Charlie Hebdo: FULL SPEED AHEAD!
Tubularsock has been mulling over this entire Charlie Hebdo cartoon mess.
It was truly fantastic to see people actually get off their butts and go to the streets in a statement of freedom of speech. And then Tubularsock realized that it was happening in France not the United States. So it isn’t as fantastic as it appears because the French have always gone to the streets in protests.
Years ago while Tubularsock was bopping around France he bumped into a huge protest in the streets of Paris himself. Tubularsock doesn’t speak French but he does drink French wine which gives him credibility in understanding.
The protest Tubularsock finally figured out was in favor of the French librarians being on strike.
No, you got that right ….. The French LIBRARIANS! (les bibliothécaires Français)
Tubularsock marveled at the size of the protest and was flabbergasted at the support for Librarians. WTF?
Leaving the protest and cutting through to smaller back streets Tubularsock ran smack into truck loads of the French military decked out in riot gear.
Come to find out street protest in France get out of hand often.
Side note: From that day forward Tubularsock has never had a library fine for late books. Librarians are a force to contend with! Some things just stick with you.
The French live in a cafe culture where people are out in the public sphere all the time and they know what is politically going on not only in France but in the world AND they express their opinion about it publicly.
And to see Voltaire’s statement being paraded about, “I may disagree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”, was music to Tubularsock’s core beliefs.
Which brings up some bottom line issues for Tubularsock.
Tubularsock really likes to at least attempt to take people as individuals and not as groups. On a one to one bases even an ass-hole has some good qualities. So grouping people as “All Moslems, All Jews, All Christians, All Atheists” doesn’t really make too much sense if you want to understand somebody else that isn’t like you.
And when “All Moslems, All Jews, All Christians, All Atheists” are grouped like that then usually they are grouped so as to ascribe some negative aspect to them. Not that you can’t dig some shit up about all of them but in general people are individuals.
That is where some issues come up that Tubularsock is attempting to explore.
Charlie Hebdo cartoons have always covered everyone across the board and make satirical positions whether using cartoons or words to push their view. And hell satire is funny.
But why is it that in France as Chris Hedges points out, “. . . a Holocaust denier, or someone who denies the Armenian genocide, can be imprisoned for a year and forced to pay a $60,000 fine. It is a criminal act in France to mock the Holocaust the way Charlie Hebdo mocked Islam.”
Why is that?
And Hedges continues to point out that, “French high school students must be taught about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but these same students read almost nothing in their textbooks about the widespread French atrocities, including a death toll among Algerians that some sources set at more than 1 million, in the Algerian war for independence against colonial France.”
Why is that?
And just why is it that the media seemed to have missed the 2000 Nigerian, mostly women and children” that were slaughtered by Boko Haram the Islamist group and focused all their attention on the Paris attack.
Well Tubularsock does find Russell Brand’s explanation having some merit. Brand says that we (Western peoples) can identify with the Paris attack because we live in that type of environment ourselves while a “village” seems a stretch to identify with because it is not familiar. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg8Y0WpbfZw)
Why is that?
Have we as a people EVER really had the ability to walk in the other guys moccasins?
Tubularsock thinks not ………
And the reason Tubularsock thinks not is because if we had that ability we a long time ago would have stopped this constant killing and taking other peoples life, liberty and pursuit of happiness!
It appears to Tubularsock as institutions “All Moslems, All Jews, All Christians, All Atheists” have all created reason why walking in the other guys moccasins is of value but continue in reality to justify killing so as to grab those moccasins off their dead feet!
Now Tubularsock is not interested in taking a stand and walking out on the end of the limb without it being a true stand for a core belief. Tubularsock is not interested in riling people up without a good reason. Of course, in truth, Tubularsock can ALWAYS find a good reason. And Tubularsock can go off the deep end for the fun of it as well.
But poking someone with a stick doesn’t usually get a positive understanding in return.
Charlie Hebdo did a lot of anti-Muslim theme cartoons but they did a lot of anti-Pope cartoons and anti-political cartoons. They would have gone after the Jews but didn’t …. as Carlos Latuff, the Arab Brazilian freelance political cartoonist, so aptly conveys the double standard below:
You just have to remember if they make fun of YOU it’s not funny. If they make fun of THEM it’s funny.
Well Tubularsock can stretch his emotional view across this entire divide.
Tubularsock believes, the world as we know it is such a painful place that we should not rile people up. Just let them believe as they wish. But then again Tubularsock believes, fuck all that maybe a cartoon depicting Allah as a pile of pig shit will settle it.
And those extreme views rattle around in Tubularsock’s head ALL THE TIME!
But more to the point ……. Tubularsock doesn’t have a bone to pick with Allah or God, or Mohammad, or Jesus, or Buddha for that matter. No, Tubularsock leaves all the fantasy manipulations to Disney.
Tubularsock has a bone to pick with the ignorant Air Force Captain who reads his Bible and then climbs into his jet and bombs the fuck out of his fellow humans beings.
Tubularsock has a bone to pick with that ignorant mujahid who reads his Koran and then marches off to bomb the fuck out of all those who don’t believe as he does.
Tubularsock has a bone to pick with the governments that play the ignorant to achieve domination over others.
But most of all Tubularsock has a bone to pick with all those who don’t realize that we are all one …….. now how fucking simple is that?
This entire Charlie Hebdo cartoon mess falls back to that playground scene most everyone who went to grade school has witnessed.
You know ……. “if you step over that line I’ll punch you”.
And what ALWAYS happens?
Yep.
And just like the playground scene there are the background players who egg each side on.
And Tubularsock still has the 10 year old stance when it comes to being “warned” not to do something. Tubularsock’s “adult-self” likes to be reasonable and rational about decision making but confronted with that WARNING/THREAT from anyone over anything and Tubularsock ALWAYS jumps to his 10 year old self.
Now Tubularsock would like at this point to say that he had overcome his 10 year old response for his adult-self response. But in truth the only thing that has changed is that when someone gives that WARNING/THREAT Tubularsock steps back three paces. Not to take an adult appraisal of the situation but to give himself more speed as he head butts the fucker.
Well, so much for all those anger management sessions.
Just when will mankind wake up and say enough? You know the answer as well as Tubularsock and that is why Tubularsock just happens to be selling bulletproof vests.
Tubularsock 