It was nice to take a holiday from the worst of the Charlie Hebdo nonsense. I didnt want to say anything while it was in full ice bucket/Kony/solar Freakin road mode; hopefully now I can say why I found it so revolting without sounding like a heartless bastard. First thing that jumped out was a near instant lack of context. The French/Algerian war (bloodbath) isnt as well known as the history of Middle Earth or Westeros, but unlike those fictional events, it happened. Worst of all the canting bullshit about Free Speech, and Enlightenment Europe (someone on Irish radio actually said that), was knowing what France did to Algeria - and during the lifetimes of many reading this. France had no problem with censoring newspapers who dared to report their atrocities against the Muslims of Northern Africa. nytimes/2013/12/05/world/europe/paul-aussaresses-95-dies-confessed-to-torture.html Regarding Free Speech: it does not exist. There is a continuum of what you can and cannot say in any culture. You can say what you like anywhere, even North Korea, but then youll dine at the banquet of consequences. Even in the west, this can get you dead in a hurry. Julius Streicher was (rightly) hanged at Nuremberg for War Crimes. His crime? Newspaper editor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Streicher There are many examples of people in the West being persecuted for exercising Free Speech: the whisteblowers Assange, Manning & Snowden for example, in various states of confinement. Their free speech happened to tread on National Security. Others have faced professional ruin in the US, example, the Palestinian Professor Steven Salaita: op-talk.blogs.nytimes/2014/10/02/steven-salaita-and-the-quagmire-of-academic-freedom/?_r=1 To quote the fictional Irishman Patrick Harper in the Sharpes Rifles series: The Freedom to starve is no Freedom at all. I despise hidden premises or frames. And what I saw with the Je Suis Charlie was a near instant frame/hidden premise: this was an attack on Free Speech. Remember when most of us laughed at the idiocy of GWBushs post 911 they hate us because we are free? Same dotty argument, trotted out, and most people fell for it. Shame on them. Few stopped to think, and everyone ran (at the behest of their emotion-overlords on TV) to complex out emotionally. Ice buckets. Kony 2012. etc. Another idiocy/paradox: at the root of this Free Speech argument lies a cornerstone of modern secular humanism. The idea that the world is material, not teleological, it has no meaning other than what we project onto it. Religions are quaint bronze age artifacts, soon to be consigned to the scrap heap of history, and we will march on in Progress. Nothing is sacred. Not Jesus, Yahweh, Allah or Muhammed. Until one of the followers of those faiths kills a few hack cartoonists. Then something very interesting happens. We find out something. We find out that there IS something sacred after all. Free Speech. See, nothing is sacred. Ehh, well....except for Free Speech. THAT is sacred. Now mull that over for a while before you read further, and think about what it signifies. And while youre thinking about that, heres the Muslim cop who died defending the lives of the racist cartoonists who were attacking his way of life, religion, and civilisation. huffingtonpost/2015/01/08/jesuisahmed-twitter-hashtag_n_6438132.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051 Long post, Ill post more soon.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 20:31:44 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015