"...and that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon, who let all this riff raff into the room? There's one smoking a joint, and another with spots.... and if I had my way.. I'd have all of you shot". I'm pretty sure I've posted these lyrics on these boards before. Poignant as ever. It's about time people faced the facts. The cartoonists did not ever judge by the colour of skin. Or where a person came from. Or what their background is. They did judge by what they believed in. If you want to believe in a genocidal, megalomaniac, self important pan dimensional being that sends a *****philiac, gold digging, warmonger as a so called prophet then fine. Carry on. But realise that you leave yourself open to ridicule. It's not about race colour or creed. It's about the right to ridicule those who believe in the ridiculous. Without fear of being murdered.
I demonstrated in 1970 for Oz magazine... a hippy magazine which poked fun at the establishment... and the editorial staff were imprisoned for so called obscenity......( they got off on appeal..... after having their heads shorn....) I don't know if anyone remembers it.. I also was on the editorial staff of a st albans anarchist magazine called the Organ.... It was all about the right to say what you wanted without repression... The evocative lyrics of Pink Floyd above were something that my generation at that time really united against. Let us never forget that we are all human beings on this planet... and the only way we are going to get along is in peace..... Now this is not hippy dippy stuff.. it is fact... or we will end up killing ourselves and destroying our planet. So those people stirring up division and fear had better watch out as their very acts will create the conflict they prosyltse ( big word, I cant spell at o100 ) against. Bit of a rant.......
Well as we both know Yorkie those lyrics are exactly the sort of satire that those at Charlie Hebdo would defend. Anyone who cannot see their meaning (regardless of how increasingly crazed Roger Waters vocals get as the song progresses) is either a bit thick or wilfully ignorant. btw I bought several editions of The Organ. A pretty good read, will have to check the boxes in the garage...
You know I had forgotten all about that until this evening.... we produced it on the repro machine at snorbens fe college which I was supposedly attending.... the strap line was "don't let a pig get hold of your _____" I now at the memory... and my apols to my friends past and present in the aforeasaid profession. I also rather proudly remember being told there was a special branch file on me ..... I am not unaware too of the complete irony of this in relation to the watch and files being kept on folks these days...
Who is to say we wont have groups like this lot moving to Europe in the future and yet it hardly makes the news. The jihadist group Boko Haram has pulled off what is perhaps the deadliest attack of its ongoing, five-year-long insurgency in northern Nigeria. Boko Haram, extremists opposed to Western-style education and secular governance in Nigeria, carried out a multiday attack in the northeast of Nigeria, focusing on the town of Baga. According to Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official who spoke to the BBC, Baga, which once had a population of about 10,000 people, is now "virtually nonexistent." The multiday rampage focused on Baga and the surrounding towns and villages. The militants razed an estimated 16 towns around Baga, according to the BBC. “These towns are just gone, burned down,” Borno State Senator Ahmed Zanna told NBC News. “The whole area is covered in bodies.” The rampage has led to the deaths of an estimated 2,000 Nigerian civilians, and has sent approximately 10,000 people fleeing into neighboring Chad, according to the Associated Press. Boko Haram's rampage throughout the region is a direct blow to the prestige of the Nigerian military. Baga, which Nigerian troops abandoned on Jan. 4 after a day of fighting, was set to host the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a coalition of troops from Nigeria, Chad, and Niger whose expressed purpose was to defeat the Boko Haram insurgency. At the time of the attack, only Nigerian troops were present. Boko Haram's assault in Baga has comprised of two phases, according to Time. The offensive began on Jan. 3 in a push against the MNJTF base and lasted until Jan. 4. This assault was followed up by an assault on Baga itself and the surrounding towns, which lasted from Jan. 6 until Friday. The Nigerian military is currently engaged in a counteroffensive against Boko Haram, which is coming off a year in which it was more lethal than ever. In April of 2013, the group sparked an international outcry after abducting over 200 girls from a school in the northeastern town of Chibok. The girls are still missing, and Boko Haram has perpetrated a series of large-scale attacks since then. Over 100 people were killed in simultaneous bomb attacks in the city of Jos this past May; just a few days later, the group killed dozens of farmers in their own fields in a remote northeastern corner of the country. The group bombed a mosque in Kano in late November, killing over 120 people; in December the jihadists abducted "scores" of people from a village in northeastern Nigeria. Overall, Boko Haram killed an estimated 11,000 people in 2014. The insurgency comes during a time of political uncertainty for Nigeria, which has presidential elections scheduled for Feb. 14. Obviously, this contest is taking place against the backdrop of an intensifying national-security crisis. Boko Haram may be stepping up attacks in order to derail the fragile country's democratic process, Roddy Barclay, a senior Africa analyst at the London-based firm Control Risks, told Time. “Boko Haram will be a key player in the 2015 elections," he said. "It will seek to disrupt the elections by staging targeted attacks and by seeking to incite broader religious violence.”
BBH - you will know that I supported you massively in your former persona and opposed your ban. Mainly for reasons that most of us are arguing on this thread - we believe in free speech. You do not appear to have many admirers on our board and when some of the most rational i.e Yorkie and Dan Starkey give you warning shots you might be well advised to pay heed. You have always argued that it is just your sense of humour - well that may be so but the phrase "only joking" is often used by cowards. I have not enjoyed reading a single one of your posts on this topic and do not see any humour there and feel that these events are too raw for anyone other than the cleverest satirist to start to "absorb" the topic into everyday life. Your last post is bizarre and inexplicable. I wish you would honour your previous statement to not post on this particular thread again as I find your comments at best borderline racist. Therse are only my personal opinion but if you get banned from this board again I would not oppose it this time.
Everyone else - have you really nothing better to do late on a Friday night . I came on here this morning to "catch up on" a few comments and found pages of them. Barring one poster though they were all interesting and instructive and I am gladdened to find such a community that at best struggles to understand the motives behind some people's actions.
And years ago you would have been executed as a spy, identified as such via your mangling of the English language...
Ah yes, the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. Muslims need to put their house in order but therein lies the paradox. They believe in a book that can be interpreted in such a way so as to cause this hatred and violence. I contend that any book, ANY book, that can be interpreted in such a fashion is not the perfect infallible word of "god" and should be dismissed. The perpetrators of these crimes around the world prey on the intellectually weak, the superstitious and the easily led... and hold the book in higher esteem than what an all loving, all merciful, all compassionate god would behave his creation do. Whichever book of bronze age fairy tale nonsense it is I call it for what it is. I am done with tiptoeing around people's insensibilities on this matter. Je suis Charlie. We should all be.
You make a good point that a book that can be interpreted in such a way as to cause wars and violence does on the face of it not have a very good claim to be the inspired word of god - unless he is a sadistic b..... However the tendency towards tribalism is in my opinion part of the human nature. Put two groups of random strangers together and dress one lot in blue and the other red and they will quickly form tribes. Violence also seems inherent in human nature and is why we rely on laws to prevent us from doing what is unacceptable to the majority. If someone killed one of my children I would happily kill them - but that is personal - I actually do not agree with capital punishment so am happy that society prevents me from doing it. It is not religion that causes hatred but it is the glue that binds many people together. I think most religions - even if they are based on fiction - for the most part do good. The fact that they rely on superstition does not matter. However there is a tiny minority of evil people in the world - I bet no more than 1% - and all religions have this minority so when they do their evil and cloak it under their religion it is not the religion that is at fault but the individuals.
Agree on both points above... and we need to remind ourselves... we are all one step away from an animal nature....... civilization is our only way forward ..... can we grasp it.... and it is up to every single person to decide....
Why is it that when any religious teaching, text or belief is challenged to provide irrefutable, empirical evidence of what they promote, the challengers are immediately surrounded by the religious establishment (and I include politicians and the monarchy here) who say you cannot do this, it is not acceptable, you have to have faith. I believe the majority of the British population are atheists, although many probably don't realise it, they just ignore religion. More need to put their heads above the parapet and ask these awkward questions for which no credible answer will be forthcoming.
I maintain that it is religion that is at the root of the problem. It starts with an intellectually dishonest premise and goes on from there. Those that do "good" things do them under fear, those that commit these crimes do so because"god wills it". Neither way is an honest or decent way of life. We are a social animal, no more no less, and our problems are rooted in greed. And as you rightly say, tribalism. Surely we've all read Lord of the Flies? Greed, fear, ignorance are what fuels the problem today. People say "ban religion". I do not, that would be counterproductive. We need to educate people out of it.
Fair post Scully. As someone who is pretty religious I am not going to rise to the challenge (I would not stand a chance against you lot). I do however take a stand against anyone who uses my faith as an excuse for persecuting others and believe everyone has a responsibility to do so.
Do you think that if somehow the whole concept of religion disappeared and we were not capable of imagining a god that one single thing in society would change? I do not - save that we would use location of birth or some such as the excuse to regard some people as our brothers and others as strangers. The same 1% would still commit atrocities because they did not like the colour of their skin etc or whatever other prejudice they held.
