We recently had the Siege of Martin Place, eventually resolved by the swift execution of the Muslim nutter after he murdered two innocent hostages. We don’t muck about in Australia, given half a chance.
I didn’t post about this atrocity, mainly because I didn’t want to (tolerantly) endure any comments from misguided Charioteers who still believe that all the thousands of gruesome deaths around the world at the hands of Muslims have nothing to do with the cult of Islam, and that “most Muslims are nice people . . .” .
Like hell they are!
Now we’ve had the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, and again I wasn’t going to post until I heard one of our left-wing, bleeding heart, ABC TV presenters say, ” . . . but we must ask ourselves why we should want to publish cartoons that offend our nice Muslim friends . . . “. One of the others actually agreed with her – although I was encouraged that the third responded with “because we’ve been offending people with funny cartoons for centuries. It’s part of our culture.” or words to that effect.
After hearing that, I thought it might be a good idea for the Chariot to show a little positive support for Charlie, for Le Canard Enchaîné, for Private Eye, and for the multitude of other satirical publications which refuse to bow to the demands of religious gangsters of any persuasion.
Islam, its brainwashed adherents and its deluded apologists must be eradicated for the sake of a sane world where free-speech and inter-personal kindness and tolerance go hand-in-hand.
Innit?
Boadicea's Chariot 
It seems as if preaching religion is brainwashing while condemning religion is free speech.
Preaching religion is one thing – brainwashing people into believing that they have the right to retaliate to those who satirise their religious beliefs with the use of a kalashnikov is another.
I fail to see why any set of beliefs, and that is all religion is, should be safe from scrutiny, or satire.
Most Germans were never Nazis and most Japanese were not brutal killers. Most were also nice people. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a small, but dedicated minority calling the shots and a large minority happily going along with their plans. My grandfather has started opening up a lot about his life growing up in the Third Reich. He’s acknowledged that there are many parallels between Muslims today and Germans then.
It’s not so very long since England approved of state-sponsored execution of non-conformists – but we have relatively recently become enlightened and rightly censure those who have not become as civilised. Freedom to express opinions on everything and anything however has hardly been established for as long as we might wish to believe. Remember the anti-Communist purges in the USA after WWII. And a modern irony is that the condemnation of religions is largely practised by other religions, not by non-believers. Humour has a valuable rôle in expressing opinion – but rarely among religious practitioners. I wonder why?
Janus: in most cases it is true that the more zealous of religious practitioners are the most prone to condemn other religions, but not always. The more zealous of atheists, assured of their moral and intellectual superiority, at times heap scorn on their religious confrères. I’ve seen signs and advertisements by atheist groups in the US mocking religion and the religious. Not in a humorous, light-hearted way but in a chauvinistic, patronising way. Some atheists groups also attempt to remove all religious symbols from public life including attempts to ban public buildings from hosting Nativity scenes at Christmas or memorial crosses on public land.
C, I think I’d class atheism as a religion, given that its tenets are based on similar irrational ideas.
Janus: I agree with you. The Chinese are quite correct in their religious views. Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter, really.
I notice that you have taken “Je suis Charlie” as first person singular of the present tense of the verb “suivre”, Bearsy. I had assumed it was part of the verb “être”. That seems to be the case, following Nice Matin.
http://www.nicematin.com/grasse/video-deux-rassemblements-pour-signifier-que-grasse-aussi-est-charlie.2056126.html
Either way, the sentiment’s the same. Muslims have demonstrated that they cannot live in western democracies; their tender susceptibilities can’t cope and they don’t integrate. Best for all concerned if they return to the islamic country of ethnic origin. Why the French authorities stopped one of these thugs from leaving the country to fight in Iraq is beyond me. Bet they’re kicking themselves now.
In the meantime Boko Haram is continuing its massacres and destruction in Nigeria. Difficult to get rid of them.
Janus – England was one of the last European countries to sanction the execution of heretics…
… and it has been a long time since we sanctioned the execution of non-conformists.
As to intolerance – I agree that many religious, political and other non-conformists have suffered discrimination in our lifetime. But there is a difference between intolerance, discrimination and death.
Sheona, with my bad French I assumed suis was am. Thanks for the clarification. Just shows the dangers inherent in interpretation!
In this context it is “am”, Janus. It’s a bit like the scene in the film Spartacus where all the slaves claim “I am Spartacus”. But it doesn’t really matter as a gesture of support for Charlie Hebdo whether it’s “am” or “follow”.
Good afternoon, Bearsy.
I’m happy to join in the call for solidarity with Charlie, but I’m certainly not in favour of your plan for eradication of followers of one of the world’s major religions.
But thinking about it, I do admire your admirable restraint: it could have been all of them!
Good news now on French website. Both the brothers Kouachi killed and their hostage free and unharmed. The other thug Coulibaly in Vincennes also dead. Hope this doesn’t upset you, Araminta, but that seems like a happy ending.
Please also remember the Jewish victims of various terror attacks in France over the last few years.
It doesn’t upset me at all, Sheona, but it appears that some of the hostages are dead, which isn’t the happy ending I was hoping for. 😦
Christopher.
The third terrorist was holding his hostages in a Jewish supermarket, so it’s possible that some of hostages were Jewish.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11335980/Antisemitism-in-France-the-exodus-has-begun.html
Araminta: what I meant was that there has been an up-tick in anti-Jewish attacks in France in recent years with killings at Jewish schools. I simply find it disturbing that these attacks do not gain nearly as much public outcry as they should.
I’ve read quite a lot of coverage of these attacks, Christopher, but no, it hasn’t exactly hit the headlines.
The situation at the grocery in Vincennes still seems confused, as is inevitable. Let us hope that four people have not lost their lives at the hands of muslim thugs.
You are right, Christopher, that there has been a steady increase in the number of anti-semitic attacks in France, including desecration of Jewish cemeteries.
All dead, good. Trust the French to tidy up, who wants the bother and expense of trials?
Farage was right, too many fifth columnists these days, these two were born in France, hardly able to rescind their citizenship eh? About time we began deporting any of them for even the most minor infringement and stripping them of their European citizenship.
I personally think they should have the Roman principle of decimation applied. Mosques should be destroyed ‘to encourage the others’!
I see no reason but to repeat my long held adage, the only good one is a dead one. God rot our spineless politicians and their bloody multiculti in creating such a herd of ‘Trojan horses’
Bout time the Frogs reopened Devil’s Island!.
An interesting observation. Yesterday there were several reports of reprisals against a mosque or two and a kebab shop. Today they have completely disappeared from all newspaper sites. Don’t tell me a few more weren’t firebombed overnight. One wonders is there a European equivalent of the D notice? Strikes me as very suspicious.
Sheona: in general people in Paris are very nervous and many refuse to go anywhere. Those who have no choice usually go in large groups. One of my neighbours, an Algerian, has a sister who lives in Paris and she is giving me occasional updates on what is happening there.
Still can be found on The Telegraph, Tina.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11332467/Paris-shootings-lead-to-firebomb-attacks-on-French-mosques.html
Well spotted!
I had to Google it. It is certainly not easy to find if you are on the site!
And now it begins in Montpelier.
Yes, let’s irradicate the intolerant extremists – whether they claim to be serving Allah or God or the CIA. And the French decision today to reject their BS was the right way to deal with them. Fall-out is inevitable but the battle lines are clearly drawn.
AND while we are at it-
It takes an American court to bang up Abu Hamza for life!!!
Funny that isn’t it?
The British had exactly the same evidence and gave him free housing for him and his family and money to spend-wonderful, just bloody wonderful.
Guy Fawkes was right, get rid of the lot of them. What a spineless snivelling nation we have become AND we keep voting them back in!
We deserve anything we get until we are willing to stand up and be counted.
How many more of them are we keeping on the public purse?
Last night the ABC showed an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It was a breath of fresh air. Someone who finally said we need to stop looking at Islam as some cosy comfortable religion and acknowledge that it has a dark side.
I don’t know whether the link will work: but here it is. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4160195.htm
CO: the US also doesn’t have the European Court of Human Rights to answer to. The largest problem the UK has is that its Common Law system is not compatible with continental politics. Germany can simply ignore the ECHR, as can France, Italy, Spain or the Netherlands. Their legal codes are very clear in who is in charge and who is not in charge. The UK operates on a muddle and until very recently has bound itself tightly to codes and rulings which are only necessary to consider, not to obey.
Boadicea: I have a lot of respect for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She knows the subject very well and also knows the dangers of political correctness gone insane.
C, I’m not a lawyer but I suspect that the flexibility of English law allows ‘circumstances to alter cases’. I wonder why the now-dead French terrorists were not dealt with before now?
It was of course Blair who tied the UK up to this ECHR nonsense, probably to keep Cherie, the yooman rights lawyer, in work. Cameron should have untied us long before now.
Ironic really. Bliar manages to ignore yooman rights otherwise.
Good evening Bearsy and a happy 2015 to you and Boadicea, happier, hopefully, than for some citoyens de Paris.
I concur with much that has been written above and trust that, should the worst happen in the UK, the gentlemen from Hereford will be given free reign to resolve the issue by a positively administered leaden double tap to the forehead in the dark and away from the cameras unencumbered by political interference and correctness.
Much has been mentioned in the press of a ‘fifth column’, referring to immigrants with no allegiance nor goodwill towards their adopted country. In the UK I fear there is an additional problem. Yes, there are some first or even second or third generation immigrants who absolutely refuse to integrate at any level and others who wish us positive harm, but these are not the ‘fifth column’ per se. That shameful moniker in the UK belongs to the apologists for multi-culturalism and diversity who spout that we must accept the foreign attitudes and mores of a significant minority as mainstream lest sensitivities of said minority be ‘offended’ and who have been conspicuously quiet in recent days.
Bolleaux!
Next time you are in Brisbane go for a flat white at Tuppy’s shop across the road from the Story Bridge Hotel which was (and hopefully still is) run by an Asian family who speak authentic ‘Strine and are totally integrated into the Aussie dream. Likewise the Pakistanis who took over the local post office in Widnes from the couple who bought our English Cave.and then the grocery business next door and then the chip ship next door to that. OK, these are all family run with one son now the grocer and another the chief frier, but they all work all hours within the system and are absolutely sound. There is no way anyone should condemn or shun these people because of the actions of a few deluded raghead nutters or particularly some Islingtonista who decries opposition to unfettered immigration before pªªsing off to Granita for lunch with the Blairs.
Listen, this is what offends’ me, aka grips my fur. When Her Majesty visits an Arab country she wears a long sleeved, full length dress in deference to local sensibilities. My own sensibilities are offended by walking down my home streets and seeing immigrant women in niquabs and burkhas et al and men in overlong shirts and a choche’ed cap better suited to their local souk. And I do not like the finger-wagging teenager Malala Yousafzai in her scarf and shawls overstaying her welcome and lecturing me on yooman rites whilst bringing all of her extended family to join her in the munificent UK. I do not like men wearing an unkempt hedge (often light brown or, ahem, ginger) under their chins in place of a well groomed grey effort like mine. I do not like immigrants being allowed to stick a knife into some poor animal in contravention of all our animal welfare legislation because of ‘religious sensibilities’ and then have some air-headed council fifth-columnist decreeing that halal meat will be served to EVERY schoolchild of whatever religion come what may, my own grandchildren included. You want to live here, then lose your traditional customs or at least keep them within your four walls like homosexuality and breastfeeding and stabbing a goat in the neck. I just do not need any of these things in my face in pubic every day.
As an aside, we were up in Lisboa last weekend for the NSW’s birthday. We were sitting in a riverside eatery when a young lady on an adjoining table started breastfeeding her newbown. No problem whatsoever – she was discreet and ladylike, unlike the uncouth cow in the UK who blatantly slapped the baps out for her sprog recently and then went to the press when people complained.
In fact, do what they do here in Portugal, my adopted country into which I am still doing my best to integrate and where I can go for days without speaking or hearing English. If you arrive here illegally, expect to to taken straight to the airport and flown out to wherever – no yooman rites appeal allowed. Learn the language, because if you need to engage with the authorities you need to speak Portuguese or take with you someone else who does. You do not sit there honking for a taxpayer-funded interpreter or a multi-lingual card explaining how to claim your dole and council house and taxpayers’ handouts, ‘cos there ain’t none even for the Portuguese, let alone for you. So there!
What I do like is the expression on the face of an errant Portuguese truck-driving owner of a donkey driving licence (I kid you not) on a roundabout having some blond-haired, hairy foreigner hanging out of the car window berating him in fluent and the foulest Algarvian Portuguese on the error of his ways.
Tee hee.
OZ
G’day OZ, and a very Happy New Year to you and the NSW.
Many thanks for your comment – Boadicea and I happily agreed with every word and with the underlying sentiments. Good on ya!!
We have quite a few parallel experiences that I won’t go into, except to mention the daughter of an Indian guy who with his wife owned and ran a restaurant in a Canberra suburb. A great bloke and his wife was an excellent cook.
We got to know them reasonably well but had more extended conversations with the teenage daughter. She was fully trilingual in Hindi, standard English and young persons’ Canberran Strine. If many customers were expected, she would wear elegant saris and serve table with classic subcontinent grace, communicating with her Dad in demure Hindi.
If there were only a few customers, she would usually stay in her school uniform and do her homework in a corner unless called on to help, talking English to her Dad – correcting his grammar and vocabulary at the same time – and in varying degrees of colloquial sub-dialects with us and the occasional friend of hers who might drop in.
She was adamant that within the household she remained a good subservient Indian daughter, obedient to Mum and Dad, but that outside, in the real world, she was an ordinary Australian girl with ordinary Australian interests and she would dress and speak like any other Aussie Shelia, thank you very much! Her parents were apparently resigned to the dichotomy, if not exactly happy with it.
If anyone deserved the Australian of the Year award for services to integrated multiculturalism, it was her. I hope to see her soon as a Federal Minister for something worthwhile, heading for an even more rewarding position.
. . . and she had a great sense of humour, too.
G’day Sheona –
I give up !! Having seen the large sign on the Arc de Triomphe proclaiming, with great disregard for accuracy, grammatical or biological, “Paris est Charlie”, I have to admit that my chosen interpretation of what was meant by the original slogan has to be wrong.
But it grabbed your attention, and was, I assert, somewhat true to the subtleties of Charlie Brown (who is the Charlie in Charlie Hebdo) and to the multilevel meanings stacked in Le Canard Enchaîné.
Enfin, The Chariot is not Charlie Hebdo, but it does follow Charlie Faiblement (please forgive the tortuous bilingual punning). 🙂
Oz: a few weeks ago I brought the last of my US paperwork to Rathaus in order to have notarised copies made. Because of the nature of the documents, I could not open the letters without invalidating them. The official who saw me, a pleasant middle-aged lady, asked me to open them. I informed her that I could not open them without invalidating them and that either she, or the younger official across from her, had to open them for the copies to remain acceptable. She then handed them to her colleague who took a look at the seal and said “I can’t accept these instructions, they are not in the official language” and handed the letters back to his colleague. I again told them that I could not open them without invalidating said documents, but I would be much obliged if she would open them. After that, he advised her that it was perfectly acceptable to open the documents as I explicitly requested that she do so. There is no way that they will accept documents in anything but the “Amstsprache” — official language. It’s German or nothing.
G’day, Bearsy. Your Indian teenager sounds like just what Australia and the rest of the world needs. I wish her a long, successful and beneficial career.
Christopher – As we all know there is bureaucracy and then there is German bureaucracy. 😉 Portuguese bureaucracy runs the Hun a close second in my world-weary, frustrated opinion. I won’t even depress you with the calls on my time and wallet currently required to keep the bean counters in gainful (?) employment.
OZ
It would be unfair of me to label Danish bureaucracy ‘Germanic’; I prefer Kafkaesque. There is a sneering disregard of any hint that a citizen doesn’t understand the vagaries of the system and precious little chance of clarification. The system has been rendered even more opaque by the supremacy of the computer.
Janus: in Germany there is at least a sort of understanding that the bureaucratic nature of the state is overwhelming. There is also the off-chance that some bureaucrat somewhere will try to make the process slightly less painful. A few times I’ve even met helpful officials who have spoken on my behalf to other officials which simplified the process tremendously.
Oz: if that is what you think, then you need to apply for a permit to state that at the Buergersamtskritikenbuero followed by a trip to the Meinungserlaubnissbeduerfniszentralamt which will then need to be followed by a Bundesaemtlischesvorsprungleistungsfaehigkeitzentralamt Bureau visit. It makes me almost wish to go to a stable third world country where a few quid here and there can make it all go away.
In Zimbabwe, we overcome bureaucracy with a few well positioned dollars. Saves considerable time and frustration for all concerned.
Sipu, according to the meeja, the same is true here and the only crime is getting caught.
Christopher please do provide a translation! Just love to hear it.
CO: Citizens’ Agency Critique Bureau, Central Bureau For the Permission and Authorisation for Opinions and finally Central Federal Advancement through Efficiency Capabilities Through Central Agencies respectively.
Now what about in English?! 😀
Janus: Tosh, Bullocks and Hogwash.
Ah so, only in Chermany und ich danke Ihnen. All will be well once I have prised the cogs and sprockets of my translation device out of the ceiling.
Flick, the Gestapo.
With help from OZ
Oz: you would have to go to more bureaux for that! Some of them will be impossible to visit as most will die of old age before they finish reading the name.
🙂
OZ
Ach so! Ze tosh, ze bullocks und ze hogvasch! Now I get it! 😳
Christopher.
As the expression goes-
Well fuck my old boots!
No wonder they lost the war, too busy spelling it!
Quite extraordinary.
Thank God I am the world’s worst at foreign languages makes Welsh seem positively akin to Esperanto!
Do they really really exist or are you pulling the other leg?
Perhaps you had better not answer that, it is far more amusing to imagine that they do exist. I shall eschew the google. more like gargle.
CO: I shall leave the existence of said bureaux to your imagination, but will give you a list of official German bureaux:
Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien
Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht
Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik
One of my pupils pointed out that by the time she’d shouted “Rape!” in German – Vergewaltigung – it would all be over.
So, zer Cherman rapists have zer short fuse?
I heard of the EU translator working on a speech by the notoriously verbose Helmut Kohl. In mid flow, the simultaneous translation stopped abruptly and our ambassador with the headphones asked why. ‘Sorry’, said the interpreter, ‘I was just waiting for the verb’.
Between you and I, perhaps the Jedi masters are also closet Hun, for example Yoda, ‘So, young Luke, the power of The Force you are feeling’ or maybe ancient Romans, ‘All of the Empire into three parts divided is’ and I’m not rendering the latter bit in Latin because Bearsy will shout at me and correct my grammar (again). Sob!
OZ
I used to do business on a regular basis in Vienna with the Bundesamt für Zivilluftfahrt. That was quite long enough to get my tongue around.
OZ – now would I ever do that? 🙂
Oz: many instructors have criticised my writing for its tendency towards run-on sentences and passive voice. I asked them what they expected from a Hun, we have words longer than English paragraphs. Much of the time, the language is often written and spoken in a moderate passive voice. Some did not approve of statement that I would not accept criticism on my English skills from Americans.
Bearsy: although such words might be long and needlessly complex; they are also precise. One will know exactly what the terms mean although it might be best to read them carefully as skipping one part will change the meaning entirely.
In Austrria i had a boss with the title Herr Doktor Direktor Ingenieur Gerhard…….Dingsbums. A whole cv.
Austria I – whoops!
Bearsy – Perish the thought, but our ‘Hic leges Icenorum observantur’ grammatical exchanges of a few years ago will haunt me to the day they seal up The Cave for good. And you were right, dammit. Having said that, Latin, as is English and German, an incredibly precise language if used properly, but my Latin of forty years ago is now being diluted by another great Romance language, Portuguese.
Christopher – There is absolutely nothing wrong with your written English. In fact it is far better than most. I too refuse to take lessons from a nation that thinks that ‘aluminium’ has only four syllables or that the Harrier VTOL jet was designed by Lockheed. On the other hand, a mainstream British newspaper referred today to a car which shunted the car ahead as suffering “damage to its front bonnet”, whatever that is, (do cars have a ‘rear bonnet’?) and another which used the phrase ’empty podium` as a verb as in “Broadcasters can always empty podium the Prime Minister if he refuses to engage in the pre-election debates.”
Anyway, back to topic. It seems Belgian special forces have offed a couple of ragheads planning terrorist attacks in Verbier, captured one other and are presently engaged in mopping-up operations in Brussels.
Good.
OZ
There have been two articles in the local government organ, The Herald. Zimbabwe has always been a largely Christian country. Robert Mugabe himself is Catholic. However, two days ago there was an article denying that Zim was “Christian” per se, but that rather it was multi demoniational. That in itself, would have been reasonably harmless were it not for the timing and the fact that right next to it was a long screed about Islam and the Koran.
Today this article appeared. http://www.herald.co.zw/im-not-charlie-and-the-clash-of-freedoms/
The battle lines are being drawn up. Islam = anti-white and anti-West. Africa is rapidly falling under its curse.
Islam is being used as a justification to attack the West. The West has done little to help, by a) encouraging multiculturalism and then b) allowing the freedom of people to humiliate their neighbours.
Religion is not the problem. Multiculturalism is the problem. If there is only one religion, people do not fight. When there are two or more, side by side, they get at each others throats.
Sipu: China serves as a model for managing a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state. The Chinese let people think as they wish, let people dress as they wish and let people believe what they wish. So long as they don’t make a point of causing problems, they’re generally left alone. If problems are caused, there will be hell to pay. Things do go wrong in China and that isn’t to say that it is necessarily a “free” country, but in our efforts to feel superior to China we miss many lessons we can learn from the Chinese.
C, for my understanding: does China have satirical media?
I saw that the C of E doesn’t believe in poking fun at religion. So the muslims are not alone. The Pope does believe in free speech but would punch anybody who insulted his grandma. Not easy, eh?
Janus: yes, China does have satirical media. Because all media are controlled in China, satire is an excellent way to see the relative influence of figures or positions of countries. Many stories from North Korea that are later shown to be false such as Kim Jong-un being fed to the dogs (how many dogs, exactly, would be needed to eat that?) is one example of this.