Yuletide
  • Yuletide blog
  • About Me
  • Links
  • List of All Posts

Post-272: What Happened to Standards of Decency?

1/15/2015

2 Comments

 
High-profile political killings in France last week.
.
Read More
Twenty people were killed in several gun attacks. Three were police and three were the perpetrators (Muslims; all three born in France in the early 1980s to non-European parents). That leaves 14 "civilians" among the killed. Of these 14, six were Jews and one was a Muslim, leaving seven"Français de souche" (old-stock French) victims. (I found an essay entitled "French Lesson" by Dr. Peter Frost to be insightful in analyzing the attacks.)

The main group of victims was at a (so-called) "satirical magazine" which publishes tasteless, filthy, deliberately offensive "political" cartoons.
The worst of the cartoons are definitely inflammatory and humiliating, up to and including depictions of the genitalia of Mohammed and Jesus and graphic sexual acts involving the same.

(At the risk of speaking ill of the deceased,) The people behind this magazine seem to have been deeply nihilistic and perhaps psychologically disturbed. It doesn't mean they deserve to have died. Yet it wasn't so long ago
that people who published such things would've been under serious risk of being lynched by local European Christians for either blasphemy or degeneracy or both.

I have to ask: What happened to standards of decency in publishing? Are they all out the window in France?
Why were cartoons so inflammatory and frankly indecent by (surely) anyone's standard allowed to be published and sold?

France is totally committed to free speech, I'm told, no matter who may get offended. Yet that's not the case: France is one of the countries that has a law imposing heavy fines and even jail sentences on Holocaust revisionists, for one. For another, a Black comedian called Dieudonne was prosecuted for "hate speech" for his comedy routines and certain political statements. The government has imposed a total television ban on him. (Here he is on a TV program defending himself from a critic before the lifetime ban was handed down.)

So I am left confused.

2 Comments
LJ
1/17/2015 12:41:24 pm

I agree with the Roman Catholic Pope: No religion should be mocked or made fun of.
That being said, no one deserves being murdered by half baked religious fanatics who use their religion for their own power purposes.
The cartoons are sometimes tasteless and way overboard.
Like most issues there are no simple explanations.
One thing is certain, ordinary people must be protected.
Incidentally, I expect those "non-European parents" were French citizens from Algeria.

Reply
lrj
1/17/2015 01:42:10 pm

Some of this tragedy has to do with reactions to drones, torture, invasion, and support of dictators.
Some of this tragedy has to do with those who think they can issue death fatwas with impunity as well as instigate impressionable young men to commit murder with bogus thoughts of paradise, along with those instigating violence and murder in the name of god.

Reply



Leave a Reply.


    About

    Welcome. This is a place I write things that may or may not be of interest. Thanks.

    See here for more.


    Search this site:

    List of All Posts
    List of all posts
    Subscribe via email:

    Subscribe to the Feed:

    Enter email address to subscribe to daily updates:



    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013


    Contact by Email
    Yuletide5142 at y@hoo.com


    Picture
    Me

    I thank you for
    stopping by
    this quiet corner
    of the Internet.

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.