France abducts 5 children from Muslim couple falsely suspected of moving to Syria
February 5, 2015
A Muslim couple in France has had their five children abducted by the state over unproven allegations that they are radicals who planned to take the entire family to fight in Syria.
Nearly a dozen police and social service workers entered the couple’s house, on an allegedly false pretext, as the family was packing to move to Tunisia, where the father was born.
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Unpacking France’s Chilling Proposal to Hold Companies Accountable for Speech
By Jillian York | EFF | February 6, 2015
France’s misguided efforts to grapple with hate speech—which is already prohibited by French law—have been making headlines for years. In 2012, after an horrific attack on a Jewish school, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed criminal penalties for anyone visiting websites that contain hate speech. An anti-terror law passed in December imposes greater penalties on those that “glorify terrorism” online (as opposed to offline), and allows websites engaging in the promotion of terrorism to be blocked with little oversight. And following the attack on Charlie Hebdo last month, Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated that “it will be necessary to take further measures” to address the threat of terrorism.
Despite such a history, the latest proposal to emerge from the country is shocking. At the World Economic Forum last week, President Francois Hollande called on corporations to “fight terror,” stating:
The big operators, and we know who they are, can no longer close their eyes if they are considered accomplices of what they host. We must act at the European and international level to define a legal framework so that Internet platforms which manage social media be considered responsible, and that sanctions can be taken.
In effect, Hollande’s proposal seeks to hold social media companies accountable for the speech that they host. This is antithetical to US law, where online service providers are explicitly exempted from being treated as publishers, with few exceptions, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
In other countries, such as Thailand, a lack of protections for intermediaries led to the 2010 arrest of the editor of a popular publication. Her crime? A failure to quickly moderate comments that were deemed to defame the monarchy, an act that in Thailand comes with harsh penalties.
Developing global norms on intermediary liability point away from the Thai model that the French President lauded, in favor of a model closer to US law. An international study on the topic launched last month by UNESCO concluded that “Limiting the liability of intermediaries for content published or transmitted by third parties is essential to the flourishing of internet services that facilitate expression.”
While it’s likely that many of the companies in question would attempt to voluntarily comply with requests to remove content that glorifies terrorism, Hollande’s proposal would subject them to sanctions if they fail to comply with the proposed regulations. This places an extraordinary burden on these companies, whose users number in the millions, or even billions. It also stifles innovation locally: Entrepreneurs in France are unlikely to create new platforms for speech if there’s a risk of penalty in doing so.
We understand that European attitudes toward hate speech differ from those in the United States, but we strongly believe that any attempt to ban speech leads down a slippery slope. Holding corporations accountable for the speech they host is just one step down that slope.
French comedian convicted of ‘supporting terror’
French humorist Dieudonné Mbala Mbala
Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – February 5, 2015
Paris – Popular French humorist Dieudonné Mbala Mbala has been convicted and fined 30,000 euros for “supporting terrorism speech” in a decision which many say exemplifies the often discriminatory and two-tiered nature of France’s legal system.
Following the recent terrorist attacks in France, Dieudonné, as he is widely known, posted on Facebook that “Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly” (I feel like Charlie Coulibaly), an apparent reworking of the global “Je suis Charlie” campaign. Coulibaly refers to Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist responsible for four deaths at a Kosher supermarket in Paris.
The court rejected Dieudonné’s claim that he is a satirist in the same vein as Charlie Hebdo, the French weekly which has sparked worldwide protests on multiple occasions by publishing sacrilegious pictures of Prophet Mohammed.
Both Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo defend their actions by saying they insult any and all religions, ethnicities and politicians, with plenty of evidence available on the Internet to support their claims.
While Charlie Hebdo has been exonerated for its previous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, as well as for insulting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the neo-fascist National Front Party, Dieudonné has been repeatedly fined for remarks deemed to incite racial hatred and anti-Semitism, both of which are explicitly banned by French law. Dieudonné and his entourage have been taken to court some 80 times in recent years, and just this week Dieudonné was convicted and forced to pay a fine of 4,000 euros for calling current Prime Minster Manuel Valls a “Mussolini with half Down’s Syndrome”.
Many claim that the lack of a law to ban Islamophobic speeches or the insulting of Islam reflects a state-sanctioned double-standard, and there is little political support apparent to create such laws. That has led to widespread complaints from France’s Muslim community, estimated at 5 to 10 percent of the overall population.
Where Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo differ greatly is in their favored target: For more than a decade Charlie Hebdo has been openly anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic, while Dieudonné is openly anti-Zionist. Many also believe that Dieudonné satirizes France’s politicians much more forcefully, as Charlie Hebdo’s editors have increased their ties to the conservative UMP party in recent years.
This helps explain Dieudonné’s vast popularity among the youth, Muslim and immigrant communities, as reflected by the hundreds of Dieudonné supporters present at the Palais de Justice in Paris.
“Dieudonné is the same as Charlie Hebdo, except that Dieudonné attacks our society’s ‘untouchables’,” said Enzo Columba, 23, outside Dieudonné’s trial. “In France, you can attack the Blacks, the Arabs, the Muslims, but not the ‘untouchables’, and that’s why Dieudonné is treated differently by the media and the law,’” said Columba.
“He is so popular because he is like us: He is the son of immigrants, he grew up around Paris, and, like so many French youth, he is anti-Zionist,” added Columba.
France has not released updated arrest totals for “supporting terrorism speech” since January 20, when 117 arrests were acknowledged. People have been accused, tried, convicted and sentenced to multi-year prison terms in just 3 days, causing widespread accusations of “hysteria” and “witch-hunts”.
Among the convicted have been alcoholics, homeless people and the mentally ill. Critics contend that the wave of arrests is intended to have a “chilling effect” on all criticism of the government’s policies, as well as to intimidate the Muslim community.
“I’m here to support the liberty of expression, like we had in the past,” said Madame Lamarque, an interested citizen who also awaited the verdict outside the courtroom.
“I think we are losing this freedom, and I don’t understand why,” said Lamarque. “I do not think Dieudonné has been treated like other humorists.”
France made global news this week when an 8-year-old boy was interrogated for 30 minutes by police for allegedly making remarks supporting terrorism. Ahmed, whose last name has not been released, could not even explain what “terrorism” was, and his teachers and school principal have been sharply criticized for involving the police.
“The manner in which this was handled and became so overblown is totally unbelievable,” the head of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent, told Press TV.
“We cannot expose a child of 8 years to such a trauma,” said Laurent. “It’s the opposite of the mission of education: To care for and protect children, not to place them under the media’s glare and render them fodder for the public’s judgment.”
Ahmed is in the third grade in the southeastern city of Nice, an affluent region which is also a stronghold of the neo-fascist National Front party.
The Great Israeli Theft of Iraqi Jewish Heritage

Extreme right-wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (C) holding the Torah stolen from Iraq on January 22, 2015
By Alaa al-Lami | Al-Akhbar | February 3, 2015
Recently, Israel stole one of the symbols of Iraqi Jewish heritage, a rare ancient copy of the Torah. The incident went smoothly and quietly, with blatant collusion between Israel, the United States, the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, and the Jordanian authorities, amid suspicious silence from the Iraqi federal authorities and the Iraqi cultural scene, save for a few objections.
The Torah manuscript in question, known as the Iraqi Old Testament Scroll, was written using concentrated pomegranate juice on deer-skin parchments. The manuscript was seized by US forces, among other Iraqi antiquities, which survived the systematic destruction by the illegal Anglo-American invasion and occupation.At the time, it was said that many Iraqi archaeological treasures and large amounts of documents from the Iraqi state’s secret archives were transferred to Israel, ostensibly for restoration and preservation. In truth, however, this was the deliberate looting of Iraqi heritage.
At a ceremony held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli authorities publicly displayed that major Iraqi artifact, thus admitting that they had pirated part of Iraq’s heritage. The Israeli Foreign Minister explicitly admitted that the manuscript had been obtained from Kurdistan via Baghdad and Amman, and that it is now being used in daily prayer in the Foreign Ministry synagogue.
According to The Times of Israel, “After it was repaired and prepared for ritual use by a Jerusalem-based scribe, the scroll was placed in a case from Aleppo, Syria and brought over to the ministry.” Avigdor Lieberman, the extremist foreign minister of Israel, did not let the occasion go without repeating old Zionist cliches, saying that “the scroll’s journey from Kurdistan to Baghdad to Amman to Jerusalem was reminiscent of the destiny of the Jewish nation.”
Some like Iraqi writer Akil al-Azraki, one of the rare voices who commented on the affair, believe that the Israeli announcement exposed the lies of the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government had claimed the manuscript was sent along with other Iraqi artifacts to the United States for restoration.
Azraqi, citing information revealed by The Times of Israel, said, “The claim about the Torah scroll having been sent to the United States for restoration is a lie. The scroll was revealed not to have travelled to the United States, but to the Israeli embassy in Amman from that time until 2011. After the attack by Egyptian protesters on the Israeli embassy in Cairo, the manuscript was sent to Israel.”
After the Israelis celebrated their successful piracy, official Iraqi authorities were oddly silent. There was no immediate response to the reports, even in the Iraqi media and cultural scene, save for a few voices.
Recall here that the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities in Iraq Adel Shershab had said on January 19, 2015, “The Jewish archive should have been returned to Iraq since 2005, after it was removed on the grounds of restoring it,” stressing that this was part of Iraqi heritage and that his government would continue efforts to retrieve it.
However, the minister did not say anything in response to the Israeli theft. In turn, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture fell completely silent following the incident, although it had announced on May 13, 2010, that an agreement was conducted between Iraq and the United States, whereby the Iraqi Jewish archive and millions of documents that the US army removed from Baghdad following the US-led invasion in 2003 would be returned to Iraq. These include the archive of the dissolved Baath Party and many Iraqi historical artifacts.
A few days after the report on the Israeli theft, the media published remarks by a member of the Culture Committee in the Iraqi parliament calling on the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to issue a complaint to Washington over the matter.
The news agency that first published the remarks, which is owned by Fakhri Karim, a businessman and senior adviser to former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, tried to promote another account of what happened.
The news agency said the way the manuscript reached Israel was a “mystery,” describing what happened as “the loss of parts of the manuscript,” even though the Israeli foreign ministry had said in its ceremony that the scroll had come from Baghdad via Kurdistan, Jordan, and then Tel Aviv. Fakhri Karim, however, is known for his pro-Israel attitudes. Karim visited the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in Washington, as reported by renowned Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, in a story Al-Akhbar reported in August 2013 (in Arabic).
On the day Al-Mada reported the story, one of its most famous staff writers, Sarmad al-Tai, wrote a strongly-worded criticism of those who protested the theft of the Iraqi Torah scroll, accusing them of folly. He suggested that the Jews who were expelled by the Iraqis from their country in various ways had only retrieved their Torah.
Tai’s article is often quoted by the Israeli media, though some Iraqi Jews who live in Israel and beyond dispute such analysis. Refer, for example, to what Sasson Somekh wrote in his books, and novels by Jewish Iraqi writer Samir Naqqash, who wrote all his novels in Arabic and refused to write anything in Hebrew, considering himself an Iraqi until the last day of his cruel life in Israel. The article received strong responses, though they were few in number, on social media.
The article’s absurd and sinister logic is meant to exonerate the occupation and its allies in the Iraqi federal government, the KRG, and Israel, for the crime of stealing important Iraqi artifacts, produced in Iraq hundreds of years before the creation of the Zionist entity.
Extrapolated further, the same skewed skewed logic can be used to justify an artificial entity, built on injustice, aggression, and warmongering, which has killed, maimed, and displaced people by the millions amid global silence.
The official Iraqi position was not stated publicly until days after the incident. The Iraqi minister of tourism released a statement calling on Washington to return the manuscript to Iraq, and said what happened was unlawful confiscation of a part of Iraqi heritage.
However, the minister repeated previous claims purporting the manuscript had been in Washington. These claims were invalidated by remarks made by Israeli Labor MP Mordechai Ben-Porat, who has Iraqi Jewish ancestry. Ben-Porat said that it was Iraqi government officials who gifted Israel a number of precious historical manuscripts.
Ben-Porat’s account cannot be completely dismissed. It is indeed possible that insiders colluded with this theft and piracy. Recall that Lieberman said that the manuscript was moved from Baghdad to Kurdistan, Jordan, then Tel Aviv.
The theft of Iraqi antiquities is not unprecedented. Many Western powers, led by France, Britain, Germany, and the United States, have its looted artifacts in the last century and before.
Dr Mahmoud al-Saied al-Doghim, Research Associate, Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of London, wrote a paper titled, “One Hundred and Ten Years of US Theft of Iraqi Heritage.” The paper says that entire wings of the Louvre Museum, the Berlin Museum, and the British Museum would have to close down entirely, if they returned all the artifacts stolen from Iraq (and elsewhere).
Doghim estimates the number of stolen artifacts at more than one million. A single US university, the University of Pennsylvania, as he wrote, “Acquired more than 50,000 palettes and other artifacts shedding light on the history of Mesopotamia, and discrediting many of the biblical claims promoted by the Zionists.”
The American occupation forces hit the mother-lode following the invasion of 2003. The US forces seized a large part of the contents of Iraq’s 33 museums.
In effect, the astounding rich history of Iraq and its wealth of ancient historical artifacts is not the subject of dispute. However, it might be very surprising when one examines the numbers.
According to a statement made in March 2003 by former head of Iraqi antiquities Jaber Khalil Ibrahim, archaeologists believe that there are 500,000 archaeological sites in Iraq that remain undiscovered and unstudied, along with ten thousand registered and discovered sites. The sites include at least 25,000 highly important ones.
Only 15 percent of the sites in Iraq have been excavated, most of them located between the Euphrates and the Tigris. This area is considered the cradle of humanity, and from six thousand years ago, it was home to civilizations like the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, all the way to the Abbasids.
The US occupation of Iraq was a disaster for the country’s material heritage.
Eight-year-old summoned to French police station for “glorifying terrorism”, two hour interrogation
By Sylvain Mouillard – Libération – 28/1/2015
A school director has filed a complaint against the father of a fourth grader. He is also supposed to have inflicted “bullying” onto the schoolboy, according to the family lawyer.
January 8th, 2015, the day after the killing at Charlie Hebdo. In a primary school in Nice, fourth grade pupils discuss the tragedy with their schoolteacher. “Are you Charlie?”, he asks them. Ahmed, aged 8, says no. Why not? “Because they caricatured the Prophet. I am with the terrorists.” The teacher alerts the school headmaster, who decides to summon the boy, and then his parents, who reason with their offspring. But he does not stop there. On January 21st, the head of the school, which is located in the south of the city, lodged a complaint at the police station for “glorification of terrorism”, according to the lawyer for the family of the child, Mr Sefen Guez Guez.
Contacted Wednesday evening by Libération, the Minister of Education confirmed that a complaint had been filed against the father of the child, who is supposed to have made an “intrusion” into the school premises. And that “an alert had been sent to child protection services.”
“From there, the judicial machine is launched,” Mr Guez Guez, the lawyer defending Ahmed, explains to Libération.
Summoned on Wednesday afternoon to the police station in Nice, as part of an unofficial hearing, the child remained there for almost two hours.
What next?
The lawyer related the events in a series of tweets, under the moniker “IbnSalah” .
[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah Question from OPJ [police officer in the French Criminal Investigation Department]: “What does the word terrorism mean to you ? – I don’t know.” Ahmed. 8-year-old.
[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah “Did you really say that the journalists deserved to die? – It’s not true, I never said that.”
“Placing a child of 8 years in an unofficial hearing, is telling of the current state of hysteria around this notion of glorifying terrorism. In these kind of cases, pedagogy is necessary”, considers Mr Guez Guez, furious. “We do not think of leaving it there, the headmaster’s attitude is unacceptable.” He accuses him of inflicting “bullying” onto Ahmed by “putting him in the corner” and “depriving him of recreation.”
According to the lawyer, the child also recounted having endured this remark while he was playing in the sandbox: “Stop digging, you will not find a submachine gun to kill us all with.” Ahmed, a diabetic, had even once been deprived of taking his insulin, according to the lawyer. Contacted by Libération, the prosecutor of Nice confirmed the existence of this unofficial hearing, but did not have any further comment to make.
“In the current context, the school principal decided to report what happened to the police”, Commissioner Marcel Authier explained to the AFP [French Press Agency], noting that it is was absolutely not a judicial complaint. “The child and his father were summoned to try to understand how a boy of 8 years could be able to make such radical statements”, said the director for the department of public safety. “Obviously, the child does not understand what he said. We do not know where he found his declarations sentiment from”, he said. The primary school, closed, could not be reached on Wednesday evening.
~
Translated by Jenny Bright, Tlaxcala
“Glorifying terrorism”: French Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem supports the measures taken by Nice Elementary school
Politicians react after the summoning of Ahmed, 8-years-old, to the police station for having affirmed his support for the perpetrators of the “Charlie Hebdo” attack.
LIBERATION with AFP – January 29, 2015
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem supports the administration of the Nice Elementary School where studies Ahmed, 8, summoned to the police station yesterday for “glorifying terrorism” . The staff “responded appropriately”, the Minister of Education said this Thursday. “I say it strongly, not only has this team done well to behave as such, but its monitoring work, educational as well as social, is a useful endeavour and I thank them for it”, the Minister has insisted from the Presidential Palace where she had met with teachers, educators and associations.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem also affirmed that “when the father [of the schoolboy] came into the school facility, he had […] a brutal attitude, he even repeatedly entered without authorisation into the school building while threatening school staff. So it is for this precise reason and for that reason only that the school director filed a complaint against the father and not against the child.”
A statement which the child’s lawyer, Me Sefen Guez Guez, again challenged on his Twitter account.
[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah @najatvb Nonsense. I signed a police report that testifies to the contrary. Go ahead slandering and defaming, but the truth will always emerge. State lie.
On the right-wing scene as well, some were keen to show their full support for the school headmaster who made the complaint against the child, as for instance Christian Estrosi, UMP mayor of Nice, where the incident occurred, and Eric Ciotti (UMP).
[Tweet] Christian Estrosi Full support for the school headmaster who courageously denounced the facts. I await justice and firmness in front of parental responsibility.
[Tweet] Eric Ciotti I wonder about the collective hysteria merely because of the unofficial hearing of a child and of his parents after alarming declarations had been uttered.
[Tweet] Eric Ciotti Child heard at Nice, the police and teachers have perfectly reacted given the context, I fully support them.
More cautious, Chantal Jouanno (UDI) has wondered, in a message on Twitter, why “no one [has been] putting their trust in the principal and the police.”
[Tweet] Chantal Jouanno Child heard at Nice with his father. No one trusts the school headmaster and the police?
The communist deputy of the mayor of Paris, Ian Brossat, has not reacted on the substance of the case but to the declarations of some right-wing members.
[Tweet] Ian Brossat Those who rejoice at an 8-year-old being summoned by justice howl when their dear Sarkozy is in custody. #Go figure it out.
As for the National Islamophobia Observatory (OIC), he was indignant: “The National Observatory against Islamophobia is indignant about the treatment inflicted on Ahmed, a child of 8 years, summoned to a police station in Nice”, writes in a statement this authority attached to the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the representative body of Islam in France. “The fight against radicalisation should not lead to mass hysteria but must be inscribed within the Republican legal framework”, said the Observatory, which calls on the Minister of Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, “to ensure that such excesses do not happen again and to give priority to dialogue in similar cases.”
On Twitter, where the hashtag #Ahmed8 was used nearly 4000 times Thursday morning, users have already taken up the case, with irony , dismay , annoyance , humour , or to express their agreement with the decision of the school headmaster.
~
Translated by Jenny Bright for Tlaxcala
French Child Interrogated by Police for ‘Apology for Terrorism’
teleSUR | January 29, 2015
French police interrogated an eight year old child because he said that “[he was] not Charlie” in class, in the southern city of Nice on Wednesday.
The professor had begun a discussion with his students the day following the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine that left 12 dead – 10 journalists and two police. The child justified his refusal to identify with Charlie as “they [the journalists] caricatured the prophet. I am with the terrorists.” The school director, alerted by the teacher, decided to file a complaint for the French crime of “apology of terrorism” -similar to inciting terrorism- last week, against his father, confirmed the education ministry.
One week later, the child was interrogated for two hours in the police station of Nice, informed his lawyer, Sefen Guez Guez.
To the question “What does the word terrorism mean to you?” the child replied, “I do not know,” the lawyer tweeted. “Did you say that the journalists deserved to die?” “Wrong, I have never said that,” he said.
Guez denounced the “current state of collective hysteria that surrounds this notion of apology of terrorism.”
“In this kind of case, pedagogy is what we need,” he asserted, saying he intended to sue the director, which he accused of having abusively punished the boy. The boy claimed he was deprived of playtime, had to stand in the corner, and was even told the following while playing in the sand pit, “Stop digging, you will not find any Tommy gun to shoot us all.” As a diabetic, he was also deprived of his insulin shots, claimed his lawyer.
During the two weeks that have followed the Charlie Hebdo attack, over 70 people have been put on trial for “apology of terrorism,” sometimes just for shouting “Allahu Akbar” to municipal police. In Corsica 30 people were found guilty, including people with mental issues.
Stand-up comedian Dieudonne will be heard in a Parisian court on February 4 for having posted on Facebook “I am Charlie Coulibaly,” a combining the slogan “I am Charlie” and the name of the attacker of a Kosher supermarket, a few days after the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.
Charlie Hebdo, Zionism & Media Deception – Interview with Hafsa Kara-Mustapha
Brandon Martinez interviews Hafsa Kara-Mustapha on a January 18, 2015 episode of the Non-Aligned Media Podcast.
Hafsa Kara-Mustapha is a London-based journalist and political commentator who has written extensively about the Middle East for publications such as Middle East Magazine, Jane’s Foreign Report and El Watan newspaper. She also appears frequently on Press TV and Russia Today.
Brandon Martinez is an independent writer and journalist from Canada who specializes in foreign policy issues, international affairs and 20th and 21st century history. For years he has written on Zionism, Israel-Palestine, American and Canadian foreign policy, war, terrorism and deception in media and politics. Listeners can contact him at martinezperspective[at]hotmail.com or visit his blog.
A Rogue’s Gallery in Paris
We Aren’t Charlie
By Robert Fantina | CounterPunch | January 16, 2015
Much has already been said about the hypocrisy of world leaders, all of whom oppose free speech and freedom of the press to one degree or another, jumping on the ‘I am Charlie’ bandwagon and marching in Paris. Reminiscent of the massive demonstrations in support of the U.S. after 9/11, this rally was just another ‘feel good’ moment, full of photo opportunities for politicians masquerading as statesmen to use in future campaigns.
Let’s look for a minute at just some members of the Rogues Gallery that were on display in Paris.
French President Francois Hollande: As president of the country that, to hear the media and world leaders describe it, is now the front line of some war at which civilization is at stake, Mr. Hollande, of course, had to be there. So what if France banned pro-Palestine demonstrations last summer, when Israel was slaughtering thousands of defenseless men, women and children? Who cares if France assisted in the training of Muslim radicals to fight in Syria? They should have known that their victims were only to be other Muslims, not good, respectable non-Muslims who make a career out of mocking Islam. France taught them how to kill, but perhaps didn’t specify that it was only to be in Syria. But what is any of that? When Muslims, trained and armed by France, shoot up a magazine office in Paris, killing several people, and then go to a market to do the same, somehow we all become Charlie.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu: According to a recent report, Turkey has the distinction of currently imprisoning forty journalists, more than any other country in the world. But, what are facts, when a good photo op beckons?
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: Siberian journalist and blogger Dmitry Shipilov was jailed in Russia for three months in 2014, for the crime of “insulting a government servant in the course of his work.” Free speech isn’t quite as free in some places as it might be.
Tunisian Prime Minister Medhi Jomaa: Mr. Yasine Ayan is currently imprisoned for ‘defaming the army’. Mr Ayan, a civilian, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to three years imprisonment, due to Facebook posts he created in August and September of 2014.
Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu: Perhaps this writer saved the best for last. The word ‘hypocrite’ simply isn’t strong enough here, but unfortunately, a better one doesn’t exist. Israel, under Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership, arrests and jails people for Facebook posts critical of Israel. During last summer’s genocidal bombing of the Gaza Strip, press vehicles were not ‘collateral damage’; they were successfully targeted, killing the journalists riding in them. Israel pays university students to write blogs and other articles favorable to Israel. It prevents United Nations personnel from visiting the Gaza Strip to see firsthand the damage wreaked there by Israel.
Absent from this Paris love fest was a top representative from the United States. Is it possible that U.S. President Barack Obama knew that for the U.S. to go to France to show support for free speech would simply be too ludicrous? Perhaps he thinks of recent police assaults on reporters in Ferguson, Missouri. Or possibly Edward Snowden, living in asylum in Russia after having revealed the extent to which the U.S. monitors the actions of its own citizens, citizens around the world, and world leaders, comes to mind. Or could he have thought of Chelsea Manning, serving a thirty-five-year sentence for releasing the largest set of government-classified documents ever released to the public, information that was more than a little embarrassing to the government? Or maybe his thoughts were not quite so specific. Knowing that profit-making corporations control most of the ‘mainstream’ press in the U.S., Mr. Obama must surely be aware that, while many people may have the right to speak freely, there is no opportunity for them to do so. The airwaves only broadcast what their corporate masters demand. For example, Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in the thousands were occurring for weeks before any major news stations deemed them worthy of reporting.
Well, what is any of that, if people have a brand new hashtag (#jesuisCharlie), and get to feel a sense of shared outrage? And, to add icing to the rather stale and poorly-made cake, those perpetrating the crime were Muslims, a foreign-looking, foreign-sounding people who wear such things a hijabs and kufiyahs. ‘Different’, of course, must be bad. Just because nearly 25% of the world’s population is Muslim is no reason for people to learn anything about them or, heaven forbid, accept them as fellow human beings. If the media says they are terrorists, hating western society for its freedoms, then it must be so. One wonders why the nearly constant bombing of mainly Muslim nations hasn’t proven to them yet the benefits of western society.
Following the 9/11 attacks, flag lapel pins, and flag decals on car windows were all the rage. They enabled people far removed from the reality of suffering to feel that they were ‘doing their part’ and ‘supporting the troops’. It was never necessary to look at any motivations that might have been behind those attacks; after all, when politicians like New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were telling the public that ‘they hate us for our freedoms’, well, what else is there to say? Just because the U.S. supports the most repressive Middle Eastern regimes, bombs citizens of the nations it doesn’t support, kidnaps and tortures suspected ‘terrorists’ and generally causes untold suffering, is no reason, a true, flag-waving patriot would say, for them to hate us. No, it is our cherished freedoms (similar to those enjoyed by Canada, Australia, most of Europe, much of South America, etc.), that motivates their hatred.
And now we are all supposed to be Charlie, whatever that means. But a clever phrase, an attractive sign, and the mistaken belief that by waving it one is doing ‘something’, is sufficient for many people. Tomorrow we all go back to our own little worlds, while the same heads of state that piously marched in Paris throw bread and water into the cells of imprisoned journalists, control through wealthy corporations which events become public knowledge and which don’t, and continue to repress their own citizens and press. And then come together again, in a pseudo show of solidarity the next time some event occurs that the governments and media choose to exploit. That it will most likely be at the expense of Muslims is an additional tragedy.
Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).
Those who aren’t Charlie
By Richard Seymour | Lenin’s Tomb | January 15, 2015
Unfortunately, there are a few troublemakers in our midst, people who aren’t Charlie, who need to be rooted out and dealt with. As explained by Nathalie Saint-Cricq, chief political editor of France 2 (state-owned TV channel):
« C’est justement ceux qui ne sont pas “Charlie” qu’il faut repérer, ceux qui, dans certains établissements scolaires ont refusé la minute de silence, ceux qui “balancent” sur les réseaux sociaux et ceux qui ne voient pas en quoi ce combat est le leur. Eh bien ce sont eux que nous devons repérer, traiter, intégrer ou réintégrer dans la communauté nationale. Et là, l’école et les politiques ont une lourde responsabilité. »
“It is those indeed who are not “Charlie” who must be identified; those who in certain schools refused to observe the minute’s silence, those who “spout off” on social networks, and those who don’t see that this struggle is theirs. Well, they are the ones that we have to identify and treat, integrate or reintegrate into the national community. Schools and the politicians bear a heavy responsibility in this regard.”
In fact (a correspondent tells me, referring to this article), the provisions of recent legislation (13.11.2014) on the monitoring and reporting of school pupils’ speech and behaviour appear to have been put into effect for the first time as the names of children who failed to observe the minute’s silence were reported by teachers or supervisors to the head, then to the rectorat – the regional education administration – and on to the police and prosecuting authorities, to be analysed by the intelligence services, who decide whether the facts in question are serious enough to warrant formal investigation of the pupil and his/her family and social network.
More widely, there are a series of arrests and sentences being handed down for “justification/glorification of terrorism”, including that of a 28 year old man diagnosed with learning disabilities.
If you are not Charlie, would you please speak up so that we can have you arrested and flung in jail, or re-educated?




A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.