To live in a diverse society means to live with debate. Bring it on

Sun 28 Mar 2021

No one has a right not to be offended. All of us have a duty to challenge bigotry. These two claims are not just compatible, they are often interconnected. Today, though, many view these as conflicting perspectives. To give offence to other cultures or faiths, they argue, is to foment racism; to challenge racism, one should refrain from giving offence.

It’s a belief at the heart of the controversy engulfing Batley grammar school. The facts are still unclear. A teacher apparently showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in a religious education class. Some parents have demanded the teacher be sacked, holding protests outside the school. The school has apologised and suspended the teacher involved. At the heart of the affair, the former Tory cabinet minister Sayeeda Warsi insists, is the issue of “child safeguarding”, of protecting children from racist bullying.

It is inevitable in plural societies that we offend the sensibilities of others. Where different beliefs are deeply held, disagreement is unavoidable. Almost by definition, that’s what it means to live in a plural society. If we cherish diversity, we should establish ways of having such debates and conversations in a civil manner, not try to suppress them. A structured discussion in a classroom, properly done, seems an ideal approach.

It is inevitable, too, that in pursuing social change, we often offend deeply held sensibilities. Many groups struggling for justice and equality – women, gays, non-believers – within religious communities cannot but be blasphemous. In this context, to accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged. Fighting for social justice, in other words, often requires us to offend others. The boundaries of speech are different in a classroom than in the world outside. Here, a teacher is dealing with minors, building a relationship of trust with them, encouraging them to think, and to think about issues that they may not have thought about or may not have wanted to think about.

But here, too, there is nothing wrong in discussing material that may offend or be deemed blasphemous. Some commentators, including Warsi, claim that pupils were shown a Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. The problem, they say, is not blasphemy but racism.

Whether this claim is true is unclear. Given that, in Paris, Samuel Paty, a teacher, was beheaded after a schoolgirl’s false claim, we should be wary of jumping to conclusions before knowing all the facts. Even if the story is true as reported, however, it does not imply that the teacher was misguided. Nor does it show that the class discussion was a cause of racism or bullying.

One can play a clip of a Bernard Manning joke, show an antisemitic cartoon or discuss a Charlie Hebdo cover in ways that heighten racist prejudices. One can also do each of these things in ways that allow students to think more deeply about the issue at hand and reduce racial or religious tensions. What matters is the manner and context in which the subject is approached. To simply insist that showing offensive material in the classroom is to exacerbate racism is a disingenuous means of manipulating “safeguarding” to limit what can be discussed.

One of the ironies of such controversies is that they serve to silence many Muslim voices and traditions. Virtually every press report on the Batley school controversy has claimed that there is an Islamic prohibition on the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, as, indeed, does the “agreed syllabus for religious education” in West Yorkshire.

This is historically illiterate. There have been many Islamic traditions, particularly in Persia, Turkey and India, open to depicting Muhammad. Only in the 17th century did attitudes shift, particularly among Sunnis. In recent decades, reactionaries, both Sunni and Shia, have seized on prohibition as a means of strengthening their control over Muslim communities. To claim that “Islam prohibits depictions of Muhammad” is to take the most conservative views and present them as representative of Islam.

When we say that we live in a diverse society, we mean that it’s a messy world out there, full of disagreement and debate. That is something we should welcome, not fear, for it is such disagreement and debate that allow us to break out of our culture-bound boxes, to engage in a wider dialogue that can help forge a more universal language of citizenship. The question we should ask ourselves is not how to minimise such debates, but how to create ways of engaging in them more constructively.

**********************************************************

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

Muhammad cartoon teacher fundraiser under scrutiny by Tom Belger in 'SCHOOLS WEEK'

Mon 5th Apr 2021, 5.00

A fundraising campaign for the teacher at the centre of the Muhammad cartoon row is being led by an activist accused of stirring up local ethnic tensions.

It comes as a petition demanding the teacher’s reinstatement reached almost 70,000 signatures.

The staff member’s use of caricatures of the prophet in class sparked protests outside Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, thrusting it into the middle of a wider row over religion and free speech.

The school has now ordered an independent investigation into its curriculum after immediately suspending the teacher and apologising “unequivocally” over the materials used in RE lessons. The teacher involved is reported to fear for his life after death threats forced him into hiding.

An online fundraising page to help the teacher fight for his “job, reputation and security” secured more than £5,600 in donations within a day of its launch on Wednesday.

Creator Paul Halloran called it the “official fundraiser,” and said he was a family friend who had been asked to set it up.

But Halloran’s involvement in past local community tensions may risk further politicising divides over the issue.

Standing as a candidate in the 2019 local elections, Halloran faced claims from opponents across the political spectrum that he was stirring up ethnic divisions.

Halloran came third in the Barley West ward for the Heavy Woollen District independent party, whose only other local candidate Aleks Lukic was a former UKIP candidate.

Lukics led a controversial campaign to stop non-stunned halal meat being served in schools, with Halloran demanding the council reveal which schools did so.

Kirklees’ Labour council leader Shabir Pandor told the local Yorkshire Live news site their motives were “extreme and dangerous” accusing the pair of trying to “sow division” by politicising the issue.

Conservative leader David Hall agreed all meat should be pre-stunned to avoid animal cruelty, but condemned “those who would try to stir up community tensions” over the issue.

Halloran has also criticised the term “Islamophobia,” saying all racism should be called out. “I don’t see a lot in the Muslim community commenting on grooming gangs and terrorism…. Let’s not invent a word that will stop us debating those things,” he reportedly said, according to the Press local newspaper. He denied accusations of racism.

But Halloran told Schools Week he “wholeheartedly” rejected ‘far-right’ labels, calling them “nonsense” promoted by his political opponents to discredit him. He said he was a respected local man who belonged to no political party, and had friends of “all cultures and religions.”

But he said he remained concerned “the word ‘Islamophobic’ is used at time to stifle reasoned and respectful debate.”

Footage of protests outside Batley Grammar’s gates quickly went viral, catapulting the area into the headlines only a few years after the murder of local Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist.

Demonstrators’ anger over depictions of Muhammad, reportedly caricatures from French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the school’s apology for “inappropriate” RE materials quickly sparked a backlash against the backlash.

Many appealed for calm but the row sparked not only fierce rows over blasphemy, schooling, free speech and multiculturalism but also reported death threats. Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi warned debate had been “hijacked by extremists on both sides.”

The DfE swiftly called the protests and threats “completely unacceptable,” and defended the inclusion of controversial curriculum materials. The teacher involved is reported to have been teaching about blasphemy.

National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans told Schools Week school leaders “shouldn’t allow blasphemy taboos enforced through intimidation to dictate their teaching.”

The school switched to remote learning amid the protests. The independent investigation will review the “context in which the materials [which caused offence] were used, and to make recommendations in relation to the Religious Studies curriculum so that the appropriate lessons can be learned and action taken, where necessary”.

An independent investigation panel will be appointed over the next fortnight, with the probe set to begin on April 12 and report “towards the end of May.”

,

****************************************************************

Western liberals’ weakness on blasphemy is letting down Muslim dissenters

Posted on the National Secular Society website by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid on Wed, 31 Mar 2021

The hand-wringing in the face of a vicious campaign against a teacher sends a demoralising message to those fighting for free speech on religion globally and in British Muslim communities, says Kunwar Khuldune Shahid.

The Batley Grammar School teacher who has been suspended, and gone into hiding, after showing a caricature of Islam's prophet Muhammad in class last week, now understandably worries that he might be killed. While the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) worries that the teacher may have shown an image that "plays into" an "Islamophobic trope", and many on the Western left similarly wring their hands, it remains unclear if fearing for one's life over offending Islam also constitutes a phobia. Others, graciously, have responded by quickly condemning 'extremists on both sides', as if the defence of liberal principles were equivalent to Islamist intimidation.

After the satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo was targeted in a jihadist attack, the gruesome murder of its journalists was rationalised through the 'Islamophobia' that it was guilty of, for treating Islam like any other religion. When French schoolteacher Samuel Paty was decapitated after showing Charlie Hebdo's caricatures in school, 'Islamophobia' once again became the rallying cry.

At first it was a publication's act of satirising Islam that translated into asking to be murdered. Now it's teachers showing those cartoons in lessons on blasphemy that is translating into 'asking for it'. Next it may well be critics of this blatant endorsement of Islamic blasphemy laws in the West who might 'ask for it'.

This gruesome eventuality has long been a reality in Muslim-majority countries, where individuals have been killed for mere criticism of the blasphemy laws. A dozen Muslim states sanction death for blasphemy and apostasy, and 20 mandate prison sentences. The day the Batley Grammar School teacher was suspended, and left at the mercy of radical Islamists, yet another man was killed for blasphemy in Pakistan. Since then, over the past week, radical Islamists have initiated violent protests in Bangladesh demanding, among other means of institutionalised persecution, capital punishment for blasphemy against Islam. On Tuesday, a man was burnt to death in Nigeria for 'insulting prophet Muhammad'.

It is impossible to separate the Islamist blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries and the demands to silence critique, caricaturing and satire of Islam by Muslim minorities. It shouldn't need saying but it is actually possible to uncompromisingly defend the rights of minorities, and shield them from majoritarian groups, without mollycoddling them over regressive and often downright bigoted beliefs.

Similarly, drawing cartoons or mocking religious beliefs as satire, or exposing believers to ideas completely antipodal to their beliefs in critical learning settings, do not constitute persecution. An offence, or its gravity, needs to be universally applicable and cannot be determined by the reaction of a group. Otherwise, we're a Hindutva attack on a steakhouse away from equating beef cuisine with persecution of Hindus.

Sketches or depictions of Muhammad are no more prohibited in Islam than cow slaughter is in Hinduism; or more poignantly, no more offensive than Hindu wives outliving husbands was two centuries ago. Europe consumed centuries over 'religion wars' between Christian sects which found one another's beliefs offensive. The rise of a radical, and puritanical, literalist brand of Islam, impacting Muslim majorities and minorities alike, is a corollary of a similar sectarian warfare within Islam today.

Some interpretations of Islam have long incorporated the tradition of drawing Muhammad, which means that the ubiquitous claims masquerading as fact that 'Islam prohibits depictions of Muhammad' or that 'Muslims are offended' by such illustrations paints all Muslims with a monolithic, and arguably regressive, brush.

However, even if there is a 'true' version of religion that might uphold certain beliefs, and even if every single one of its billions of adherents were to endorse them identically, that still cannot be used as justification to suppress rights, including the fundamental freedom of speech. And the only legal asterisk on this right should be explicit incitement to violence.

Again, to hold offended sensibilities as the limit of free speech is to not only fail miserably in understanding the very need for protection of such a freedom — since what is acceptable by all doesn't have to be guarded. It is also to constantly lower the threshold of what is 'offensive'. Even more critically, it can shield ideologues from countering viewpoints, which often is the raison d'etre of protests undertaken by those believing their ideas to be the ultimate truth.

Perhaps most pungently, endorsement of this censorship on the part of Western liberals makes it harder to normalise criticism of religion and undermines the fight against Islamic blasphemy laws that hang like a sword over millions in Muslim-majority countries. More than just an ideological regression on the part of the left, such upholding of Islamist ideas has even translated into European courts upholding blasphemy laws that many from Muslim majority countries are escaping from. And in acquiescing to the Islamist narrative in the garb of 'protecting Muslims', liberals in the West have not only abandoned dissidents in Muslim-majority countries, they have also helped facilitate regression of Muslim minorities in their own countries.

When the MCB's first ever female leader was asked questions that would be considered extremely basic for any other community, those otherwise unflinching in their quest for gender quality instinctively shouted 'Islamophobia'. Much of the western left embraces the MCB's calls for 'inclusivity' and 'care' when faced with cartoons. It showed less interest when, for example, an Ahmadi Muslim shopkeeper was killed in an Islamist attack in 2016 – and the Muslim Council of Britain's focus was declaring that 'Ahmadis are not Muslims'.

Shouldn't such marginalisation or violence committed for Islam, or the fear of one's life over cartoons on Islam, be the bigger concern here?

Shouldn't more energy be dedicated towards elimination of this widespread belief, codified in many Muslim-majority countries, but also preached in many mosques in the West, that blasphemy against Islam merits death?

One doesn't have to be a linguist to discern the contrast between statements issued by many Muslim community groups over killings in the name of Islam, and satire of Islam.

Indeed, Western liberals are complicit in facilitating these Islamic blasphemy narratives around the world. For, when states otherwise upholding free speech on religion start backtracking, those living in countries where blasphemy still mandates death will have little hope.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a writer and social commentator based in Pakistan. The views expressed in our blogs are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.

Petition Backing Batley Teacher Hits 50,000

THE petition in support of a suspended teacher who showed students a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed has passed more than 50,000 signatures.

The Batley Grammar School teacher had apologised after showing the cartoon, widely reported as taken from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, during a religious studies lesson earlier this week.

He was suspended on Thursday pending an investigation.

The school, in Batley, near Bradford West Yorkshire is facing calls to reinstate the teacher after a petition in support of him reached more than 50,000 signatures in two days, hitting the figure just after 2.00am on Sunday.

Protesters gathered outside the school gates on Thursday and Friday, claiming the school has not taken the issue seriously.

****************************************************

Charlie Hebdo & Prophet Muhammad cartoons

Al Jazeera 2/09/20:

Move comes a day before 13 men and one woman - accused of assisting the 2015 attackers of the newspaper - go on trial.

The French satirical newspaper whose Paris offices were attacked in 2015 is reprinting the controversial caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that the gunmen who opened fire on its editorial staff cited as their motivation.

The move was announced on Tuesday, a day before 13 men and a woman accused of providing the attackers with weapons and logistics go on trial on charges of terrorism on Wednesday.

In an editorial this week accompanying the offensive caricatures, the paper said the drawings "belong to history, and history cannot be rewritten nor erased".

The January 2015 attacks against Charlie Hebdo and, two days later, a kosher supermarket, touched off a wave of killings claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group across Europe.

Seventeen people died in the attacks - 12 of them at the editorial offices - along with all three attackers.

The attackers, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, claimed their attack on the newspaper in the name of al-Qaeda. As they left the scene at Charlie Hebdo, they killed a wounded policeman and drove away.

Two days later, a prison acquaintance of theirs stormed a kosher supermarket on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, claiming allegiance to ISIL. Four hostages were killed during the attack.

Blasphemy

The decision to republish the cartoons will be seen by some as a defiant gesture in defence of free expression. But others may see it as a renewed provocation by a publication that has long courted controversy with its satirical attacks on religion.

The caricatures re-published this week were first printed in 2006 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, setting off sometimes violent protests by some Muslims who found the depictions offensive.

The Prophet Muhammad is deeply revered by Muslims and any kind of visual depiction is forbidden. The caricatures were perceived as linking him with terrorism.

Charlie Hebdo, infamous for its irreverence and accused by critics of racism, regularly caricatures religious leaders from various faiths and republished them soon afterwards.

The paper's Paris offices were firebombed in 2011 and its editorial leadership placed under police protection, which remains in place to this day.

'Ignore'

Laurent Sourisseau, the newspaper's director and one of the few staff to have survived the attack, named each of the victims in a foreword to this week's edition.

"Rare are those who, five years later, dare oppose the demands that are still so pressing from religions in general, and some in particular," wrote Sourisseau, also known as Riss.

The president of the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM), Mohammed Moussaoui, urged people to "ignore" the cartoons, while condemning violence.

The suspects, who go on trial from 08:00 GMT on Wednesday, are accused of providing various degrees of logistical support to the killers.

The trial had been delayed several months with most French courtrooms closed over the coronavirus epidemic.

The court in Paris will sit until November 10 and, in a first for a terrorism trial, proceedings will be filmed for archival purposes given public interest.

National anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard dismissed the idea that it was just "little helpers" going on trial since the three gunmen were now dead

'Ignore'

Critiques of Free Speech & PEN

ON the 2^nd, May this year in Dallas, two Islamists tried to do a critique of Pamela Geller's 'Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest' with assault rifles.  Dominic Green argues in the June issue of Standpoint magazine that 'The depiction of Muhammad is a test case for the practice of Western freedoms'.  If a guard had not suspended the art critic attackers' 'freedom of assembly' with a Glock pistol there would probably have been a massacre.  

Days later PEN held its annual dinner in New York at which the PEN board conferred its annual  'Freedom of Expression Courage Award' on Charlie Hebdo.  Six of the dinner's table hosts Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Kushner, Frances Prose, Teju Cole and Taiya Selasi, resigned, and Salman Rushdie twitted '6 pussies' only later to amend it to 'Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.' 

In an essay in January 1946 entitled 'The Prevention of Literature' George Orwell wrote about a meeting of PEN commemorating the tercentenary of Milton's Areopagitica  - a pamphlet in defence of freedom of the press:

'There were four speakers on the platform.  One of them delivered a speech which did deal with the freedom of the press, but only in relation to India; another said, hesitantly, and in very general terms, that liberty was a good thing; a third delivered an attack on laws relating to obscenity in literature.  A fourth devoted most of his speech to a defence of the Russian purges.  Of the speeches from the body of the hall, some reverted to the question of obscenity and the laws that deal with it,  others were simply eulogies of Soviet Russia.  Moral liberty – the liberty to discuss sex questions frankly in print – seemed to be generally approved, but political liberty was not mentioned.' 

Then with eyes and ears like a shit-house rat Orwell then discerns:

'Out of this concourse of several hundred people, perhaps half of whom were directly connected with the writing trade, there was not a single one who could point out that freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose....  In its net effect the meeting was a demonstration in favour of censorship.' 

When the Salmon Rushdie affair first broke out in the late 1980s, I argued that writers ought to be prepared to take risks in the same way miners and building workers did everyday in their working lives.   Following the recent PEN resignations Salmon Rushdie said:

'If PEN as a free speech organisation cannot defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organisation is not worth the name.  What I would say to Peter, Michael, the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.' 

In 1946 when Orwell wrote, it was not the fashion on the left to attack the Soviet Union, perhaps with the exception of the anarchists and some trotskyist groups; today even the anarchists are likely to embrace a sickly sophistry when challenged by the quandary of the freedom of the press.  With the Stalinists, the British trade unions and the main-stream left, free speech has often been a difficult concept for them to embrace wholeheartedly as Orwell discerned. 

In a posting on the 'anarchist' libcom website earlier this year someone wrote:  'By the magazine's (Charlie Hebdo) own admission, the point was to offend and provoke anger.' 

The writer disapproves of this because '... by and large, here you're actually getting a reaction from a maligned and marginalised minority community, who already suffer violence and prejudice.' 

I suppose the National Front supporters who were banned by the Church elders from participating in the election hustings at St.Chads Church in Rochdale earlier this year, could equally claim that they too were 'a maligned and marginalised community'.   Though I doubt that libcom would want to defend them. 

Coincidentally, as I write these words an editor on our Northern Voices' Blog is currently facing a 'Rule 27, Panel Investigation' by a Unite union panel, based on a report that appeared in March about a meeting of the Local Authority Regional Sector Committee entitled 'Unite Committee Bins Motion on Blacklisting'.  As George Orwell realised the English Left, and I would say the trade unions, may call for transparency and openness when referring to others, but they often lack a robust ability for self-criticism and self-examination.       

In 1946, George Orwell complained:  'Fifteen years ago, when one defended the freedom of the intellect, one had to defend it against Conservatives, against Catholics, and to some extent – for they were not of great importance in England, against Fascists.  Today one has to defend it against Communists and “fellow-travellers”.' 

Now, not only do we have to fend off the Fascists; the Communists (if they still exist); tin-pot anarchists on libcom; and trade union bosses who are covering-up for those who colluded with companies who blacklist, but we also have to challenge trade union committees that are run like petty fiefdoms, and Labour Councillors who produce pious proposals to cover-up for Labour Councils that do business with, and give public contracts to blacklist companies. 

Naturally, none of this can be as challenging as having to confront the assault rifle analysts in downtown Dallas, but it does make for an interesting life.

Charlie Hebdo & War for Civilisation

15 January 2015:

Charlie Hebdo And The War For Civilisation IN 2003, a top security expert told filmmaker Michael Moore, 'there is no one in America other than President Bush who is in more danger than you'. (Michael Moore, 'Here Comes Trouble – Stories From My Life,' Allen Lane, 2011, p.4) Moore was attacked with a knife, a blunt object and stalked by a man with a gun.  Scalding coffee was thrown at his face, punches were thrown in broad daylight.  The verbal abuse was ceaseless, including numerous death threats.  In his book, 'Here Comes Trouble', Moore writes: 'I could no longer go out in public without an incident happening.' (p.20) A security company, which compiled a list of more than 440 credible threats against Moore, told him: 'We need to tell you that the police have in custody a man who was planning to blow up your house. You're in no danger now.' (p.23) But why was Moore a target? Had he published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad? The problem had begun in the first week of the 2003 Iraq war when Moore's film 'Bowling For Columbine' won the Oscar for best documentary. At the March 23 Academy Awards ceremony, Moore told a global audience: 'I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us. They are here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction, yet we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts: we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you! And anytime you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up! Thank you very much.' (p.5-6) About halfway through these remarks, Moore reports, 'all hell broke loose'. On arriving home from the ceremony, he found three truckloads of horse manure dumped waist-high in his driveway. That night, Moore witnessed for himself the extent to which US corporate journalism defends the right to offend: '...as I flipped between the channels, I listened to one pundit after another question my sanity, criticise my speech, and say, over and over, in essence: "I don't know what got into him!" "He sure won't have an easy time in this town after that stunt!" "Who does he think will make another movie with him now?" "Talk about career suicide!" After an hour of this, I turned off the TV and went online – where there was more of the same, only worse – from all over America.' (pp.9-10) This is the reality of respect for free speech in the United States. If, on Oscar night, he had held up a cartoon depicting President Bush naked on all fours, buttocks raised to a pornographic filmmaker, would Moore still be alive today? War - Total, Merciless, Civilised In stark contrast to the campaign of near-fatal media vilification of Moore, journalists have responded to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in Paris by passionately defending the right to offend. Or so we are to believe. The Daily Telegraph's chief interviewer, Allison Pearson, wrote: 'Those that died yesterday did so on the frontline of a war of civilisations. I salute them, those Martyrs for Freedom of Speech.' Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy agreed, describing the attacks as 'a war declared on civilisation'. Joan Smith wrote in the Guardian: 'I am feeling sick and shaky. I have been writing all day with tears running down my face. I don't suppose I'm alone in reacting like this to the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, which is an assault on journalists and free speech.' New York Times columnist Roger Cohen tweeted: 'I am shaking with rage at the attack on Charlie Hebdo. It's an attack on the free world. The entire free world should respond, ruthlessly.' The Western tendency to act with ruthless, overwhelming violence is, of course, a key reason why Islamic terrorists are targeting the West. Glenn Greenwald asked Cohen: 'At whom should this violence be directed beyond the specific perpetrators, and what form should it take?' Sylvain Attal, editor of new media at TV station France24, replied: 'response must be both merciless and respectful of our legal system. Period' End of discussion. American journalist and regular Fox News talk show host, Geraldo Rivera, raved: 'The French extremists say they are committed to Jihad and are willing to die for their cause. We should make their wish come true. No mercy' The 'entire free world', then, should resort to ruthless, merciless violence to defend 'civilisation', a term some naïve souls have associated with compassion, restraint, and even the bizarre exhortation: 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.' Cohen retweeted Anand Giridharadas, who writes for the New York Times: 'Not & never a war of civilizations or between them. But a war FOR civilization against groups on the other side of that line. #CharlieHebdo' Thus, we live in a time when a 'war for civilisation' is seen as something more than a grotesque contradiction in terms. Much, but thankfully not all, media coverage has been this extreme. To his credit, former Independent editor Simon Kelner managed a rather more nuanced view. Journalism - Part Of 'The Murder Machine' In The Times, the perennially apocalyptic David Aaronovitch wrote: 'Yesterday in Paris we in the west crossed a boundary that cannot be recrossed. For the first time since the defeat of fascism a group of citizens were massacred because of what they had drawn, said and published.' The Guardian took a similar view: 'Wednesday's atrocity was the... bloodiest single assault on western journalism in living memory.' But, in fact, the bloodiest attack on journalism in living memory, at least in Europe, happened on April 23, 1999 when Nato bombed the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television, killing 16 people. The dead included an editor, a programme director, a cameraman, a make-up artist, three security guards and other media support staff. Additional radio and electrical installations throughout the country were also attacked. The New York Times witnessed the carnage: 'The Spanish-style entrance was ripped away by the blasts, which seemed to hit the roof just under the large girder tower that holds numerous satellite dishes. Although the tower and blackened dishes remained, the control rooms and studios underneath had simply disappeared.'  (Steven Erlanger, 'Survivors of NATO Attack On Serb TV Headquarters: Luck, Pluck and Resolve,' The New York Times, April 24, 1999) Presumably this had been some kind of terrible mistake by the civilised West crossing a boundary that could not be recrossed. No, Nato insisted that the TV station, a 'ministry of lies', was a legitimate target and the bombing 'must be seen as an intensification of our attacks'. A Pentagon spokesman added: 'Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic's murder machine as his military is. The media is one of the pillars of Milosevic's power machine. It is right up there with security forces and the military.' (Erlanger, op.cit.) Amnesty International responded: 'The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime.' In all the corporate press discussion of the Paris killings, we have found no mention of Nato's bombing of Serbian TV and radio. In August 2011, Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, condemned Nato's bombing of Libyan state broadcasting facilities on July 30, killing three media workers, with 21 people injured: 'I deplore the NATO strike on Al-Jamahiriya and its installations. Media outlets should not be targeted in military actions. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1738 (2006) condemns acts of violence against journalists and media personnel in conflict situations.' Again, Nato confirmed that the bombing had been deliberate: 'Striking specifically these critical satellite dishes will reduce the regime's ability to oppress civilians while [preserving] television broadcast infrastructure that will be needed after the conflict.' In November 2001, two American air-to-surface missiles hit al-Jazeera's satellite TV station in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing a reporter. Chief editor Ibrahim Hilal said al-Jazeera had communicated the location of its office in Kabul to the American authorities. In April 2003, an al-Jazeera cameraman was killed when the station's Baghdad office was bombed during a US air raid. In 2005, the Guardian quoted the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ): '"Reports that George Bush and Tony Blair discussed a plan to bomb al-Jazeera reinforce concerns that the US attack in Baghdad on April 8 [2003] was deliberate targeting of the media" said Aidan White, the general secretary of the IFJ.' According to the Daily Mirror, Bush had told Blair of his plan: 'He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it.' Similarly, during last summer's blitz of Gaza, Israel killed 17 journalists. An investigation led by Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli attacks on journalists were one of many 'apparent violations' of international law. In a 2012 letter to The New York Times, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, head spokeswoman to foreign media for the Israel Defense Force, wrote: 'Such terrorists, who hold cameras and notebooks in their hands, are no different from their colleagues who fire rockets aimed at Israeli cities and cannot enjoy the rights and protection afforded to legitimate journalists.' 'Sorry For Any Offence' Aaronovitch warned that 'appalling' as previous attacks on Western free speech had been, 'they were generally the work of disorganised loners', whereas the Paris attacks seemed to have been more organised. What then to say of lethal attacks on journalists conducted, not by a group of religious fanatics, but by democratically elected governments? Given this context, corporate media commentary on the Charlie Hebdo massacre all but drowns in irony and hypocrisy. The Telegraph commented: 'But the march in Paris reminds us, at the very least, that the men of violence are not just a minority, but a fragment of a fragment. And it may be that it also acts as a turning point. The US is to hold a conference at the White House on countering violent extremism...' In fact, as LSE student Daniel Wickham clarified, 'men of violence' were among the marchers. Certainly the White House is a good place for people to do some serious thinking about violent extremism and how to stop it. A Guardian leader observed: 'When men and women have gone to their deaths for nothing more than what they have said, or drawn, there is only one side to be on.' True, but if it is to be meaningful, support for the right to offend must not defer to a self-serving view of a world divided into 'good guys' and 'bad guys', 'us' and 'them'. Like the rest of the media, the Guardian protests passionately when 'bad guys' commit an atrocity against 'us', but emotive defences of free speech are in short supply when 'good guys' bomb Serb and Libyan TV, or threaten the life of progressive US filmmakers. Far fewer tears are shed for Serb, Libyan or Palestinian journalists in US-UK corporate media offices. The Guardian added: 'Being shocking is going to involve offending someone. If there is a right to free speech, implicit within it there has to be a right to offend. Any society that's serious about liberty has to defend the free flow of ugly words, even ugly sentiments.' The sentiment was quickly put to the test when BBC reporter Tim Willcox commented in a live TV interview: 'Many critics though of Israel's policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.' This mild statement of obvious fact brought a predictable flood of calls for Willcox to resign. The journalist instantly backed down: 'Really sorry for any offence caused by a poorly phrased question in a live interview in Paris yesterday - it was entirely unintentional' A BBC spokesman completed the humiliation: 'Tim Willcox has apologised for what he accepts was a poorly phrased question... He had no intention of causing offence.' Glenn Greenwald describes the prevailing rule: 'As always: it's free speech if it involves ideas I like or attacks groups I dislike, but it's something different when I'm the one who is offended.' Chris Hedges notes: 'In France a Holocaust denier, or someone who denies the Armenian genocide, can be imprisoned for a year and forced to pay a $60,000 fine. It is a criminal act in France to mock the Holocaust the way Charlie Hebdo mocked Islam.' A point emphasised by the recent arrest of a French comedian on charges of 'defending terrorism'. The irony of the BBC apology, given recent events, appears to have been invisible to most commentators.   Radical comedian Frankie Boyle is a welcome exception, having earlier commented: 'I'm reading a defence of free speech in a paper that tried to have me arrested and charged with obscenity for making a joke about the Queen' The Guardian leader concluded: 'Poverty and discrimination at home may create fertile conditions for the spread of extremism, and western misadventures abroad can certainly inflame the risks.' The term 'western misadventures' is a perfect example of how media like the Guardian work so hard to avoid offending elite interests with more accurate descriptions like 'Western atrocities' and 'Western genocidal crimes'. A leader in The Times observed of the Charlie Hebdo killers: 'Their victims knew the risks they ran by defying the jihadist strategy of censorship through terror. They accepted those risks. They understood that freedom is not free, and so should we all.'  (Leader, 'Nous Sommes Tous Charlie,' The Times, January 8, 2015) Fine words, but in 2013 Times owner Rupert Murdoch apologised for a powerful cartoon by Gerald Scarfe that had appeared in the newspaper. The cartoon depicted the brutal Israeli treatment of Palestinians but was not in any way anti-Semitic. Murdoch, however, tweeted: 'Gerald Scarfe has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times.  Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon.' In its response to the Paris killings, The Times perceived 'a vital duty for Muslim clerics who must embrace a new role actively deradicalising their followers. It also imposes an urgent responsibility on Muslim political leaders'. Did the paper have any positive role models in mind? 'One controversial figure who appears to have understood this is Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In a remarkable speech to imams last week to mark the birthday of Muhammad, he called for a "religious revolution" to prevent the Islamic world being "lost by our own hands".' The Times went on: 'Mr al-Sisi is not unique. Najib Razak, Malaysia's prime minister, has championed moderate political Islam at home and abroad.' (Leader, 'Freedom Must Prevail,' Times, January 9, 2015) Thus, Sisi, leader of a military coup, someone who oversaw the massacre of 1,000 civilian protestors on a single day in August 2013, is hailed as a 'champion' of 'moderate political Islam'. There is so much more that could be said about just how little passion the corporate media have for defending the right to offend. Anyone in doubt should try, as we have, to discuss their own record of failing to offend the powerful. To criticise 'mainstream' media from this perspective is to render oneself a despised unperson. In response to our polite, decidedly inoffensive challenges on Twitter we have been banned by champions of free speech like Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, Peter Beaumont of the Observer and Guardian, and many others. Even rare dissident fig leaves on newspapers like the Guardian dismiss as asinine and, yes, offensive, the suggestion that they should risk offending their corporate employers and advertisers. Not only is no attempt made to defend such a right, the very idea is dismissed as nonsense unworthy even of discussion. DE

This Alert is Archived here:
Charlie Hebdo And The War For Civilisation

Contact Us:
editor@medialens.org 

Charlie Hebdo continues!

THE French left-wing newspaper Liberation made room for the surviving Charlie Hebdo journalists to prepare the satirical weekly’s next edition. The newspaper plans to print 1 million copies, 30 times its regular run.


Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists have returned under heavy police protection, Reuters said.
"Since a long time, Charlie Hebdo and Liberation are seen, are like brothers. It's like a fraternity," Liberation editor Pierre Fraidenraich said. His paper had welcomed Charlie Hebdo staff after the newspaper was firebombed in 2011.


Fraidenraich said his newspaper would host the Charlie Hebdo team  for 'all the time they want.'

Charlie Hebdo and Tsarnaev’s Trial: Cui bono?

January 8, 2015 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

by Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

THERE are two ways to look at the alleged terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

One is that in the English speaking world, or much of it, the satire would have been regarded as “hate speech,” and the satirists arrested. But in France Muslims are excluded from the privileged category, took offense at the satire, and retaliated. 

Why would Muslims bother? By now Muslims must be accustomed to Western hypocrisy and double standards. Little doubt that Muslims are angry that they do not enjoy the protections other minorities receive, but why retaliate for satire but not for France’s participation in Washington’s wars against Muslims in which hundreds of thousands have died? Isn’t being killed more serious than being satirized?

Another way of seeing the attack is as an attack designed to shore up France’s vassal status to Washington. The suspects can be both guilty and patsies. Just remember all the terrorist plots created by the FBI that served to make the terrorism threat real to Americans. http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/22/human-rights-watch-all-of-the-high-profi 

France is suffering from the Washington-imposed sanctions against Russia. Shipyards are impacted from being unable to deliver Russian orders due to France’s vassalage status to Washington, and other aspects of the French economy are being adversely impacted by sanctions that Washington forced its NATO puppet states to apply to Russia. 

This week the French president said that the sanctions against Russia should end (so did the German vice-chancellor). 

This is too much foreign policy independence on France’s part for Washington. Has Washington resurrected “Operation Gladio,” which consisted of CIA bombing attacks against Europeans during the post-WW II era that Washington blamed on communists and used to destroy communist influence in European elections? Just as the world was led to believe that communists were behind Operation Gladio’s terrorist attacks, Muslims are blamed for the attacks on the French satirical magazine. 

The Roman question is always: Who benefits? The answer is: Not France, not Muslims, but US world hegemony. US hegemony over the world is what the CIA supports. US world hegemony is the neoconservative-imposed foreign policy of the US.

According to National Public Radio, Charlie Hebdo is about free speech. The US has free speech, claim NPR’s pundits, but terrorists have taken it away from the French.

Just how does the US have free speech when NY Times reporter James Risen was psychologically put on the rack to force him to reveal his source, despite the fact that Risen and his source are protected by the US Constitution and whistleblower protections. Clearly, in the US “national security” has trumped everything else.

“National security” has nothing to do with national security. It has only to do with protecting the criminals in the US government from accountability for their crimes. Every time you hear Washington invoke “national security,” you know for a 100% fact that the government has committed yet another crime. National security is the cloak for Washington’s criminal operations. “National security” prevents the government’s crimes from coming to light and, thereby, protects government from accountability.

One wonders what role “national security” will play in the trial of alleged Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev has been in custody since April 2013 and under indictment since April 22, 2013. Yet jury selection is only now beginning in January 2015. Why this long delay? The guarantee of a speedy trial no longer means anything, but with all sorts of charges in addition to the bombing for which the government claims eye witnesses and confessions and with the Tsarnaev brothers already convicted in the media, the long delay is a puzzle. Yet, we have not heard from Dzhokhar Tsarnaey himself. It is difficult to push away the thought that Dzhokhar’s trial has been delayed in order to compete his conditioning and acceptance of his guilt and in order for the many questions raised by alternative media to be forgotten.

The print and TV media have dished up the government’s explanation without investigation. However, the alternative media have taken great exception to every aspect of the case. As the US government has taught us since the Clinton regime, the safest assumption is that everything the government says is a lie.

The most suspicious aspect of the event was the speed with which an army of 10,000 heavily armed troops consisting of police from various jurisdictions and National Guard soldiers outfitted in military gear and provided with tanks or armored personnel carriers were on the streets of Boston. Never before has such a massive force equipped with military heavy equipment been employed in a manhunt, much less for one wounded, unarmed, 19-year old kid.

For such a force to be assembled and deployed so quickly suggests pre-planning. What was presented as a manhunt for one badly wounded suspect looks more like a test case and precedent for locking down one of America’s largest cities, while squads of troops evicted US citizens from their homes at gunpoint and conducted indiscriminate searches of houses that contributed nothing to apprehending the alleged suspect. The chances are zero that any household would have harbored a badly wounded unarmed fugitive dying from the lack of medical care.

Not only was Boston and its suburbs locked down, the Federal Aviation Administration restricted airspace over Boston and issued a “ground stop” for Logan airport. Why? 

Several other cities in Massachusetts and even some other states put their police forces on alert. Why? 

On the scene were the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the National Counterterrorism Center. The US Attorney General committed the full resources of the US Department of Justice.
Why?

The only plausible answer is to raise the fear level in order to gain the public’s acceptance of the lockdown of Boston and police invasions of citizens’ homes. It makes no sense that danger from a badly wounded unarmed 19 year-old could possibly justify such expense and trampling of constitutional rights of citizens. 

A non-gullible person must wonder if the bombing was an orchestrated event for the purpose of coordinating state, local, and federal governments in the lockdown of a major city. A poll of Bostonians last July found that 42 percent harbored doubts about the official version of events. http://www.globalresearch.ca/four-in-ten-bostonians-skeptical-of-official-marathon-bombing-account/5390848 

The gullible always say that if a conspiracy existed someone would have talked. But people do talk. It just doesn’t do any good. For example, during George W. Bush’s first term a NSA whistleblower leaked to the New York Times that the NSA was bypassing the FISA Court and spying on American citizens without warrants. Under US law, NSA was in a conspiracy with the Bush regime to commit serious felonies (possibly for the purpose of blackmail), but the New York Times spiked the story for one year until George W. Bush was re-elected and the regime had time to ex post facto legalize the felonies.

Operation Gladio was a conspiracy kept secret for decades until a President of Italy revealed it.

The Northwoods Project was kept secret until years afterward when the second Kennedy Commission revealed it.

More than one hundred first responder police and firemen report hearing and personally experiencing multiple explosions floor by floor and even in the sub-basements of the World Trade Center twin towers, and these testimonies had no effect whatsoever.

It only took one high school physics professor to shoot down NIST’s account of the collapse of WTC 7. The fact that it has been conclusively proven that this building was brought down by controlled demolition has had no effect on the official story. 

The co-chairmen and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission published books in which they say that information was withheld from the Commission, that the US Military lied to the Commission, and that the Commission “was set up to fail.” Neither Congress, the media, nor the US public had any interest in investigating why information was withheld, why the military lied, and why the Commission was set up to fail. These extraordinary statements by the leaders of the official investigation had no impact whatsoever.

Even today a majority of the US population believes Washington’s propaganda that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed some provinces. Neither judgement nor intelligence are strongpoints of the American public and juries.

Government tells Americans whatever story the government puts together and sits and laughs at the gullibility of the public. 

Today the US public is divided between those who rely on the “mainstream media” and those who rely on the alternative Internet media. Only the latter have any clue as to what is really happening.

The stories of Charlie Hebdo and the Tsarnaev brothers will be based not on facts but on the interests of government. As in the past, the government’s interest will prevail over the facts.