Archie Kobain

Greeting my fellow time travelers…

Lots to talk about regarding France and the recent terrorist activity there but, in trying to take things chronologically, one of the first things that happened in 2015 was the shootings in Paris aimed at the weekly French publication which calls itself Charlie Hebdo.

I’d like to start by saying that I whole-heartedly and unequivocally condemn the actions of the shooters.  No one is a bigger believer in Freedom of Speech and/or Freedom of Expression than me!  …and I truly believe that no one should lose their life due to something they said or something they drew.

That said, I am NOT Charlie.

Quite honestly, I’m a little disturbed by everyone who decided to show their support for Charlie Hebdo by declaring “Je suis Charlie” or I am Charlie.  Seriously?  Charlie Hebdo is an intolerant, disrespectful, vulgar and offensive magazine.  So if you are Charlie, that makes you intolerant, disrespectful, vulgar and offensive. N’es pas?

Again, I’m not saying that the shootings in Paris were by any means justified but they were absolutely provoked and no one should have been surprised when this happened.  We were all in grade school once.  What happened when you kept teasing someone, particularly someone who had a big bully cousin?  Answer: Eventually you got your ass kicked, that’s what.

Let’s go back to the things I talked about in my last few articles and try to gain some perspective. Imagine living in a culture where religion is more important to you than your family, your country or your career.  Then imagine an organization that continuously insults you and your religion in the deepest way.

The Muslim community had reached out to Charlie Hebdo multiple times asking that they not use images depicting their prophet, Mohammed, as it was something that was inappropriate and highly offensive to Islam.  Charlie Hebdo, of course, continued to publish offensive images of Mohammed.  What makes matters even worse and what I believe unites the Muslim “home team” against Charlie Hebdo is anger, as Charlie Hebdo continues to frame all Muslims as terrorist and Mohammed as the head/leader of both terrorism and Islam.

Imagine for one second the public outrage that would occur in uber tolerant America if we had a publication that were to continuously insult a particular ethnic or religious group.  Imagine a publication that would, on a weekly basis, make fun of Jews, the Torah, or depict rabbis as terrorist and blamed all Jews for the actions of a few fanatic Jews back in Israel.  What if there was a publication that picked on blacks and when Freddie Gray was mistreated and subsequently died in Baltimore, the publication’s front page made fun of it and said, “blacks die here – whites get to live”.  Of course, if you are anti-Jewish you are antisemitic and if you are anti-black you are racist.  But since there’s no cool special name for it, I guess it’s OK to be anti-Muslim.  In fact, the whole rest of the world will back you and be Charlie with you.

By the way, my analogy of “blacks die here – whites get to live” is dead on.

Not too long ago, a Syrian child drowned as he and he his family fled the conflicts in their home country.  So what did Charlie Hebdo do?  Although they rejected the idea of putting it on the front cover, they nevertheless included a cartoon in their magazine that depicted Jesus walking on water next to a drowning child.  The captions said, “Proof that Europe is Christian. Christians walk on water…Muslim kids sink.”

Are you still Charlie?

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Now, I get that everyone who stood in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo felt that they were standing for freedom of speech and they were appalled at the actions of the attackers but what we all have to understand is that the freedom to speak is a great power that is not afforded to everyone on Earth …and also that with that great power to speak freely comes great responsibility and Charlie Hebdo is repeatedly, grossly irresponsible with that power.

So to be clear, no one is a bigger advocate for freedom of speech than I am and I am absolutely not saying that anyone deserved to die because of the things they said or wrote and the bad guys were absolutely not justified in anyway… but I am saying that I am absolutely not Charlie.  Je ne suis pas Charlie…

In a cartoon that was removed from most Internet search engines immediately after the shootings in Paris at Charlie Hebdo, the paper had run a cartoon that said, “Still No Attack on France”.  And the bearded turbin-wearing character is saying to himself, “oh, that’s right, we have until the end of January”.

So, really…  You are going to repeatedly insult one of the largest religions on the planet, the one known for having extremist who regularly plan attacks, and then you are going to taunt them and say, “why haven’t you come and attacked my country?”

Two attacks later…  How is that working out for you?

Remember, in the US there are no laws preventing you from saying whatever you want, however, these days, you can be sued, you can be fired, etc., etc…  No one can regulate what you are thinking but it’s common sense to use your freedom to speak responsibly.

I wish I remember who said this as I would love to give them full credit but I once heard it said, “there are no laws preventing me from calling you a nigger but doing so does not make me a great advocate for freedom of speech”.

Truer words are seldom spoken.

As a final thought, although it was a relatively small and ill-planned terrorist attack, the United States recently had a little ISIS inspired event in California.  I checked all over Facebook for French people who had Americanized their profile.  Didn’t see any.  Perhaps the terrorist will have to take out someone deeply offensive, like Justin Bieber, before we get the attention of the general French population?

That’s all I have for today.  Gotta run.

Vive la France!

– Arch