Category: Notes and Comment Blog

The pope says we can’t insult religion.

Well he would, wouldn’t he. Anyway he does.

In provocative remarks which may cause consternation in France, the Pope said that freedom of expression had its limits, especially if it involved insulting or ridiculing religion.

He made the forthright comments to journalists on board his official plane as he flew from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, the two stops on his week-long visit to Asia.

Amnesty International has satellite photos that show the damage done by Boko Haram in Baga and Doron Baga last week.

Satellite images released by Amnesty International today provide indisputable and shocking evidence of the scale of last week’s attack on the towns of Baga and Doron Baga by Boko Haram militants.

Before and after images of two neighbouring towns, Baga (160 kilometres from Maiduguri) and Doron Baga (also known as Doro Gowon, 2.5 km from Baga), taken on 2 and 7 January show the devastating effect of the attacks which left over 3,700 structures damaged or completely destroyed. Other nearby towns and villages were also attacked over this period.

“These detailed images show devastation of catastrophic proportions in two towns, one of which was almost wiped off the map in the space of four days,” said Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International.

“Of all Boko Haram assaults analysed by Amnesty International, this is the largest and most destructive yet. It represents a deliberate attack on civilians whose homes, clinics and schools are now burnt out ruins.”

The thing is, they’re attacking (and overcoming) military bases, so they’re getting more and more firepower. This is a very bad trend.

The BBC reported a couple of days ago that Goodluck Jonathan hasn’t even mentioned the Baga attack. Can you imagine? If armed criminals killed hundreds of people in a remote part of Scotland or Cornwall, can you imagine David Cameron saying nothing about it? If armed criminals killed hundreds of people in Alaska or Montana, can you imagine Obama ignoring it? It’s inconceivable.

The destruction shown in these images matches the horrific testimonies that Amnesty International has gathered. Interviews with eyewitnesses as well as with local government officials and local human rights activists suggest that Boko Haram militants shot hundreds of civilians.

A man in his fifties told Amnesty International what happened in Baga during the attack: “They killed so many people. I saw maybe around 100 killed at that time in Baga. I ran to the bush. As we were running, they were shooting and killing.” He hid in the bush and was later discovered by Boko Haram fighters, who detained him in Doron Baga for four days.

Those who fled describe seeing many more corpses in the bush. “I don’t know how many but there were bodies everywhere we looked,” one woman told Amnesty International.

Another witness described how Boko Haram were shooting indiscriminately killing even small children and a woman who was in labour. “[H]alf of the baby boy is out and she died like this,” he said.

Boko Haram fighters have repeatedly targeted communities for their perceived collaboration with the security forces. Towns that formed state-sponsored militia groups known as the Civilian Joint Task Force (Civilian JTF) have suffered particularly brutal attacks. Civilian JTF groups were active in Baga and a senior military official confirmed to Amnesty International confidentially that at times the military took these members on operations to attack Boko Haram positions. A witness told Amnesty International that during the attack on Baga that he heard Boko Haram fighters saying they were searching for Civilian JTF members, as they went house to house shooting men of fighting age.

After the attack on Baga, witnesses describe how Boko Haram drove into the bush rounding up women, children and the elderly who had escaped. According to one woman who was detained for four days “Boko Haram took around 300 women and kept us in a school in Baga. They released the older women, mothers and most of the children after four days but are still keeping the younger women.”

Of course they are. Fuck toys. Warmer and wetter than inflatable dolls, plus they can cook.

Raif’s wife, Ensaf Haider, thinks he won’t survive the second set of lashes tomorrow, the Huffington Post reports.

Last Friday he endured the first round of lashes — 50 strikes on the back of his body by a long, hard cane — in a public flogging held in the city of Jiddah. This Friday, he will reportedly be subjected to a second round of 50 lashes.

“Raif told me he is in a lot of pain after his flogging, his health is poor and I’m certain he will not be able to cope with another round of lashes,” Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haider, told Amnesty International.

It’s too bad the UN High Commissioner for human rights didn’t issue his statement sooner.

Human rights groups have condemned Saudi Arabia — which has a history of brutally quashing free speech — for its treatment of Badawi and have called for his immediate release.

“It is horrifying to think that such a vicious and cruel punishment should be imposed on someone who is guilty of nothing more than daring to create a public forum for discussion and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression,” said Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa, per CNN.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the United Nations secretary-general, said last week that the U.N. human rights office was “deeply concerned about the flogging.”

The U.S. State Department has called for Saudi Arabia to “review Badawi’s case” and stop its “inhumane” punishment.

Badawi’s wife told Amnesty International that “international pressure” will be crucial in the fight to save her husband.

“I believe if we keep up the support it will eventually pay off. We must keep on fighting,” she told the rights group.

The god of the Saudis is a god of evil.

Sky News prevents Caroline Fourest from showing the Charlie Hebdo cover immediately after she explains that it’s a “very sweet drawing that puts Mohammed outside this crime.” They jerk the camera upward and then shift away altogether to the presenter, who apologizes to anyone who may have been Offended.

Cowardly obsequious crawling assholes. They endorse the stupid claim that the cover is “Offensive” and they endorse the fiction that Charlie Hebdo was to blame. C’est dégueullasse.

A ray of hope? The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – who is Jordanian – has told Saudi Arabia to stop flogging Raif Badawi. Ok has asked, urged, called on, whatever – he’s not in a position to tell. But still.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Saudi Arabia on Thursday to stop the serial flogging of an atheist and civil rights blogger sentenced to receive 1,000 lashes over an extended period.

Raif Badawi, who set up a website called “Free Saudi Liberals”, received 50 lashes after Friday prayers last week and global rights groups say he is expected to be submitted to a second round on Friday.

“Flogging is in my view at very least a form of cruel and inhuman punishment,” High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement from his Geneva office. As such, it was banned under international rights law, he added.

“I appeal to the King of Saudi Arabia to exercise his power to halt the public flogging by pardoning Mr Badawi, and to urgently review this type of extraordinary harsh penalty,” said Zeid, a former Jordanian diplomat.

DO IT, KING.

Funny, I listened to an interview with Zeid by the BBC last night and the interviewer asked about Raif (without naming him) and I thought Zeid gave a completely useless answer – generalities about capital punishment elsewhere. I was frustrated and furious – I was not expecting this! On the contrary, I thought it was a sign of the opposite – he wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it.

Guest post by Saba Farbodkia. Originally a post at British Muslims for Secular Democracy on Facebook, published here by permission.

Dear offended religious people,

Please stop the hypocrisy. The right to offend is not exclusively yours.

If you know the holy scriptures of the religions that you uphold so dearly, you already know how offensive parts of them are to people.

Yet, some of you still continue to publish them. Some of you buy those publications and read them. Some of you recite them to your children. Some of you force your children to uphold them as sacred and act upon them as far as they can. And all of you regard those scriptures beyond questioning and criticism, otherwise why would you feel offended when one did so?

If you know the holy figures of the religions that you uphold so dearly, you probably know of a few things they have done that are offensive to people.

Yet, some of you consider them as the paragons of how one should live their earthly life, and all of you regard desecration of those figures an offense to the sacredness of your religion.

Your religions have not only deeply offended women, homosexuals, and non-believers, but have also been a source of physical pain and agony for them by the actions of those followers who have been literally following their instructions, throughout centuries and millennia.

And yet, the right of these people to offend you back by questioning, criticizing, and mocking the religious concepts that you uphold so dearly has been breached for most of the history, only granted to them for a couple of decades or centuries in some parts of the world, now, and not granted to them in so many other parts, yet.

Despite such historical privilege, you still whine when somebody starts to use their right to mock your religion or desecrate its figures. Worse than that, when a tragedy happens because some of your fellow offended religious people have gone nuts and killed a group of blasphemers, some of you distort a conversation that should be about the right to blasphemy, to a conversation about your offended feelings at the blasphemy that the blasphemers were killed for. KILLED FOR…

Take a moment and think about it.

If a group of atheist homosexual women, deeply agonized and in pain bullied by expression of your religious beliefs for decades, had gone nuts and had exploded a few mosques and churches and other religious centers for “incitement of hatred and prejudice” against them, and had killed a dozen of hate preaching Imams, how would feel if all the world would turn to you when you were moaning your loss, by changing the conversation to be about how offended their feelings would get the sermons were given at those centers? How would you feel if those religious centers were not even actually preaching such hate?

Do you see how hypocritical it is?

So this is what I am gonna do: Next time you mention something about empathy, and how it requires that people don’t offend each other, I ask you for empathy first. I ask you to stop offending people by giving up your support for religions that have such offensive concepts in their scriptures, or the actions of their holy figures as recorded by history. I ask you to show your empathy for your fellow human beings by leaving your religion. Until you haven’t shown enough empathy not to offend others, please don’t ask others to show that to you.

Please stop the hypocrisy. The right to offend is not exclusively yours. The empathy not to be offensive is not exclusively other people’s responsibility, either.

Disclaimer:
This is only intended for those religious people who feel offended at blasphemy, and took the CH events to express their feelings.
I understand there are many religious people like myself, who can take a witty joke about their religion with a smile, and face a serious criticism of it by a deep thought.

AFP at the Guardian reports on the arrest of Dieudonné.

Notorious French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has been arrested for being an “apologist for terrorism” after suggesting on Facebook that he sympathised with one of the Paris gunmen, a judicial source has said.

Prosecutors had opened the case against him on Monday after he wrote “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” – mixing the slogan “Je suis Charlie”, used in tribute to the journalists killed at magazine Charlie Hebdo, with a reference to gunman Amédy Coulibaly. Dieudonné was arrested on Wednesday.

Coulibaly killed four people at a Jewish supermarket on Friday and a police officer the day before.

In the US that wouldn’t get him arrested, although it probably would get him investigated and spied on by “Homeland” security – and I’m Millian enough to think he shouldn’t be arrested for that. But I think he’s a colossal asshole for saying it. Coulibaly was a murdering piece of shit, who carefully singled out Jews for murder. Dieudonné is disgusting.

Pliny the in between offers a helpful algorithm for the offended:

So. Someone whose case does not fall under the statute of limitations is pursuing criminal charges against Cosby.

A model who claims Bill Cosby drugged and sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion met with Los Angeles police on Wednesday to pursue criminal charges against the comedian over the 2008 incident.

An attorney for Chloe Goins said after the meeting that his client is the first woman accusing Cosby of sexual misconduct whose case may fall within the statute of limitations.

More than 15 women have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, including several who say the comedian drugged and raped them in incidents dating back at least four decades.

Quick, somebody make a joke about women not drinking around Bill Cosby hahahahahahahaha.

[Goins’s lawyer Spencer] Kuvin declined to discuss what Goins told detectives but restated her allegations that Cosby drugged her at a 2008 event at the Playboy Mansion. Goins does not know what happened while she was blacked out but Kuvin says she awoke to find herself naked and Cosby over her.

“Ms. Goins and I are here for two reasons: for justice and accountability,” Kuvin said.

And to be the punchline of Bill Cosby jokes.

Cosby’s attorney has denied some of the accusations against the comedian, saying they have been discredited or come from discredited accusers. Cosby joked about the allegations against him at a recent show in Canada and is scheduled to perform two shows in Denver on Saturday night despite planned protests.

“We hope that the people that are paying to attend Mr. Cosby’s shows understand that these victimized women have broken their silence now and they will not remain quiet any longer,” Kuvin said. “Mr. Cosby should, and will be held accountable for what he’s done.”

He said women reporting abuse “should be encouraged and not joked about.”

Not joked about, not called liars or crazy, not pressured to shut up, not offered a bribe to shut up.

Lliana Bird also objects to the whole “Charlie Hebdo is racist!” thing.

[O]ne thing I’ve found difficult to ignore is the growing voices of those who knew little of the cartoonists and journalists saying terrible things about them, which are quite frankly unsettling.

“Racist”, “Islamophobic” and “hypocritical” have been the most common accusations. Many seemingly educated friends and social media buddies seemed to be merely glancing at a few cherry-picked Charlie Hebdo covers without making any effort in understanding their true meaning or impetus (or often even of the French translation of the accompanying captions).

And that’s not enough, especially when the subject is people who were just murdered by two fanatical bigots for reasons that are beneath contempt.

Charlie Hedbo were leftists, some may even anarchists and punks. They printed numerous cartoons which were anti racism/xenophobia; that mocked and satirised the far right as bigots and racists. As long time reader and Frenchman, Olivier Tonneau pointed out in his excellent article, The National Front and the Le Pen family were in fact their primary targets above all others. Next came bosses, politicians and the corrupt. Finally they opposed organised religion. ALL organised religion. They didn’t hate or abuse or target any one group or religion. They did however mock ALL systems and organisations and individuals of power – from political to religious to everything in between. They were satirists, and all people, systems and organisations should be open to criticism and mockery (so long as it sticks within the laws of the land). They were democratic in their ridicule and satirisation. No one was exempt. To do otherwise would have been the hypocritical. Equal rights also means equal treatment.

I don’t agree with those last two sentences, because (among other reasons) equal rights don’t always mean equal treatment in areas other than satirical journalism. People can have equal rights but still also be stigmatized or scorned in various ways, and I do think that makes a difference to how (or if) they should be satirized. (A shorter way of saying that is to talk about punching up versus down, but I’m sick of that formula, and anyway I don’t like formulas.)

As Oliver Tonneau so beautifully writes: “Two young French Muslims of Arab descent have not assaulted the numerous extreme-right wing newspapers that exist in France (Minute, Valeurs Actuelles) who ceaselessly amalgamate Arabs, Muslims and fundamentalists, but the very newspaper that did the most to fight racism… I hope this helps you understand that if you belong to the radical left, then you lost precious friends and allies last week.”

Terrible, isn’t it?

Salty Current has further thoughts on the failure of many to make the effort to understand Charlie Hebdo before declaring it racist.

I’ll repeat briefly the major point I’ve been making for the past several days: that I hate the approach that many people with basically good motives seem to be taking, which consists of a hostile-prosecutorial attitude that begins by assuming the worst, even on the basis of the most skeletal evidence and biased reports, and proceeds through various stages of half-listening to and then minimizing or dismissing evidence that contradicts or at least challenges the original impression.

Not the history of the publication and its political commitments or those of its staff, not the statements of the people who created and published the images, not their courage in defending blasphemy and going after the Right and numerous sacred cows, not the local context in which the images were created or viewed, not the history of French satire, not CH’s public reputation which would shape people’s interpretations, not films in which the artists describe their intent in producing particular images and the efforts to preclude their misuse,* not indications of the critic’s own ignorance – nothing, it seems, is enough for the self-appointed judges to pull back on their determination to smear Charlie Hebdo. The goalposts are moved again and again: from actively and openly racist to neglectfully employing racist tropes without concern for who might be hurt to insufficient efforts to make it impossible for others to misrepresent the images or use them in a harmful way. This last is simply an impossible standard, especially for a satirical magazine with a small circulation which works within local traditions and comments on current events.

It’s all that good. Read it.

On page 10 of the new issue of Charlie Hebdo – under the subhead Allah Akbar! –

The killers shouted twice before executing the team – “God is the greatest!” Bah, no, fuckhead, if he existed, you really think he would have let your bottomless stupidity murder the brilliant intelligence of Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Charb, Tignous, Bernard Maris, Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad?

It actually says “he wouldn’t have” rather than “he would have” but I figure that’s an idiom I’m not aware of.

“Allah Akbar” was Charb’s cri de guerre, his salutations in emails and texts – “Allah Akbar, do you think you can manage to get your article in tomorrow?” One day at the magazine, for a laugh, we said “Char, quit saying that, the day they arrive to whack you, we won’t know whether it’s a joke or not.” And it arrived. We knew it, we at Charlie did – that humor is something very serious.

Bien entendu they did.

H/t Brian E.

On Twitter –

FranceBleuLoireOcéan @bleuloireocean · 15 hours ago
5h20 ce mercredi : plus aucun #CharlieHebdo au kiosque de la gare de #Nantes. Les 106 exemplaires sont partis en 5′

5:20 a.m. this Wednesday: not a single #CharlieHebdo left at the newsagent’s at Nantes station. The 106 copies were gone in 5 minutes.

I like that photo because you can see how CH is still all over all the papers. I especially like the cover of Libération.

I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I knew 3 million wouldn’t be enough just for France, let alone everywhere else.

The print run has been raised to 5 million, but that won’t be enough either.

I want a copy, but apparently it’s not even distributed here outside New York.

The Guardian reports:

The planned print run of the first Charlie Hebdo magazine since last week’s deadly terrorist attack has been increased to 5m as many newsagents in France sold out of stocks within minutes of it going on sale.

“The publisher has decided this morning to bring the print run to 5m,” Véronique Faujour, president of the distributor MLP, told AFP. The figure is 2m more than had been expected.

Large queues formed outside French magazine kiosks as the first edition since the attack on the magazine’s office killed 12 went on sale.

Some outlets reported that hundreds of copies of the magazine were sold in the first few minutes of going on sale by customers eager to show support for free speech following the attack.

Also, frankly, in my case and I would guess in theirs, to have the damn issue.

The Guardian’s Anne Penketh said her local newsagent in Paris was so inundated with customers wanting copies of Charlie Hebdo that he hid them and sold copies only to regulars.

She said: “While I was there, a couple of people stopped by and asked for a copy, but [the newsagent] said he didn’t have any. He then stooped down and put my copy inside Le Figaro so nobody would see. He says he’s never seen anything like it.”

5 million won’t be enough either. Keep printing.

“It was incredible. I had a queue of 60-70 people waiting for me when I opened,” said a woman working at a newspaper kiosk in Paris. “I’ve never seen anything like it. All my 450 copies were sold out in 15 minutes.”

Jamie Johnson, 21, a language student from Exeter University working in Paris, reported a queue of 400 people snaking around a block in usually quiet streets in the 5th arrondissement by 8am.

Johnson said that a woman behind him in the queue shouted: “I am buying a piece of history.”

Well exactly. A piece of history, a “oui” to freedom of expression, a “fuck you” to the murderers and their fans, a farewell to the murdered, a cheer for secularism and the right to apostasize, all that and more.

In a small shop in Gloucestershire –

Caroline Powell, 47, came in to order a copy, but was too late. “It is to honour the people that were massacred,” she said. “I will come in again on Friday. I think it is about freedom of speech. I think we should be able to buy what we want. Charlton Kings isn’t just a sleepy village.”

To honour the people who were massacred: exactly so.

Via Twitter –

Nakul Shenoy ‏@nakulshenoy Jan 13
Eh?! RT @girishmallya: Bought my copy of one part Woman to support freedom of expression http://www.amazon.in/One-Part-Woman-Perumal-Murugan-ebook/dp/B00GZQDISO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1421146193&sr=1-1&keywords=one+part+woman … #IAmPerumalMurugan

There’s a new party standing in the next UK general election in May.

An anti-feminism party called Justice for Men and Boys (And the Women Who Love Them) is standing for parliament in May’s general election.

The party, which hands out “Lying Feminist of the Month” awards to female journalists, will be fielding three candidates in the Nottingham area, including one candidate who will attempt to unseat shadow women and equalities minister Gloria De Piero.

The party was founded by retired businessman Mike Buchanan, who told BuzzFeed News it’s his party’s ultimate aim to “make feminism a dirty word”.

That’s already happened.

Buchanan used to work as a business consultant for the Conservative party, but quit in 2009 when David Cameron backed all-women parliamentary candidate shortlists. He has since dedicated his life to anti-feminism, writing three books, Feminism: The Ugly Truth, The Glass Ceiling Delusion, and David Cameron – The Heir to Harman?

“Feminism is a hatred, and it should be a badge of shame,” he said. “To call yourself a feminist should be no more acceptable than calling yourself a bigot or a sexist or a fascist. It is a deeply vile, corrupting ideology and the idea it’s a benign movement about gender equality is dangerous nonsense.”

Mike Buchanan is a citizen of Backward World, where everything means the opposite of what it means in Real World.

“We hear a lot about misogyny, which is actually very rare, but a hatred of men is very commonplace,” said Buchanan. “As far as the state is concerned, males are pretty much subhuman and they’ll do anything they can to destroy men’s lives.”

Oh? Really? So men are officially forbidden (by the state) to have jobs? Boys are barred from all forms of education? Everything is in the hands of women, and men are enslaved and confined? I don’t recognize that picture.

In the general election, Buchanan is pessimistic about winning enough votes to retain any of the three £500 deposits he’s put down, but thinks it’s worth the expense in order to raise awareness of what he called “the only anti-feminism party in the English-speaking world”.

It’s a bargain.

A beautiful new Jesus and Mo today.

They are the same. Ce sont pareils.

Iman @1GodlessWoman · Jan 12
They are indeed but one in the same #ParisShooting #RaifBadawi #saudi #NotInMyName

It was Raif Badawi’s birthday yesterday.

IN THE NOW @INTHENOWRT · Jan 13
World chants #JeSuisCharlie for #FreedomOfSpeech while Saudi blogger #RaifBadawi takes 1K lashes for discussing faith

Clemens Wergen at Die Welt has some home truths for the American media on this matter of refusing to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, even the new cover cartoon.

Today the French newspaper Libération published the new cover of Charlie Hebdo which will be on the newsstands on Wednesday. Yes, it is Muhammad again. He is shedding a big tear and holding a poster like so many people did in these days that reads “I am Charlie”. The title of the cover says “All is forgiven”. I can only imagine what amount of self conquest the surviving members of the Charlie Hebdo team had to muster to come up with a cover of such melancholic sweetness after they have lost 8 people, their most important editors and cartoonists among them. Anyone would have understood if they had had put all their rage and mourning into a biting and unforgiving cover. Except that they didn’t. They came up with a cover that speaks of the enlightened humanism Charlie Hebdo embodies, despite its at times scathing style.

Exactly. It’s a shatteringly moving cartoon because of that, and the failure to publish it spits in the faces of the people at CH.

And what did leading American media companies like NBC, CNN, the New York Times and others do? They again refused to show the cover. A disgrace to the surviving editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo  just as well as its dead members. It is a disgusting and morally appalling refusal to let Charlie Hebdo speak in its own distinctive voice.

It is not that I don’t understand where you, my American colleagues, come from. You are not  fans of the iconoclastic, anti-clerical tradition of Europe where fighting against the church during many centuries meant fighting against power or fighting against the legitimizing force allied to the absolute power of kings and emperors.

I am! Over here! And I’m not the only one. Don’t go thinking we’re all pious about the very idea of religion, because we’re not.

But way too damn many of us are. Still.

You didn’t need to, because your many and diverse faiths never were accomplices to the abuse of power in the way the old faiths of Europe were.

Never? That’s too strong. Slavery for instance got a lot of support from religion.

On the day after the attack the New York Times ran a story with two small covers of Charlie Hebdo as illustration. In order not to offend its Muslim readers, they didn’t print any of the Muhammad cartoons. “Under Times standards, we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities”, the Times said in a statement.

Good grief – what a pathetic “standard” for a newspaper to hold. And it’s a stupid and mindless description of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, too, in fact it’s yet another example of finger-pointing victim-blaming. Their chief purpose was not “to offend religious sensibilities” – it was to undermine the taboo on treating religion like any other subject, and to mock it and have fun with it and sell the paper by doing that. They knew religious sensibilities would be offended, but that’s not the same as deliberately intending to do so.

“After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today’s story.”  This “sufficient information” consisted among other things of two small covers of Charlie Hebdo that illustrated the Time’s story on the attack, one critical of socialist French President Francois Hollande and one critical of Marie Le Pen’s right wing Front National. That was absurd because the attackers, which were most probably sent by al-Qaida in Yemen, didn’t shoot Charlie Hebdo’s editors and cartoonists because their socialist or right wing feelings had been hurt. They went on a killing spree because Charlie Hebdo had ridiculed their prophet. And the Times and others basically conceded that they had a right to feel offended.

Maybe they were just afraid, Wergen concedes. Understandable if somewhat silly.

But would you please spare us in the future all this journalist bullshit about speaking truth to power? It is easy speaking truth to power if you criticize and ridicule you own democratic government which won’t kill you or put you in jail for speaking your mind or publishing unfriendly or over-the-top cartoons. But when you are ready to be intimidated by the new Fascist thugs in the world even in those little things and in such a crucial moment you’d better stop all that self-aggrandizing talk about the bravery of the free press. It is striking that the much maligned “new media” had much less inhibition to inform its readers about the issue at hand than traditional news outlets had.

That’s us. He means us. We’re new media. Good job, us.

Myself and a good number of my European colleagues stood with you and all Americans when you suffered the catastrophic attack of 9/11. Now, my dear American colleagues, I feel that many of you have betrayed your European colleagues in what can only be descibed as the 9/11 of European journalism which was perpetrated under the same misguided understanding of Islam that has attacked the American homeland 13 years ago. Where has your moral compass gone?

Ouch, that stings. But I can’t deny it. Hang your heads, New York Times, NPR, NBC. Stand up Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BuzzFeed.