In a disgraceful act of cowardice and hatred, fanatics murdered at least 12 members of the staff of the French satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo. I don’t hesitate to call this cowardice; the gunmen faced no real threat, killed people, and then ran away. They seemed to think this was a triumph of some sort.
In the video, the gunmen can be heard shouting “Allahu akbar” between bursts of gunfire. The gunmen also shouted “we have avenged the prophet,” according to police.
All they have accomplished is to inspire revulsion and further taint their religion with the slime of zealotry…and to make people more aware of the ridicule the dead had heaped on their principles…and this action has confirmed that Charlie Hebdo was right. Good work, guys.
Furthermore, they’ve done their own people great harm. The majority of Muslims do not condone terrorism, but terrorism committed in their name will be used by the fascists and anti-immigrants and just-plain bigots to justify persecution of Muslims. All Muslims. Without discriminating between those who condemn and those who applaud.
But I do have to criticize one thing. Read this collection of Muslims repudiating the murders. That’s good, and I think the majority of Muslims will concur that these acts were wrong.
But a lot of them declare that the killings were “un-Islamic”. No, the killers probably think of themselves as deeply Islamic; there is nothing un-Islamic about killing others, just as there is nothing un-Christian about denouncing gays or sending drones to blow up Muslim wedding parties. Let’s all just recognize that religion is a muddled, incoherent mess that allows good people to find rationalizations for doing good and bad people to find rationalizations for doing bad. And the three cowards who shot up the offices of Charlie Hebdo were just as Muslim as the good people who denounce religiously-motivated murder.
But when your version of your god requires that you shoot cartoonists, I think you’ve lost — that’s the kind of action that will drive Muslims away from your fanaticism, and that will make violent Islamicism an object of universal contempt. The cartoons win.
Good job making life in France noticeably shittier from now on for anyone who happens to look a bit like you, you murderous cretins.
Maybe I should see about getting a Charlie Hebdo subscription, my French could use some refreshing.
No True
Scots-Muslim.–
Signed in triplicate. When Atheist Asshole #354824 commits an atrocity, I’m not gonna apologize for being an atheist and would not expect anybody else to. But I’m also not gonna say “well obviously they weren’t a real atheist. Doing such a thing is un-atheistic!” Because that would be bullshit.
Sigh. The reason that there aren’t supposed to be representations of the prophet is so that people won’t start idolizing the prophet, instead of following the god. Killing other folks for insulting the prophet’s honor, is worshipping the prophet, and not following the god.
Delurking to say that I think I agree 100% with this take on the events. Thanks for putting it so well PZ. My Sympathies go out to the victims and their families, as well as all of the innocent European Muslims who will no doubt suffer for the actions of these despicable fanatics.
I wouldn’t agree with that. Of course the killers see their actions as very islamic; Islam provides the whole motivation for them in the first place. But when someone says that the killings are un-Islamic, they basically say that they interpret Islam/the Koran/whathaveyou in a way that does not condone/motivate these deeds. Which basically proves our point, that religion doesn’t provide a useful basis for ethics and morals that is any more universal than any other ethic standpoint, since in any religion itself there are disagreements about what the Holy Word(s) mean.
“But a lot of them declare that the killings were “un-Islamic”.”
Believe it or not, that is what the late Charlie Hebdo people stated themselves last time they were attacked. The very same people who were killed today.
If they were alive today, if the killers had shown up at the wrong time, say, or if the policemen who were there had managed to stop them, they would probably be saying the same thing: these guys are not true Muslims.
Why not? Beats me.
“I don’t hesitate to call this cowardice; the gunmen faced no real threat, killed people, and then ran away.”
Granted, the policement were outgunned and taken by surprise. However, in the past, people who did similar deeds did not live long. They die shot within a short time. Even when they can surrender, they don’t.
I am amazed at the execution of the operation. It in an unprecedented success. And they knew exactly when to attack to shoot the main people at Charlie Hebdo (they were having a pretty serious meeting of the “heavies” apparently, and such meetings are not advertised for).
Usually terrorists in France are not that good and that worries me a great deal.
So, maybe they really were facing no real threat and have also a very good support network that will help them never be found.
@Zeppelin (comment #1):
Unfortunately Charlie Hebdo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo) was a very small journal in terms of demography. As the killers said out loud, they really killed the journal and it probably won’t survive this event.
Un-Islamic? A large swath of the Islamic world gleefully condones the killing of atheists, apostates and blasphemers. I would call these muderous zealots very Islamic indeed.
@Zeppelin:
I’m afraid that’s a win/win for terrorists. Shittier life for French minorities means more future recruits.
Everybody wonders whether the journal will survive. Believe me, it has national recognition.
Former editor Philippe Val is still alive. He had left the journal, but no law says he cannot come back.
There still are more than a few talents of Charlie alive today. Charlie may very well survive, even if only out of stubbornness. (Merriam tells me that word does not exist, but I guess you see what I mean).
*murderous*
Okidemia:
That’d be a great shame…The German news report had some scenes from their offices from some time last year, and there seemed to be quite a lot of people there, so I’ve been hoping there’ll be enough people left to pick up the pieces and keep going, but if they killed the cartoonists and the editor… I guess we’ll see soon enough :/
It seems to me that at least part of the problem is this whole idea of “Freedom of Religion” and some kind of governmental recognition of a superior status for religion. Honoring the separation of church and state requires no recognition of religious groups beyond any other grouping of people. Freedom of Association, Freedom of Expression but not freedom of religion.
This would make it much easier to judicially separate out the murderous aspects of religion. Any sort of advocation of infringement on another’s rights should be illegal and no justification in religious belief could be claimed.
lff
http://www.ibtimes.com/moderate-muslims-use-jesuischarlie-condemn-charlie-hebdo-attack-paris-1775986
just for a view on the reality….
no, that’s exactly the opposite of the problem.
Zeppelin:
Those authors and cartoonists they mention, they were also the owners of the journal.
The owners were having this meeting, but there were a lot more than five cartoonists in that publication. I’m expecting an issue next week.
Why are radical Muslims still killing people over cartoons? By now they should know it doesn’t end with people not criticizing Islam or anyone converting to Islam. Quite the contrary, in fact. Pick your battles, guys. And this is on the heels of ISIS beheading one of its own executioners for smoking. That’s the think about fanatics: they don’t know how to pick their battles.
@Ichthyic, #16
“no, that’s exactly the opposite of the problem.”
What do you mean?
@fredfile:
The problem is that for legal purposes, and correct me if I am wrong, ATHEISM is a religion. We need those protections as well. Believe me, in religiously dominated societies, especially ones dominated by a single strain of religion, freedom of religion is a good thing.
At least here in the States that is…
that when you actually HAVE true freedom of religion, the religions tend to work shit out and the violence tends to go away.
it’s when you DON’T have that, like in a country with imposed sharia law, that you start getting the idea that your religion is the bestests, and all others deserve death.
so, no, the problem here is most definitely NOT freedom of religion.
damien75@19:
Because in this glorious Islamic Caliphate these douchebags are trying to set up, freedom of religion is the LAST thing they are fighting for. In fact, I think it is diametrically opposed to the whole idea of Tawhid.
Kamaka, #9
Depends who you talk to. It’s both Islamic and un-Islamic. There are also Muslims who condemn the killings but still support suppressing blasphemy against their religious figures.
TRIGGER WARNING: cop being executed
Video of part of the incident:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc6_1420632668
@ Ichthic
Moderate religion is the pavement violent zealots walk upon.
Moderate religionists own these fanatics and provide cover to many other varieties of miscreants as well.
Condemnation of rape and murder after the fact is small consolation.
@Ichthyic, #21
Thank you.
France lacks the death penalty and that’s a good thing. When these things are caught (I could not bring myself to type people), once convicted they should be forced to have their prison cell inside a pig farm. Their prison cells could be interspersed with pig pens all around them. Of course, something would need to be done to protect the sensibilities of the pigs from these zealots.
Why do you assume they will be caught?
They were hooded, gloved, and unwounded: there is little chance of getting DNA or fingerprints to identify them.
If they had state or quasi-state support, they are likely no longer even in France.
I will be shocked if anyone goes to trial over this. Of course that will be fertile ground for conspiracy theories galore….
They’re humans just like you and me. They’re obviously very bad humans and did horrible things, but humans nonetheless. I think that convincing ourselves that this was perpetrated by some inhuman force of nature will just open us up to this happening over and over and over again.
markmckee #27:
Well you should. People are to be held responsible for their own actions. If this were an act of nature, of ‘things,’ it would be sad, but no blame would attach. It is precisely because it was the act of people that it is so much worse than merely sad.
Well Zeppelin, that’s probably one of their goal. Extremism feeds off division and no doubt there will be plenty of petty deeds against Muslims in the days to come. If even a few of them drive young kids in the arms of the zealots, it will have been worthwhile. (Hence the beauty of the Australian reaction to the recent shooting #ridewithme.)
That’s also why I kind of disagree with PZ here: French Muslims have come out to condemn the act, but to me it smells of fear more than anything (not that I don’t believe their reaction is genuine, mind you). My point is : they shouldn’t have to. They are French: to me, their loss and horror is is as obvious as mine and they shouldn’t have to try to convince us.
Yeah, humans killing humans who hurt their feelings by laughing at the fact that their imaginary friend is the most important thing in their life has a long, long history full of many, many incidences.
Since no other known lifeform does that, we can say that it is a uniquely human trait.
Only because I’m assuming they’ll die in a shootout. I can’t remember the last time somebody pulled one of these off and got away with it. Look at the mall stabbing in the UAE. She was covered from head to toe and walked off. They caught her in a day.
I’m fucking scared.
But what scared me most was how quickly my usually very cool Twitter timeline filled up with “muslims did it”.
Long before anything beyond “terrorist attack” was known.
Because even if you’re right it doesn’t mean that you’re not displaying a massive amount of prejudice that your first reaction to terrorism is “muslims”.
No fuck. Islamist fascists. You know whom they kill mostly? Muslims.
Remember Peshawar? Or was that just not that important because the victims were muslim children?
But yeah, this attack will be used for more discrimination against muslims, more restrictions on immigration. Because obviously people fleeing IS are those who will “islamificate” Europe.
BTW, the policeman killed on the street? His name was Ahmed…
The obvious – and probably true – assumption is that these evil scumbags are Islamist extremists, but it is possible that they are far-right anti-Muslim provocateurs, intent on encouraging racial/religious war. In at least one way, their actions are atypical for Islamist terrorists: they appear to have planned on getting away with their crime, not being “martyred”.
@ 35
Point taken.
Obviously shocked by what happened. Just came back from one of the countless meetings in France (and indeed Europe and beyond).
I’m just gonna translate something Charb, one of the cartoonist shot to death today and head of Charlie Hebdo, said some years ago:
“I’d rather die standing up than live on my knees”. –Charb
On the matter of the end of Charlie Hebdo:
– As I read someplace: they wanted to kill Charlie Hebdo, they just made it eternal.
– A lot of media groups in France are stating solidarity in order to keep the newspaper alive. Let’s hope they do.
@28
They are likely disenfranchised young men who rarely speak to anyone outside of their own circle and talked themselves into thinking that this sort of thing is a good idea. If they had state support the supporters are probably about to throw them under a bus. Everyone in France now hates them, and even if they just drop off the map and are never seen again someone is going to take note of the three young and especially devout kids that aren’t hanging out at the mosque anymore. They spoke fluent French as well so that really does narrow down the number of possible suspects, and video of them is going to all over the place in a short while. Anyone who fits the general physical and social profile is about to be very uncomfortable, and these things have a tendency to unravel very quickly.
No guarantees, just statistics.
Jerry Coyne’s article on this whole area is still relevant: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/11/14/the-times-calls-it-like-it-is-on-islam-theres-no-true-version/
Cross posted from the Lounge:
Head meet desk time, courtesy of Fox News. Those fools at Faux News are blaming the attack in Paris on France’s strict gun laws, and on too much political correctness in France. Sheesh.
Oh, yeah, bring in Mayor de Blasio and blame him for not supporting unequal enforcement policies. [more head/desk time]
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/07/fox-news-exploits-tragedy-in-france-to-attack-n/202037.
Arnaud
THIS
It’s completely fucked up that every time a terrorist attack happens the non-muslim majority first turns towards their muslim fellow-citizens and demand that they condemn it. Before they have even said “my heart goes out to the victims and their families”.
We hold all muslims guilty of the crime until they have proven to our satisfaction that they’re innocent.
Laura Ingraham of Fox News blamed the attack on France’s immigration policy, on “the principle of multiculturalism and open borders […] this is pure insanity, a suicide pact.”
Laura Ingraham and Fox News in general are bloody awful.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/01/07/ingraham-blames-tragic-attack-in-paris-on-frenc/202036
Cross posted from the Lounge:
The Charlie Hebdo offices were firebombed in November, 2011. At the time, the bombers explained themselves this way: “You keep abusing Islam’s almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech. Be God’s curse upon you.”
So that’s their logic, or lack of logic. Total misunderstanding of “freedom of speech.”
No. Just no. We should not aspire to reach the moral level of Dick Cheney.
If they are caught and brought to justice, they should spend a long time in prison, but in as humane conditions as the necessary security will allow, where they will be allowed to live their lives and hopefully reflect on, and eventually renounce, their crimes. I don’t know enough about prisons in France if that’s possible, but that is what we should all wish for.
@Zeppelin:
No. Just no.
I hope you can figure out why on your own.
Stuff like this is just so off the chain that I always have a hard time accepting it at face value too. Yes, the obvious thing given the target and the reports that they were doing the Allahu Snackbar thing is that this was an act of Islamist terrorism, but man if I’m not always entertaining the thought that maybe this is some false flag bullshit being pulled by some extremist righties. Because they’d NEVER conduct an act of terrorism, amiright?.
If Mohammad or Allah have a fucking problem with the cartoons, then let them deal with it.
I’m pretty sure she’s completely unaware that a large part of France’s immigrant population are the descendants of people France colonized.
I mean, sure, mess with them for a few centuries, rape murder and abuse them, but really, the problem is that they then had the gall to come to France…
Whoops. Borked the link!
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/je-suis-charlie-demonstrations-paris-massacre
“People Around the World Are Pouring Into the Streets to Support Charlie Hebdo After the Paris Massacre”
Maps and photos at the link.
Thankfully, France’s law and jurisprudence forbid this kind of petty revenge
My condolences to those who lost their friends and family in the attack today.
@27 Yes, because dehumanizing them and making their life a sort of anti-Muslim hell will bring the cartoonists back to life and prevent future attacks. /sarcasm We’re all rightfully enraged at what the perpetrators did, but going beyond fair justice to Cheneyistic revenge isn’t something we need. And, plain old secular justice can itch a revenge nerve too:
http://www.nysun.com/national/judge-to-moussaoui-you-will-die-with-a-whimper/32190/
We’re way past the tipping point, unfortunately. No matter what we do, there is going to be violence eventually.
I can’t help but suspect Saudi Arabia is starting and bankrolling this crap and the people actually committing the attacks are “useful idiots,” driven to it by injustice, injured pride, and fear, always always with the fear.
The honorable thing to do would be for the US to invest in thorium and thermal-mass solar and pull out of the Middle East entirely. There’s no way we’ll do that right now given, I suspect, the leverage of OPEC over Russia (increase production, oil prices plummet, Russian economy goes kersplat). But if we did, it would radically shift the geopolitical balance and give the Middle East far less control over world affairs.
That should be combined with, or perhaps preceded by, a block on Muslim immigration. I know I’ve just stepped on a sacred cow’s toes here, but hear me out: no other group has such hostility toward its host countries. CAIR has said on numerous occasions that American democracy is not compatible with Islam, and the European equivalents are not going to feel much different about European secular society either. Why the hell should any nation let people in whose stated goal is conquest and annexation of said nation?!
I despair of the day I ever agree with the ridiculous fascists on ANYTHING, but lo and behold, it’s happened. What a sad, sick world.
@nich
Hmmm, and just where would I apply for my tax exemption?
lff
Azuma Hazuki,
Fuck you and your sacred cow. Sure, trapping innocent people under the terror of extremists is a brilliant idea. You know what’s going to happen to them? Many of them will suffer and die, but sure, that’s cool because they happen to have been born in a country where Islam is the predominant religion.
Azuma Hazuki #54:
That sacred cow would be ‘Not discriminating on grounds of religion.’ What part of us wanting to be better than despotic theocracies do you not understand?
Actually, scratch my #57. Beatrice said it better.
Azuma Hazuki
Goodness, this is completely stupid, racist and islamophobe on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin. Let’s try…
1. Current muslim immigration is mostly war refugees from countries where IS is roaming. Countries the west did a lot to destabilize. You know, if there’s anybody who will oppose islamist fascism it’s probably Syrian refugees because they just got away from that shit.
2. What’s your plan for US Sovereign citizens? Where do you ship them?
3. Are you even fucking aware that the large majority of muslims in Europe are actually born, raised and citizens of the counties they live in? What’s your idea, some kind of “Ariertest”? Or would forced conversion like in the 15th and 16th century be enough?
4. So, how do you profile for “muslim immigration”? Don’t tell me, it’s probably by country of origin.
5. What’s your idea for white converts, who make up a large part of the more violent European islamofascists? Just prohibit anybody from converting? Deport them to Somewhereland? Simply ban Islam?
Why don’t you take your racist shit to Dawkins, UKIP, KKK and Pegida? I’m sure Breivik would welcome a fan letter, too
Don’t know if its been pointed out but only 10 of the 12 killed were from the magazine. The other 2 were police tasked with the magazine’s protection.
Azuma Hazuki @ #54, maybe you’re just angry and sad like everyone else. I hope that’s it, because what you just said is incredibly stupid. It’s unsympathetic to the suffering of those who wish and have the chance to leave their present circumstances for what is supposed to be the welcome offering of a better life.
You know, Canada faced an attack (thankfully thwarted, but not before there could be death) recently and the response, except for from that small-minded fascist and bigoted sub-section of the population, even, indeed, from our conservative Government, was that the country and the people, including those recently welcomed, come together in solidarity against the action of the violent few.
There is no concerted, consistent, pervasive and singular mindset among Muslims that the countries to which they immigrate are ideologically opposed to their world-view. Indeed, there is no singular hostility that Muslims share against the countries to which they immigrate.
Shame on you. Shame, shame, shame.
What Giliell said@59. Azuma Hazuki’s reaction, of course, is precisely the one that would most please the terrorists.
@fredfile:
Umm…you don’t REALLY think that the tax exemption is simply for believing in a deity do you? You do realize that clergy pay income taxes (though with a few more exploitable loopholes than the average Joe Sixpack I think) AND that 501s aren’t exclusive to religion? American Atheists enjoys the same 501(c)(3) tax exempt status as any religious institution as far as I know, along with every other “Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals” organization that meets the requirements.
But don’t you know? Zeppelin’s already told us that Azuma isn’t responsible for Azuma’s shitty words: the Paris terrorists are!
…give the Middle East far less control over world affairs.
Do you really believe that any countries or non-state parties in the Middle East have “control over world affairs?” That’s about as ignorant as saying criminal gangs in Bed-Stuy have control over Midtown Manhattan.
@ Christopher, #28
“Why do you assume they will be caught?”
Past authors of similar crimes in France were. Except those three seem better than any past one. Daily newspaper Le Monde says there is a video, not available on the web, in which you see them kill a cop and shooting him again at close range for good measure, with professional-like cool.
“I will be shocked if anyone goes to trial over this.”
I’d be surprised too. Merah and Kelkal died without a trial. However, they were found. Dekhar, who shot a staff member of the Libération daily was arrested, though.
@Nick Gotts, #35
” it is possible that they are far-right anti-Muslim provocateurs”
They could be… But as you write it does not seem likely.
“In at least one way, their actions are atypical for Islamist terrorists: they appear to have planned on getting away with their crime, not being “martyred”.”
Except muslim terrorists in France in the past such as Kelkal and Merah, who, apparently were motivated by Islam, have tried to hide and get away with their crimes.
@tomfrog #37
“A lot of media groups in France are stating solidarity in order to keep the newspaper alive.”
That is what they always do in such circumstances. Last time Charlie was attacked, Libération gave them asylum. When the ephemerous Globe was bombed in the 80’s (probably the deed of a friend of Jesus), Libération hosted them in their facilities and they even inserted the following issues of Globe in their own pages, if I remember well.
This times, I bet Libération again gets to help Charlie.
@ChristineRose #38
“They spoke fluent French as well so that really does narrow down the number of possible suspects”
Did you forget to write a “not” in that sentence? Because if you didn’t I do not get it.
following Lynna OM, #40
“national security analyst KT McFarland said that “really strict gun control policy” in France contributed to the attack”
And yet 99% of the French would choose French gun laws over, say, Florida gun laws any day. Go figure.
Thank you Faux News. You actually got a smile out of me in this time of distress.
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- #41
” every time a terrorist attack happens the non-muslim majority first turns towards their muslim fellow-citizens and demand that they condemn it”
I am not aware that such demands were made, though (granted: I do not read everything). Maybe some were but I wonder who would dare. That would not look good.
It seems like the terrorists want everyone to know that they are affiliated with the toilet in Yemen:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11330636/Terrorists-shouted-they-were-from-al-Qaeda-in-the-Yemen-before-Charlie-Hebdo-attack.html
Am I just super jaded, or does any of that seem a bit fishy?
Though it’s not like al-Queda in Yemen doesn’t exist…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/magazine/11Yemen-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/al-qaeda-in-yemen/understanding-yemens-al-qaeda-threat/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/al-qaeda-in-yemen/interactive-map-americas-war-in-yemen/
And just today:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/07/us-yemen-security-idUSKBN0KG0AD20150107
By request, here’s some actual cartoonists speaking out on today’s massacre:
Attack on Charlie Hebdo: Long live comics, and long live freedom of the press;
Cartoonists React to Murder of Colleagues at Charlie Hebdo ;
Charlie Hebdo’s mysterious last tweet before attack (okay this one’s not really a response, but there it is);
22 Heartbreaking Cartoons From Artists Responding To The Charlie Hebdo Shooting.
As for me, I stand by what Giliell said @59, and Thomathy @61.
And if you’re waiting for Muslims to apologize on behalf of other Muslims and condemn today’s killing spree, then you believe that all Muslims are, in some sense, guilty by group association.
And it is sad that so many of them feel the need to apologize and condemn anyway, just to be sure that their voices get out there before the bigots start yelling too loudly, because they know what the response will be. And they are afraid, as I would be, of random retaliation for things they do not support in their wildest dreams.
Not a monolith.
I linked to that video in post #24
Tomorrow will be a national mourning day in France.
Charlie Hebdo was made “Citoyen d’honneur de la ville de Paris”.
@Beatrice
Well said. If only people in power across the EU had thought of that before starting up the immigration of poor uneducated rural muslims into European democracies.
Oh, I guess that wasn’t where you were hoping to go eh? Well, fuck the native europeans amirite, racists every one of them.
Did you mean to write terrorists and auto-correct made it toilet, or are you trying to imply an entire country and it’s citizenry are a toilet because of a few asshole terrorists?
@Christopher #69
Thank you very much.
So much for “not available on the web”.
I confess I watched none of the videos. I do not think I can tale it.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-514909
dutchdelight,
I am a “native European” you moron.
Yeah, that’s the reaction I expected. Sad, but understandable. If it’s true that this would help the terrorists, then I’ll retract it as being a good idea; the last thing we want to do is give them more ammunition.
Thomathy at #61 is mostly correct, and i will admit to a largely emotional reaction. Knowing my history, you know I tend to be a bit kneejerk about religious extremism. I just don’t know how to solve this, and some part of me (brain stem? R-complex?) is perhaps irrationally worried that there’s no reasonable solution.
Do you all think it would be smart to quit funding the epicenter and origin of this memetic plague, though? Wahabbism is a Saudi thing, and I really do think the Saudis are playing more moderate Muslims for fools.
Christopher@75:
Gotcha. Don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that before…
How many of them actually are poor, uneducated and/or “rural”?
@Beatrice
Good job calling me a moron, i’m sure that was totally called for. Not sure why you feel you should mention that you are a native European, so, here, have a cookie for that.
And here’s David Silverman eloquently stating “#Yesallmuslims”
Fuck him.
dutchdelight
Goodness, it’s racist whack-a-mole here today.
So, tell me, how many people have Turkish islamists killed in Germany vs. how many people of Turkish descend have been killed by German neonazis?
How many seats does the AKP have in the German Bundestag?
It’s being reported that the attackers have been identified.
Christopher @69
I saw that video. It is terrible.
@nich
Which “them” are you talking about. You do understand people find jobs, make money and start families over time right?
Been called a racist, and moron, for a factual line on effective immigration policies in the EU. Good job people.
dutchdelight #83:
They would be the immigrant Muslims you referred to, arsehole. Arguing in good faith: you might want to try it.
dutchdelight
Oh, you mean when they worked their asses off in shitty jobs that built up the economy of the EU they were totally desirable, but now after some 50 years of living here they should get out again quickly, please, right? Including their children and grandchildren, of course.
Lynna
I’m going to borrow your link @40. Has relevance.
dutchdelight,
I mentioned it because of yours:
,
dutchdelight, no, fuck the racist fascist assholes who would restart Nazi policies because they can’t recognise that shitting on country after country that has a majority Muslim populace will continually create incidents like this. We declared a fucking Crusade, and then we’re astonished when the targets of it fight back in the only (vile) way available to them.
We’ve done this to ourselves. Not the victims, but our governments, the people we voted for who started war after war, drone attack upon rendition upon torture, we have done this. Did we have an international outcry and hashtag floods when USan bullets have slaughtered Iraqi journalists, or Afghan and Yemeni weddings? Cause we’ve killed a fucktonne more of them then they have of us. Hell, fascists inside Europe have murdered more Islamic adherents – and people who looked like they might be – than were killed today, or ever by Muslim terrorism inside Europe.
Fuck fascism. When fascism gets a grip, do you think I will be safe, as a pansexual polyamorous and atheist trans woman? Learn your history. Fascist response is reactionary, by definition, and it never stays confined to the initial target. Yellow stars weren’t the only markers used by the Nazis.
http://www.metronews.fr/info/attentat-a-charlie-hebdo-les-trois-suspects-ont-ete-identifies/moag!6R1qjYdgLbxjQ/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#.VK2MnpbfFS0.twitter
https://twitter.com/rennmax/status/552919995169378304
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/attack-charlie-hebdo
it is possible that they are far-right anti-Muslim provocateurs
Sure it’s possible, but it’s not all that probable, given the number of Islamist terrorist attacks that turn out NOT to have been the work of far-right anti-Muslim provocateurs. (Didn’t some conspiracy-buffs say the same thing about 9/11?)
OTOH…
Two terrorists shouted that they were from al Qaeda in the Yemen before they launched the brutal attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris….
Yes, that DOES seem rather fishy — I’ve never heard of any terrorist group taking credit for an act BEFORE it’s done.
national security analyst KT McFarland said that “really strict gun control policy” in France contributed to the attack
How so? Did the cartoonists seek, and fail to gain, permission to buy guns and bring them to work? If not, then that talking-point is bullshit. And even if every cartoonist had been armed to the teeth on that day, the terrorists — being the aggressors and all — would still have got the drop on at least one of them, and the rest would not have had a coherent defense, and would not have known what sort of threat they were shooting at. Ares only knows how many people would have been hurt or killed in a firefight. (Oh, and they killed two cops too, not just unarmed cartoonists; so that casts further doubt on the whole “more guns would have saved lives” blithering.)
@nich
Oh, i get it, you think there’s a point to be made that not all fit the label. Well, bask in your glory friend, you made it there first. Now that we’ve had that… did you have a point?
dutchdelight #93:
Umm?
@90 Christopher:
Here’s a machine translation of that Metro page link you posted.
You’re a racist fuckwad, happy?
Oh look, Richard Dawkins is Twitter-trolling for the cause. We can all breathe easier now…
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/07/richard_dawkins_goes_on_anti_islam_rant_blames_charlie_hebdo_massacre_on_entire_religion/
No, all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didn’t.
Three, actually: there are plenty of Jews and Christians who are just as happy to kill their critics as al Qaeda ever was. (What’s the majority-religion of the country that recently invaded two Muslim countries and has drones picking off people in god-knows-how-many-more?) How does an educated and articulate person like Dawkins manage to be so consistently wrong about so many things?
‘Islam is not a race’ in 3… 2… 1…
“Freedom of Religion” is a real mislabel. Should be: “Freedom of Belief”. That is, Actions are not free for everyone to act as their religion tells them to, when those actions interact with another person. Thus, they are free to Hate those cartoons and believe that the cartoonists have committed an irredeemable sin. They must not take Action against those cartoonists, let the Gawd of one’s religion do the punishing. This is not exclusive to Muslims, ie going too far, we got lots of Xians doing the same; they too are going too far. And Freedom of Belief also includes freedom to NOT believe. Don’t lump atheism as a “new religion” to get that F.o.R protection.
.
and what of that annual “cartoon the prophet day”? Are participants on the extremists hit list?
… run away! / run away!…
@dutchdelight:
I was hoping you’d respond with some sort of link to a reputable source showing that in fact these immigrants really are poor, uneducated and rural and that you weren’t simply stereotyping them them as illiterate backwoods poor folk being accepted by the benevolent white folk of Europe like your average racist asshat. By responding like an asshole, I feel pretty safe in assuming you’re a racist fuckwad.
Now have a nice day, sugar.
I would imagine dutchdelight wouldn’t have liked the alternatives to those Muslim immigrants any better.
Beats me how you’d ban the immigration of Muslims. It’s not as if there’s a surefire way of telling a Muslim Pakistani, Lebanese, or Indonesian from a non-Muslim one, other than banning everyone from any country with a significant Muslim population. So, hey, you’re a Nigerian that wants to come to Canada? Sorry, you can’t, because too many of your fellow countrypeople are Muslims, so we can’t let any of you in.
@66
Either they were homegrown, or they weren’t. Knowing one or the other narrows it down. From a statistical point of view they were always likely to be homegrown, but the suggestion was that they’re now out of the country. There can’t be too many people that fit the description that have left France in the last twelve hours. My guess is, though, that they are still in the country and that someone will put the details together.
Islam is not a race. Don’t be an idiot. I’m running out of patience with the leftist insistence on labeling any criticism of the religion “Islamophobia.” It’s inaccurate, it’s not true, and it’s actually much more profoundly racist than calling the religion out for its evils.
Why is this? Because it reeks of 19th-century Orientalism. “Oh, lookit the poor widdle backwards people! It’s not their fault their religion is so horrible! Poor things, they can’t think any different anyway for being so backwards!” Now that is racist. That devalues their humanity and strips them of their agency.
Someone upthread asked me what I’d do about “white converts to Islam.” What would I do? Keep an eye on them, same as any other radicalized population segment. That they are white does not make a difference; that they are converted, and therefore likely to be radicalized, does. Ditto for the “Sovereign Citizens” here in the US; keep an eye on them, and for the precise same reason: they have been radicalized and are likely to perpetrate violence because they consider themselves not only above the law but religiously sanctioned to fight it.
Ah, yes, it’s Gilliel at #59
The second half of that does not follow from the first. More than likely, the Syrians want their own form of Islam, rather than the fascist form, which will work out juuuuust about as well for non-Muslims. Read the Quran, please.
Nowhere, until they commit a crime; then ship their asses to prison. I addressed this above.
Yes i am fucking aware that they are actually born in, raised in, and citizens of these countries they live in. Stop insulting my intelligence, please. The rest of this does not dignify a response.
No, you self-righteous jackhole, it’s finding out what religion they are. This is why I said “Muslim immigration, not, e.g., “Pakistani immigration.”
As stated above: let the secular law handle this. Keep a close eye on them, as they tend to be both violent and dangerous, and have a proper response ready to go at the first sign of trouble. Meanwhile, do community policing and attempt to cool down the flames of fundamentalist rhetoric by making sure people feel safe and socialize across religious and social barriers; it’s hard to blow up the guy you buy bread from, you know?
This also doesn’t merit a response, but here’s one in kind: why don’t you take your thoughtless, self-satisfied, ahistorical, tone-trolling smug idiocy and go to Iran with it? I’ll notify your next of kin…
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/07/religion_is_a_medieval_form_of_unreason_salman_rushdie_responds_to_paris_attacks/
I think Rushdie’s description: “religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam” is more accurate and more tolerant than the tweet from Dawkins.
More from Rushdie: “‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion,’” he concluded. “Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”
Juan Cole opines that aggravating relationships in the west (France in particular) between Muslims and others is an ambition of this assault. That it is an example of the tactic terrorists are named for.
They hope to stir reaction and encourage a cycle of violence that radicalises people because it is the world they wish for.
Allahu akbar!
Al-Queda made me say that!
@103, Azuma Hazuki
No one said Islam is a race. So you’re confused somehow.
*And I’m sure everyone here agrees that Islam is not a race.
Well, the European country that’s known for its “poor uneducated rural muslims” is indeed Germany.
50 years ago.
During the Wirtschaftswunder (economic boom) Germany advertised all over Europe for labour. Main countries of origin were Spain, Italy, Portugal and Turkey. Most of the Spanish and Portuguese immigrants returned to their countries of origin after a while while many Italians and Turkish stayed. Those folks were indeed poor, uneducated and rural. They were hired to do hard manual labour, the stuff the Germans were getting “too good” for. They were also those who didn’t have a chance back in their home countries.
So today our muslim population is mostly 2nd and 3rd generation kids and adults, speaking the exact same dialect their peers without inmigration background do.
I’m still wondering how the actions taht happened 50 years ago are relevant to what happened in Paris today.
@Daz
People rarely talk in absolutes, so pointing out a label used to describe a group is not an absolute is just an attempt to derail. Hence, no point remained.
@nich
You are kidding right? You can go do your own homework thanks. Or just let your prejudice fly and shout racist at people when you have no points to make.
Thanks; good point.
Did you really just compare the murders by Islamist terrorists in Europe – outrageous, but totalling at most a few hundred over the past decade – with the wholesale carnage being suffered by those unlucky enough to live in, for example, Syria or Iraq, where millions have fled their homes to save their lives?
Yes, you did. What a shitbag you are. And here’s another native European telling you to stuff your racist crap back where it came from.
Does Dawkins have some sort of memory problem? He seems to have forgotten that little Balkan mess in the ’90s. And that little Irish mess that largely ended in the ’90s. Both conflicts where a major excuse used by the warring players was that the other guys were the wrong religion, and hence had to be suppressed.
The only religions that haven’t had large numbers of violent adherents have been ones that are too new and have never held significant political power someplace, or were stomped into paste before they had a chance to be violent.
Raging Bee@92, I’m guessing the Fox fools believe, like lots of Americans, in the magic power of Teh Gunz. If the victims had possessed Teh Gunz they would have known the attack was coming and responded instantly and with utter effectiveness. Why that magic power doesn’t apply to French cops is another question I suppose.
Icthyic #21
Although ‘Freedom of Religion’ may not be the best way to express it, fredfile did put a finger on a significant problem, which is usually defended under the guise of Freedom of Religion: the fact that in many allegedly secular states religious beleif is specially privileged and people are allowed to do things under the guise of religion that would otherwise be prohibited, most notably relating to child abuse and domestic abuse, although there are also less egregious examples.* Mind, none of this has anything directly to do with the attack on Charlie Hebdo, which appears to have been perfectly ordinary violent extremists, except insofar as it legitimizes religious belief in general.
Giliell #34
Indeed, the principal victims of any type of authoritarians are those who are counted as part of their ‘in-group’, from domestic abusers and ‘their’ families on up. This actually kind of ties into the top part of the post; one of the problems with the way that Freedom of Religion is often interpreted in allegedly secular states, which allows the assholes to define their own in-groups, so that, e.g. parents are allowed to decide on behalf of kids that prayer is as good as medicine, or that churches get to have internal processes for ‘dealing with’ child molesters, etc. On a grander scale, of course, we get bigots like Azuma in this very thread allowing violent fanatics to define everyone in the Middle East as their ‘in-group’, and write off everyone under their yoke as collaborators rather than victims.
nich #63
Note, however, that ‘religion’ is the only category there that isn’t directly beneficial to the community in some way (the justification for the tax exemption being that they’re essentially taking on the role of infrastructure provider in some form and releiving the state of that burden). Merely stating that you’re a church is sufficient grounds to get an exemption from, among other things, property tax for church-owned property (I was once the focus of a religion created for this purpose; six housemates in California worshipped me as a god in order to duck property tax. For all I know, they still do.)
That’s the kind of thing fredfile is talking about, where religious groups get special treatment; every other kind of group on that list has to specify some kind of actual goals and metrics to get 501(c)(3) status, and there’s a bugger of a lot of paperwork involved.
dutchdelight
Not all Europeans, no. Just racist shitheads like you.
CaitieCat #89
This.
@timgueguen
How nice of you to speculate what i would have liked better. The thing is, you will never know, nor will i, ’cause nobody got to choose. The only people complaining are extreme right-wingers or racists anyway, so why would you even raise your voice on this topic.
Here’s a bit of background info on cartoonists in France, and, more specifically, on the cartoonists that were killed:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/01/07/the_french_cartoonists_killed_at_charlie_hebdo_wolinski_charb_tignous_and.html
Azuma Hazuki #103:
Jebus H Christ.
When you treat any characteristic in the same way that racists treat race, the difference between what you’re doing and what a racist does becomes negligible.
You may criticise Islam and its tenets all you like. You may criticise individual Muslims and groups of Musluims all you like. The moment, though, that you decide to treat ‘Islam’ as a monolithic bloc, whose members are all defined by the actions of the worst, you cross the line into injustice and bigotry. When you would stop Muslim A entering your country, or deport them, because of the actions of Muslim B, you cross the same line.
When you don’t advocate the same for, say, Christians, in light of similar Christian atrocities, you also become a hypocrite. Where are the calls to arrest and deport all Christians?
@dutchdelight:
It’s your claim. I’m not doing your homework for you, fuckhead.
You don’t want to call your bigotry Islamophobia? Fine, it’s still bigotry.
That’s actually the first mention of “Islamophobia” on the thread. But why let that fact get in the way of a good spittle-flecked rant against leftists?
Oh, right. How? Demand that they trample on a copy of the Quran? Offer them a bacon sandwich?
Azuma Hazuki
Ah, and the Q’ran leads necessarily to what exactly? There’s a huge variety of muslim majority countries. But since you’re such an expert on Syrian muslims, please, do tell me what they want. I’ll check with those I know, who are, you know, actual members of my actual family
Ah, so it’s one rule for muslims and one rule for everybody else. Seperate but equal, got it.
So you are actually aware that your whole proposal was bullshit from the start, right?
That’s hardly possible.
The insulting, I mean. That’s like insulting baby Jesus.
So it IS forced conversion. How do you find out they’re not muslim? Do they have to eat a Schweinshaxn and drink a beer?
So again, people who have done nothing but believe a particular religion will be banned from entering the country for what is indeed a thought crime but in order to deal with homegrown terrorism the law is actually sufficient. Yeah, that’s totally not discriminating against people for what you believe they believe.
You know you’re not very good at this…
Says the person who didn’t actually think what their proposal would mean
Says the person who thinks “you disagree woth me therefore my bullshit has merrit
I really don’t know how posting a lot about the history of muslim immigration in Europe make me ahistorical, but, you know
Huh?
I own that
Gratitious insult, but we know you’re not up to much more.
Ouch, that stung. “Go somewhere where you’ll be murdered because you actually would deserve that”. Sure you gave me.
Because the first cops on scene didn’t have guns, so they ran away.
http://www.examiner.com/article/french-terrorist-bloodbath-first-responder-police-arrived-unarmed-fled?CID=examiner_alerts_article
And the best the civilian witnesses could do was video from their apartment windows instead of taking pot shots at the fuckers with their hunting rifle.
They have made some arrests.
Doug Little,
links?
LeMonde only writes that the identities of attackers have been confirmed
@nick #112
No, “trapping innocent people under the terror of extremists¨ is a bad idea. Every time it happens. Not sure why you want to make it into a contest.
German newsfeed says “localized but not arrested”
Early versions of the following article said they were captured, but they have since backtracked on that claim.
http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/01/07/le-siege-de-charlie-hebo-vise-par-des-tirs_1175326
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.liberation.fr%2Fsociete%2F2015%2F01%2F07%2Fle-siege-de-charlie-hebo-vise-par-des-tirs_1175326&edit-text=
I still wonder how exactly the names of the attackers was determined givin how little evidence they left behind and given that even the named people are at large…
democracy is the pavement fascism walks upon.
so… we should obviously eliminate democracy.
?
More reactions by cartoonists.
I’ve never understood this “argument”. To what extent can you predict the attitudes and actions of a randomly chosen Christian from reading the Bible?
Why not treat everyone this way?
So? How do you do that?
Don’t you think most of the terrorists will simply lie?
Two of the suspects are French, born in 1980 and 1982. I’m sure they were born in France.
Iran’s minister of the exterior has in fact condemned the attacks (…while also claiming that insulting religion is ).
QFT.
Hommage to the murdered:
Morts de rire (Died laughing)
Then again, maybe they were arrested:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/07/shooting-paris-satirical-magazine-charlie-hebdo#block-54ada427e4b01f977f448fda
The fog of current events….
@nich #118
Correction, it’s your lack of education on the subject that i will not waste my time on.
I’m just having a belly laugh that you think this is an important thing to dispute. If i gave you more attention, you’ll be coming up with counter examples and you’ll think you actually have made a worthwhile point, all the while the bulk still fits my description, and you added nothing to the discussion.
David
Oh, I know this one: It’s because christians are individual people and muslims are a mob.
In the future, I will no longer greet #1’s friend because the Q’ran says she wants to murder me. I don’t care that she’s just 8.
I’m not responding further to Gilliel. He has a need, it seems, to make everything fit his narrative. That’s fine; I encounter thi routinely when dealing with presuppositionalist apologists. Sad to see it here, though, and it means I can’t have any meaningful conversation with you.
One thing needs to be said though: if I had my way, Muslims and Christians would all be in the shit. I won’t forgive what was done to me as a girl, and that was Christians, not Muslims. However, this is not my world and I am not in any sort of position of power, so for now we go as we are.
And why, to the person who accused me of “separate but equal,” did you think I’d let the secular law handle one religion but not the other? I actually hate Christianity as much as Islam, if only because it’s had more of an effect on me. To be clear, I see the “sovereign citizens” assholes and the Muslim suicide bombers as precisely identical, and they can BOTH go to their beloved Hell as far as I’m concerned.
Now if any of you people have any actual solutions to offer, rather than dogpiling on me because “Whaa, whaa, she said mean things about Muslims!” I’m all ears.
Well, obviously, the real culprit behind this was Obama.
somehow.
A police source has confirmed to Le Monde that searches have been conducted in Paris, in the XIXth arrondissement, and are currently in progress in the native town of the youngest suspect.
Can anybody tell me who the Gilliel-guy is?
Maybe he’d like to say something? I’m afraid he’s getting unfair flag for what I write…
@Gilliel-guy
I’m sorry
Azuma Hazuki,
I’m glad you’re in no position of power.
Also, Giliell is a woman.
beatrice
You’d think that picture of me would do the trick…
And how, exactly, is that not the same as saying, “You brought this on yourself.” Sure sound like that to me. It also, unfortunately echoes some of the Faux News reporting.
Talking Points Memo link.
You know what I’m getting sick of? I’m getting sick of seeing the lack of support for the insinuation that people in Europe are living under the thumb of an oppressed minority which escaped oppression 50 years ago simply because they mostly share the same religion. It would be good to have something, like, you know, evidence, that such is the case. But no. We’re treated to “Do your homework!” in a condescending non-conversational way.
It is eerily similar to what someone would do who comes in bad-faith: condemn the bad-faith arguing of others and moan about the level of discourse.
Oh woe is they who are much afflicted by the barbs of the badges they unknowingly wear.
don’t know if it was here or somewhere else, but I saw today someone who posted that the whole idea behind there being no images of Mohamed, was not so that if people made fun of an image, they would be killed, but to prevent idol worship itself.
funny, but killing someone over the depiction of your messiah rather resembles idol worship.
I don’t know if what they said about the rule on no images in Islam being for idol worship reasons is accurate, but it WOULD fit within the parameters of an Abrahamic religion, and it kinda does make sense.
“Can’t stop the signal, Mal.” – Mr. Universe, “Serenity”
Shorter Azuma Hazuki: Make the US safe against future Muslims and ban their immigration now.
I do wonder how that’s meant to be a solution for anything at all. If only there were other people who faced an exclusionary immigration policy by the US to ask about that history and how it worked out …
I live in France, and like all the people here am deeply shocked by the tragedy. I haven’t read all the blog comments on this site, since the event is so recent it is still hard to know much for sure. But it is surprising that even the leader of the National Front, our very own fascist party, has proned a very pacifist reaction and condemned all amalgame between moderate muslims and the asshole terrorists. I am not saying she has suddenly lost her reactionary views, she is just trying to align with the mainstream political parties. And so it is striking that just about the only “group” which is trying to recuperate the understandable disgust is Fox News with its bit about the strict french anti-gun laws being responsible. Was it reported that the assailants used military attack weapons, they were no ordinary small firearms but intended to destroy implacably. Should we equip the french police with bazookas? And yes, they have been identified, two french nationals born in Paris, the third a homeless guy of unknown citizenship. Nous sommes tous Charlie.
Lynna, OM: thanks for the map. My local one (in Montreal) is on my walk home, at the time I’d be walking home. Very convenient. I’ll risk my car getting towed to attend.
you could easily have said those same words if you lived in Europe during the 10 years prior to the start of WWII.
Azuma Hazuki, the terrorists have won as far as you’re concerned: you are terrified out of your wits.
The picture is actually not unambiguous. It only shows the least diagnostic parts of your face.
From The Fount Of All Human Knowledge™
Following Doug Little, #81
“It’s being reported that the attackers have been identified.”
Another record for the brigade!
Since the majority of murders are committed by citizens who were born in the same country where they committed their murders, perhaps we should also have a moratorium on breeding as well. Just sterilize the whole lot of ’em. Keep ’em from immigrating from the uterus.
American gun nuts really do privately own Kalashnikovs.
Cartoonists are coming out in force, wielding their greatest weapons:
I always considered my eyes to be the more striking feature of my face ;)
I’m Giliell.
please don’t respond to me, either.
@ChristineRose, #66
Thank you, I had not understood.
thanks daz.
ichthyic
The parallel hadn’t occurred to me. Damn.
@149/David M
Maybe they have. I don’t know what to do about that, really; fear rules me. Always did, probably always will. Working on it, but it’s not something that disappears overnight, you know? Personally I think they won on 12 Sept 2001 and have been winning since then…and they played the US government like a piano to do it. This country’s administration walked right into their hands.
@156/Not-Giliell
No, I’m Spartacus.
I came back a few hours ago from the meeting in Paris, place de la République, to protest the massacre. Le Monde says more than 100,000 people turned out all over France. I saw someone who looked like Amina Sboui, ex-Femen, climb the statue in the center of the square to show her bare breasts with a slogan written across them. She was accompanied by a young man who began to tear up a Koran but they were both stopped by the demonstrators around me who chanted “pas d’amalgame” (no amalgamations) meaning not to make this into an occasion to attack Islam. There is a very fine line between attacking Islam and attacking Muslims or people with Islam in their backgrounds. One person who steers clear of this line is writer Caroline Fourest who FtB’s Myriam Namazie interviewed last October (see M.N.’s blog).
Philippe Val, ex-director of Charlie Hebdo, has been very eloquent today in recalling his friends that died and the importance of not letting irreverence and laughter die.
I can’t tell if the mask hides Theo Waigel’s eyebrows. :-)
Therapy? Anxiety meds even?
Azuma, #103
I have a very large Muslim family in Pakistan. Tell me why none of them should be allowed to migrate, but my friend’s Hindu family members from India should.
Let’s hear it.
AFP (Agence France-Presse) – news agency reports that there’s an ongoing police operation in Reims.
following Christopher, #122
“Because the first cops on scene didn’t have guns, so they ran away.”
And that is how I learn that our cops in France sometimes do not have a gun… I had no idea.
again, following Christopher, #122
“And the best the civilian witnesses could do was video from their apartment windows instead of taking pot shots at the fuckers with their hunting rifle.”
That would have been illegal, they would probably have ended in jail.
“And the best the civilian witnesses could do was video from their apartment windows instead of taking pot shots at the fuckers with their hunting rifle.”
Well going by US statistics, taking out the three terrorists would have been wonderful no doubt, but the facts are that these successes would have been accompanied by about 120 innocent/unarmed civilians, family members or acquaintances getting killed.
It’s a rhetorical mistake of cherry picking often made, to cite single incidents to defend gun possession while ignoring the numbers on a larger scale.
Azuma HazukiI’m not responding further to Gilliel. He has a need, it seems, to make everything fit his narrative. That’s fine; I encounter thi routinely when dealing with presuppositionalist apologists. Sad to see it here, though, and it means I can’t have any meaningful conversation with you.
You are throwing out a lot of accusations against this Gilliel guy (presuppositionalist apologist? Whence does that come?), accusations that you have not even attempted to show the merit of. To me it looks like you can not answer this Gilliel guy’s arguments, but of course that can’t be the case, now can it?
so, you’re thinking you were offering some kind of solution, were you?
huh.
Aw crap, borkquote. Again:
Azuma Hazuki
You are throwing out a lot of accusations against this Gilliel guy (presuppositionalist apologist? Whence does that come?), accusations that you have not even attempted to show the merit of. To me it looks like you can not answer this Gilliel guy’s arguments, but of course that can’t be the case, now can it?
Well, at least German TV is not horrible for once.
United front of non-religious, christian, muslim and jewish journalists. Anti Pegida-bigotry
I don’t think so. Defence of others by adequate and necessary means is a lawful exception to exonerate helpers who commit deeds that would be crimes under different circumstances. You don’t get to “overkill”, for example break both arms of someone trying to rob you when one injury already stopped him.
Only if you assume that suicidal people won’t commit suicide if they don’t have access to firearms. Since France’s sucide rate (14.7 per 100k) is greater than America’s (12.5 per 100k), that seems to be a faulty assumption.
If that’s intended as sarcasm, suggest you toss it and be thankful your writing got across your implied point?
Giliell
You mean that’s not a carefully-trained moustache?
Damn my preconceptions!
@163/Saad
You really wanna know? Really and truly? Or are you sitting here going “go ahead, punk, make my day” and waiting for an excuse to have a temper tantrum?
See, i have this bad habit of assuming people talking to me are grownups and mean what they say and say what they mean, so I’m going to operate on the assumption that you DO want to know. Here’s my answer:
If any of your Hindu family members are known to be violent, they shouldn’t come over. Hindus are not, however, generally known for violent ideology against Westerners; if anything, I’m amazed this isn’t the case given the horrible things Britain has done to India over the last few centuries.
As to the Muslim members, if they are good Muslims, they must be invested in the downfall of the west, as well as any other non-Muslim society. This is Koranic law. If they are bad Muslims, then they are risking attack both from the fanatics for being insufficiently zealous and from non-Muslims for being the wrong religion and/or shade, as there is a gigantic storm of cacky brewing on the horizon over this.
Furthermore, even “moderates” lend legitimacy to extremists. Do you truly think the Dominionists and Theonomists in the US would be so powerful if it weren’t for the millions upon millions of “moderate” Christians who go “I wouldn’t go that far but… and keep indirectly pumping money and votes and political power to them? No, your relatives may be fine people, but they’re gonna get caught smack in the middle of two clashing armies, both of whom want to use them for something or another.
There. Ask question, get answer.
Not in France. You can’t even defend yourself much less another.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/world/europe/fatal-shooting-stirs-self-defense-debate-in-france.html
it does not appear that way to me.
The cartoonists that were killed today were more than people, they were regular institutions in and of themselves. Their cartoons were everywhere, they were an important part of life here, I can’t really imagine life without them. There is only one cartoonist left of equal renown and talent and that is Plantu who draws for Le Monde. This is a terrible blow, each of these cartoonists was more infulential and well-known than say Jon Stuart and Stephen Colbert are in the U.S.
Ignorant, fear driven, inanity.
but yeah, it was an answer alrighty.
sad.
I honestly just stumbled into it. No sarcasm intended.
ah, all good then.
Well, they usually kill muslims, which probably makes it ok
Daz and David
I always pluck the Theo Waigel eyebrows ’cause my great grandma always said that people whose eyebrows meet in the middle are in a coalition with the devil*
*She was, actually, an atheist
BAN UNIBROW IMMIGRATION!!!!
Azuma Hazuki #176:
And all Christians are Young Earth creationists. Add up the dates in the Bible, and there can be no question.
Fuckin’ idiot. Muslims are as capable of cherry-picking and re-interpreting as people of any other creed.
And, hey, aren’t atheists nihilistic self-worshippers who might run amok at any minute, what with having no god-given moral compass? Best not let them in either. Fuck it, just ban everyone.
following Lynna, OM, #141
“An editor at the British newspaper the Financial Times wrote on Wednesday that the cartoonists who were murdered by gunmen at the offices of satirical paper Charlie Hebdo had a history of being “stupid” by “baiting” Muslims.”
I guess that will teach them a lesson!
@photoreceptor, #146
“the leader of the National Front, (…) has proned a very pacifist reaction and condemned all amalgame between moderate muslims and the asshole terrorists”
She is more clever than her father. As a result she is tougher to fight.
@Felix, #172
“Defence of others by adequate and necessary means is a lawful exception to exonerate helpers who commit deeds that would be crimes under different circumstances.”
I guess you are right.
Joep Bertram’s cartoon
Blow it out your self-righteous ass, miss “professional cynic.” You know very well that never even crossed my mind as “okay.” Or if you truly didn’t, you’re making assumptions you have no right to and simply confirming my earlier suspicion that you want to make reality fit your narrative, not vice-versa.
As to you, Icthyic, if you really think that’s inane, I don’t know what to say to you. History moves in feedback loops; things build and build and feed back into one another until the equilibrium crashes and there’s an explosion. I’ve felt that coming ever since 11 Sept 2001, and I knew deep down that all players involved were going to bring it to an explosive head.
Someone up top, maybe a lot of someones, wants this. We have people in charge on both sides who really buy into that “clash of civilizations” meme. I am hoping to buy time and get the western world off petroleum, which will allow for less entanglement and money issues and hopefully let the problem solve itself organically, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. And if it doesn’t, a lot of innocent people are gonna die.
Not a good day. It was a disgraceful attack and since it’s too late to do anything about it now, I’m mostly waiting to see if I can at least get to feel proud of the reaction of one of my countries rather than ashamed. It’s a relative haven of sanity here, barring a few individuals, so thanks for that.
Ms. I prefer Ms. Mrs., if you must, but miss? Adding a bit of misogyny to your all around bigotry? Come on, you can do better. Apart from this “not responding to the Gilliel guy” thingy. You don’t do that very well.
No, it didn’t cross your mind, because you’re so fucking ignorant that you don’t even know that there is organized Hindu terrorism and who the victims of that terrorism are has everything to do with that.
Azuma Hazuki #189:
And nobody argued with that part of what you said. Quite why you feel a need to repeat it is beyond me.
The Independent cartoonist Dave Brown’s response to the events in Paris
@186/Daz:
The exact same thing applies to Christians. The only reason we’re not talking about them this way is a lot of professing Christians are utterly shit at actually following their religion. Biblically illiterate, lackadaisical, comfort-loving cherry-pickers. And this is a good thing for all of civilization.
Yes, there are other factors, such as that there is somewhat less tight coupling between religious faith and day to day life in Christianity than Islam, but when you get right down to it, Christianity has largely been de-fanged by several centuries of Enightenment thought. Islam never had an Enlightenment that stuck, though it looked like it was coming close in the pre-Renaissance time period.
Atheists also tend to be freethinkers; their main dogma is not to have dogma, if that makes sense, and a lot of atheists started as some religion and had to think their way out of it. It is not an apples to apples comparison to compare Muslims to atheists. You have, actually, said something that we hear Christian politicians saying constantly, so don’t act like that’s some impossible straw man.
@191/MISS professional cynic
Sorry for mistaking you for a man. It happens to me a lot too. Though I have to say I don’t usually see this kind of idiocy coming from women, so it’s not that huge a leap on my part!
What idiocy? THIS idiocy:
Strike two for bad assumptions, miss professional cynic. You really shouldn’t do that. I know very well about the organized Hindu terror groups, and not just the ones fighting over Kashmir. I grew up in a neighborhood that had over three dozen spoken languages and you can bet your behind Hindi, Urdu, Pashto, and Tamil were four of them. I went to school with the child of an Afghani refugee who was deafened in one ear by a bomb.
You’re a special kind of stupid. Stop digging before you hit mantle will you?
Azuma Hazuki #194:
If you’re in the US, how many abortion clinics are there in your state? I take it you’re not gay, and living in Uganda or Russia? How many people have died because some bloke in Rome said condoms are evil and actually spread AIDS?
Defanged, my arse. Christianity merely kills and persecutes less violently than of yore.
Yep, that was what we call ‘sarcasm.’ But hey, who gets to define atheism, when we set up our shiny new belief-based immigration laws? You and me, or some Christian fundy who really does think our lack of a moral compass means we’re likely to turn violent on a whim?
Cupcake, is your blood pressure ok?
So, you knew about Hindu terrorism, but that’s no reason for you to exclude Hindus because they don’t kill western people?
Sorry to think you ignorant. You are malicious. Yep, that’s what we commonly call racism
That multicultural upbringing you had, I’m sad it didn’t make you any more tolerant. Such an opportunity, so totally wasted.
If you want to know who’s making themselves look like an idiot, believe me, it’s not me.
Did you check they were thoroughly de-muslimized?
@196/Daz:
Yes, defanged. Not 300 years ago we’d be fucking executed for speaking like this, do you understand? Slowly and horribly; it would take us days to die and we’d be mutilated and broken and burned beyond all recognition.
Christianity is growing its fangs back, which is what you’re describing here. As horrible as the things it’s doing now are, just imagine what kind of Holocaust-scale Inquisitions would be going on if it were still as fanatical in the main as Islam.
It will be the fundie, and it will happen at this rate.
@197/MISS professional cynic
Let me know when you’re ready to talk at the grownups’ table. Until then, shut the unholy blue blazing Hell up. You don’t know a goddamned thing you’re talking about and it shows.
Béatrice @193
Really good article.
Would ‘Holocaust-scale Inquisitions’ and related policies include, oh I dunno, just for instance, denial of rights based on religious belief?
@201/Daz:
That is one of the beginning steps and one of the signs of much worse coming on the horizon, yes. All fascism follows the same pattern, no matter who’s doing it or when.
banksy’s hommage to the murdered
Alright. Maybe it’s just me, but this is getting fucking annoying now. Especially that condescending “MISS professional cynic” bullshit. I don’t care what gender Azuma happens to be, that shit is uncalled for.
Azuma Hazuki #202:
Thank you. I take it this means you no longer see discriminatory immigration policies as a good idea?
Azuma Hazuki
You know, your childish insistence on calling me miss does not do well for your insistence that others aren’t talking like grown-ups.
And you really shouldn’t complain about my potty mouth.
Maybe you could try an argument?
Coherent sentences would be a start, too.
Just for your information, I’m taking a piss out of you. Because you’re a racist. And a moron. A western supremacist. And yes, it shows.
Azuma Hazuki
Please refer to people by their chosen nym.
@throwaway
You can’t read, all you can do is run for the fastest path to call someone a racist. This is afterall a place where that happens when you underwrite the point that it’s not nice for innocent people to be trapped with extremists.
Arrive in Europe, “oppression” magically disappears, as do all the feuds, allegiances and loyalties of the people immigrating. Also, sweeping generalization much?
Interesting assertion there. You should write an essay.
I claimed that “poor uneducated rural muslims” immigrated to Europe. It serves no purpose to discuss the finer details of a statement that is not in dispute in any way on either side of the political spectrum. The fact that someone tried to latch on to that like i’m saying something racist or otherwise controversial is telling enough for any onlooker.
Defanged, but they still have claws.
Of course, moderate islam is equally defanged. Moderate Islam and modern Christians are largely indistinguishable to my eyes.
Extremist tendencies in Islam have much more traction than do the equivalent in modern Christianity. But this extremism is a fairly recent phenomenon, 19th and 20th century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_fundamentalism#Origins
So you can’t say that Islam is just behind Christianity in losing its fangs; instead, it has gained fangs in the last 150 years. And Islam has no monopoly on violently toxic ideology — it wasn’t islamist leaders who started two world wars.
The point about reducing western dependence of middle eastern oil is about the only way in which I agree with Azuma Hazuki. Remove the US and allies from that region and they lose one of their best recruiting tools. Oh, and we slow down global warming, since the only practical way to achieve this is to burn less oil — this is a double whammy since global warming leads to major disruptions, which in a poor or poorly-run country provides for a bunch of malcontents who are vulnerable to extremism.
A couple of more cartoon responses:
Ben Smith @bmcsmith92 ‘s cartoon
Matt at The Telegraph
The Power Of One. @france7776
#JeSuisCharlie Dear haters of freedom of expression : We are not going to stop drawing
@207/Daz: When they’re taking the mickey? Not bloody likely!
@206/little miss piss taker
Are you so completely out of redeeming qualities that you’ve resorted to this?
Here’s something that’ll really knot your drawers then: i don’t subscribe to the idea that all cultures are equal. You can call that racist if you want, but you don’t either; if you did, you’d happily go live in Bangladesh or with the Yanomami or deep in the Bronx where I spent a lot of my late teenagerhood.
What do I judge them by? Rationality, respect for reality and the natural world, and humanism. This leaves me in the unenviable position of viewing my own culture as inferior to, say, that of most Nordic nations or Canada just 200-odd miles north of me.
There is a very big difference between respecting people and respecting cultures, which are after all just a bunch of memes with a post code. I do not respect evil, self-destructive ideas. Not even if I grew up surrounded by them. “Multiculturalism” is a failure by design, mostly because it attempts to integrate cultures that are not themselves interested in humanistic thought. It’s a nice idea, but it’s one whose time has not yet come. Not until we eliminate desperate, grinding poverty, war, and injustice.
Monitor Note:
Azuma Hazuki
You have been asked to use people’s nym’s properly. Please do so.
Azuma Hazuki #211:
Who decides? Who decides which religious beliefs are acceptable? Who do you trust with this power?
doesn’t matter, for today I’ve surely decided you aren’t worth listening to anyway.
@213/Daz: That had to do with using peoples’ ‘nyms, not religion.
NBC News reports that ” two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials” claim one attacker is dead and the other two in custody.
Le Monde reports that all reports about anyone being apprehended are false.
We’ll see.
—
Azums Hazuki, lookit up there at Daz’s 205
Azuma Hakuzi
To what?
To holding a mirror up to your face?
If you haven’t noticed it, you’re the one who’s literally resorted to 6th grade tactics.
Like the one where people are treated differently according to the god they do or don’t believe in?
Yep, that’s evil.
That’s everything the enlightenment, what a few centuries of secular and humanist struggle stand against.
You’re the baddie.
Also, I’m off to bed. I have to skin kittens tomorrow morning *yawn*
Yes, that multiculturalism totally doesn’t work, no society could bring in a increase of 1%/ year of new immigrants and continue to function. Why, as soon as there was a Muslim attack on their government, they’d all be howling for closing the borders.
Except, whoops, evidence that it fucking can happen: http://globalnews.ca/news/1641343/watch-residents-in-hamilton-ont-respond-to-anti-muslim-racist/
Je suis Charlie.
@dutchdelight:
Perhaps, but it might show you are commenting in good faith and not a bigoted fucking asshat.
@214/Ichthyic: Your loss. You know where the ol’ porcu-thing is and where you can put it, quills-first. You may have to wait for Giliell to finish with it first though!
this is what I will forever remember you for.
not so much. nope.
not thinking anyone else here would feel the pinch either.
that porcupine you just brought in with you? I suggest you take it with you on your way out.
Beatrice, amateur cynic… Thank you for all those wonderful cartoon responses. It is nice to see that people (some, anyway) are taking the long view. I’m having a tough time of that, myself; in the short view, this is (well, at least the way I currently feel) one the sword has won over the pen. I’m hoping the more supportive cartoons I see, the more that will change.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2015/01/07/je-suis-charlie/
Caitie
Well, Canadians have just been declared superior by the ultimate arbiter of all things.
@221/222
Yeah, remember whatever you want. Given the connotations of the word “multiculturalism” and the kind of people who usually deride it, I don’t blame you for taking that badly. But I also don’t care. As we have it now it’s a bandage for a bleeding open wound and the rich buggers at the top are picking at the stitching.
Multiculturalism is humanism, and it’s not compatible with anti-humanist cultures, end of story. We can help them come around if we can eliminate the problems that make them anti-humanist in the first place, but we can’t put the cart before the horse, and it’s naive to try and leads to useless loss of life. Enjoy your quill enema, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out or it’ll be even more painful than usual.
dutchdelight
Yes. You claimed that they immigrated to the detriment of Europe by way of a lax immigration policy (you know, like, not discriminating on the basis of religion alone, which seems like a pretty progressive and forward thinking policy.) That is not as simple a statement a fact as you seem to believe, maybe because it doesn’t serve your bias against the “poor uneducated rural muslims.”
I think you’re late to the meeting for whatever nationalist organization it is that you belong to.
fixing myself @226
Basically, show me the detrimental effects of inviting the “poor uneducated rural muslims” and I’ll show you the detriment of inviting the “poor uneducated rural Irish Catholics”.
@Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought, #216
“NBC News reports that ” two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials” claim one attacker is dead and the other two in custody.”
Wouldn’t it be strange if we learnt it from U.S. counterterrorism officials?
Azuma Hazuki
Oh, as if you care about any life besides a westerners. It’s largely muslims in these muslim countries who are challenging the status-quo about education for women among other things. Hello, Malala ring a bell? Of course not.
Azuma Hazuki #225:
People are not cultures. They are individuals. A free society does not discriminate against or punish individuals for the actions of other individuals.
This ‘joke’ is long-retired around here. It relies on an image of non-consenting sexual violence at best, rape at worst. Knock it off.
Bill Donohue is a class act. Let’s blame the victim, shall we?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/catholic-league-chief-charlie-hebdo-editor-got-himself-murdered-by-being-a-narcissist/
@230
How dare you. Malala Yousafzi not only “rings a bell,” she’s one of the people I’ve been thinking about almost daily for months now! She’s facing off against hideous odds, and still in danger no matter where she goes in the world, and you want to use her as a football to score points on a message board?!
There should be no need for people like her to risk her life. She is one of the people trying to help them come around, and she’s very likely going to die horribly because of it. She is one of the humanists, in one of the most dangerous places to be one, in one of the most dangerous bodies in which to be one. We need a million of her, and we won’t get them at the rate things are going.
I think Charlie Hebdo had trained its eye on Pope Palpatine more than a few times so he’s probably not all that sad.
The twelve dead:
nor if you had your way.
you can’t even see the contradictions in your own thinking, can you.
There’s a rising narrative from some quarters of the Left that “publishing caricatures of Muhammad” = “racism”, and of course this is awful but these horrible racists kinda had it coming, etc. Check out Ayesha Siddiqui ‘s twitter (and particularly the replies to her tweets).
That’s particularly depressing when applied to Charlie-Hebdo, easily the most left-wing, anti-capitalist, pro-immigrant of all “major” French journals. Contrarily to other publications, they famously mocked Christians, Jews and Muslims with equal ferocity.
Friends don’t let friends confuse muslimophobia with anticlericalism. Yes, one can masquerade as the other. That doesn’t mean that they’re the same thing!
Azuma Hazuki,
Look at Daz’s #205
Btw…. Malala is Muslim
@nich
I’m supposed to “show good faith” while you derail, add nothing to the discussion, and now throw a tantrum and baseless accusations around? Yea, nice try, I heard the same things happened just before WWII.
@daz
Maybe you could point out to people that they are supposed to be able to make a case for the creative ways they refer to other commenters, or stick with the chosen nym of whomever they are referring to.
@236
I thought you were going to stick the flounce? As it is, you don’t know the entire contents of my thinking, nor what I would do to solve this. There are clues; notice how I keep talking about sustainability? Stopping immigration doesn’t mean stopping aid (though I don’t think “aid” as we have it now is effective as it could be).
No, I’m thinking good old cultural infiltration, minimalistically if possible. No ads, no weird “democracy, whiskey, sexy” bullshit, just showing them that 1) life can be better, 2) it won’t be better remaining under the old way, and 3) there’s no need to be angry when the suffering is gone.
@238: No shit she’s Muslim, but there is a such thing as a religious humanist. Christianity has a long (if rather self-contradictory) tradition of it. Besides, I bet she goes atheist in a decade or so :)
Could we get a new thread, I’m bored of the Azuma Hazuki show?
… sounds like something Norman Bates tells you while wiping the knife.
Racist asshat is racist…and fucking stupid to boot.
Pardon me for typing at 120WPM I’m sure, and for engaging with everyone who engages with me. This was a near-complete waste of time.
dutchdelight #239:
I could, yes. I didn’t, though, and won’t. We had that discussion months ago. And, frankly, Azuma Hazuki’s condescending use of ‘miss’ was verging on misogyny.
</derail>
Azuma, #176
Yes, teacher! I truly do! Please teach the ex-Muslim born and raised in a conservative Muslim country about this monolithic creature called The Moslem!
Okay, fine. I’m just playing with you. I already know a million times more about Muslims than you. I just can’t help but see what shit your bigoted little head is full of. Maybe I’ll read your posts to some of my family and friends so all us dirty Mahomatens prospering peacefully in the west can get a laugh too.
That’s …. it? People who identify as Muslims should be banned from migrating because “good Muslims” want to destroy the West?
I’ll just laugh at you and let you be on your way then. You poor, feeble-minded, bigoted asshat. But please keep posting more. Your dumb shitty opinions amuse me.
So far, Berlin Zeitung and La Tribune have decided to print Charlie Hebdo old covers on their front page tomorrow.
@246: There’s gonna be a run on porcupines if you keep this up. You’ll need to take turns with Gil and Icthyic. Laugh all you want, but the Koran says what it says, and no amount of insult-slinging will change that.
If your Muslim family isn’t trying to kill infidels, they suck as Muslims and according to their own beliefs will spend eternity in Jahannam, and “as often as their skins are burnt off, We will provide them with new skins, saying, “taste the torment of the Fire.”” They must also, of course, believe this about you. Islam brooks no rebellion or dissension. In proportion to how good they are as people, that is how bad they are as Muslims. They are munafiq.
I’ll give you that. That is pretty fast typing for a person with diarrhea in their skull.
It hasn’t been a waste of time for me. I’ve read your posts so far, and I’ve had a whale of a time laughing at your ignorance and fascist beliefs. I’m glad the west is safe (so far) from following your plans. Dangerous anti-civilization people like you would destroy it.
@throwaway
Why do you think i’d disagree that the negative effects on the existing population would be similar in the case of any poor uneducated rural people.
I also don’t get why you think that an example where you smuggled in nationality, and posited a population with a much smaller cultural distance would be equivalent. There are many immigrant communities that also come from places without much democracy and a decidedly non-western culture, yet only one stands out as problematic, and that is the one vulnerable to islamic extremists and their “pure islam” stripped of national and cultural baggage.
following Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought, #247
“So far, Berlin Zeitung and La Tribune have decided to print Charlie Hebdo old covers on their front page tomorrow.”
That is comforting.
I am glad that they made Mike Harris be wrong when he wrote:
“I wager not a single national newspaper will reprint any Charlie Hebdo front cover featuring either the Prophet Muhammad or radical Islamists.”
in
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/charlie-hebdo-there-can-be-no-negotiation-between-liberal-democracy-and-totalitarian-theocracy-9963334.html
Azuma, #248
Nah, good Muslims don’t care about those parts of the Quran and the Hadith. They go on living decent lives.
Besides, your opinion of what kind of Muslim they are is irrelevant anyway. I’m just glad you have no voice in this and millions of Muslim go on living peacefully in the west. That’s the only thing I like about you here: that you don’t have a say in who gets to migrate. :)
@Saad: Door. Ass. Ballistic properties of. Way out. Etc. I don’t care what you think anymore, get it? Congratulations on escaping that horrible religion, but you of all people oughtta know a million times better than me how dangerous its adherents are. Your insults are sadly misguided.
@nich
It’s true. Fascists would derail debate with pointless questions, like you did, add nothing to debates, like you did, then throw tantrums when people didn’t obey them or agree with them, like you did. Then they got themselves some guns, which you might do, who knows right.
The WWII reference is stupid of course, but people keep calling me all sorts of nasty things without any evidence, so i figured i’d join with the asshattery and do my part.
An interesting article:
Paris Attack Reflects a ‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe
damien75,
I don’t see the face-slobbering cover, but there are some others that have Mohammed or at least stereotypically Muslim characters.
dutchdelight #250:
Oh I’m sorry. My TARDIS Of Bigotry seems to have developed a fault in the ‘What decade are we in?’ circuit.
Azuma, #253
So pleased you have to just sit there and stew in your bigoted fascist juices as Muslims thrive and contribute to making their countries (U.S., Canada, European nations, Australia) better places to live. I wish them even greater success.
You’re just a rehashed version of Ann Coulter and other FOX News assholes, i.e. a laughing stock.
Alright, I really am done now. Gotta meet the parents for dinner. No pork, of course.
Damn dutchdelight, you’ve got me. I’m trying to derail this magnificent fucking debate as part of a long con to reintroduce good ol’ 40s style Eurofascism to the world, you Godwinning, racist fuckwit.
And just to confirm my previous post, some guy at the Jacobin decides that Charlie Hebdo was totally racist and stuff:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-islamophobia/
This guy has never read Charlie Hebdo.
A portfolio of tomorrow’s covers of various papers:
Hommage international à Charlie Hebdo
(The Independent is my favorite)
@Saad, you really have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ll forgive you, but only because your skull is clearly empty…or you have a “motivated reason” not to examine certain things too closely. As stated, I deal with people like that all the time (van Tillian presups), so it’s nothing new. Not even worth getting angry over; reality is what it is no matter what you want it to be. Say hello to your parents, who sound like good people but, according to the Koran, lousy Muslims :)
@Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought, #255
That really is good enough for me.
Moreover, Mike Harris was only writing about “the Prophet Muhammad or radical Islamists.”.
I think no one can say that either a Tribune or Berlin Zeitung played it safe with these covers.
Christopher @127
According to this site, one of the attackers left his passport in the getaway car.
Internal CNN memo: ‘We are not at this time showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons’
Because terrorists bring their passports along when going on a murderous rampage, then conviently forget them in the getaway car…
It looks more like we know who is supposed to be blamed rather than we know who committed the crime.
Azuma Hazuki
You said, in your first comment:
Later, responding to a question about denial of rights based on religious belief, you said:
Either: you happy to admit that you are a fascist, or you have since changed your mind and one of the above statements is now false. Please clear this matter up.
@Jeff, #263
Left his passport in the car?
So they’re just three losers with luck?
Christoper,
I does seem strange, but then again strange coincidences are strange (and they do happen sometimes).
@266/Daz:
It is perfectly reasonable to deny entry to your country when you have reason to believe that the nation sending immigrants has a problem with you. We have the words of the CAIR spokesman on record stating that Islam is not compatible with American democracy, and that the objective of Islam is to rule. I don’t think keeping out a known danger is fascist, unless you’re going to accuse every country whose immigration policy is anything but “sign here and come on in, fellas!” of fascism. Quit insinuating I’m a goddamned Nazi, Daz; I’m counting the logical fallacies in replies to me and am perilously close to hitting a data type overflow.
@daz
Good job, why flail around trying to argue my words are racist like the others, when you can just replace them with something that suits your argument.
#267
No passports left in cars being reported here. Photos on the site you link to show no passports either, those are i.d. cards. Also names not being reported here and much less, one dead.
Azuma Hazuki #269:
This statement was brought to you by Azuma Hazuki and all those nice folks at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
And if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
These guys took care to hide their faces, wear gloves, and hijack a third party’s car in order to hide their identity, then just left a passport in the getaway car? That smells worse than a French-Algerian who had fought in Iraq telling a bystander that they committed their terrorism in the name of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
@272: Daz, you are a fucking moron. You just lost all credibility with me. You know goddamned well that is not what I’m saying, that no reasonable person could get that out of what I said, and you’re doing it to take the piss. Fuck off.
dutchdelight #270:
‘Replace’? I’m old enough to remember when the words ‘darky’ and ‘pakki’ were surrounded by that exact same rhetoric. My mother can remember it being said of Jewish refugees. It was bigotry then, and it is bigotry now.
I am having SUCH internet issues tonight
but
Beatrice #235 listed the dead
they killed the janitor
Well Done Brave Heros!
Wow, i’m sorry you are obsessed with that long gone era, and now see it popping up everywhere all the time. Maybe it’s time for your paranoia and debate poisening tactics to take a back seat, and let more qualified people worry about things.
btw, i didn’t godwin this thread that, happened above me, i was just joining in, like i said. Reading is not your strongest point is it, i guess that gets in the way of all that prejudice.
garlic @259
Read it. Oh boy, this is going to be hard to watch, the outpouring of accusations of racism. So easy. The mag is terribly offensive. Always offended me, not my taste. But it treated Islam no different than it treated other religions, and it treated religions with as much sarcasm as it treated corruption and fascism and socialism and….
Le Monde reporting:
… says that the youngest man surrendered to the police
@daz
Well that’s a *huge* surprise to me. How many blasphemers did those jewish refugees kill after they got radicalized by rabbi’s preaching the “pure” form of judaism? And those others? Oh, and try not to project your national hang-ups about foreigners on me ok?
dutchdelight
You need to establish what is in bold rather than assert it. That’s the crux of the matter. You are full of assertions and low on evidence.
How about something concrete from you for a change rather than your alluding to the imminent threat of as yet untold numbers of Muslims being swayed to violent action? I’m sure you can find the numbers if you visit the right (nationalist) websites. Maybe try UKIP.
btw, I’m getting all that from here:
Le Monde – live
Somebody lost his ticket to martyrdom.
Azuma Hazuki:
Your bigoted anti-Muslim screed @176 is disgusting.
Three people are enough to get someone like dutchdelight up in arms about lax immigration standards of the past which “allowed” this to happen, and that now the civilised people of the EU are under constant threat of terrorism by an untold number of muslims who may or may not agree with what happened today.
The threshold for a group becoming a threat is thus set at three. Or maybe there are other incidences. But then, why focus on just the religiously motivated aspects of murder? There are others who commit atrocities in the name of Nationalism as well… Anders Behring Breivik. How many did he kill? What was his motivation? Should we be worried about the minorities who were affected by his reign of terror? I mean, you’re a reasonable person. What’s the body count looking like for muslim terrorists who commit the acts in the EU versus just Breiviks? Got any numbers there, dutchdelight?
Le Monde has it that the guy who surrendered went by himself to the local police station.
Maybe he didn’t want martyrdom after all.
@284: I didn’t write the Koran, Tony. If you think that’s an anti-Muslim screed it’s also anti-Christian, as I feel about the same way about the members of both faiths. A “sovereign citizen” and a suicide-vest-toting terrorist are at precisely the same place in my classification scheme.
And now the ammosexuals are saying “Oh look! Frances perfect gun control led to this, if they police where armed like our cops are, they could of had the chance to stop this.”
Folks, the standard issue handgun for the Paris police, if not all of French Law Enforcement, is the Sig SP 2022, a modified version of the Sig Sauer Pro series of hand guns, specifically the Sig 2009, a polymer framed 9mm handgun. The 2022 has a shorter barrel and accessory rail for flashlights and laser sights.
Azuma @233:
Curious. Since she’s a Muslim, I imagine were she to try immigrating to the United States, you’d oppose that.
“Folks, the standard issue handgun for the Paris police, if not all of French Law Enforcement, is the Sig SP 2022, a modified version of the Sig Sauer Pro series of hand guns, specifically the Sig 2009, a polymer framed 9mm handgun. The 2022 has a shorter barrel and accessory rail for flashlights and laser sights.”
I don’t understand it all, but I consider myself warned.
words, what the fuck do they mean?
the flounce direction was towards yourself, dear.
You really should, you know.
you make less and less sense as you continue onwards.
@291: We’re done, fish-head. You’ve got nothing more to say to me in this thread. Buzz off and go eat some flies on a hook or something.
@289: At this point I wouldn’t oppose it, and since she would likely have been applying as a refugee before that, I would not oppose that either. That would be a fairly clear case of amnesty wouldn’t it?
Azuma @287:
Despite this, you are suggesting that only Muslims should be prevented from living in the U.S. You don’t have a problem with the Christians living here? I mean, since you feel the same about the members of both faiths and all…
I don’t know where you keep getting this stuff. It’s not funny, i don’t allude to any such thing anywhere, yet you apparently can just make this shit up on the spot. Try and tone the prejudice down a bit will you.
1. Both sides of the political spectrum have pointed out that immigrants from muslim countries are overrepresented in crime statistics. That’s because those are the facts (only took 2 decades for the labour party to acknowledge that).
2. Guys in dresses target young “dissatisfied” muslims primarily, not non-muslims or unconverted natives.
so, say your next door neighbor doesn’t like you for being a liberal, and he beats his wife regularly.
the wife finally decides she’s had enough, and comes to you for help.
you of course, must turn her away because she came from a house where someone has a problem with you.
…you’re quite pathetic.
@damien75
What i am saying is that the average french beat cop is in fact armed, just like any American police officer, however many Gun Righters are saying that the french police are just like the British Bobbies, mostly unarmed. That is not the case. Besides three combat rifles verse two handguns. Who do you think will win?
yup, time to deport the Christians!
First, we use the black helicopters to herd them into FEMA camps…
dutchdelight #294:
Please do not use gender or sexuality as a slur.
whoever gets in the first shot, as is the case in almost every gun battle, ever.
this is exactly why ammosexuals are NUTS to think that having a gun prevents gun crime.
ask any cop, ever, who has been shot, if having his gun on him stopped him from being shot.
@293: We can do fuck all about them because they rule the nation. I would LOVE to deport every fundamentalist fanatic to the Middle East, and solve two problems with one action. As it is, though, some of the people in charge here are the Christian version of Khameini. If it were up to me, they’d all be out in the desert with their masturbation aids–excuse me, guns–and being told to put their money where their flapping mouths are.
@295: This was addressed in an earlier post. Fuck off and take your shark head with you.
@Ranzoid
I got what you meant.
I was just joking over the fact that your paragraph was a bit technical.
this is about the time I say…
Make me.
yes, that strikes about the right tone for you.
make me.
Ranzoid liar and bullshitter:
Then why does Wiki say this:
Stop your lying and bullshitting, and we might stop concluding you are a liar and bullshitter, by linking to every claim you make….
and you come across as the atheist version.
you do nobody any favors.
Or keep flailing, Ichthyic. I used to respect you, but you’ve disappointed me severely in this thread. Now you’re just noise…
project much?
…project much?
And as I keep saying, over and over and bloody over, I’m a Deist, not an atheist. And no, the “atheist version of Khameini” would be someone like Pol Pot. Shit like this is why I haven’t got any respect left for you. You may as well just drop your drawers and rip ass for all the good it’ll do you.
got that porcupine firmly tucked under your arm?
good good. wouldn’t want it to get left behind.
nobody cares what you are any more.
doesn’t that tell you something?
No, it’s somewhere up around your duodenum by now, I’d imagine. Unless Gil or Saad are still using it. Funny, I was told that joke was retired and not to use it any longer…looks like someone didn’t get the memo :) Rot in Hell, you smug heap of shit.
yeah… that would be the one who used it… you.
note how I worded it such that I asked you to take it with you… since YOU brought it in.
words… how the fuck do they work?
Let me know when you figure it out *rolls eyes* Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Entrapping peaceful civilians with violent extremists is bad was Beatrice’s point. I agreed with her. The rest… just you ranting and needing a nym to copy/paste into it.
uh, you’re the one who hasn’t figured it out yet.
but I’m guessing you will shortly.
time for you to find a new site to play on I’m thinking.
@304
Ah! Maybe that is the key to the mystery:
The unarmed policemen that the terrorists met were probably municipal policemen.
I was confused, I had no idea that some policemen were unarmed, but also, I had never considered municipal policemen as policemen at all.
They are good as crossing guards though. Also for the lost and founds.
However, I do not see them as policemen, and I doubt many French people do. They do traffic control, they give drivers tickets.
ROFLMAO
I just…
LOL
Anyone seen this one yet? Who’s up for sending all the balding white men back to England where they belong because they’re just too violent to keep around here?
馬鹿
馬鹿
馬鹿
@daz
There is no slur intended, nor present in the description “guys in dresses”. They are always guys, because religion, and they want to broadcast their piousness with the dress. Guys in dresses it is.
Right, dutchdelight, and that it uses a transphobic slur that causes actual harm to people is irrelevant: you have a need to express your bigotry, and fuck any useless things that get in the way.
Azuma Haruki, your deeply ironic comment about how the mighty have fallen is deeply ironic. I used to think you weren’t a vile bigot, but now I know better. Nasty.
Chigau:
馬鹿が言う人は馬鹿です
CaitieCat: I don’t care what you think of me. There is a stunning lack of critical thought in this thread, and a lot of kneejerk “butbutbutbut DA’S RAYCISS!” bullshit. It’s a smokescreen, and an excuse to avoid facing reality and the hard truths.
Or he had nothing to do with it, saw his name in the papers as a perp, and didn’t want to be gunned down by trigger happy SWAT dudes.
it’s pretty clear you don’t really care about what anyone here thinks of you.
so… why are you here then?
run along, take your porcupine with you.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Wow, what bug crawled up your ass? I mean you just quoted
Meaning that’ I’m at least half right. All you could of said was ‘Ranzoid, you are not completely right, here is why. Please do better research’. Instead you call me a Liar and bullshitter. Bullshitting about what? that i didn’t directly post a piece of bullshit from breitbart.com and Open Carry Texas? Okay fine then!
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/07/unarmed-paris-police-officers-forced-to-flee-as-armed-terrorists-attack/
https://www.facebook.com/OpenCarryTexas
Guns that the police in France are issued, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIG_Sauer_Pro_series
Part of the Paris PD, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefecture_of_Police_of_Paris
The other part, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Police_%28France%29
Azuma Hazuki
I know you are but what am I?
@325: as someone who looks a lot like you said not an hour ago…”make me” :)
@327: say something dumb and juvenile, get something dumb and juvenile in response.
At this stage Azuma Hazuki reminds me of the proud parent watching their child at a military parade: “oh look, my little Azuma is the only one marching in time!”
How many times do i have to say “I don’t care what any fuckwit incapable of critical thought thinks of me” before you get it…? Although, since your problem is critical thought deficit in the first place, maybe that’s a fool’s errand. Sit down and let the grownups talk, Badland *patpat* If you’re good there’ll be tea and crumpets.
Azuma Hazuki
Why did you think the 馬鹿 was for you.
Why are you looking to get banned from Pharyngula?
Chigau: let’s see, because you speak Japanese and probably disagree with me. And I’m not looking to get banned; you seem to have a detached retina in your second sight, boy.
What you label a “transphobic slur” are just two descriptive ordinary words next to each other to most people.
That’s a lot of baggage you just dumped in my lap. I have no issues adapting language to the place where i am at though.
Oh, that’s easy. Don’t discriminate against Islam, for sure. Don’t pass laws that affect people on the basis of a religion that ain’t yours. Just say that if you voluntarily join our religion, leaving it is apostasy and kill ’em!
@333: Forget it, DutchDelight. Much as I hate to admit it, having come here for at least half a decade, this place has a tendency to go echo-chamber-y when a hot button issue like this pops up. There’s some kind of hardcore memetic engineering that’s been done to make a large proportion of otherwise rational left-leaning people go completely apeshit falling over themselves defending Islam, and for the life of me I cannot understand what it is.
Azuma Hazuki
I truly suck at 日本語
and I’m not a boy
but you are proving to be an asshole
Well, sorry* you feel that way, Chigau. And if you suck so hard at it, maybe don’t try to speak it…?
* yeah…
’twas brillig @99
Thank you. From a slightly different angle, every time I see someone suggesting there should be no freedom of religion, it reads less like “no freedom to do horrible things under the cover of religion” than a statement about what people should be free to believe, and that gets a big Fuck You from me (and undoubtedly lots of people of whatever belief). Freedom of belief is a much better term.
Icthyic @ 128
Well said. That comment had me wondering if, I dunno, the local church/mosque/synagogue/temple social groups should be shut down in an Ideal World, or places like the Theosophical Bookshop closed, because hey, can’t have breeding grounds for zealotry, can we?
Giliell-not-the-dude @140
It’s almot the Murphy’s Law of gravatars. If it’s a pic of the commenter, someone will think otherwise. If it isn’t, they will (I’ve been called a dude often enough on WHTM ‘cos my gravatar’s of Louis.)
The cartoon cat gravatars really confuse the trolls.
*will think it’s the commenter
Where did you go, middle of sentence?
so… “boy” eh?
Chigau is clearly not the only one seeing the inevitable in your behavior here.
but then, we’re all just children to you right?
don’t you have “adult” things to do, like petition to have the Christians rounded up and deported or something?
get on with it.
the rest of us can get on with talking about what actually happened today in France.
Icthyic: Does the phrase “make me” sound, perhaps, hauntingly familiar? You’ve got nothing left so all you’re doing is taking the piss.
@48, Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-:
You never know; I argued for a while with some brits who felt that all the brown-skinned people who came to the U.K. back when their countries were colonies in the empire should just go away now because they were a drain on the economy and the empire was no more. Yes, they admitted that Britain had shamelessly looted those countries (particularly India) and never compensated for it, that the British aristocracy still received inherited privilege for their acts in subjugating various parts of the world, and that the only justification for accepting British rule had always been that the subjects could claim the benefits of being members. None of that mattered; actually living up to those promises was a burden, rather than a benefit, and so there was no need to actually do so — besides, those people are all dark-skinned heathen anyway, so promises to them don’t actually count.
Ah, well.
明日私はここにまだいます。
あなた、、、
I’m starting to think PZ will be breaking out the Red Letters of Death on this thread before too much longer.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/07/charlie-hebdo-magazine-shooting-france-police-manhunt-suspects
Curiouser and curiouser.
I hope the French have some damn good investigators on the case.
” It also reports that one of the three men had been identified by an identity card left in the getaway car.”
wait.. they left an IDENTITY card in the car?
wtf?
@Dutchdelight, #280:
Murder, Inc. did up to 1000. Jew or not-Jew gives them a “borderline Jew” rating (while slipping in digs about Reformers [reconstructionists don’t rate a mention on Jew-or-not-Jew] along the way).
Sure it was a mob, and they made money out of others’ fear, but that changes what, exactly?
Looks like they are being set up as a patsy.
I wonder if we will ever know who actually did it.
man, that takes me back to “Rainbow Warrior” days.
It better fucking NOT be that again.
Intelligent thinking people who commit mass murder in the name of fanaticism tend to be rather rare.
seriously, I really doubt it, but just for those that have never heard about what happened…
http://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/rainbow-warrior/
Don’t be an idiot.
Don’t be a gullible dumb-fuck.
One of the people tha supposedly did this crime was sitting in school with a bunch of witnesses during the whole thing. What makes you think the other two people fingered are any less innocent?
or not really care if they get caught, like Brevik.
Breivik.
typo.
If you wanted to commit this act of mass murder and get away, it would be very prudent to leave a bread crumb trail to divert police attention towards a wild goose chase while you got out of country. Telling bystanders you did this in the name of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, then dropping some dude’s ID (or copy thereof) in the getaway car would be a great way to divert police attention. All you need is for the cops to chase their tail for a few hours while you bug out.
@Azuma
I’ve been around since before scienceblogs, even had a tiny part in the creation of the fatwah envy meme.
I don’t actually agree with your points, although there’s something to be said to do a full-stop on non-eu immigrants for a decade or so, combined with actual action against illegals. Mostly to get some time to fix the system, provide some rest in the population and to protect the immigrants that are following the rules.
The context for that is that it is a mess here, and has been for decades. All because criticism was automatically racism for all that time. Of course, treating the electorate as racist wannabe-hitlers for ages doesn’t go over well, which is why the labour party is almost marginalized today, wrapped up in clientelism scandals, defecting mp’s taking their immigrant votes with them, and a right wing populist ready to sweep in at the next elections. They and other big parties could have just listened to the electorate and adjust policies sensibly, but they chose not to go that route. Watching them throw fits and demonizing the populist at every turn these days is really good entertainment though.
As far as the racism accusations here, it’s unsurprising, the commentariat is clearly out of it’s depth and that’s the only thing they know in these situations. I’m in what Americans would call an interracial relationship, with a lovely woman with a muslim background (who would no doubt also be labeled racist by the intellectual heavyweights here, had she commented), and according to harvards online test, i’m low in the least racist category, which i’d guess is the norm for my generation, the one before it, and all the ones after. I’m under 40.
Just keep shouting people down and demonize them crew. Nothing fascist about that. I’m sure the bad scary people will just go away and disappear at some point if you keep it up long enough. Really.
@Azuma Hazuki 335
I don’t think I have seen anyone here defending Islam, just defending the righst of Muslim people (freedom of movement in particular).
@Azuma Hazuki 269
Immigrants leave their nation or origin to live in ours; it isn’t intentionally ‘sending’ them like some sort of invasion plot. If the nation is currently in political conflict with the US there is a risk of spies, but that is what background checks by country are for rather than blanket immigration bans by self-reported demographic (which would be useless against spies, since they could just lie).
What connection do Muslim immigrants have to CAIR beyond CAIR appointing itself to speak for them? Do they poll in surveys as supporting it? (Also, I tried to look up the CAIR quotes about ruling and such, but the only source I could find was an article from the ultra-right-wing WorldNetDaily about how they previously accused the CAIR of saying that and the CAIR denied it. Is there a more credible source for this?)
@ 348 Crip Dyke
Dutchdelight might also consider directing their question toward a Palestinian Arab.
@crip
Wow, so people kill for money, no shit. You must be kidding me.
Any reading comprehension going on here at all?!
I guess that means you couldn’t find anything and settled for “well they’re sorta all jews, and they killed a bunch of people so it’s pretty much totes the same”.
yeah, that’s kinda why people tend to overly(?) worry about racism being involved whenever discussions of immigrants happen.
not like there’s not a history.
that right wing populism is always there, just under the surface.
the only new thing I have discovered in the last 20 years… it’s that it’s everywhere.
aside from the obvious attempt at well poisoning, it’s like you think that somehow one’s race defines whether one even CAN be a racist or not.
say, as an analogy… Phylis Schlafly… she’s a feminist, right? I mean, after all, she’s a woman and everything.
@Silentbob
I could do that, and he’d say 0.
I don’t live in Israel, nor do i care about their considerations on immigration policies.
I think you need to take a much closer look in the mirror.
but you consider yourself oh so much more informed than the rest of us schmucks, right?
phht.
Christopher (#47) –
Bingo. If “gods” are powerful enough to create the universe as fanatics claim, then they should deal with critics on their own. They claim their gods have the ability (e.g. lot’s wife) so get them to do it.
The fact that gods do nothing to people who mock religion proves one of two things:
(a) their gods aren’t offended so the believers shouldn’t be either, or
(b) their gods don’t exist.
I am surprised finding ID in an abandoned getaway car is surprising, or suspicious to anyone. The real world is not the same as a film, where criminals often have elaborate, perfectly planned ways to get away, where they are professionals and make sure all evidence has been removed. They are messy, people are not calm, they make stupid mistakes. It is not hard to find cases where criminals are caught due to errors, often really stupid errors. Timothy McVeigh was caught shortly after the bombing because he was driving without a license plate, he also had a really an illegal firearm on him and the officer noticed the bulge from it. Mohammad Salameh was caught after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing while he was trying to get his deposit back for the van used in the bombing. Dennis Rader was caught after believing a lie about whether floppy discs could be traced back to him. It is being reported that these guys initially went to the wrong building. When I am late for the bus I forget things, I drop things, and I am sure I am not alone in this, now imagine that the police are after you and under a lot of stress.
On a tangential note, I just started a sketchbook for an art class, and to do my part for blasphemy I started it with Brohammad, Slowhammad (Pikachu be upon him) and Snowhammad. I think I might be running out of puns though; any suggestions?
It’s also possible that the suspect who surrendered, Hamyd Mourad, whether or not it was his ID card they found, simply had the wrong taste in acquaintances. One suspect, Cherif Kouachi, reportedly spent time in jail for recruiting French citizens to fight against the Americans in Iraq, so perhaps he was trying to recruit this kid.
Did you see the video of the dude executing the wounded cop after they had shot up the building and were leaving? Cold as fuck, calm as a mirrored lake.
This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing like the NY cop killer. These guys planned this and dressed for the occasion. Why would you dress up in all your ninja gear, then pull your ID out of your wallet from your street clothes and then put it in your pocket before going off to murder a bunch of innocents? It makes zero sense. Especially for people that had good enough intel to know when all the big wigs at the magazine would be in the same place at the same time and had access to the kind of weapons they did in France.
Azuma Hazuki
For pity’s sake. It was a bare 3 weeks ago that #illridewithyou took off like a rocket. Perhaps you should note the sentiment expressed by the woman who unwittingly started it off.
(my bold)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-15/illridewithyou-hashtag-takes-off-following-siege/5969102
As far as “failure” of multiculturalism goes, my observation from Australia is that any such failure usually arises from governments / communities that ignore the possibility of any problems and presume that assimilation or some other such policy-by-neglect will take care of it.
@EveryZig:
On an atheist site you couldn’t come up with Knowhammed (or No Peace) and Nohammed (and No Peace)?
Shame on you. Back to class. It’s like even as adult you still have things to learn, or something.
@mildlymagnificent:
When you assume your culture/race/nationality is best, it’s easy to assume that you don’t have to do anything to integrate sub-cultures (immigrant or native) since of course the subhumans will want to be JustLikeMe. Why wouldn’t they?
It’s not only racist mistreatment or religious oppression that fuels outsider/insider violence. It’s also the arrogance of racist/religious neglect.
Mo’hammered (he can drink you under the table)
Mo’ham’id (I like pig thoughts and I can not lie…)
@EveryZig:
There’s also Poehammed, where it’s quite hard to tell whether a drawing in fact features Mohammad, or not….
Bohammed knows, I don’t know, what’s the most popular sport among muslims? Football? In Pakistan would it be cricket?
In hot areas, Snowhammed might become Flowhammed. (Not Flohammed (Kisses be upon her grits), of course.)
It’s hard to tell how to draw Johammed, that could look like just anyone.
You could do a court sketch of Roehammed v Wadehammed.
Hohammed would be hard to pull off without descending into misogyny, but maybe you could find a way to draw Hohammed while punching up.
I could probably come up with Mo’hominids for you to draw, but that’s the limit of my ideas for now.
Anyone treating all members of a group exactly the same when some of them commit crimes deserves the same precision of attention when they opine.
*Flush*
@Christopher, #346
“I hope the French have some damn good investigators on the case.”
The best, sir!
Seriously, before they catch the people they want to catch, they tend to bullshit a lot. For instance they say they are looking for a person while they are truly looking for another.
Another thing: Charlie’s lawyer swore there would be a new issue at the normal date, that is next wednesday. It seems that Charlie is not dead yet.
He asked for some help and have no doubt he will have some.
Added Crowhammad (Peep be upon him), Showhammad, and Knowhammad. I need to go to bed now; will do Nohammad, Mohammered, Mohammerhead and MoHammad later. Thanks for the suggestions! (Should I move future updates to the general thread?)
Being calm while doing something like that does not translate into not making mistakes, especially when you are making a getaway or are being perused, or just because mistakes happen. Not sure why you choose to bring up what appeared to be a very unorganized killer. I certainly did not indicate I thought they were like that. It is really not similar to this at all. However, I listed a number cases that actually have some similarity, two of them terrorists caught shortly after the incidents, people with no qualms about killing people either, that were caught due to mistakes. Another one I mentioned is a serial killer that was known specifically for being calm and methodical, yet was caught due to making an utterly foolish decision. People make mistakes. It happens. People carry wallets, things get knocked out of them. Criminals change clothing after committing crimes as well. We have little information about what they were doing in those cars, but that does not seem like much of a stretch.
You think it would be hard to find this information? To use a colloquialism, you case the joint. This is not complicated. Or rely on human intelligence, or both. These are commonly done by criminals. This is not amazingly sensitive information that could not be found out by people interested in doing this. I am also mystified as to why you think it is so hard to obtain automatic weapons in France. Mohamed Merah had at least eight illegal weapons, including an Uzi and a Kalashnikov. France has a lot of illegal guns, for each legal firearm it is estimated there are almost two illegal firearms. This was less than three years ago, surely you remember this. There have been no lack of stories about access to illegal guns in France over the years, including the same kinds of weapons used here.
What you have is painfully weak, it is no better than the wildest right-wing conspiracies. It all seems to be based on your limited knowledge of crime, past cases, and the availability of weapons in France.
Silentbob @360
A long time ago (back in the 70s), I noticed a similarity in the comments of Israeli “settlers” regarding the inferiority of the Palestinian Arabs to the comments of the Nazis regarding the inferiority of the Jews.
I wonder if moderate religious people even consider how inconsistent they’re being when they claim that their moderation is rooted in not following the rules of their chosen faith to the letter while denouncing their radical counterparts for not being True (insert religion) Followers™.
how would you know? did you try?
it’s not as easy as you might think, especially with a business that had been targeted by a terrorist attack just 3 years previous, and had taken security measures (like the vault that acted as the front door).
as opposed to your seeming vast knowledge of it.
is this what you’re claiming?
seriously, NOBODY believed the French government was involved with the Rainbow Warrior case… until it was.
Out here, everybody (except probably for dutchdelight who’s sufficiently asshole enough)
Azuma has schooled us thoroughly. We need to go away and learn how to think. After all, she’s a world renowned expert on islam, having read the Q’ran and shit.
She knows that there are exactly two kinds of muslims:
Those who will kill you (labelled “good”. About 8000 in Germany) and those who will get you killed (labelled “bad”. About 4 fucking million in Germany*). Therefore, we must keep them all out.
But you know, Malala Yousafzai is totally a hero, only, what were the British thinking bringing a bad muslim to their country? I mean, if anybody is guaranteed to draw fire from the Taliban it’s here, right? She’s totally a hero, but couldn’t she be a hero somewhere else?
No, really no muslims at all. You have to sufficiently prove that you either never were a muslim or that you are an apostate. Oh, wait, they kill apostates, too, right?
She’s also a well-known humanist philosopher, therefore she knows that humanism means “freedom of religion as long as I deem your religion ok”.
And finally she knows that all those who disagree with her are either male or just silly girls. And she knows how to Pharyngula.
*I am still wondering how German immigration politics of the 1950’s and 60’s inevitably led to the events in Paris. Please, somebody explain to me.
+++
There have been several arrests, though no information on who’s been arrested.
The 18 yo may have been their accomplice, but was in school that morning. He went to the police when his name was making rounds through social media. Smart lad to go to the police where he had a chance to show he has an alibi. It’s not as if there have been manhunts after such events in which the tactic was “kill first, ask questions later”
Giliell
re: the 18-year-old
There’s also the fact that a lot of Muslim-sounding names tend to repeat – as in, several people may have the same name.
The sister of a friend of mine’s name is officially on a US no-fly list – except on the no-fly list, it’s a rather-somewhat-over middle-aged man they’re looking for, rather than a mid-20s young woman. :P
I suppose it’s best to be preventive about any future confusion rather than wait for the authorities to come for you.
Here’s more: ‘Je suis Charlie’: World’s cartoonists take a stand.
donnagratehouse
Well, those murderous followers also conveniently ignore large parts of their religious rules, just different ones. That’s the thing about religion: It’s usually a pick an mix where everything is at the same time right and wrong. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. All sides equally believe to be right, only that some are willing to kill for it. A feature that is, of course, not unique to islam.
No, I did not try, and that is a ridiculous reply. Appealing to personal experience, or lack thereof is not an argument. One does not need to have direct experience to be familiar with intelligence operations and information gathering techniques and how they are used. “Casing” targets, methodically learning about them, their activities, finding vulnerabilities is a common technique, employed by both criminals and those gathering intelligence. These are well established techniques used against a wide array of targets, secure or not. So yes, they had extra security, but the whole point of casing is to find vulnerabilities and understand what is going on to mitigate that. Combine that with other methods to gathering intelligence such as elicitation, and you could potentially get quite a bit of information. Is there a reason you suspect they would be incapable of performing standard information gathering techniques that have long been used as some of the main methods of gathering intelligence like this?
It might not be my profession, but yes, since I have studied these topics quite a few years, I would judge I have better knowledge than someone that has some vague feelings about “suspicious” things that are rather similar to the kind of things that have actually gone wrong for other terrorists.
Err, nobody? Are you sure you are remembering that correctly? Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart were arrested only two weeks after the bombing. They were convinced only a few months later. It was a huge diplomatic row between New Zealand and France. It seems like people believed it pretty quickly. The police in NZ were considering it a homicide immediately. I just watched a CBC broadcast from July 10th that seriously discussed the possibility, without dismissing it. The BBC had an article that day that specifically mentioned the French connection, and police investigating that. It appears it was taken seriously almost immediately.
Particularly well done. The Guardian
Just too small.
Found a larger version
following Travis, #390
That’s also the way i remember the Rainbow Warrior story. It was a while ago, though. In my memory, ithe French secret services were suspected right away.
And the next day Marine LePen wants to bring back the death penalty
Anybody still wondering why I’m much more afraid of European fascism as a response to this than I can possibly ever be of Islamists?
People, that article is not uninteresting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/opinion/the-attack-on-charlie-hebdo-and-the-tradition-of-parisian-wit.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
All apologies if somebody already linked to it. I do not agree with everything in that article, but there is something to learn from it.
To day is the day after for me. To be short: it is very tough.
The Rainbow Warrior Attack was then French Minister of Defense, Charles Hernu’s idea. What has this got to do with anything?
I don’t “want to make it a contest”. I wanted to point out, and did, that you make a mindnumbingly stupid and highly offensive equivalence, which only succeeded in making your racism obvious to all but your fellow-fuckwit Azuma Hazuki. To suggest that “native Europeans” (and how revealing that phrase is!) are trapped under the terror of extremists is ludicrous. Your chances, my chances, of being a victim of Islamist terror are minuscule compared to that of being killed by a careless driver, let alone that of contracting some painful and fatal disease. If you are really terrified of Islamist extremists, then you’re suffering from a phobia – an irrationally exaggerated fear. But I don’t for a second believe that you are.
Nick
So? Do you propose reducing the speed limit as a response to Islamic terrorism?
Every time a terrorist attack happens a few hypocrites among the non-muslim majority first turns towards their muslim fellow-citizens and demand that they condemn it, then pretend that the fact that they nearly unanimously condemned it does not matter because “Taqiyya”
***
I don’t know what’s the most repugnant thing here: the racism or the wealthy urbanite bourge’s class contempt toward “those dirty peasants”
***
Fifty-Six
***
Don’t confuse everything: you’re being called a racist for wallowing with delight in ethnic determinism, you’re being called a moron because contrary to your overrated opinion of yourself, you lack the cunning to efficiently hide the fact that you are wallowing with delight in ethnic determinism
***
Believe it or not, that’s already how french law state things
***
Ironically, this tactic was invented by french anarchists during the 19th century: they had trouble finding new members so they started planting bombs left and right in the hope that it would provoke the state into voting liberticide laws (which it did, at the time) which would in turn convince the underclass that the ruling class was out to get them and that therefore it was in their best interest to become anarchist themselves (didn’t work).
But it’s true that increasing animosity between French and their Muslim compatriots in order to force french Muslims into fundies’ arms is most certainly one of (if not the main) the killers’ objectives
***
From this day on, I’ll remorselessly steal that line.
***
So basically, you were hurt in the past, you want revenge against millions of people uninvolved into the harm you received, but, lacking the firepower to make your petty vengeful fantasies real, you cravenly hope politicians will use the power of the state to satisfy your revanchism.
Like Beatrice, I’m fucking glad you’re in no position of power.
***
And immediately after advocated bringing back the death penalty and striping french people of their nationality. It never take long for the ugly side of fascism to bubble back to the surface.
***
That’s a shitty exemple: Stephan Turk did not shoot a thief in self defense: he shot him in the back, while he was running away
***
Which is why the killers targeted Charlie specifically: they’re not going to target far-right or white supremacist organizations masquerading as paragons of secularism: they need these to keep fueling the Us vs Them mentalities which feed them.
***
Remember Anders Breivik? Lucky losers leaving a pile of corpses behind them are not unheard of.
***
The guy who surrendered is a high-schooler and his classmates affirm that he was at school with them when the slaughter happened. He may indeed have nothing to do with it.
While being unrelated that would probably save more lives than whatever politicians are sure to enact now.
But it’s actually quite a good analogy.
Because somehow we don’t worry about seeing cars, but many people worry when they see somebody the think is “muslim” (which has, at times, included yours truely).
Muslim population grows, traffic density grows, yet we don’t speak of a “carification of Europe”
And somehow we don’t hold every driver collectively responsible for those that break speed limits.
After a mass crash or a particularly nasty accident in which school children are killed people don’t bomb the car dealer down the road or set randomn cars on fire.
We don’t treat every driver as irresponsible from the start, but try to find out which ones are dangerous and try to keep them from driving.
Yeah, the mosques are burning already in France.
Fortunately, France already introduced over the years tougher regulations regarding speed limitation, security belts and alcohol while driving (you can’t drive with more than 0,5 grams of alcohol per liter of blood: creeeeeeeeping Sharia), which have reduced the number of people killed in road crashes from 12.000 yearly in the late seventies to less than 4.000 per year nowadays.
***
Fast-foods located near mosquees as well.
So maybe if we’re really serious about saving lives we should divert funds from battered women’s shelters to the Highway Patrol, would be more effective and realistic.
I am a bit disappointed in the quibbling and attempts at oneupmanship in this blog site. Different people trying to show they have a bit more savvy than others. We cannot rewrite history, as awful as much of it was – meaning that France did try to cover up the Rainbow Warrior botched job, and that ex-colonial powers (England, France, Spain…) have all dealt badly with the lucky survivors of their invaded territories. And in France it has led to the existence of disenfranchised ghettos around the main urban centres, where drug-dealing and seemingly fanaticism are the main occupations. But it does not mean that the present day is pre-ordained to play out as some inevitable retribution, that sounds almost religious. And the idea put around by a few zealous types that Charlie Hebdo “had it coming” because of their irreverent attitude is akin to blaming rape on women who wear short skirts. Getting back to the actual butchery, the real-time news says the two armed suspects have been localized and are heading back towards Paris. Maybe some more gruesome deaths in store…
I propose that we import large numbers of Muslims. As I’m sure bigoted fuckwits like Azuma Hakuzi would agree, “Western Culture” (whatever that is) is far superior to the (single?) culture that Muslims have (maybe it’s like two or three, tops), so they will probably benefit from it and become less terrorific over time. Plus, someone dying in this country from terrorism is no worse than it happening to any other human in any other country, so even if it happens there’s no real downside. Indeed, with all the murderous loons and religious fanatics and such already in the US — with its fabulous culture, although I’m sure other “Western” countries could boast just the same — I doubt you’d even notice a thing. I mean, you certainly wouldn’t notice it if your head remains shoved up your ass.
chimera@398,
I guess you really are as stupid as you sometimes appear.
photorecteptor
And who here did that?
Be precise, please. Name, number, quote.
Also, what happened to paragraphs?
I thought they were halal…
+++
chimera
You really need to spell your argument out.
Gotts! Brilliant argument!
Nope. Pegida was already scary as fuck and now they’ll be using this as a blunt object to beat anyone who objects to their racism over the head with.
chimera,
Your stupid crap@398 doesn’t require or invite any more specific response. Anyone too stupid to see its stupidity would not understand such a response anyway.
It’s all thanks to your brilliant rhetorical question. Next up: what should be the response to non-Islamic terrorism? If I’m following your implied reasoning, I guess I’m supposed to believe Nick Gotts would want to speed things up in that case. Or something. Actually, I have no idea what the fuck the point of your question was.
Yea, don’t make assumptions, you all have been doing really bad at them this thread. Racism in this thread was being used in the broad sense (prejudice + power), and that’s how i used it even thought that’s either a ridiculousy broad definition or the wrong word to use imo.
Some of the more fascist regulars here can’t do anything but reflexively shout racist at ideas they don’t understand or have been taught are just advanced by extremists, so they can’t even respond in reason anymore, as evidenced by the sheer retardedness of people replacing the words i type with something that they can more easily catogorize and dismiss as “foreigner hating hillbilly”.
More evidence, not in your favor. Speak less like a bigot, and it might you help your case. Also, making some kind of a coherent case to begin with would also help. Your whining isn’t too compelling all by itself.
err… it might help you make your case. I swear, I really learned English once, just like a natural born American, officer.
dutchdelight #411:
Please do not use mental health issues as a slur.
Yep, but still I’ll be at the local No Pegida ralley on Monday, taking the kids with me. I’m scared. I used to have a special permit to stay in the classroom during recess because some Nazis used to hunt me outside. My youth was characterized by right wing terrorism. Hoyerswerda, Mölln. Bombing the “crimes of the Wehrmacht” exhibition. Death lists. And let’s not forget that the NSU was happily roaming the country during much of that time, killing immigrants. Only we never knew. And the refugee homes are burning again.
Yep, islamistic terrorism exists. But it’s just bombs and guns. Nationalistic terorrism is bombs and guns and a fucking lot of people who get to vote for fascist parties and policies. I doubt very much that they’ll be nice to a lefty atheist socialist feminist.
dutchdelight@411,
That would be you and Azuma Hazuki, then. You’re the only ones that are putting forward the nostrums peddled by fascists as the solution to Islamist terrorism.
Ooooh, fascist.
Yep, wanting to treat people, even brown people who believe in Allah as people is a sure sign of fascism. Pro-immigration, the hallmark of fascism.
Azuma, #335
Good. The entire world needs to be an echo chamber when it comes to shitbrains like you saying ban all Muslim immigration.
Are you truly that stupid?
Islam fucking sucks. The world would be a better place if Islam just went away. But you were talking about all Muslims. Totally different thing. You really thought switching up the word would work and nobody would notice?
Yeah, we’re all a bunch of intolerant, multicultural, self-hating Jew-Nazis here. That’s just how we roll.
I guess since she can’t make that distinction – at least, not consistently, because I admit we’re assured that Malala totally wouldn’t be caught by a blanket ban on Muslims – she assumes no-one else can.
Azuma, #261
Make up your mind, idiot. What exactly are you against here: Islam, the Quran, or all Muslims?
Islam isn’t a living thing with rights and feelings. The Quran isn’t a living thing with rights and feelings. All Muslims are living things with rights and feelings. All Muslims don’t follow everything in the Quran. So if your problem is with horrible shit in the Quran, stop trying to make it spill over onto the millions of Muslims who don’t act on that horrible shit.
You think you have some deep understanding of this issue, but to us civilized people you sound like a fucking idiot going on about how all Christians are bad people because the Bible mentions killing witches. You’re a fucking FOX News talking points regurgitating joke.
Azuma, #269
They’re not objects being “sent” by their nations. They’re people making conscious decisions to legally move from one place to another.
I’m enjoying this. You’re the most incorrect person I’ve ever encountered. You’re just getting everything wrong.
I genuinely feel sorry for Azuma in some ways. By the looks of it, based on a lot of previous threads, she’s still trying (and failing) to recover from a very bad kind of fundamentalism and is still utterly terrified and confused about a whole lot of shit. You can easily have the impression that you’ve left it all behind and feel like you’re opposed to everything about it, even while much of it still dominates your thinking. It can be a real mindfuck, getting away from a religion and a toxic culture. Besides still being half-religious, she’s not there yet on the more general humanist and non-dogmatic side of things either.
To try to answer the question, I think she takes it as a serious criticism that they’re not “good Muslims.” Because there’s something about doing a religion the “right” way (whatever the fuck that would be) that she still puts some kind of value in. But it’s not consistency which is valuable. It’s more like following the horrific/bullshit rules, in the most “true” authoritarian, scripturally-correct™ fashion. She apparently hates these religions enough that she wants (and expects) them to break themselves apart that way. You see, these evil religious people supposedly deserve punishment, and they should be the ones to deliver on the themselves. It’s just stupid, senseless destruction — but it’s supposed to look like “poetic justice” or something. As long as it’s happening to somebody other than Azuma or Americans or Westerners or white people (or you name it), then that always seems to be acceptable. But I do worry if she also has self-destructive tendencies along with all this. That’s my best interpretation, anyway, also given a lot of others I’ve known similar to this over the years, but I could be wrong.
All of that requires a great deal of forethought and planning. People who spend that much effort planning this type of attack wouldn’t be the type of people to bring their license with them for their murder spree; they would be more likely to be the type of people to drop someone else’s ID in order to create a false trail.
to #406, I didn’t mean to accuse the bloggers of advancing such a hypothesis, but rather some of the links that were given, to Fox News, the Financial Times and some right wing Catholic group. Going back to Marine Le Pen, I said she had aligned herself with french mainstream political parties, but I certainly didn’t say I believed her sincerity. She is a dangerous cynical loud-mouthed bigot, worse than her father because she knows even better how to manipulate the masses. And yes, this kind of tragedy plays right into her hands. Bringing back the death penalty in France? Apparently ever since Robert Badinter campaigned to abolish it, referendums show a majority of french say they would prefer it reinstalled. Are they fascists? No, but mostly quite conservative.
Shit that happened while I was asleep:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-france-shooting-idUSKBN0KG0Y120150108
Two guys that seemed to match the description of the Charlie Hebdo killers stuck up a gas station.
Another person, not matching the description of the Charlie Hebdo killers but wearing a combat vest and sporting an assault rifle and handgun, shot a couple of cops attending a traffic accident, killing one of them.
What the fucking fuck is going on? How much worse are things going to get?
to the multiple posts of Christopher: although one still cannot be really sure, there is a lot of evidence that these guys are the ones. They have been tracked by the police over the recent hours and their behaviour doesn’t fit (still travelling cagouled and heavily armed) with somebody framed by the real commandos. Also their track record (at least for Cherif) is rather damning.
Raging Bee@92, I’m guessing the Fox fools believe, like lots of Americans, in the magic power of Teh Gunz. If the victims had possessed Teh Gunz they would have known the attack was coming and responded instantly and with utter effectiveness. Why that magic power doesn’t apply to French cops is another question I suppose.
Because they’re French Old-Europe surrender-monkeys.
Raging Bee@428: You left off cheese-eating!
Yeah, his experience in Iraq could go a long way towards explaining how comfortable they were in gun handling and casual murder, and the gas station stickup does imply that we’re dealing with a few isolated dudes rather than someone with access to a deep network.
I still wonder why a French-Algerian who fought with Al-Qaeda in Iraq would tell a bystander that they committed their crime in the name of Al-Qaeda in Yemen and not Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The various Al-Qaeda branches have become more independent over the last few years and is more branding exercise than a united group these days. Why attribute your attack to an Al-Qaeda group you have never interacted with instead of one you have?
I do hope these fuckwads make it to trial so we might have a chance to get some sort of answers.
Because it was Al-Queda in Yemen which openly called for Charb’s murder.
Chances are these guys want to go out in a blaze of glory, they will not want to be taken alive (even if their attack was not martyr-style). At least they will be mighty disappointed to find no virgins waiting for them, in fact just oblivion.
You forgot fundamental atheist.
Concerning the change in terrorist tactics (no kamikaze-style attack in which their death would figure), a french specialist was saying the ISIS group have evolved into less “spectacular” forms of modus operandi; even if the slaughter was spectacular enough, it did not involve use of explosives which are more easily traced. So the fear and terror element is increased, since they can strike wherever and whenever they want with less chance of being countered prior to action. Fuck.
#42 Lynne. Fux News is clueless as usual. “the principle of multiculturalism and open borders […] this is pure insanity, a suicide pact.” France has one of the strongest policies of integration. Its public policy is just as strongly against multi-culturalism. So Fux knows nothing about France.
For those of you in America, imagine that your four most popular cartoonists were murdered in one fell swoop. That is what happened here in Paris. I don’t mean to diminish the tragedy of the deaths of the two policemen and the rest of the magazine’s staff. But of course the four famous names make the news.
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.”
Even though America’s abysmal immigration record makes it hypocritical, I still love this poem and the idea that our shores should be open to everyone., especially those in need. Are we so petty as to turn away those who suffer, just because some of their co-religionists are violent thugs?
Doug Hudson, yes, apparently, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do. Because fascism has worked so well every place it’s been imposed.
@photoreceptor:
I wouldn’t let this particular attack terrify you quite so much. Mass killings have been a sad fact of existence for almost centuries now. Look at the Bath school disaster. That happened in 1927 and dwarfs what happened in Paris. Most people didn’t seem to react in this manner after Anders Breivik or Timothy McVeigh or Martin Bryant, all far more deadly. Heck, the same day as this, some idiot apparently tried to blow up NAACP HQ in Colorado Springs here in the States. They’re still out there planning who knows what but nobody cares because we’re all focused on the Muslim bogeyman again. People seem quick to ascribe some sort of special horror status to attacks committed by Muslim terrorists but not to others.
The term terrorism is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Christopher @357
If you wanted to commit the act and be recognized for it though…
dutchdelight @earlier
Much like black men are overrepresented in the American prison population, I believe there may be some other factors involved in both the scrutiny and conviction of these immigrants, coupled with their status within society it really doesn’t come as a shock to me, especially when assholes like you abound.
Saad @422:
Azuma is the embodiment of SIWOTI in this thread.
Azuma @323:
(bolding mine)
This is deeply ironic coming from the person who thinks Muslims should be prevented from immigrating to the United States bc a small number of Muslims are violent religious extremists.
@439, just as Irish men were over-represented in the American prison population in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It’s blatantly obvious why oppressed minorities would be over-represented in criminal statistics, and anyone who uses such statistics to claim that said minorities are “more violent” (or “violent drunks”, in the case of the Irish) is a bigot, either knowingly or unknowingly. Like my parents, who live in fear of those “violent black people” and refuse to acknowledge the systemic problems that lead to “black violence” (and, of course, the fact that black people face far greater violence, or the threat of violence, on a daily basis…) Sigh.
Maybe if Muslims in Muslim countries didn’t have to live with the very real possibility that a drone will drop a bomb on their head, they wouldn’t be quite so pissed at the West?
Right-wingers use multi-culturalism as a codeword for “not giving institutional privileges to whites: as a French citizen, allow me to answer: guilty as charged and proud of it.
Laurent: does France really have strong policies of integration? After those riots in the Paris suburbs, it seemed the French were good about letting immigrants into their country, but not so good at helping them to really integrate themselves into French society as productive, stakeholding, responsible, full citizens sharing equally in the benefits of French and Western values.
Then there is that. But those fuckers tend to go the whole Dorner/Breivik manifesto route. Maybe these fuckwads are functionally illiterate…
@Christopher
There’s also the possibility that they wanted to escape and then blend in, i.e. take off the black clothing, dump the car/guns/etc.
It then makes sense to have your ID on you. If that’s the case, the accident they had with the initial car forced them to change plans (and also lose the ID card) and may have been a lucky break for the police.
In any case, I’m obviously just speculating.
@Tony!, #441:
thanks for bringing to my attention Azuma @323:
Wow. Enjoys proving others’ points, does Azuma?
@Christopher, #426
“How much worse are things going to get?”
My answer: not. It is going to fade away. I am no psychic, but that is the usual scenario.
You seem to expect an apocalyptic turn of the events. I don’t. I am not worried the least in the world in fact. These guys are going to get caught or shot, and everything will go slowly go back to normal.
The newspapers suggest that they already may be feeling the jaws of the leviathan closing around them.
Jesus jumping Christ…I really should not be doing this, but here goes:
@385: …actually, no, this is a gigantig field of burning strawman and doesn’t dignify a response. Burn in hell.
@399:
You seem to think I want some kind of pogrom. You couldn’t be more wrong: all I want “the state” to do “on my behalf” is stop shitting all over the Constitution and the wall of separation between church and state. Since you’re asking, I’d also like to see not only CAIR but also the sovereign citizens’ whackaloonery think tanks (and ALEC, while we’re asking) shut down, and proper campaign finance laws, and the declawing of the religious right’s influence in politics, but that’s not gonna happen. You also get a “fuck you” for equating me with some kind of goose-stepping Nazi.
@418 and 422:
Actually Saad, I was raised to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” and in secular context that still makes a lot of sense. You can believe I mean “Muslims” when I say “Islam,” but it’s not the case, and fuck you very much too for presuming to read my mind, asshole. Islam is the disease; Muslims are the infected. But it’s a particularly dangerous disease, very much like a memetic version of a zombie plague, and if it’s all the same to you I’d prefer not to have the walking dead on my doorstep.
Besides, I know about taqiyya. How can we take anyone at their word when they claim to be moderate? You should be much more frightened than me, really. So what am I against? Islam and the Koran. Muslims aren’t evil in and of themselves, but they have an evil religion and an evil book, just like Christians.
@423
Easy there, tiger. I don’t have insurance and can’t afford your services as a therapist.
Well, yes. If someone calls themselves a member of group X and does not do what the charter of group X says one must do to be a member of group X, that person is not in fact a member of group X. This is rather simple logic…
Bingo! Someone gets it! I want nothing more than to see evil, stupid people hoist by their own petard! There is no justice in this world but what we make, and justice cannot be had against a superior force…but we can wait for them to get corrupt and insane and destroy themselves from within. Incidentally, this is happening to the US, and I have to say it’s deserved here too.
It *is* poetic justice. Evil people and evil ideas should meet their ends by their own hands.
…oh dear, you were doing so well until this part…
Entirely possible. I admit I don’t want to deal with people any longer and have something that would be called misanthropy if I gave enough of a damn to actually hate. I’m just tired of stupid, tired of injustice, tired of evil people prospering and evil ideas winning, and I don’t see any way out via the status quo. Happy now?
@440 and 441: If you don’t understand why I think that way you’re pretty dull. Hint: “It’s like saying we shouldn’t let anyone who might have been in an Ebola hotzone into the US because a few people who were in that zone are puking up horrible, red liquid sludge that used to be their organs.” Do you get it? The Abrahamic religions are a memetic plague.
@447: Idiots who jump right to “you’re a racist!” or “you’re a bigot!” are mouthbreathing knuckledraggers and my mental image of them is like a Discworld troll on a hot day. Got a problem? Of course you do, Sergeant Detritus.
I’m more worried about the gunning down of the two cops by another person who also hasn’t been caught.
If every sef-styled terrorist cell decided that now was the time to start randomly capping people they don’t like, this could spiral way out of control.
Azuma @449:
Oh, I get why you think that way. You’re a bigot who irrationally and hatefully thinks Muslims are all dangerous. You’ve no facts or evidence to back up your bigoted views, so your only recourse is to hand wave the criticism against you, call people names, and revive the long-dead porcupine meme.
It’s so precious that you derisively dismiss everyone else as lacking in critical thought in this thread when your comments show that you’ve not given your own position much careful reflection.
That stops at the US border.
Unless we allow Muslims in. If we don’t allow Muslims in, that meme will never reach the USA’s shores. Thank goodness.
CD @ 452:
Too late. There are already Muslims in the United States. I guess they should be deported, bc they’re Muslims, and according to Azuma, Muslims are dangerous. Just pay no mind to the followers of other religions who employ violence to achieve their goals. And pay no attention to the countless peaceful Muslims, who, Azuma’s protestations to the contrary, *are* Muslims (whether they’re doing Islam right or wrong is beside point).
I also wonder if white or black Muslims would be allowed to immigrate into the United States under Azuma’s hypothetical immigration ban or if that ban only applies to Muslims from the Middle East.
Wouldn’t racism also be a memetic plague? What do we do with racist people, then?
Yusuf Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens#Denial_of_entry_into_the_United_States
You know, i’m no fan of any people who hold irrational and dehumanizing ideologies, and still i’d much rather have many muslims (possibly most) as my neighbours than you, Azuma…
Blergh, you are just evil…irrational and evil…
Blind them by frying their eyeballs with a laser?
That way they wouldn’t be able to tell who was what race and would magically not be racist. Or alternatively would become humorously racist (cue Dave Chapelle’s Black White Supremacist) .
By Azuma’s rules, Muslims can’t win, apparently. If they use their religion as an excuse for violence, they’re terrorists, about which I agree*. But if they mind their own business and peacefully practice their religion without bothering anyone, they’re doing it wrong. In either case, they should be barred from entering any and all non-majority Muslim countries and/or deported. Or something like that.
I think the expression “fractally wrong” is applicable here…
* With the caveat that the same applies to anyone who uses their religious beliefs as an excuse for violence.
Someone up-thread mentioned that rightwing politicians would find a way to blame the attack in Paris on President Obama. Yes, indeed. That’s exactly what they’ve done.
Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also made disparaging remarks about President Obama. It just seems really odd to me that a terrorist attack in Paris becomes yet another opportunity for politicians to strike their Obama piñata one more time. Priorities? Perspective?
Azuma Hazuki,@ #449
The logic is simple, yes, and you’ve presented a no true Scotsman.
A person’s religion is defined however that person defines it in relation to the religious community to which they belong. You do know that there are many, many sects of Islam, right? There are many, many sects of pretty much every religion. Each of which identifies itself uniquely, even if any real difference is minute (or is not extant).
You seem to be under the misapprehension that there are a few bodies which have the authority to speak on the true beliefs of all Muslims in the world.
You’ve mentioned, in particular, CAIR
CAIR, while it seeks to be a representative voice of American Muslims, is not an authority on all Islamic belief, it is a lobbyist and advocacy group. Using CAIR in the way you do to help prove your point is equivalent to someone quoting The Catholic League or the Papacy as the authoritative voices on Christian belief.
You’re making an inane argument and you’re stretching to defend the blatantly indefensible. Either this place really is an echo chamber, Azuma Hazuki, or you’re just wrong. If this is an echo chamber, leave; isn’t it clear yet that we don’t appreciate your discord?
An example of Muslim communities in the USA doing good:
http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/muslim-groups-donate-100k-to-prevent-detroit-water-shutoffs/30570082
And if they leave their religion, expect the nutjobs to pull a limpieza de sangre and proclaiming that their ancestry suffices to make them “the enemy“
Fox News has decided to give the attack in Paris the Benghazi treatment.
Link.
The eloquence, it stuns.
Bill Donohue’s ridiculous reaction was mentioned twice up-thread. Here’s more coverage:
Yes, Bill Donohue is well-respected in the Catholic community in the USA. Yes, he is a dunderhead.
Link.
Thomathy @460:
Can I make a small change?
discordbigotryI’m not sure “bigot” is sufficient to describe Azuma, the verbiage used is outright eliminationist. I mean, technically the Nazis were bigots, but that’s not the first term that comes to mind.
Because really, the ultimate end of Azuma’s logic is the annihilation of Muslims. How else can the world be saved from the “meme”?
If we aren`t going to let any of `them` in because some of `them` do bad things then we won`t be able to let anyone immigrate. Can`t let any Ugandans in because they might be homophobic bigots who`ll do violence to gay people. Can`t let any Tamils in because the Tamil Tigers launched an insurgency in Sri Lanka. Can`t let any Sikhs in because some of them killed a bunch of airline passengers flying from Canada. Can`t let any Japanese in because of Aum Shinrikyo and the existence of the Yakuza. Can`t let any….
I’m okay with that change, Tony! It’s not poetic, but then, you’ve read what Azuma Hazuki has written.
Much too simple. The objects of interest here are the people, not concepts written about in a charter (or in a scriptural tradition or its commentary).
But as a presupper, I guess it may not even phase you to be told your premise is false. It’ll keep rattling around in your head over and over again anyway. Too stupid to know you’re stupid. I was trying to be a little charitable though … you could be too terrified of religious bogeymen to think straight, assuming you’d otherwise be able to do that.
Sirvan is a commenter from Azerbaijan, mostly geo-political long-term analysis, on his The Caspian Report (YouTube). His often enlightening takes are a far cry from European and American analyses, reports, polemics. Today he uploaded a piece on the reasoning behind the Paris shooting. He claims the ultimate goal is to radicalize and further isolate Muslims in Europe. It’s worth a viewing.
He’s not the only one to make such an analysis. Which is why, once again, it is not repeated often enough that islamic fundies and white supremacists are de facto objective allies
@Tony!, #453:
The internet was implied.
Azuma,
Why would millions of innocent peaceful Muslims need to convince you that they’re peaceful? You’re just a bigoted little shit. They can simply ignore your fascist ranting discriminating against them. It’s not like you have extermination camps set up that you can send them to. You’re even less than pieces of shit on FOX News: you don’t even have an audience that you can influence.
If your answer to “How many more Muslims should we be afraid of now after the Charlie Hebdo attack?” isn’t “At most three.” then you may indeed be a bigot. Them’s the breaks.
I thought he was mostly ignored by the CC in the USA?
@travis:
no, one can watch “24” and apparently get sufficient education, as you seem to have done.
yes, I am remembering it correctly, nobody suspected the french in the media then. nobody.
you have hindsight to guide you now, and google to pretend you actually know what you’re talking about.
pathetic.
…and if not my own recollections, I can rely on those who actually live here (where I do now) and have told me the same.
Seems like the thread to post this one in:
Fox News host asks:
But there’s no racism involved in Islamophobia. None at all.
egads, that sounds like a line from “Spies like Us”.
damien75 @448
That’s pretty much how I feel. There hasn’t been a terrorist attack in Melbourne, but even if there is … I don’t feel terrified. Or even alarmed. I’m not changing my behaviour or fretting about the possibility. If I get caught in it, so be it. Just let the bastards shoot me quickly. Hell, I’m more concerned about keeping an eye out for potentially threatening men in the Schrodinger’s Rapist sense than this, and I’m not even on medium alert for that – and male violence against women is a matter of daily life.
Terrorism’s been happening for a very long time, as nich pointed out above, and eventually things settle down again. Even wars don’t go on eternally.
Since the only one replying to me here who isn’t resorting to nothing but kneejerking and mass scarecrow murder seems to be Consciousness’ Razor at #470, I am not going to dignify the likes of Saad, Gil, or any other of you stupid fucks comparing me to a goddamn Nazi with an answer. That is a hideous strawman, and either you know it, or you’re too dumb to breathe without mechanical ventilation. You are cordially invited to rot in whichever Hell takes your fancy.
@470:
Do you really think I don’t understand that every religious believer is a “cafeteria” type? Seriously? That still doesn’t change the fact that, as I said, someone who calls themselves X and does not do what the rules of being an X say must do to be an X are not in fact an X. Hypocrites (munafiq) in this case are everywhere, yes. I know that. It’s one of the things that got me on the road out of my own religious upbringing.
But this…what, seriously, the actual fuck is this? I am not a presuppositionalist, and in fact if you knew my history, you’d know I’ve spent years specifically working on a counter-apologetic to the argument. I wrote a large chunk of the RationalWiki article on it, in fact.
Would you care to explain youself here, “friend?” You’ve given about the two most deadly insults possible to me, viz 1) accusation of Dunning-Kruger effect and 2) accusation of being the very thing I’ve devoted years of study and literary combat against. You’d better have a fucking good explanation, pal, and not just “I think you suck.”
What “rules”? The ones people themselves make up? There is no Allah, so it’s not as if one person’s set of rules-for-being-Muslim (whatever you think those are) are more or less authoritative than another’s. If Muhammad himself really said one thing, there’s no reason to take his word over that of any other self-identifying Muslim who has a different view now. People change, so do societies and so do religions. Those are just facts. So, there’s no reason at all why they must remain stuck in the past, in what you consider their “original” or “true” state. That is, there’s not a reason which would be compelling to a rational person, based on reality. Of course, if they’re a fuckwit like you with an axe to grind, or if they’re a different sort of fundie authoritarian than you who happens to believe in those particular dogmas, then they might believe the “rules” have to be a certain way or else their (or your) whole system falls apart. But those fuckers don’t own the religion they identify with any more than you do. And you can’t tell other people what they’re going make of it. Nor does going against your preconceived notions make them fucking “hypocrites,” for fuck’s sake.
Yet you believe in a deity. I’m sure you have some fascinating evidence for that. Wait, no, I’m sure you don’t. However, I’m sure you could spend all day railing against other presuppositionalists for not having your presuppositions, seeing as you’ve been soaking in it all this time, along with Biblical interpretation and whatever the fuck else. But that’s hardly the same as not being one yourself. Presupposing a fuckload of nonsense right here in this thread doesn’t say much for you either. You’re too far gone and too tiresome to bother writing up a list, bottom to top and beginning to end. But read over it again and try to really pay attention to just how much evidence-free horseshit you’ve been spewing. This isn’t an “echo chamber” and they weren’t “sacred cows” you tried to be “skeptical” about. You just happen to be totally, fractally fucking wrong. And I’m not your friend or your pal, so don’t keep saying more wrong shit like that either.
if this is true, could you POSSIBLY ever consider, for a moment, that it is purely YOUR communication skills that have lead to this impression?
nobody else in this thread managed to get so misinterpreted as you seem to have….
and, as I said earlier, if you really think we’re so fucking far off base, given what you’ve so far written, why are you even bothering trying to defend yourself?
judging by your interpretation of OUR interpretation, we are so far apart nothing we said even touches the point you apparently were trying to make.
so, you’re all good to go, right?
Cross-posting to the other shooting thread, too, because this is one of the best pieces I’ve read on the Charlie Hebdo massacre: 9 Points to Ponder on the Paris Shooting and Charlie Hebdo.
2kittehs @482
I see what you mean. However, what I meant is that I do not expect at all a period of frequent terrorism attacks. And if there is one I do not expect it to be long.
I am not worried, not just because day in day out terrorism kills less than domestic accidents. (Even in 1995, when there was in France a series of terrorist attacks, it killed 8 people and injured 100 over a period of more than a month and a half, in a contry where 3000 die every day, so if you are in France and worried about dying check your car’s brakes.)
In Paris people go about their business pretty much as usual, probably out of a superhuman courage or disdain for life, but because they don’t expect another terrorist act.
So far we do not know if yesterday’s shooting of two policemen in the South of Paris is linked to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, so let’s relax about that.
Once again, I have no magic foresight ability, and if the turn of the events proves me wrong, the laughter is on me (and Christopher, I owe you a drink). I’m just telling you what I think is reasonable to expect based on my knowledge of my country.
By the way: all school trips are canceled. It is an ideal moment to go to a museum and have it for yourself. Take advantage of it if you like going to these places.
@484: You just went full-on balls-out moron. Are you seriously gonna tell me, using Islam as an example, that someone who does NOT follow the Five Pillars and believes, say, Zeus is real, can call himself or herself a Muslim? Are you gonna tell me a woman with no legs can call herself a pole-vaulter? Because that is precisely what the fuck you’re doing in part one. You make Derrida look analytical.
And part two? Ohhhhh, lawdy, part two! Go find out what a Deist is (think Tom Paine here) and then come back and tell me I’m anything like Cornelius may-he-rot-in-his-own-beloved-hell van Til. You stupid asshole. You stupid fucking asshole. I can’t think of a venomous enough word for someone like you, who twists language around to mean its precise opposite for the sole purpose of massaging his own ego. Damn straight we’re not friends. Die! Just die! You’re too fucking stupid to draw breath on this earth, and you do this crap on purpose! Die!
[No. This kind of talk will get you banned. Any more wishing for people’s deaths and you’ll be out of here — this is your only warning. –pzm]
@485:
And YOU! Self-righteous little shit! No one else on this thread “managed to get misinterpreted” this way, huh? You and your smug pals don’t want to face the truth: the Abrahamic religions are a plague that will destroy civilization if we let them, and you fucking mollycoddling tone-trolling pearl-clutching race baiters are going to be their ticket in! I can assure you, the extremist elements are laughing their asses off at you, you stupid useful idiot. It’s bad enough we have the goddamned Dominionists destroying the US from within!
that you’re the one spinning strawmen?
that you’re the race baiter?
yeah…
you’ve clearly got your head so firmly wedge up your own ass, nothing on earth can pull it out at this point.
good luck with that, you’ll need it.
Azuma @483:
Many of us don’t believe in Hell, but thanks for the imagery of being tortured for all eternity bc you don’t like being called out on your anti-Muslim bigotry.
Most of the responses to you have contained a good deal more than kneejerking or “mass scarecrow murder”, but you won’t engage with reality. Just as you refuse to acknowledge that the vast majority of Muslims are not dangerous and should not be profiled, you won’t engage with the substance of what people are saying. Nor will you recognize your faulty logic and poor argumentation. If your goal was to demonstrate for everyone how poorly you argue your hateful screeds, congrats. You’ve done so. Feel free to fuck off somewhere else. You’ve commented at Pharyngula long enough to know that your hateful, racist bigotry is not welcome here.
coming from you, it tempts me to go out and find a double-amputee pole vaulter.
Ok, this has gone on long enough. Can a monitor please bring this to PZ’s attention. Wishing for the death of others is not cool.
How is it that people who are criticizing the bigotry of racists like Azuma get the label ‘race-baiters’?
I’m feeling like we’ve reached “Starfart” territory at this point.
Say, Azuma, if you going to flame as your flounce, get on with it… tell us ALL what you REALLY think.
don’t hold back. This is for posterity, remember.
She’s arguing in a parallel universe at this point. you’ll have to apply a transform equation.
@491 and 493: Cry some more, Tony. Then, when you’re done with that, cry harder. Then…well, you can probably guess. Hint: it involves crying.
@492: Way to completely miss the goddamn point, not that I expected anything better of you. The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife and package in neat little foil wrappers.
second response:
It’s got something to do with Obama, I’m sure of it.
tell us more about the irony.
surely you can do better?
It actually does sadden me to see such a person such as yourself so consumed by hatred and contempt for others. I’m not crying though. No intention of doing so. I do think you’ve crossed a line in wishing for another person to die bc you disagree with them. You really ought to take some time away from this thread, but clearly you’re too emotionally invested in stirring shit, wishing for people to die, proclaiming your hate for all Muslims, and embracing the same bigotry of RWAs everywhere.