It has been said that the second before Stéphane Charbonnier was murdered, he will have stood up and in the face of his assassins, raised his arm in the renown "up yours" L-shape. Under the circumstances I think that is just outright honorable, maybe even heroic and we can only wonder whether he would have mentally practiced this final act, knowing his time would come one day in this manner.
When I got the alert that some terrorist attack had struck in Paris, the minute I had an opportunity to browse into France's leading media, I had to admit that I was forced to dig deep into fairly solid memories of frequent visits to Paris to try to recall what was Charlie Hebdo.
Personally I do not particularly appreciate the style of the publications and I accept that to be attributable to my inability to capture the type of cultural ventures which tend to become worldfamous only in France.
Moi, je trouve that freedom of speech does not imply that anything goes even in private discussions and who seeks public-ation has an accountability not to offend or incite a wider community or society in general, which evidently includes the laws and courts of justice a population has chosen to have or indeed will have fought hard for, over centuries. Frankly I consider any intent to draw any line between the events and effects of the French revolution and the Charlie Hebdo massacre to be giving far too much (historic) importance to the defeated in the latter.
Let's be real, if the scum that executed the killings would have been caught alive, no prosecutor would have sought to charge them with a violation of article 11 of la Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen.
It would be equally naïve to consider that - in general - a hand holding a pencil is less dangerous than a hand holding a weapon. I note one particular emotional reaction of a Parisian Imam instantly blaming the abusive and horrific effects on youngsters in his community from what comes over the internet, the type of messages and images the Anonymous organization has declared war on, in the meantime.
I am afraid I am going to have to agree with a statement from Marine le Pen on this one occasion, that the attack should not be (simply) classified as terrorism but rather an outright contract murder.
That classification is more relevant than we may want to admit as it not only should cancel the need to spread unnecessary security measures at many other editorial and media bureaus, but especially because it should come to lay down the fundamentals of how we want to go about combating and preventing more of the scary same.
It is natural, beautiful and impressive to see the common Je suis Charlie denominator across so many popular and official demonstrations across the world, especially those which focus on the people that lost their lives. This Sunday a range of political leaders will join what may end up being the largest "manif" ever in the streets of Paris.
Any sense of unity that anyone would think to withdraw from these gatherings will be entirely false, however.
What may distinguish this occasion from so many other manifestations is that hardly anyone will be indifferent. Still, the far majority of people will be elsewhere doing something else and somewhere in the midst, an equally growing number of individuals on the wrong side of life will be busy getting organized and sponsored to seek future damage to generally free societies.
It should be clear by now that any threats to the preservation of fundamental freedoms in Europe no longer vest in nearby countries and their official military, but rather with the radicalism one or the other individual had left their mind, door or portal open to.
In a world, country, city, neighbourhood or school that intends to (continue to) promote pluralism there is some serious work to do to adjust to each other's senses not only of freedom, but pretty much anything else that people have carried with them from the diverse corners of the world.
One of my favourite cartoonists put it brilliantly in Luis Afonso's Bartoon concluding that we will not tolerate anything else than tolerance.
No comments:
Post a Comment