Killing cartoonists clearly can't be allowed. There is no absolute authority for jihad, crusades or lacking a self-depreciating sense of humour prepared to rip loved ones from the lives of relatives and friends. The most common 'cause' of killing and war in primitive societies is revenge, generally pretty dumb.
On the day Charlie Hebdo was struck, Boko Haram was doing much worse in Nigeria and 2000 died. Yemen was pasted again. 25 million or so have died in wars after WW2 and any number of people have had peaceful lives destroyed by various forms of imperialism. We understand revenge films where the child not slaughtered by Barbarians grows to destroy them. There are at least questions we should be asking on whether fundamentalist Islam is radicalising terrorists, or the various imperialisms and the conditions these create in countries kept poor and run by installed despots. Institutional religion is no use to me and I detest the hostility of those believers who would have me respect belief in superstition,clearly false history, varieties of justified sexism, racism, apartheid and selfish chosen-peopleism. This extends far beyond religion and to false ideas that the Greek Enlightenment was the zenith of civilisation. This was a sexist, racist, slave economy. Western democratic free trade liberalism is such a lie as to be merely another control fraud, not the end of history. There is little clarity. We stand as Charlie for free speech, yet do nothing against indecent Saudi floggings and beheadings. We have never produced democratic foreign policy, population control or sustained peace. Now we are arresting people protesting publicly against Charlie, somewhat contradictory to say the least. All that seems clear is that we are all Charleys, without much of a system to openly discuss what is wrong, leaving tyranny anywhere a threat to freedom everywhere. -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
