2015: The year Charlie Hebdo was hailed, blasted and misunderstood

This picture taken on January 18, 2015 shows a giant half-broken pencil
near the headquarters of French satirical newspaper  
Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Image: Joël Saget/AFP/France 24

By Benjamin Dodman in France 24

IN THE 12 months since the gruesome attacks on its Paris office, Charlie Hebdo has been praised, mourned, cursed and debated by a global panel of commentators, politicians and religious zealots - most of whom have never read it it, let alone understood it.

By all accounts it has been a tumultuous year for the satirical weekly – one that began with carnage, brought the cash-strapped paper fame and scrutiny, and left its traumatised survivors holed up in a bunker with more subscribers than they ever dreamt of having.

Charlie had been a household name in the French media landscape, its notoriety surpassed by that of its most illustrious cartoonists, including Jean Cabut (known as Cabu) and Georges Wolinski, two icons of French popular culture, both of whom were murdered a year ago by jihadist gunmen, along with six other staff members.

And yet its actual readership, barely reaching the tens of thousands, was a tiny – and shrinking – minority in a country where few people still read the papers, least of all in print.

ANZAC Day - now we're fighting to spy for torturers and to hide how NZ soldiers die?

Cartoon: Malcolm Evans/TDB

By MARTYN BRADBURY of The Daily Blog

SO this ANZAC Day we are fighting to spy for torturers and hiding the manner in which NZ soldiers die?

While we stand at attention and bow our head solemnly to do our pious bit for ANZAC Day, what exactly are we fighting for this year?

While we stand at attention and bow our head solemnly to do our pious bit for ANZAC Day, what exactly are we fighting for this year?

Apart from siding with butchers and dictators who have helped create the new generation of Muslim fanaticism, it appears we are fighting to spy for torturers and the ability to hide how NZ soldiers die in battle.

Our need to worship the dead for some sense of identity has blinded us to the mistakes that drive war and that’s why we are silent on the outrageous hypocrisy of entering a new war to suck up to America.

The Malcolm Evans gallery at The Daily Blog

Cartoon: Malcolm Evans/TDB

On Charlie Hebdo: An open letter to my 'Anglo' friends

What Voltaire might have said to Charlie Hebdo - and the answer below. Cartoon: Ironman

'We are all trying to find the narrow path – defending the French Republic against the twin threats of fundamentalism and fascism (and fundamentalism is a form of fascism). But I still believe that the best way to do this is to fight for our Republican ideals - secular and democratic.'*

By Olivier Tonneau writing for France's Mediapart

Dear friends,

LAST week, a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Muhammad, by men who screamed that they had “avenged the prophet”. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all sorts of criticism started pouring down the web against Charlie Hebdo, who was described as Islamophobic, racist and even sexist.

Countless other comments stated that Muslims were being ostracised and finger-pointed. In the background lurked a view of France founded upon the “myth” of laïcité, defined as the strict restriction of religion to the private sphere, but rampantly Islamophobic - with passing reference to the law banning the integral veil. One friend even mentioned a division of the French Left on a presumed “Muslim question”.

As a Frenchman and a radical left militant at home and here in UK, I was puzzled and even shocked by these comments and would like, therefore, to give you a clear exposition of what my Left-wing French position is on these matters.

Firstly, a few words on Charlie Hebdo, which was often “analysed” in the British press on the sole basis, apparently, of a few selected cartoons. It might be worth knowing that the main target of Charlie Hebdo was the Front National and the Le Pen family. Next came crooks of all sorts, including bosses and politicians (incidentally, one of the victims of the shooting was an economist who ran a weekly column on the disasters caused by austerity policies in Greece).

‘Je suis Charlie’? Not I. Here’s why…

A profile on the role of satire in France a la Charlie Hebdo via Vox.

By Richard Fidler at Canada's Life on the Left

MILLIONS of people took to the streets in France and elsewhere in Europe and North America to protest the brutal murderous attacks by Islamist extremists on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket in Paris.

At Charlie Hebdo, the death toll of 12 included the paper’s editor and some of its major cartoonists; a further 23 staff members were wounded. Several more were murdered at the Jewish grocery store.

The unifying slogan of these protests is “Je suis Charlie!” - I am Charlie, the implication being that the targeted publication — notorious in France for its ridicule of minority religious beliefs, especially Islam — had merely been exercising its right to “freedom of expression.”

That is the theme being propagated by the establishment media and politicians. Many on the left have chimed in. NDP [New Democrats] leader Thomas Mulcair in Canada says it was a “terrible attack against democracy and freedom of the press.” Québec Solidaire leader Amir Khadir, speaking for the party, said it was a “black day for free speech".

Free speech?

Creating the cartoons that led to the Charlie Hebdo assassinations

Charlie Hebdo, Before the Massacre from The New York Times on Vimeo.

NINE years ago two Paris-based filmmakers, Jerôme Lambert and Philippe Picard, who have directed many documentaries for French public television, made a controversial documentary, Cabu: Politiquement Incorrect (Cabu: Politically Incorrect), about one of Charlie Hebdo's most famous cartoonists.

The documentary hasn't yet been released in English, but an almost six-minute section of it about the decision-making process around publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad has been edited as a short package and published online on Op-Docs at The New York Times.

Ultimately, the publication of this cartoon - and others – by the satirical magazine led this week to the tragic assassination by two jihadist gunmen of the cartoon creator, the editor and eight other people and two police officers protecting them in a savage raid on the publication’s office.

By the end of three days of blood-letting in Paris, including a double hostage siege, 17 innocent people had been killed plus three extremist gunmen - shot dead by French elite security forces. More than 3.7 million people and global leaders on Sunday marched in rallies across France - including the French Pacific territories - to pay tribute to those who lost their lives.

According to the NYT's website for Op-Docs, it is a "forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists". And there is an open invitation for submissions. Here is the introduction to the video - Charlie Hebdo, Before the Massacre:

#JeSuisCharlie : Cartoonist Plantu explains why taunting world leaders is essential

CAFÉ PACIFIC has been prompted with this column about Plantu and an interview he did last year before this week’s barbaric attack on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo leaving 12 cartoonists, media people and a couple of policemen dead. And that's without adding the latest double siege casualties).

Queries in response to an earlier blog posting with questions by Robert Atack and others on whether Charlie Hebdo ran any cartoons about the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents in 1985 have not been answered here definitively.

Robert asked: “Did [Charlie Hebdo] ever publish any Rainbow Warrior cartoons?”

And then added in his next posting 37 minutes later: “This might be an opportune time to lay a [wreath] for Fernando Pereira. The freelance Dutch photographer, of Portuguese origin, who drowned when French Intelligence (DGSE) sabotaged and sank the Rainbow Warrior ship, owned by the environmental organisation Greenpeace, on 10 July 1985.”

An infamous example of state terrorism three decades ago this July!

RSF calls on media outlets to publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons in defiance of ‘barbarity’

 
Charlie Hebdo getaway video from Trung Tâm VBig.

THE PARIS-based media freedom organisation Reporters Sans Frontières has called on global media editors to publish Charlie Hebdo’s political and religious cartoons as a response to the shocking “black Wednesday” attack on the weekly satirical magazine.

Renowned internationally for its scathing and hilarious cartoons, Charlie Hebdo has always put its fight for freedom of information first, says RSF.

And now its staff has been “decimated by an unspeakable act of violence that targets the entire press. Journalism as a whole is in mourning".

Many social media posters are asking is this a new “freedom of speech war”. Supporters are declaring "Je suis Charlie" - "I am Charlie" in vigils of solidarity.

“But,” warns RSF, “freedom of information cannot shrink in the face of barbarity and yield to blackmail by those who assail our democracy and what our republic stands for. In the name of all those who have fallen in the defence of fundamental values, let us continue Charlie Hebdo’s fight for free information.

KKK cartoon fallout in Oz exposes rightist party

WHILE an Indian cartoonist has defended his controversial lampooning of the Australian police as Ku Klux Klan extremists amid a hostile reaction from Ocker media followers, a Klansman claims his movement has infiltrated a political party.

The cartoonist, Prasad, of Delhi's Mail Today, depicted an Aussie police badge pinned to a character with the notorious pointed white hood of the KKK following a controversy over race-based treatment of Indian students and a murder.

The speech bubble reads: "We are yet to ascertain the nature of the crime".

It was published as an indictment of homicide investigators in Victoria "being unable to say if the recent killing of 21-year-old Indian student Nitin Garg in a Melbourne park was racially motivated", reports News.com.au. A mixture of grief and anger marked Garg's funeral at the weekend.

The website quoted Prasad as saying: "I was responding to the news about the Australian authorities and police refusing to acknowledge the underlying racism in the attacks against Indian youth."

Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that the Ku Klux Klan says it has infiltrated an anti-immigration party preparing to contest seats at the next federal election. The paper reports:

David Palmer, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Australia, said several Klan members had secretly joined Australia First, a far right party that announced yesterday that it had the numbers to register as a political party.

"We aren't interested in actually registering as a party," Mr Palmer said. "Our main idea was we would move in and take back what we consider our Aryan parties.

"[The Klan] is a white pressure group; a white social group for white families. But also a reserve in case the ethnics get out of hand and they need sorting out."

When he made similar claims about the infiltration of One Nation, the party formerly led by Pauline Hanson, two of his associates were expelled from the party. The NSW director of Australia First, Jim Saleam, vehemently denies his party has been infiltrated by the Klan.

The Australian has condemned the caricature, saying in an editorial this is "no time for crude cartoons":

It is offensive and plain wrong, but the Indian cartoon depicting Victoria Police as akin to the Ku Klux Klan reveals the hysteria on the sub-continent over the safety of Indian nationals in Australia. Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard was right to condemn the cartoon in New Delhi's Mail Today. There is no evidence police are acting in other than a professional manner in attempting to solve crimes involving Indians.

Cartoon: Prasad, Mail Today.

• Indians and Australians discuss deepening row
• We have infiltrated party: KKK
• Indian paper defends Ku Klux Klan cartoon
• Foreign students tell of fear on the streets
• Attackers set Indian man on fire