Lexham Gardens in the late sixties was bedsit land, I seem to have seen somewhere now it's trader land?
*grunts while swift-nebbing*
:)
That was true of lodgings in Notting Hill in London where only bankers can afford to live now.
My fault, Brian, I'm really trying to say that most countries in the world have rules to control the behaviour of individuals for the benefit of all. There are controls to stop me driving my car at high speed in towns, I cannot buy a gun without police checks, I am not allowed to assault others, write dodgy cheques, steal from others, mow my grass on a Sunday. We all live by these restrictions on our personal freedom because we also care about the welfare of others. I am not permitted to cut my grass on a Sunday because my neighbour might be upset at having his day off ruined. If I did cut my grass he may get angry but he does not have the right to come round & destroy my mower.
Is there no law in France limiting verbal attacks on minority groups? I thought that there was a law to prevent social disorder?
Nobody has the right to take the life of another but it does happen! We are all aware that there are extremists in all parts of society, not just in religion. These extremists do not need much of a trigger to set them off be they animal rights activists, footbal supporters or G8 protesters. The larger the group the more likely that one or two will be prepared to kill & the muslim faith is a very large group! I do not like the idea that we should adjust our lifestyles to appease those who choose to live here & we should not.
CH did not have any newsworthy reason to print the trigger cartoon, it was simply an editorial decision taken with the full understanding that it would cause offence to someone as indeed most of the content will. Most targets are mature enough to take the joke but it is well known that this particular target contains persons who have no grip on reality & will kill & they have proved this on many occasions.
If you point a gun (real or not) at an armed policeman he will shoot you. Your action will have a reaction & you would be daft not to know what that reaction might be. The action of CH elicited a reaction, one that, based on past experience, could be violent. It was. Was it worth it?
Seems fair enough ;)
What about the signs on pub doors around the London Docks while they were being knocked down and rebuilt into Trader Hives :
"No dogs, Irish, or Northerners"
What about plebeian? I remember the word "pleb" being used back in the 50's and early sixties and it was then quite offensive (if the target know what it meant). It then fell into disuse but emerged as a very offensive word recently. Words change fashion and importance. Gods remain Gods and gross offence can be caused but surely that doesn't justify massacre under any circumstances. Another load of people abducted in Africa last night- will they ever be seen again?
Whilst here in France we have a secular society, it is incumbent upon everyone to accept that, not pick and choose what suits us best.
There is a problem with the education of some imams. They have only had a narrow religious education and then take responsibility for their mosques without any real understanding of the societies in which they are operating. Their views are then propogated within their followers.
Pakistan is taking steps to address this problem and we have seen the problems which the UK has had with extraditing Abu Hamza who has now been convicted of terrorism. He was a poisonous preacher and we need to put a stop to men of his ilk.
Radical Islam is a danger to the whole world and I have just heard on the Today programme that the governments of Western Africa are now coming together to fight Boko Haram because they realise that it is a problem for all.
So pooh-pooh to the bits of laïcité here in France that offend a particular group? It is one law for all or nobody, therefore it must be accepted full stop. That the imams do not recognise secularity because the Q'ran, not the prophet's original words, but what was 'said' in Medina later when basically going to sort out inter-tribal conflicts between Moslems, Jews and 'pagan' he began to preach forced conversions or death, holy war and the conversion of the entire world - the latter being a dubious word because in Arabic of that time it meant a large region. Literally, used or misused today there are scholars who would say that outside of 'their region' they have no business saying what they do.
However, they are in France. Since 1905 laïcité has been the law. The law for everyone. There is no exact comparison with Anglo-Saxon law's inflammatory language, which incidentally exists in neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland where their legal systems are different. Imposing the values carried over from England and Wales on France is meaningless because those laws have no validity here. Either we live with that or simply do not like it, however our opinions count for nothing and that we must accept.
Here in France? Isn't that where we are talking about? As for law against the N word, actually there is a law against inflammatory language but not N specifically in England and Wales only.
Irene, ask yourself how rude or nasty you are allowed to be to other races & religions. If you have a derogatory view of Jews you are an anti semite (severely frowned upon). If you use words like "nigger, spic, paki" you are racist (against the law). If you walk down the street naked you are also breaking the law, & so on.
There are lines we should not cross, some reinforced by law. Personally, I was brought up with the saying that "sticks & stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me". This has enabled me to laugh at most things including religion & politics & I hope I will continue to do so but not everyone holds the same values. We have to accept that what is acceptable in our western culture can be offensive in others. The world is getting smaller & many countries encourage multiculturism. This does not mean that a country should change to make it more acceptable to those from outside but it does not hurt to bear in mind that among the peaceful majority of other cultures dwell a few who will take murderous offence.
Irene, of course it is not acceptable to murder a person just because they have caused offence, but it happens alot! You only have to look at the racially motivated attacks which have ended in death and the killing in America of policemen following the killings of black men by white police. Most people will protest but one or two will see murder as a way of making a point - wrong on all levels!
There is something fundamentally wrong in setting out to deliberately cause offence - we do not do it on SFN & to do so will earn us a verbal slap at the very least - but it is acceptable for magazines to do so even when they know that, among those they offend, there are a few nutcases with guns just looking for an excuse to use them. If the point that CH was trying to make was important - maybe exposing a government cover up of a situation such as providing weapons to its enemies - then I can understand that the risk it is put its staff in could be justified, but I find it personally difficult to accept that it is worth the lives of 18 people just to put a wry smile on the face of 45,000 people by deliberately insulting many millions - then risk doing it again a few days later!
I take full responsibility for my posts. I will make a point but I do not wish to deliberately offend anyone, least of all anyone with a gun.
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Can you imgine the outcry by certain groups if Private Eye carried a cartoon on the front cover with the N word included ?
Then it is only fair to accept the collateral damage that goes with that reasoning rather than half the world going into mourning....
So why is there a law forbidding the use of the N word?
Absolutely.
It is not just French people, it is British and Belgians and who knows next.
Moderate Muslims will not be officially expected to renounce jihadists, I just feel that it would be a good thing to do to keep tolerance between religions and people of no religion and to be seen to do that more publicly than has been done at present would go a long way towards that.
Exactly. So often the taking offence is a pretext.
And just how privileged the media are, we saw on the 7th.
Jihadists don't need a special reason to kill innocent people as you say, so we will carry on being rude & immature & laughing at all legitimate targets like them and the FN, the president, religions etc and we will NOT allow ourselves to be scared into shutting up.
That is the point. In France laïcité which is a little more than the secularity of the English language is anchored in law. As somebody who does not confess any faith but also stands up for beliefs as they should be for their adherents, I appreciate what the French law says. It is a two way relationship in that it does not deny anybody their religion but does not welcome overt displays of it. Thus said, religious symbolism and signs such as crosses are found everywhere although they should not be and having roads closed whilst Moslems pray publicly should equally not be. They may be in places that are not overt. However, the French state has seen fit to be lenient in application of laïcité although for some people that is clearly not enough. It is not only the fact that one can do as CH did that 'offends' some, and it is their right to be offended, but that if the openness of religion was entirely banned, all of the crosses and other symbols removed from public places, the Star of David from the outside of synagogues and public prayer by Moslems prohibited there would be trouble. Bear in mind that during the Terror following the revolution nearly all of France's 40,000 churches, abbeys, monasteries, convent, seminaries and also the few synagogues were closed, many knocked down, priests and nuns were hung or beheaded. Those who re-emerged at the end of that time had gone underground and many had entirely given up offering covert services and so on. However, religion was allowed to openly return and when the 1905 laws that gave modern laïcité by separating church and state formally, the last vestiges of the years of terror (incidentally it was the Terror that gave us the meaning of terror and terrorist as now most commonly used) were rescinded. However, the 'tradition' of the kind of hard hitting cartoon is part of the revolution, indeed some of the hardest hitting were those by James Gillray, an Englishman. Charlie Hebdo is continuing in the revolutionary tradition, the cartoons are no harder than then and within France laïcité actually enshrines their right to do so. Theoretically, it is absolutely nothing to do with Yemeni Al Qaeda or any other foreign organisation any more than a cartoon of a French government minister is.
Nobody has to like what CH did, however to argue against and particularly as people from outside the French culture and tradition to use the kind of arguments that are pursued is a difficult ground to occupy. Thus said, it is as Véro says, the French shall carry on offending religions and political parties and bear whatever consequences there may be. To do otherwise will be to abandon French values to cow down to the values of others. Therefore, it is very hard to justify any argument for saying it MUST be controlled without taking those parameters anchored in constitution and law into account. However, nobody is forced to like them, whether French, foreign or from another planet. That said, observe and accept we must.