media of fomenting hatred against the magazine and the former Right-wing French president Nicolas Sarkozy of "freeing up" racism in France.
It slams Islamists who apply the Koran to the letter as if they were "putting up Ikea shelves", and are ready to "cut the infidel's throats along the dotted line otherwise God will deprive me of Club Med in the afterlife".
But it saves its heaviest salvos for Left-leaning intellectuals, described as "ridiculous demagogues" for accusing Charlie Hebdo of going too far by publishing drawings of Mohammad. Many then joined mass street demonstrations after his death under the 'Je Suis Charlie' banner.
"The suggestion that you can laugh at everything, except certain aspects of Islam, because Muslims are much more susceptible that the rest of the population, what is that, if not discrimination?," it asks.
"It's time to finish with this disgusting paternalism of the white, left-wing bourgeois intellectual seeking to prove himself among the 'poor unfortunate undereducated'," it goes on.
Seeking to explain what he saw as intellectuals' condescension masquerading as solidarity, Charb writes: "Since I am educated, I understand that Charlie Hebdo is using humour. But out of respect for you [Muslims], since you haven't yet discovered second-degree humour, I will denounce these Islamophobic drawings that I pretend not to understand. I will put myself at your level to show that I love you.
"These ridiculous demagogues just have a huge need to be the centre of attention and want to satisfy their formidable fantasy to dominate others."
Charb's book, extracts of which are to appear in L'Obs, the weekly magazine on Thursday, risks adding fuel to an already fraught debate over the treatment of Islam and secularism in France. The magazine conceded that the late editor's stance was "both ultra brave but sometimes very bloody minded".
Charlie Hebdo defends the right to mock all religions, Islam included, but insists it targets Islamists rather than Islam as a whole.
Critics argue its drawings exacerbate discrimination against Muslims at a time when they already feel under attack from the rise of the far-Right Front National.
Charb insists that victims of racism in France will remain so whatever religion they choose to believe in.
He writes: "Those who accuse Charlie Hebdo's cartoonist of Islamophobia every time a figure in them has a beard are not only showing dishonesty or gratuitous bad faith, they are displaying support for so-called radical Islam."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...attack-on-left-wing-French-intellectuals.html
Last edited:
I wholeheartedly agree with you and wish i had the same gift at putting it in words as you do... unfortunately for me, all that happens are bad memories, anger turning me red, and the words fuck islam you fuckers on my lips, my hate for their culture is unparalleled in all other parts of my life
Charlie Hebdo attack
Belfast ‘shamed’ after university cancels Charlie Hebdo conference
Northern Irish author Robert McLiam Wilson criticises Queen’s University Belfast after it calls off discussion of the killings in Paris for security reasons
Flowers and pens in Paris commemorate the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in January, in which 12 people were killed. Queen’s University Belfast has cancelled a conference on the shootings, over security fears. Photograph: Michael Bunel/Michael Bunel/NurPhoto/Corbis
Henry McDonald
Wednesday 22 April 2015 13.24 BST Last modified on Thursday 23 April 2015 00.27 BST
An award-winning novelist has said he is ashamed of his native city because of the decision by Queen’s University Belfast to cancel an academic conference on the Charlie Hebdo massacre for security reasons.
Robert McLiam Wilson, the Paris-based author of Ripley Bogle and Eureka Street, described the cancellation of the event in the face of an unspecified security threat as “not cowardice or surrender. It is part of a long defeat in an unfought war.”
McLiam Wilson, who writes for the French satirical magazine, said he could not believe that a city like Belfast that had endured decades of violence would call off the conference.
Speaking from his home in Paris, the author, who was born in west Belfast, said: “I am feeling a touch of shame today. Cancelling such an event in the face of putative menace in a city that endured a 30-year torture of self-immolation seems worse than pusillanimous. Belfast? Seriously? This is not the city I remember. This cancellation says, with trumpeting clarity, that there is no debate because there can be no debate. There is a big boat that can’t be rocked.”
He added: “Charlie Hebdo is anti plenty of things. But it is not anti-Arab or anti-Israeli or anti-immigrant. No one gets more grief than Front National leader Marine Le Pen and loopy rightwinger Nicolas Sarkozy. If you speak French, it’s pretty hard to deny what Charlie really is. It is, monotonously, rigorously and sometimes unamusingly anti-arsehole. I am beyond proud to write for Charlie. And not, today, so proud of the city of my birth.”
The novelist has been living in Paris for more than a decade and has written three books in English. Eureka Street was adapted for BBC television in 1999 and is partly set in the Holylands district close to Queen’s University. McLiam Wilson has also written a television documentary on paramilitary punishment attacks in Belfast and recently recorded an essay for Radio 4 about his love for Paris in the aftermath of the attack by two gunmen on the Charlie Hebdo offices in January, in which 12 people were killed.
A conference to discuss the implications of the attack on the magazine involving academics, novelists, journalists and commentators was due to take place at the Queen’s University institute for collaborative research in the humanities in June.
The institute claimed that the university’s vice-chancellor, Patrick Johnston, had cancelled the event because of the security risk and concerns for the university’s reputation.
An email circulated by the institute this week said: “The vice-chancellor at Queen’s University Belfast has made the decision just this morning that he does not wish our symposium to go ahead.
“He is concerned about the security risk for delegates and about the reputation of the university.”
On Wednesday, Queen’s University denied that the cancellation of the conference had anything to do with academic freedom.
A spokesperson said: “As part of managing the health and safety of the institution it is a requirement for all major events to have a full risk assessment completed prior to them going ahead on the campus. Unfortunately, the proposed symposium organised by the institute for collaborative research in the humanities did not have a completed risk assessment and as a result the institute has cancelled the event.
“This issue is not related to academic freedom and Queen’s continues to uphold the importance of academic freedom in a world-class institution and has demonstrated this over many years.”
However, locally based writers have joined McLiam Wilson in condemning the cancellation.
The Irish poet and playwright Damian Gorman, who has taught at Queen’s University, said: “While I’d like to, I don’t believe in the absolute freedom to do or say whatever you want to wherever you want. I wouldn’t, for example, defend someone’s right to light up in an oil refinery – literally or metaphorically.
“But, in saying that, I just don’t understand why Queen’s won’t have a conference looking at the Charlie Hebdo attacks in the round. Is that not the sort of thing universities are for?”
The award-winning Belfast-based Irish blogger Alan Meban accused the university of being influenced by commercial considerations.
“QUB has outposts internationally and perhaps there are fears for the security of staff and students. However, QUB’s reference to ‘reputation’ in their cancellation implies a worry about their ability to attract funding from overseas investors, particularly international students who pay premium fees.
“We need our universities to stand up for learning, reflection and free speech, rather than being bound up by bursars and budgets,” said the author of the Alan in Belfast blog.
Belfast ‘shamed’ after university cancels Charlie Hebdo conference
Northern Irish author Robert McLiam Wilson criticises Queen’s University Belfast after it calls off discussion of the killings in Paris for security reasons
Flowers and pens in Paris commemorate the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in January, in which 12 people were killed. Queen’s University Belfast has cancelled a conference on the shootings, over security fears. Photograph: Michael Bunel/Michael Bunel/NurPhoto/Corbis
Henry McDonald
Wednesday 22 April 2015 13.24 BST Last modified on Thursday 23 April 2015 00.27 BST
An award-winning novelist has said he is ashamed of his native city because of the decision by Queen’s University Belfast to cancel an academic conference on the Charlie Hebdo massacre for security reasons.
Robert McLiam Wilson, the Paris-based author of Ripley Bogle and Eureka Street, described the cancellation of the event in the face of an unspecified security threat as “not cowardice or surrender. It is part of a long defeat in an unfought war.”
McLiam Wilson, who writes for the French satirical magazine, said he could not believe that a city like Belfast that had endured decades of violence would call off the conference.
Speaking from his home in Paris, the author, who was born in west Belfast, said: “I am feeling a touch of shame today. Cancelling such an event in the face of putative menace in a city that endured a 30-year torture of self-immolation seems worse than pusillanimous. Belfast? Seriously? This is not the city I remember. This cancellation says, with trumpeting clarity, that there is no debate because there can be no debate. There is a big boat that can’t be rocked.”
He added: “Charlie Hebdo is anti plenty of things. But it is not anti-Arab or anti-Israeli or anti-immigrant. No one gets more grief than Front National leader Marine Le Pen and loopy rightwinger Nicolas Sarkozy. If you speak French, it’s pretty hard to deny what Charlie really is. It is, monotonously, rigorously and sometimes unamusingly anti-arsehole. I am beyond proud to write for Charlie. And not, today, so proud of the city of my birth.”
The novelist has been living in Paris for more than a decade and has written three books in English. Eureka Street was adapted for BBC television in 1999 and is partly set in the Holylands district close to Queen’s University. McLiam Wilson has also written a television documentary on paramilitary punishment attacks in Belfast and recently recorded an essay for Radio 4 about his love for Paris in the aftermath of the attack by two gunmen on the Charlie Hebdo offices in January, in which 12 people were killed.
A conference to discuss the implications of the attack on the magazine involving academics, novelists, journalists and commentators was due to take place at the Queen’s University institute for collaborative research in the humanities in June.
The institute claimed that the university’s vice-chancellor, Patrick Johnston, had cancelled the event because of the security risk and concerns for the university’s reputation.
An email circulated by the institute this week said: “The vice-chancellor at Queen’s University Belfast has made the decision just this morning that he does not wish our symposium to go ahead.
“He is concerned about the security risk for delegates and about the reputation of the university.”
On Wednesday, Queen’s University denied that the cancellation of the conference had anything to do with academic freedom.
A spokesperson said: “As part of managing the health and safety of the institution it is a requirement for all major events to have a full risk assessment completed prior to them going ahead on the campus. Unfortunately, the proposed symposium organised by the institute for collaborative research in the humanities did not have a completed risk assessment and as a result the institute has cancelled the event.
“This issue is not related to academic freedom and Queen’s continues to uphold the importance of academic freedom in a world-class institution and has demonstrated this over many years.”
However, locally based writers have joined McLiam Wilson in condemning the cancellation.
The Irish poet and playwright Damian Gorman, who has taught at Queen’s University, said: “While I’d like to, I don’t believe in the absolute freedom to do or say whatever you want to wherever you want. I wouldn’t, for example, defend someone’s right to light up in an oil refinery – literally or metaphorically.
“But, in saying that, I just don’t understand why Queen’s won’t have a conference looking at the Charlie Hebdo attacks in the round. Is that not the sort of thing universities are for?”
The award-winning Belfast-based Irish blogger Alan Meban accused the university of being influenced by commercial considerations.
“QUB has outposts internationally and perhaps there are fears for the security of staff and students. However, QUB’s reference to ‘reputation’ in their cancellation implies a worry about their ability to attract funding from overseas investors, particularly international students who pay premium fees.
“We need our universities to stand up for learning, reflection and free speech, rather than being bound up by bursars and budgets,” said the author of the Alan in Belfast blog.
Salman Rushdie slams critics of PEN’s Charlie Hebdo tribute
The author called writers who had objected to the award, including Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje and Francine Prose, ‘Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character’
Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after a fatwa was issued against him, has spoken out strongly against the decision by six of his fellow authors to withdraw from the PEN annual gala in New York over the organisation’s decision to honour Charlie Hebdo with its freedom of expression courage award.
“The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character,” Rushdie wrote on Twitter on 27 April, having the day before told the New York Times that the authors – who include Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje and Francine Prose – were “horribly wrong”.
“If PEN as a free-speech organisation can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organisation is not worth the name,” Rushdie said. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”
“It is quite right that PEN should honour [Charlie Hebdo’s] sacrifice and condemn their murder without these disgusting ‘buts,’ Rushdie wrote.
“This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority. It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence.
“These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of that project. Now they will have the dubious satisfaction of watching PEN tear itself apart in public.”
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/27/salman-rushdie-pen-charlie-hebdo-peter-carey
The author called writers who had objected to the award, including Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje and Francine Prose, ‘Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character’
Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after a fatwa was issued against him, has spoken out strongly against the decision by six of his fellow authors to withdraw from the PEN annual gala in New York over the organisation’s decision to honour Charlie Hebdo with its freedom of expression courage award.
“The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character,” Rushdie wrote on Twitter on 27 April, having the day before told the New York Times that the authors – who include Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje and Francine Prose – were “horribly wrong”.
“If PEN as a free-speech organisation can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organisation is not worth the name,” Rushdie said. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”
“It is quite right that PEN should honour [Charlie Hebdo’s] sacrifice and condemn their murder without these disgusting ‘buts,’ Rushdie wrote.
“This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority. It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence.
“These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of that project. Now they will have the dubious satisfaction of watching PEN tear itself apart in public.”
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/27/salman-rushdie-pen-charlie-hebdo-peter-carey
Don't mess with Texas! Security thwarts terror attack and sends two Jihadis on a one way trip to Allah after they fired shots at a free speech conference on Muhammed cartoons in Garland Texas.
Gunmen shot dead outside Dallas conference on Prophet cartoons
Police sealed off the suspects' vehicle near the conference centre
Two gunmen have been shot dead after they opened fire outside a conference on cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a suburb of Dallas, police say.
A security guard was also injured. Police have put the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland on lockdown and evacuated participants.
Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders was attending the conference.
Mr Wilders tweeted that shots had been fired and he had now safely left the building.
It was not clear if the shootings were related to the event.
One eyewitness told the Associated Press news agency that he heard about 20 shots, which appeared to come from a car driving past the conference centre, followed by two individual shots.
A City of Garland statement said the gunmen's vehicle could contain an "incendiary device" and a bomb squad was at the scene.
About 75 people inside the building were escorted to another room, US media reported.
Later, a group of 48 were taken to a school bus and officials told attendees they would be taken to a nearby high school.
The Dallas Morning News reported that nearby businesses had been evacuated.
The event was organised by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which has campaigned against the building of an Islamic centre near the World Trade Center site in New York.
Sunday's meeting included a $10,000 prize for a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.
The same conference centre in Garland hosted an event in January to raise funds for building a local Islamic centre; that meeting was picketed by opponents.
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are offensive to many Muslims.
There were widespread protests in 2006 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.
In January this year, 12 people were murdered by two Islamist gunmen at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published similar cartoons.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32579396
Gunmen shot dead outside Dallas conference on Prophet cartoons
Police sealed off the suspects' vehicle near the conference centre
Two gunmen have been shot dead after they opened fire outside a conference on cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a suburb of Dallas, police say.
A security guard was also injured. Police have put the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland on lockdown and evacuated participants.
Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders was attending the conference.
Mr Wilders tweeted that shots had been fired and he had now safely left the building.
It was not clear if the shootings were related to the event.
One eyewitness told the Associated Press news agency that he heard about 20 shots, which appeared to come from a car driving past the conference centre, followed by two individual shots.
A City of Garland statement said the gunmen's vehicle could contain an "incendiary device" and a bomb squad was at the scene.
About 75 people inside the building were escorted to another room, US media reported.
Later, a group of 48 were taken to a school bus and officials told attendees they would be taken to a nearby high school.
The Dallas Morning News reported that nearby businesses had been evacuated.
The event was organised by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which has campaigned against the building of an Islamic centre near the World Trade Center site in New York.
Sunday's meeting included a $10,000 prize for a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.
The same conference centre in Garland hosted an event in January to raise funds for building a local Islamic centre; that meeting was picketed by opponents.
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are offensive to many Muslims.
There were widespread protests in 2006 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.
In January this year, 12 people were murdered by two Islamist gunmen at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published similar cartoons.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32579396
Last edited:
Islam and Free Speech: Missing the Point in Garland
The purpose of the free-speech event was to highlight the threat posed by Islamic supremacists.
By Andrew C. McCarthy — May 4, 2015
‘Even free-speech enthusiasts are repulsed by obnoxious expression.” That acknowledgment prefaces the main argument I’ve made in http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1594037485, a just-released pamphlet in the Broadside series from Encounter Books. Alas, in view of last night’s deadly events at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, the argument is more timely than I’d hoped.
In Garland, two jihadists opened fire on a free-speech event that was certain to be offensive to many Muslims. The gunmen wounded a security guard before being killed when police returned fire. The jihadists are reported to be roommates who resided in Phoenix. As this is written, only one of them has been identified: Elton Simpson. The wounded security guard, Bruce Joiner, was treated and released. Joiner works for the Garland Independent School District, which owns the Culwell Center.
Simpson was apparently what my friend, terrorism analyst Patrick Poole, describes as a “known wolf.” That’s a radical Muslim whom the Obama administration and the media are wont to dismiss as an anonymous, unconnected loner but who, in fact, has previously drawn the attention of national-security agents over suspected jihadist ties.
Simpson previously attempted to travel to Africa, apparently to join al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda franchise. He was http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20150503-one-gunman-reportedly-id-d-in-shootings-outside-muhammad-art-show-in-garland.ece convicted of lying to FBI agents, though a judge found the evidence insufficient to prove he was trying to join the terror group. The al-Shabaab connection seems salient now: Police are http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/04/police-shooting-at-muhammad-cartoon-contest-in-texas/ tweets about the Garland event prior to the violence, allegedly posted by a young al-Shabaab jihadist who is said to be an American citizen.
The Garland free-speech event was a contest, sponsored by Pamela Geller’s New York–based American Freedom Defense Initiative. Participants were invited to draw cartoons of Islam’s prophet, in homage to the Charlie Hebdo artists killed by jihadists in France. Besides Ms. Geller, the featured speaker at the event was Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian whose life has been threatened for years for speaking openly about the scriptural moorings of Islamic terrorism. Al-Qaeda has publicly called for Wilders to be killed, and a notorious Australian imam called on Muslims to behead him because anyone who “mocks, laughs [at], or degrades Islam” must be killed by “chopping off his head.”
In Garland, activists opposed to the violence endorsed by Islamic doctrine and to the repression inherent in sharia law were invited to draw caricatures of Mohammed, with a $10,000 prize awarded to the “best” one. The contest was sure to yield images offensive to Muslims just as transgressive artist Andres Serrano had to know the public exhibition of his Piss Christ photograph would offend Christians.
Yet, as I argue in Islam and Free Speech, it will not do to blame the messenger for the violence. The shooting last night was not caused by the free-speech event any more than the Charlie Hebdo murders were caused by derogatory caricatures, or the rioting after a Danish newspaper’s publication of anti-Islam cartoons was caused by the newspaper. The violence is caused by Islamic supremacist ideology and its law that incites Muslims to kill those they judge to have disparaged Islam.
It will not do to blame the messenger for the violence. The shooting last night was not caused by the free-speech event any more than the Charlie Hebdo murders were caused by derogatory caricatures.
Christians were offended by Piss Christ, but they did not respond by killing the “artist” or blowing up the exhibiting museum. If any had, they would have been universally condemned for both violating society’s laws and betraying Christian tenets. In such a case, we would have blamed the killers, not the provocative art. There can be no right against being provoked in a free society; we rely on the vigorous exchange of ideas to arrive at sensible policy. And the greater the threat to liberty, the more necessary it is to provoke.
The threat to liberty in this instance is sharia blasphemy law. A bloc of Muslim-majority countries, with the assistance of the Obama administration (led by the U.S. State Department, particularly under Hillary Clinton), is trying to use international law to impose Islam’s repressive law to make it illegal to subject Islam to negative criticism. No sensible person favors obnoxious expression or gratuitous insult. But as I contend in the pamphlet, there is a big difference between saying “I object to this illustration of insensitivity and bad taste” and saying “I believe that what repulses me should be against the law.”
Ms. Geller’s detractors are predictably out in droves today, prattling about how the violence would not have happened were it not for the offensive display. No one would feel deprived by the lack of sheer insult, they say, so wouldn’t it be better to compromise free-expression principles in exchange for achieving peaceful social harmony? But that line of thinking puts violent extortionists in charge of what we get to speak about — an arrangement no free society can tolerate.
It is very unfortunate that this debate is so often triggered by forms of expression that non-jihadists will find insulting and therefore that even anti-jihadists will find uncomfortable to defend. This grossly understates the stakes involved. This is about much more than cartoons. As I outline in Islam and Free Speech, classical sharia forbids most artistic representations of animate life, not just expressions that are obviously sacrilegious. More significantly, it deems as blasphemous not just expressions that insult the prophet and Islam itself but also
It is not the purpose of Pam Geller, Geert Wilders, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, and other activists to insult Muslims. Their mission is to awaken us to the challenge of Islamic supremacists — not just the violent jihadists but also the powerful Islamist forces behind the jihad. Islamists are attempting to coerce us into abandoning our commitment to free expression. They are pressuring us to accommodate their totalitarian system rather than accepting assimilation into our liberty culture.
You may not like the provocateurs’ methods. Personally, I am not a fan of gratuitous insult, which can antagonize pro-Western Muslims we want on our side. But let’s not make too much of that. Muslims who really are pro-Western already know, as Americans overwhelmingly know, that being offended is a small price to pay to live in a free society. We can bristle at an offense and still grasp that we do not want the offense criminalized.
It would be easy, in our preening gentility, to look down our noses at a Mohammed cartoon contest. But we’d better understand the scope of the threat the contest was meant to raise our attention to — a threat triggered by ideology, not cartoons. There is in our midst an Islamist movement that wants to suppress not only insults to Islam but all critical examination of Islam. That movement is delighted to leverage the atmosphere of intimidation created by violent jihadists, and it counts the current United States government among its allies.
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...peech-missing-point-garland-andrew-c-mccarthy
The purpose of the free-speech event was to highlight the threat posed by Islamic supremacists.
By Andrew C. McCarthy — May 4, 2015
‘Even free-speech enthusiasts are repulsed by obnoxious expression.” That acknowledgment prefaces the main argument I’ve made in http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1594037485, a just-released pamphlet in the Broadside series from Encounter Books. Alas, in view of last night’s deadly events at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, the argument is more timely than I’d hoped.
In Garland, two jihadists opened fire on a free-speech event that was certain to be offensive to many Muslims. The gunmen wounded a security guard before being killed when police returned fire. The jihadists are reported to be roommates who resided in Phoenix. As this is written, only one of them has been identified: Elton Simpson. The wounded security guard, Bruce Joiner, was treated and released. Joiner works for the Garland Independent School District, which owns the Culwell Center.
Simpson was apparently what my friend, terrorism analyst Patrick Poole, describes as a “known wolf.” That’s a radical Muslim whom the Obama administration and the media are wont to dismiss as an anonymous, unconnected loner but who, in fact, has previously drawn the attention of national-security agents over suspected jihadist ties.
Simpson previously attempted to travel to Africa, apparently to join al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda franchise. He was http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20150503-one-gunman-reportedly-id-d-in-shootings-outside-muhammad-art-show-in-garland.ece convicted of lying to FBI agents, though a judge found the evidence insufficient to prove he was trying to join the terror group. The al-Shabaab connection seems salient now: Police are http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/04/police-shooting-at-muhammad-cartoon-contest-in-texas/ tweets about the Garland event prior to the violence, allegedly posted by a young al-Shabaab jihadist who is said to be an American citizen.
The Garland free-speech event was a contest, sponsored by Pamela Geller’s New York–based American Freedom Defense Initiative. Participants were invited to draw cartoons of Islam’s prophet, in homage to the Charlie Hebdo artists killed by jihadists in France. Besides Ms. Geller, the featured speaker at the event was Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian whose life has been threatened for years for speaking openly about the scriptural moorings of Islamic terrorism. Al-Qaeda has publicly called for Wilders to be killed, and a notorious Australian imam called on Muslims to behead him because anyone who “mocks, laughs [at], or degrades Islam” must be killed by “chopping off his head.”
In Garland, activists opposed to the violence endorsed by Islamic doctrine and to the repression inherent in sharia law were invited to draw caricatures of Mohammed, with a $10,000 prize awarded to the “best” one. The contest was sure to yield images offensive to Muslims just as transgressive artist Andres Serrano had to know the public exhibition of his Piss Christ photograph would offend Christians.
Yet, as I argue in Islam and Free Speech, it will not do to blame the messenger for the violence. The shooting last night was not caused by the free-speech event any more than the Charlie Hebdo murders were caused by derogatory caricatures, or the rioting after a Danish newspaper’s publication of anti-Islam cartoons was caused by the newspaper. The violence is caused by Islamic supremacist ideology and its law that incites Muslims to kill those they judge to have disparaged Islam.
It will not do to blame the messenger for the violence. The shooting last night was not caused by the free-speech event any more than the Charlie Hebdo murders were caused by derogatory caricatures.
Christians were offended by Piss Christ, but they did not respond by killing the “artist” or blowing up the exhibiting museum. If any had, they would have been universally condemned for both violating society’s laws and betraying Christian tenets. In such a case, we would have blamed the killers, not the provocative art. There can be no right against being provoked in a free society; we rely on the vigorous exchange of ideas to arrive at sensible policy. And the greater the threat to liberty, the more necessary it is to provoke.
The threat to liberty in this instance is sharia blasphemy law. A bloc of Muslim-majority countries, with the assistance of the Obama administration (led by the U.S. State Department, particularly under Hillary Clinton), is trying to use international law to impose Islam’s repressive law to make it illegal to subject Islam to negative criticism. No sensible person favors obnoxious expression or gratuitous insult. But as I contend in the pamphlet, there is a big difference between saying “I object to this illustration of insensitivity and bad taste” and saying “I believe that what repulses me should be against the law.”
Ms. Geller’s detractors are predictably out in droves today, prattling about how the violence would not have happened were it not for the offensive display. No one would feel deprived by the lack of sheer insult, they say, so wouldn’t it be better to compromise free-expression principles in exchange for achieving peaceful social harmony? But that line of thinking puts violent extortionists in charge of what we get to speak about — an arrangement no free society can tolerate.
It is very unfortunate that this debate is so often triggered by forms of expression that non-jihadists will find insulting and therefore that even anti-jihadists will find uncomfortable to defend. This grossly understates the stakes involved. This is about much more than cartoons. As I outline in Islam and Free Speech, classical sharia forbids most artistic representations of animate life, not just expressions that are obviously sacrilegious. More significantly, it deems as blasphemous not just expressions that insult the prophet and Islam itself but also
critical examinations of Islam . . . especially if they reach negative conclusions or encourage unbelief[;] proselytism of religions other than Islam, particularly if it involves encouraging Muslims to abandon Islam[; and any] speech or expression [that] could sow discord among Muslims or within an Islamic community. And truth is not a defense.
It is not the purpose of Pam Geller, Geert Wilders, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, and other activists to insult Muslims. Their mission is to awaken us to the challenge of Islamic supremacists — not just the violent jihadists but also the powerful Islamist forces behind the jihad. Islamists are attempting to coerce us into abandoning our commitment to free expression. They are pressuring us to accommodate their totalitarian system rather than accepting assimilation into our liberty culture.
You may not like the provocateurs’ methods. Personally, I am not a fan of gratuitous insult, which can antagonize pro-Western Muslims we want on our side. But let’s not make too much of that. Muslims who really are pro-Western already know, as Americans overwhelmingly know, that being offended is a small price to pay to live in a free society. We can bristle at an offense and still grasp that we do not want the offense criminalized.
It would be easy, in our preening gentility, to look down our noses at a Mohammed cartoon contest. But we’d better understand the scope of the threat the contest was meant to raise our attention to — a threat triggered by ideology, not cartoons. There is in our midst an Islamist movement that wants to suppress not only insults to Islam but all critical examination of Islam. That movement is delighted to leverage the atmosphere of intimidation created by violent jihadists, and it counts the current United States government among its allies.
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...peech-missing-point-garland-andrew-c-mccarthy
"Stay Quiet and You'll Be Okay"
by Mark Steyn
The War on Free Speech
May 9, 2015
As we mentioned a week ago, I'm none too well at the moment, and it so happens my preferred position in which to write causes me severe pain - which is presumably some kind of not so subtle literary criticism from the Almighty. But I'm back, more or less, with lots to catch up on. There were two big elections in recent days, with dramatic results: in Alberta, the Tories were wiped out; in Scotland, the Labour Party was slaughtered; in England, the Liberals were crushed. Strange times.
I'll have more to say about the elections in the days ahead, but for now let me offer a whole-hearted good riddance to Ed Miliband, the now departed Labour leader who, in a desperate last-minute pander, offered to "outlaw Islamophobia". That was the British political establishment's contribution to a rough couple of weeks for free speech, culminating in the attempted mass murder in Garland, Texas.
That's what it was, by the way - although you might have difficulty telling that from the news coverage. The Washington Post offered the celebrated headline "http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/event-organizer-offers-no-apology-after-thwarted-attack-in-texas/2015/05/04/f0926fb4-f28e-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html (Event Organizer Offers No Apology After Thwarted Attack In Texas)", while the Associated Press went with "Pamela Geller says she has no regrets about Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that ended in 2 deaths". The media "narrative" of the last week is that some Zionist temptress was walking down the street in Garland in a too short skirt and hoisted it to reveal her Mohammed thong - oops, my apologies, her Prophet Mohammed thong (PBUH) - and thereby inflamed two otherwise law-abiding ISIS supporters peacefully minding their own business.
It'll be a long time before you see "Washington Post Offers No Apology for Attacking Target of Thwarted Attack" or "AP Says It Has No Regrets After Blaming The Victim". The respectable class in the American media share the same goal as the Islamic fanatics: They want to silence Pam Geller. To be sure, they have a mild disagreement about the means to that end - although even then you get the feeling, as with Garry Trudeau and those dozens of PEN novelists' reaction to Charlie Hebdo, that the "narrative" wouldn't change very much if the jihad boys had got luckier and Pam, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer and a dozen others were all piled up in the Garland morgue.
If the American press were not so lazy and parochial, they would understand that this was the third Islamic attack on free speech this year - first, Charlie Hebdo in Paris; second, the Lars Vilks event in Copenhagen; and now Texas. The difference in the corpse count is easily explained by a look at the video of the Paris gunmen, or the bullet holes they put in the police car. The French and Texan attackers supposedly had the same kind of weapons, although one should always treat American media reports with a high degree of skepticism when it comes to early identification of "assault weapons" and "AK47s". Nonetheless, from http://bearingarms.com/pushed-forward-brave-garland-police-officer-advanced-brought-garland-terrorists/2/, it seems clear that the key distinction between the two attacks is that in Paris they knew how to use their firepower and in Garland they didn't. So a very cool 60-year-old local cop with nothing but his service pistol advanced under fire and took down two guys whose heavier firepower managed only to put a bullet in an unarmed security guard's foot.
The Charlie Hebdo killers had received effective training overseas - as thousands of ISIS recruits with western passports are getting right now. What if the Garland gunmen had been as good as the Paris gunmen? Surely that would be a more interesting question for the somnolent American media than whether some lippy Jewess was asking for it.
As for the free-speech issues, some of us have been around this question for a long time. I wrote a whole book about it: Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West - well worth a read, and I'm happy to autograph it for you. On page 123 I write about Jyllands Posten and the original Motoons:
The twelve cartoonists are now in hiding. According to the chairman of the Danish Liberal Party, a group of Muslim men showed up at a local school looking for the daughter of one of the artists.
When that racket starts, no cartoonist or publisher or editor should have to stand alone. The minute there were multimillion-dollar bounties on those cartoonists' heads, The Times of London and Le Monde and The Washington Post and all the rest should have said, "This Thursday we're all publishing the cartoons. If you want to put bounties on all our heads, you'd better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad. If you want to kill us, you'll have to kill us all..."
But it didn't happen.
The only two magazines to stand in solidarity with the Danish cartoonists and republish the Motoons were Charlie Hebdo in Paris and my own magazine in Canada, Ezra Levant's Western Standard. Ezra wound up getting hauled up by some dimestore imam before the ignorant and thuggish Alberta "Human Rights" Commission whose leisurely money-no-object "investigation" consumed years of his life and all his savings. But he was more fortunate than our comrades at Charlie Hebdo: He's still alive.
In Copenhagen, in Paris, in Garland, what's more important than the cartoons and the attacks is the reaction of all the polite, respectable people in society, which for a decade now has told those who do not accept the messy, fractious liberties of free peoples that we don't really believe in them, either, and we're happy to give them up - quietly, furtively, incrementally, remorselessly - in hopes of a quiet life. Because a small Danish newspaper found itself abandoned and alone, Charlie Hebdo jumped in to support them. Because the Charlie Hebdo artists and writers died abandoned and alone, Pamela Geller jumped in to support them. By refusing to share the risk, we are increasing the risk. It's not Pamela Geller who emboldens Islamic fanatics, it's all the nice types - the ones Salman Rushdie calls the But Brigade. You've heard them a zillion times this last week: "Of course, I'm personally, passionately, absolutely committed to free speech. But..."
And the minute you hear the "but", none of the build-up to it matters. A couple of days before Garland, Canadian Liberal MP (and former Justice Minister) Irwin Cotler announced his plan to restore Section 13 - the "hate speech" law under which Maclean's and I were dragged before the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission and which, as a result of my case, was repealed by the Parliament of Canada. At the time Mr Cotler was fairly torn on the issue. We talked about it briefly at a free-speech event in Ottawa at which he chanced to be present, and he made vaguely supportive murmurings - as he did when we ran into each other a couple of years later in Boston. Mr Cotler is Jewish and, even as European "hate" laws prove utterly useless against the metastasizing open Jew-hate on the Continent, he thinks we should give 'em one more try. He's more sophisticated than your average But boy, so he uses a three-syllable word:
Free speech is necessary to free society for all the stuff after the "but", after the "however". There's no fine line between "free speech" and "hate speech": Free speech is hate speech; it's for the speech you hate - and for all your speech that the other guy hates. If you don't have free speech, then you can't have an honest discussion. All you can do is what those stunted moronic boobs in Paris and Copenhagen and Garland did: grab a gun and open fire. What Miliband and Cotler propose will, if enacted, reduce us all to the level of the inarticulate halfwits who think the only dispositive argument is "Allahu Akbar".
Alas, we have raised a generation of But boys. Ever since those ridiculous Washington Post and AP headlines, I've been thinking about the fellows who write and sub-edit and headline and approve such things - and never see the problem with it. Why would they? If you're under a certain age, you accept instinctively that free speech is subordinate to other considerations: If you've been raised in the "safe space" of American universities, you take it as read that on gays and climate change and transgendered bathrooms and all kinds of other issues it's perfectly normal to eliminate free speech and demand only the party line. So what's the big deal about letting Muslims cut themselves in on a little of that action?
Why would you expect people who see nothing wrong with destroying a mom'n'pop bakery over its antipathy to gay wedding cakes to have any philosophical commitment to diversity of opinion? And once you no longer have any philosophical commitment to it it's easy to see it the way Miliband and Cotler do - as a rusty cog in the societal machinery that can be shaved and sliced millimeter by millimeter.
Do what the parochial hacks of the US media didn't bother to do, and look at the winning entry in Pam Geller's competition, which appears at the top of this page. It's by Bosch Fawstin, an Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and an ex-Muslim of Albanian stock. Like many of the Danish and French cartoons, it's less about Mohammed than about the prohibition against drawing Mohammed - and the willingness of a small number of Muslims to murder those who do, and a far larger number of Muslims both enthusiastic and quiescent to support those who kill. Mr Fawstin understands the remorseless logic of one-way multiculturalism - that it leads to the de facto universal acceptance of Islamic law. All that "Prophet Mohammed" stuff, now routine even on Fox News. He's not my prophet, he's just some dead bloke. But the formulation is now mysteriously standard in western media. Try it the other way round: "Isis News Network, from our Libyan correspondent: Warriors of the Caliphate today announced record attendance numbers for the mass beheading of followers of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ..."
On Fox the other day, Bill O'Reilly was hopelessly confused about this issue. He seems to think that Pam Geller's cartoon competitions will lessen the likelihood of moderate Muslims joining us in the fight against ISIS. Putting aside the fact that there is no fight against ISIS, and insofar as the many Muslim countries in the vast swollen non-existent "60-nation coalition" are going to rouse themselves to join the fight it will be because the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies and the Egyptian military understand it as an existential threat to them, put aside all that and understand that Islamic imperialism has a good-cop-bad-cop game - or hard jihad, soft jihad. The hard jihad is fought via bombings and beheadings and burnings over barren bits of desert and jungle and cave country in the Middle East, Africa and the Hindu Kush. The soft jihad is a suppler enemy fighting for rather more valuable real estate in Europe, Australia and North America, so it uses western shibboleths of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" to enfeeble those societies. And it does so very effectively - so that when a British soldier is hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight, you can't really quite articulate what's wrong with it; or that, upon the death of the ugly king of a state where Christianity is prohibited, the Christian ministers of Westminster Abbey mourn his passing; or that, when Australians are held siege in a Sydney coffee shop, the reflexive response of progressive persons is to launch a social-media campaign offering to battle Islamophobia by helping Muslims get to work; or that, when violent Muslims stage their first explicit anti-free-speech attack on American soil, everyone thinks the mouthy free-speech broad is the problem. This soft jihad goes on every day of the week, and Bill O'Reilly doesn't even seem to be aware that it exists.
So on the one hand we have Pamela Geller. On the other we have Francine Prose, a former president of PEN and one of those dozens of novelists who's boycotting the posthumous award to Charlie Hebdo. I've never read one of Ms Prose's books, so this piece by her in The Guardian was my first exposure to her, er, prose:
This is a writer? This dessicated language is how Ms Prose deploys the tools of her trade? It isn't a "narrative", it's real life. That's real blood of real writers all over the Charlie floor - and it's not all "white European" blood, either: it includes people with names like "Mustapha Ourrad", Charlie's copy editor. Surely he's a fitting victim for Ms Prose as she goes around "working so tirelessly"? But no. The Prose "narrative" is too simple for complicating factors like blokes called Mustapha for whom the point of living in western societies is to live all the freedom of those societies.
If you make the concessions that Francine Prose and Michael Ondaatje are implicitly demanding, what kind of art remains? There was a big fuss a few weeks ago when Steve Emerson said on Fox News that Birmingham, England was a Muslim no-go zone, and the BBC gleefully mocked him because it's only 28 per cent Muslim or whatever. That 28 per cent is pretty spectacular in just a couple of generations. How long before it's 40 or 50 per cent? So, if, circa 2030, you're a PEN member in Birmingham and you want to write a novel about your city, it will necessarily involve a consideration of the relationship between an ever more Islamic city and what remains of its non-Islamic elements.
But Islam is telling you that subject's closed off. Not long after 9/11, some theatre group in Cincinnati announced a play contrasting a Palestinian suicide bomber and the American Jewish girl she killed. Local Muslims complained, and so the production was immediately canceled - because all the arty types who say we need "artists" with the "courage" to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas" fold like a cheap Bedouin tent when it comes to Islam. The Muslim community complained not because the play was anti-Muslim: au contraire, it was almost laughably pro-Palestinian, and the playwright considered the suicide bomber a far more sensitive sympathetic character than her dead Jewish victim.
But that wasn't the point: the Muslim leaders didn't care whether the play was pro- or anti-Islam: for them, Islam is beyond discussion. End of subject. And so it was.
So what kind of novels will PEN members be able to write in such a world?
Can Islam be made to live with the norms of free societies in which it now nests? Can Islam learn - or be forced to - suck it up the way Mormons, Catholics, Jews and everyone else do? If not, free societies will no longer be free. Pam Geller understands that, and has come up with her response. By contrast, Ed Miliband, Irwin Cotler, Francine Prose, Garry Trudeau and the trendy hipster social-media But boys who just canceled Mr Fawstin's Facebook account* are surrendering our civilization. They may be more sophisticated, more urbane, more amusing dinner-party guests ...but in the end they are trading our liberties.
A final cartoon from Bosch Fawstin:
"Stay quiet and you'll be okay:" Those were Mohammed Atta's words to his passengers on 9/11. And they're what all the nice respectable types are telling us now.
[*His Facebook page is back now.]
http://www.steynonline.com/6943/stay-quiet-and-youll-be-okay
by Mark Steyn
The War on Free Speech
May 9, 2015
As we mentioned a week ago, I'm none too well at the moment, and it so happens my preferred position in which to write causes me severe pain - which is presumably some kind of not so subtle literary criticism from the Almighty. But I'm back, more or less, with lots to catch up on. There were two big elections in recent days, with dramatic results: in Alberta, the Tories were wiped out; in Scotland, the Labour Party was slaughtered; in England, the Liberals were crushed. Strange times.
I'll have more to say about the elections in the days ahead, but for now let me offer a whole-hearted good riddance to Ed Miliband, the now departed Labour leader who, in a desperate last-minute pander, offered to "outlaw Islamophobia". That was the British political establishment's contribution to a rough couple of weeks for free speech, culminating in the attempted mass murder in Garland, Texas.
That's what it was, by the way - although you might have difficulty telling that from the news coverage. The Washington Post offered the celebrated headline "http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/event-organizer-offers-no-apology-after-thwarted-attack-in-texas/2015/05/04/f0926fb4-f28e-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html (Event Organizer Offers No Apology After Thwarted Attack In Texas)", while the Associated Press went with "Pamela Geller says she has no regrets about Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that ended in 2 deaths". The media "narrative" of the last week is that some Zionist temptress was walking down the street in Garland in a too short skirt and hoisted it to reveal her Mohammed thong - oops, my apologies, her Prophet Mohammed thong (PBUH) - and thereby inflamed two otherwise law-abiding ISIS supporters peacefully minding their own business.
It'll be a long time before you see "Washington Post Offers No Apology for Attacking Target of Thwarted Attack" or "AP Says It Has No Regrets After Blaming The Victim". The respectable class in the American media share the same goal as the Islamic fanatics: They want to silence Pam Geller. To be sure, they have a mild disagreement about the means to that end - although even then you get the feeling, as with Garry Trudeau and those dozens of PEN novelists' reaction to Charlie Hebdo, that the "narrative" wouldn't change very much if the jihad boys had got luckier and Pam, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer and a dozen others were all piled up in the Garland morgue.
If the American press were not so lazy and parochial, they would understand that this was the third Islamic attack on free speech this year - first, Charlie Hebdo in Paris; second, the Lars Vilks event in Copenhagen; and now Texas. The difference in the corpse count is easily explained by a look at the video of the Paris gunmen, or the bullet holes they put in the police car. The French and Texan attackers supposedly had the same kind of weapons, although one should always treat American media reports with a high degree of skepticism when it comes to early identification of "assault weapons" and "AK47s". Nonetheless, from http://bearingarms.com/pushed-forward-brave-garland-police-officer-advanced-brought-garland-terrorists/2/, it seems clear that the key distinction between the two attacks is that in Paris they knew how to use their firepower and in Garland they didn't. So a very cool 60-year-old local cop with nothing but his service pistol advanced under fire and took down two guys whose heavier firepower managed only to put a bullet in an unarmed security guard's foot.
The Charlie Hebdo killers had received effective training overseas - as thousands of ISIS recruits with western passports are getting right now. What if the Garland gunmen had been as good as the Paris gunmen? Surely that would be a more interesting question for the somnolent American media than whether some lippy Jewess was asking for it.
As for the free-speech issues, some of us have been around this question for a long time. I wrote a whole book about it: Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West - well worth a read, and I'm happy to autograph it for you. On page 123 I write about Jyllands Posten and the original Motoons:
The twelve cartoonists are now in hiding. According to the chairman of the Danish Liberal Party, a group of Muslim men showed up at a local school looking for the daughter of one of the artists.
When that racket starts, no cartoonist or publisher or editor should have to stand alone. The minute there were multimillion-dollar bounties on those cartoonists' heads, The Times of London and Le Monde and The Washington Post and all the rest should have said, "This Thursday we're all publishing the cartoons. If you want to put bounties on all our heads, you'd better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad. If you want to kill us, you'll have to kill us all..."
But it didn't happen.
The only two magazines to stand in solidarity with the Danish cartoonists and republish the Motoons were Charlie Hebdo in Paris and my own magazine in Canada, Ezra Levant's Western Standard. Ezra wound up getting hauled up by some dimestore imam before the ignorant and thuggish Alberta "Human Rights" Commission whose leisurely money-no-object "investigation" consumed years of his life and all his savings. But he was more fortunate than our comrades at Charlie Hebdo: He's still alive.
In Copenhagen, in Paris, in Garland, what's more important than the cartoons and the attacks is the reaction of all the polite, respectable people in society, which for a decade now has told those who do not accept the messy, fractious liberties of free peoples that we don't really believe in them, either, and we're happy to give them up - quietly, furtively, incrementally, remorselessly - in hopes of a quiet life. Because a small Danish newspaper found itself abandoned and alone, Charlie Hebdo jumped in to support them. Because the Charlie Hebdo artists and writers died abandoned and alone, Pamela Geller jumped in to support them. By refusing to share the risk, we are increasing the risk. It's not Pamela Geller who emboldens Islamic fanatics, it's all the nice types - the ones Salman Rushdie calls the But Brigade. You've heard them a zillion times this last week: "Of course, I'm personally, passionately, absolutely committed to free speech. But..."
And the minute you hear the "but", none of the build-up to it matters. A couple of days before Garland, Canadian Liberal MP (and former Justice Minister) Irwin Cotler announced his plan to restore Section 13 - the "hate speech" law under which Maclean's and I were dragged before the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission and which, as a result of my case, was repealed by the Parliament of Canada. At the time Mr Cotler was fairly torn on the issue. We talked about it briefly at a free-speech event in Ottawa at which he chanced to be present, and he made vaguely supportive murmurings - as he did when we ran into each other a couple of years later in Boston. Mr Cotler is Jewish and, even as European "hate" laws prove utterly useless against the metastasizing open Jew-hate on the Continent, he thinks we should give 'em one more try. He's more sophisticated than your average But boy, so he uses a three-syllable word:
"Freedom of expression is the lifeblood of democracy," said Cotler, who was minister of justice under Paul Martin.
"However..."
"However..."
Free speech is necessary to free society for all the stuff after the "but", after the "however". There's no fine line between "free speech" and "hate speech": Free speech is hate speech; it's for the speech you hate - and for all your speech that the other guy hates. If you don't have free speech, then you can't have an honest discussion. All you can do is what those stunted moronic boobs in Paris and Copenhagen and Garland did: grab a gun and open fire. What Miliband and Cotler propose will, if enacted, reduce us all to the level of the inarticulate halfwits who think the only dispositive argument is "Allahu Akbar".
Alas, we have raised a generation of But boys. Ever since those ridiculous Washington Post and AP headlines, I've been thinking about the fellows who write and sub-edit and headline and approve such things - and never see the problem with it. Why would they? If you're under a certain age, you accept instinctively that free speech is subordinate to other considerations: If you've been raised in the "safe space" of American universities, you take it as read that on gays and climate change and transgendered bathrooms and all kinds of other issues it's perfectly normal to eliminate free speech and demand only the party line. So what's the big deal about letting Muslims cut themselves in on a little of that action?
Why would you expect people who see nothing wrong with destroying a mom'n'pop bakery over its antipathy to gay wedding cakes to have any philosophical commitment to diversity of opinion? And once you no longer have any philosophical commitment to it it's easy to see it the way Miliband and Cotler do - as a rusty cog in the societal machinery that can be shaved and sliced millimeter by millimeter.
Do what the parochial hacks of the US media didn't bother to do, and look at the winning entry in Pam Geller's competition, which appears at the top of this page. It's by Bosch Fawstin, an Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and an ex-Muslim of Albanian stock. Like many of the Danish and French cartoons, it's less about Mohammed than about the prohibition against drawing Mohammed - and the willingness of a small number of Muslims to murder those who do, and a far larger number of Muslims both enthusiastic and quiescent to support those who kill. Mr Fawstin understands the remorseless logic of one-way multiculturalism - that it leads to the de facto universal acceptance of Islamic law. All that "Prophet Mohammed" stuff, now routine even on Fox News. He's not my prophet, he's just some dead bloke. But the formulation is now mysteriously standard in western media. Try it the other way round: "Isis News Network, from our Libyan correspondent: Warriors of the Caliphate today announced record attendance numbers for the mass beheading of followers of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ..."
On Fox the other day, Bill O'Reilly was hopelessly confused about this issue. He seems to think that Pam Geller's cartoon competitions will lessen the likelihood of moderate Muslims joining us in the fight against ISIS. Putting aside the fact that there is no fight against ISIS, and insofar as the many Muslim countries in the vast swollen non-existent "60-nation coalition" are going to rouse themselves to join the fight it will be because the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies and the Egyptian military understand it as an existential threat to them, put aside all that and understand that Islamic imperialism has a good-cop-bad-cop game - or hard jihad, soft jihad. The hard jihad is fought via bombings and beheadings and burnings over barren bits of desert and jungle and cave country in the Middle East, Africa and the Hindu Kush. The soft jihad is a suppler enemy fighting for rather more valuable real estate in Europe, Australia and North America, so it uses western shibboleths of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" to enfeeble those societies. And it does so very effectively - so that when a British soldier is hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight, you can't really quite articulate what's wrong with it; or that, upon the death of the ugly king of a state where Christianity is prohibited, the Christian ministers of Westminster Abbey mourn his passing; or that, when Australians are held siege in a Sydney coffee shop, the reflexive response of progressive persons is to launch a social-media campaign offering to battle Islamophobia by helping Muslims get to work; or that, when violent Muslims stage their first explicit anti-free-speech attack on American soil, everyone thinks the mouthy free-speech broad is the problem. This soft jihad goes on every day of the week, and Bill O'Reilly doesn't even seem to be aware that it exists.
So on the one hand we have Pamela Geller. On the other we have Francine Prose, a former president of PEN and one of those dozens of novelists who's boycotting the posthumous award to Charlie Hebdo. I've never read one of Ms Prose's books, so this piece by her in The Guardian was my first exposure to her, er, prose:
The narrative of the Charlie Hebdo murders – white Europeans killed in their offices by Muslim extremists – is one that feeds neatly into the cultural prejudices that have allowed our government to make so many disastrous mistakes in the Middle East. And the idea that one is either "for us or against us" in such matters not only precludes rational and careful thinking, but also has a chilling effect on the exercise of our right to free expression and free speech that all of us – and all the people at PEN – are working so tirelessly to guarantee.
This is a writer? This dessicated language is how Ms Prose deploys the tools of her trade? It isn't a "narrative", it's real life. That's real blood of real writers all over the Charlie floor - and it's not all "white European" blood, either: it includes people with names like "Mustapha Ourrad", Charlie's copy editor. Surely he's a fitting victim for Ms Prose as she goes around "working so tirelessly"? But no. The Prose "narrative" is too simple for complicating factors like blokes called Mustapha for whom the point of living in western societies is to live all the freedom of those societies.
If you make the concessions that Francine Prose and Michael Ondaatje are implicitly demanding, what kind of art remains? There was a big fuss a few weeks ago when Steve Emerson said on Fox News that Birmingham, England was a Muslim no-go zone, and the BBC gleefully mocked him because it's only 28 per cent Muslim or whatever. That 28 per cent is pretty spectacular in just a couple of generations. How long before it's 40 or 50 per cent? So, if, circa 2030, you're a PEN member in Birmingham and you want to write a novel about your city, it will necessarily involve a consideration of the relationship between an ever more Islamic city and what remains of its non-Islamic elements.
But Islam is telling you that subject's closed off. Not long after 9/11, some theatre group in Cincinnati announced a play contrasting a Palestinian suicide bomber and the American Jewish girl she killed. Local Muslims complained, and so the production was immediately canceled - because all the arty types who say we need "artists" with the "courage" to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas" fold like a cheap Bedouin tent when it comes to Islam. The Muslim community complained not because the play was anti-Muslim: au contraire, it was almost laughably pro-Palestinian, and the playwright considered the suicide bomber a far more sensitive sympathetic character than her dead Jewish victim.
But that wasn't the point: the Muslim leaders didn't care whether the play was pro- or anti-Islam: for them, Islam is beyond discussion. End of subject. And so it was.
So what kind of novels will PEN members be able to write in such a world?
Can Islam be made to live with the norms of free societies in which it now nests? Can Islam learn - or be forced to - suck it up the way Mormons, Catholics, Jews and everyone else do? If not, free societies will no longer be free. Pam Geller understands that, and has come up with her response. By contrast, Ed Miliband, Irwin Cotler, Francine Prose, Garry Trudeau and the trendy hipster social-media But boys who just canceled Mr Fawstin's Facebook account* are surrendering our civilization. They may be more sophisticated, more urbane, more amusing dinner-party guests ...but in the end they are trading our liberties.
A final cartoon from Bosch Fawstin:
"Stay quiet and you'll be okay:" Those were Mohammed Atta's words to his passengers on 9/11. And they're what all the nice respectable types are telling us now.
[*His Facebook page is back now.]
http://www.steynonline.com/6943/stay-quiet-and-youll-be-okay
Similar threads
