The Right To Publish

"To me, these religious hardliners who protest and kill over a crappy film are no different to the people who made the crappy film.  They're all the same pack, a bunch of a--holes."  
Stephane Charbonnier, editor, Charlie Hebdo

Well, that's calling it like it is, isn't it.  And Charlie Hebdo isn't doing too badly out of the little adventure it devised for itself, intent on pricking the balloon of Muslim exceptionality.  The magazine has been selling like proverbial hotcakes in a snowstorm.  And the magazine in the process has fulfilled its mandate yet again.  Provoking public opinion, demonstrating how absurdly antic we all are.



Particularly how sanctimonious we can be about what is sacred and what represents the fear of offending against the wish to demonstrate how absurdly irrational people are in their reactions to what they perceive are insults to their honour - in the case of insults to Islam a mass psychosis of rage against blasphemy deserving the ultimate punishment of death.

Mind, the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed are by anyone's standard rudely offensive.  But, seen in the context of what the magazine's editors set out to do, prick the propensity of human pomposity, amusing as well.  Since they do reflect in part what is assumed and even documented from the background history of the religion and its original initiate and sponsor.

In preparation for chaotic havoc French police have preempted possibilities by taking up positions outside the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo.  And rather than risk a replay of the Libyan attack against the American Consulate in Benghazi, precautions have been taken in the former French protectorate of Tunisia where 30,000 expatriates make their home.

"This is a satirical paper produced by left-wingers, and when I say left-wingers, that goes all the way from anarchists to Communists to Greens, Socialists and the rest.  Above all it is a secular and atheist newspaper.
"When we attack the Catholic far right ... nobody talks about it in the papers.  It's as if Charlie Hebdo has official authorization to attack the Catholic hard right.  But we are not allowed to make fun of Muslim hardliners.  It's the new rule ... but we will not obey it.
"It shows the climate.  Everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want: to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave."

Charlie Hebdo may represent the left in all its zany manifestations, but those who are generally held to be behind all that is offensive to Muslims are held to be pawns of the Zionists.  Jews are responsible for everything untoward that occurs in the world, linked inevitably by anti-Semites and just plain old racist bigots to all the troubles that beset the world, particularly the world of Islam.

In the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles, one person was hurt when two masked men threw a small incendiary device through the window of a kosher supermarket.  Although police hesitate to link the incident to the cartoons, it takes no genius to arrive at that conclusion.  Other than that incident, and a formally lodged legal complaint by a Muslim group against the weekly, no mass protest.

"We saw what happened last week in Libya and in other countries such as Afghanistan.  We have to call on all to behave responsibly", urged French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.  Official France condemning the offence to its Muslim citizens and the wider world of the Muslim Ummah.  But freedom of speech is also a paramount guaranteed right in the Republic.

As it is in the United States where the offending video the Innocence of Muslims which went on to certify by reaction just how innocent Muslims are.  "We know that these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory.  But we've spoken repeatedly about the importance of upholding the freedom of expression that is enshrined in our constitution. 

"In other words, we don't question the right of something like this to be published, we just question the judgement behind the decision to publish it."  White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Charlie Hebdo, on the other hand, went on to prod the product of ignorance and social psychosis that afflicts the tribal, religious fanatics of the Muslim world to demonstrate yet again how utterly absurd they are in their mind-boggling dysfunction.