Yep - it's official. All this rubbish about free speech is exactly that - total crap. Charlie folded to the Jews. #charliefolded View attachment 32761
There is no real free speech. No matter how much everyone holds it up as an ideal. To protect free speech, those appointed in the government have to actively defend it.
If you don't live in France then it shouldn't bother you. I don't live in Aceh so I'm not bothered about sharia in Aceh.
'Freedom of speech' works against freedom, because it's an idea that can be defended. As soon as people start to defend a political or ideological idea, they start to weaken their freedom. But they don't, so they gain power when people start to defend their idea. You can only defend freedom by stop defending it (how contradictory that sounds), because a fight let emotions rise, and that is not going to improve freedom. The spread of emotions lead to the next rise in emotions, and so on. Everybody is copycatting emotions. That is the whole problem, and it deepens because people reply with emotion, and the next and the next. etc. Forum threads are like chain reactions of emotion.
What I meant is that those appointed to power in the government have to collectively defend it from other people in the government. The laws have given various appointed people in government so much power that there is all sorts of potential for abuse. You can't just say people have the right to freedom of expression. You have to make sure all these people in government do not misuse their positions to go after people they do not like.
Charlie Hebdo used to critics all the religion, muslims, jews and christians... They where just against religion, all religions, as good socialist are, they where pro-athest and againt parties of right. But, at least, this is not a reason for ask them to don't wrote anything... I used to quite dislike them before the attack, as I'm conservative and christian But no one have to be killed for what he draw, it's stupid... If no one can say what he's thinking, there's no debate and the thing never progress. And all the newspaper try to "shock" people in order to earn monney.
There is certainly no impression of free speech in the UK from the Anglo-Saxons , without the fear of being labelled as "bigot" or "racist". Or in fact being arrested for "hate speech" under the latest liberal-left wing introduced oppressive laws. Free expression is no longer a right in Europe, unless you are non-white.
I think that if Charlie Hebdo have been a newspaper of right, conservative, their draws would have been considered as offensive my the mass of the people... There's a newspaper in France, from the far-right, "minute", who have been condamned for this kind of thing... No one react to that. Here, this isn't freedom of speach I guess. When you're colored or from left, you can say all what you want - when you're not, you have to prove than you aren't an evil racist all the 5 seconds
They may not have been racists and their cartoons surely were funny, if you can learn to let go. See that's the point though, if you can learn to let go. Why would they target a people known to have extremist organisations that can and will fight back and get offended. It may be a freedom of speech issue, but freedom of speech comes with self-censoring, and if people do not do that, it will not work. You cannot yell "fire" in a movie theatre, and you definitely should not provoke an Islamic terrorist group with cartoons that make fun of their religion.
I simply don't read that kind of magazines. And this is democracy and freedom too: freedom of choice. If there are enough persons who like that kind of magazines and they buy them, there will be a market demand and those magazines will keep on being published, if readers will diminish at a point that the demand will be no more enough to sustain the business ... the magazines will disappear.
