Guest post by Saba Farbodkia. Originally a post at British Muslims for Secular Democracy on Facebook, published here by permission.
Dear offended religious people,
Please stop the hypocrisy. The right to offend is not exclusively yours.
If you know the holy scriptures of the religions that you uphold so dearly, you already know how offensive parts of them are to people. [Read more…]
AFP at the Guardian reports on the arrest of Dieudonné.
Notorious French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has been arrested for being an “apologist for terrorism” after suggesting on Facebook that he sympathised with one of the Paris gunmen, a judicial source has said.
Prosecutors had opened the case against him on Monday after he wrote “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” – mixing the slogan “Je suis Charlie”, used in tribute to the journalists killed at magazine Charlie Hebdo, with a reference to gunman Amédy Coulibaly. Dieudonné was arrested on Wednesday.
Coulibaly killed four people at a Jewish supermarket on Friday and a police officer the day before.
In the US that wouldn’t get him arrested, although it probably would get him investigated and spied on by “Homeland” security – and I’m Millian enough to think he shouldn’t be arrested for that. But I think he’s a colossal asshole for saying it. Coulibaly was a murdering piece of shit, who carefully singled out Jews for murder. Dieudonné is disgusting.
So. Someone whose case does not fall under the statute of limitations is pursuing criminal charges against Cosby.
A model who claims Bill Cosby drugged and sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion met with Los Angeles police on Wednesday to pursue criminal charges against the comedian over the 2008 incident.
An attorney for Chloe Goins said after the meeting that his client is the first woman accusing Cosby of sexual misconduct whose case may fall within the statute of limitations. [Read more…]
Lliana Bird also objects to the whole “Charlie Hebdo is racist!” thing.
[O]ne thing I’ve found difficult to ignore is the growing voices of those who knew little of the cartoonists and journalists saying terrible things about them, which are quite frankly unsettling.
“Racist”, “Islamophobic” and “hypocritical” have been the most common accusations. Many seemingly educated friends and social media buddies seemed to be merely glancing at a few cherry-picked Charlie Hebdo covers without making any effort in understanding their true meaning or impetus (or often even of the French translation of the accompanying captions).
Salty Current has further thoughts on the failure of many to make the effort to understand Charlie Hebdo before declaring it racist.
I’ll repeat briefly the major point I’ve been making for the past several days: that I hate the approach that many people with basically good motives seem to be taking, which consists of a hostile-prosecutorial attitude that begins by assuming the worst, even on the basis of the most skeletal evidence and biased reports, and proceeds through various stages of half-listening to and then minimizing or dismissing evidence that contradicts or at least challenges the original impression. [Read more…]
On page 10 of the new issue of Charlie Hebdo – under the subhead Allah Akbar! –
The killers shouted twice before executing the team – “God is the greatest!” Bah, no, fuckhead, if he existed, you really think he would have let your bottomless stupidity murder the brilliant intelligence of Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Charb, Tignous, Bernard Maris, Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad?
It actually says “he wouldn’t have” rather than “he would have” but I figure that’s an idiom I’m not aware of.
“Allah Akbar” was Charb’s cri de guerre, his salutations in emails and texts – “Allah Akbar, do you think you can manage to get your article in tomorrow?” One day at the magazine, for a laugh, we said “Char, quit saying that, the day they arrive to whack you, we won’t know whether it’s a joke or not.” And it arrived. We knew it, we at Charlie did – that humor is something very serious.
Bien entendu they did.
H/t Brian E.
FranceBleuLoireOcéan @bleuloireocean · 15 hours ago
5h20 ce mercredi : plus aucun #CharlieHebdo au kiosque de la gare de #Nantes. Les 106 exemplaires sont partis en 5′5:20 a.m. this Wednesday: not a single #CharlieHebdo left at the newsagent’s at Nantes station. The 106 copies were gone in 5 minutes.
I like that photo because you can see how CH is still all over all the papers. I especially like the cover of Libération.
I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I knew 3 million wouldn’t be enough just for France, let alone everywhere else.
The print run has been raised to 5 million, but that won’t be enough either.
I want a copy, but apparently it’s not even distributed here outside New York. [Read more…]
Nakul Shenoy @nakulshenoy Jan 13
Eh?! RT @girishmallya: Bought my copy of one part Woman to support freedom of expression http://www.amazon.in/One-Part-Woman-Perumal-Murugan-ebook/dp/B00GZQDISO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1421146193&sr=1-1&keywords=one+part+woman … #IAmPerumalMurugan
