Talk:Charlie Hebdo
My parents used to read this--"Shut up, Brx." 13:41, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
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[edit] far left
The left wing does not oppose islam or Stalinism so how can the paper be left wing? Talsley (talk) 15:36, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Charlie hebdo struck by a terrorist strike!
Today, 2 men armed with kalachnikov enterd the building and aimend for som renowned drawers. They killed 12. Today is a black day.
[edit] Charlie Hebdo conspiracies
I have been referencing this website for a while, and found it... rational.
Only now have I felt the compunction to register, and post.
The Charlie Hebdo incident is fairly self-contained, so it is I think surprising that more on it has not been written on this site.
My main doubts centre around the video that was shown on mainstream media, of the 2 gunmen immediately after the masscre in the office. The broadcast video is edited to omit the moment (as reported) of the injured Muslim policeman's dimise by a shot to the head. However, a 'leaked' unedited video shows this not to be the case. There is no recoil from the AK47, no movement from the police officer as the impact from a shell would cause, and no blood. But, there is a puff of dust about one foot in front of the officer's head - said to be the discharge from a blank shell. Also, the loose shoe incident, the ID in the car, the shouts of vitriol from the killer that no Muslim would phrase that way, the police car that was fired at, backed away in front of the get-away car yet didn't pursue - all don't add up.
As with these things, there are often simpler explanations than what the conspiracy theorists claim - which is where this website comes in... Perhaps someone is planning on adding in a section? I think that this incident is so compact, with plenty of conspiracy fodder, that it would make a good debate - although they rarely happen, because folk seem to be convinced they're right, and nowt else can be... I'm not sure on most things (apart from I like beer), so end up reading views from both sides which rarely lead to a conclusion for me. Often the conspiracies are too far fetched, but there are too many missing details, 'lost' data and refusals to awnswer questions from the official explanations. Maybe I should start a site called WhoKnowsWiki...
Anyhow, my first post, here goes! Unsigned, by Grayarea (talk)18:05, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
- It's true that the moment when Ahmed Merabet was executed by Chérif Kouachi was not part of the original news video. Nothing unusual or sinister about that -- it is not general practice for news TV to depict death dramatically. It is also true that when the moment was later shown on youtube it looked as if the shot missed. However, Merabet was just as dead, so it hardly matters. I don't know why you write that the loose shoe incident "doesn't add up." The shoe fell out of the getaway car and the assassin retrieved it. He expected to need it, you see. Ithaca8 (talk) 18:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Ok, sure, sod the shoe. And the ID.
It is not general practice for news TV to depict death at all, let alone dramatically. But why fasle report? They had access to the unedited version (different agencies carried out their own editing) - why did they unviersally report that the Merabet was finished off with a shot to the head? No recoil from a powerful gun? No chase from the police car?
I must make it clear that I am not in support of any conspiracy, just that there appear here to be a concentration, in a small space of time, of unanswered anomolies...
Thanks for taking the time to consider this!
Unsigned, by Grayarea (talk) 16 February 2015 (UTC)
[edit] strongly critical of religion, especially Islam?
The words above apepar in the lede. While I can certainly agree that Charlie Hebdo was (and still is) strongly critical of religion, I couldn't disagree more on the fact that Islam was more aimed than the other religions. In fact the most privilegied target of Charlie Hebdo has always been the Christian religion and in particular the Roman Catholic Church. I refer to this article of the French newspaper Le Monde or this other one from the French l'Express. 195.70.12.136 (talk) 15:57, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- Neither of those are as substantive or academic as the cite we currently have that states that they're more anti-Muslim than anti-clerical. Ikanreed (talk) 16:02, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- IKanreed -- did you read those articles? I'm familiar with both of them from the CH episode, and they're both substantive. also, the first article we had there, the BBC one referencing "more anti-Islam than anti clerical" doesn't actually say that; it's hust a straight news report on some anti-Islamic claims. I'd love to get your take on the L'Express and Le Monde pieces and tell me why you think they're lacking. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 16:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- Neither of the articles actually contest the claim, at least according the the translations I got from google? I dunno why you're holding them up against a professor saying that it's more anti-Islam. But hypothetically accepting that line of argument, what would be a valid rewrite of the intro sentence? Ikanreed (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- "Against the translations I got from google..." Sigh. i'm not even going to touch that. "a professor saying that it's more anti-Islam." Never mind the appeal to authority, there. Do you know that professors do very little else besides debate and disagree with each other. I simply inserted the refs after the claim that CH is anti-clerical, which it is, and I will change "especially Islam" into "notably Islam," because, regardless of its general hate-on for religion, it is notable for its attitude towards Islam. I will bet that you and most other Anglo readers of the wiki and Anglos more generally only know it for that reason. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 17:21, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- I get it, appeal to authority isn't great, but I'm not seeing the contrary evidence. I don't fucking read french, so I don't know what else you expected me to do with those short articles the IP linked. Ikanreed (talk) 17:23, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- I dunno, but not judging the relative merits of something you can't read seems like a reasonable thing. Look, the IP's articles don't undo the idea that CH has a particular hate-on for Islam, but they do set that hate into a generally critical attitude towards religion in general on the part of CH. look, I got my ass handed to me by a bunch of people who know way more about French politics, history, society and culture when I got on my high horse and said a bunch of things about CH after the attack, so I try to remember to default to the side of "read this and shut up, except to ask questions." Which is all I did to the article. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- Okay, sure. But in what I've got in front of me, I see 4 sources that say Charlie mocked religion(well known fact, and already part of the lede) and one that explicitly expresses the notion that they were particularly hard on Islam. In the face of that, I'd kinda expect an explicit rebuke of that point to remove the notion from the article. Is that too crazy? I'm trying to operate on a source-against-source synthesis approach. I claim exactly zero personal insight here. Ikanreed (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- The notion hasn't been removed from the article, the emphasis has merely shifted a tiny bit. You want to really engage with the question? Read a bunch of back issues of CH and a whole bunch of scholarship on French comics (of which there must be a ton, given how important graphic commentary and narrative is to French culture) -- and by "scholarship," I mean stuff that's grounded in a solid knowledge of French history, society, politics and culture, not stuff written by fly-by-night journalists who spend a year or two in a country and are then taken to be experts. See if that prof you mentioned above has a book or some academic articles. And learn French. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 17:46, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- Okay, sure. But in what I've got in front of me, I see 4 sources that say Charlie mocked religion(well known fact, and already part of the lede) and one that explicitly expresses the notion that they were particularly hard on Islam. In the face of that, I'd kinda expect an explicit rebuke of that point to remove the notion from the article. Is that too crazy? I'm trying to operate on a source-against-source synthesis approach. I claim exactly zero personal insight here. Ikanreed (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- "Against the translations I got from google..." Sigh. i'm not even going to touch that. "a professor saying that it's more anti-Islam." Never mind the appeal to authority, there. Do you know that professors do very little else besides debate and disagree with each other. I simply inserted the refs after the claim that CH is anti-clerical, which it is, and I will change "especially Islam" into "notably Islam," because, regardless of its general hate-on for religion, it is notable for its attitude towards Islam. I will bet that you and most other Anglo readers of the wiki and Anglos more generally only know it for that reason. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 17:21, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- Neither of the articles actually contest the claim, at least according the the translations I got from google? I dunno why you're holding them up against a professor saying that it's more anti-Islam. But hypothetically accepting that line of argument, what would be a valid rewrite of the intro sentence? Ikanreed (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- IKanreed -- did you read those articles? I'm familiar with both of them from the CH episode, and they're both substantive. also, the first article we had there, the BBC one referencing "more anti-Islam than anti clerical" doesn't actually say that; it's hust a straight news report on some anti-Islamic claims. I'd love to get your take on the L'Express and Le Monde pieces and tell me why you think they're lacking. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 16:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
These seem like high standards to meet to accept the statements of a generally reliable source. I think you're being unreasonable in your demands to guide me to be reasonable. Ikanreed (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what we're arguing about here. Go look at my edits to the page and tell me what's the problem. If adding 2 sources about CH's history of anti-clerical satire and changing "especially" to "notably", which, as I argued above, is a more accurate way to put it (the ONLY reason that CH became notable to us was due to the fallout from its anti-Islam satire) is that objectionable to you, propose something better. As for my "demands," I'm not "demanding" anything. I'm merely trying to point out that if you want to make authoritive statements about something, you should have a decent base of knowledge from which to work. One prof saying something is a nice start, but that's all it is. A start. There is a debate at play here, one that you seem interested in. so do the necessary homework to engage with the debate in a critical fashion. One wouldn't use their 8th grade biology lessons to argue with cutting-edge research in the Lancet, right? Well, if you want to make claims about French comics, you should know something about France. And comics. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 18:06, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- Note: I stand corrected. The article dates back to before the shootings. Nonetheless, I stand by my assertion that, in the Anglo world, CH is generally "notable" because of its relatioship with Islam. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 18:10, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- I've mostly read the first article linked (I can read French a bit) and it basically sums up population groups and specific organizations they've upset. The graph near the top lists that 12 legal complaints have come from the extreme right, 8 from the media/journalists, 8 from Catholic associations, 6 from Muslim associations and 2 from harki associations (harki is a term applied to repatriated Muslims from Algeria). Not that the number of associations is necessarily that telling, but apparently there's been an equal amount of complaints from Muslims as from Catholics (harki are also Muslims after all). Here's a quote from further down in the article, however, from a representative from a Muslim association, explaining why they're only going to court over 2 of 12 caricatures of Mohammed: « En attaquant deux d'entre elles, nous acceptons que l'on puisse caricaturer le Prophète, mais nous n'acceptons pas leur caractère raciste » Loosely translated: "By attacking 2 of them, we accept that one may caricature the Prophet, but we don't accept their racist characterization." So that would indicate that, while Charlie Hebdo isn't singling out Islam, their caricatures of Muslims sometimes have a racist streak to them. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 18:16, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- ...or are perceived as such by the Central Mosque of Paris. Ithaca8 (talk) 18:37, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- I am going to add one more document (sorry, it's in French again) to the discussion. It has been written by two French sociologists and been published in the newspaper Le Monde on 24 February. To summarise the content in a nutshell, they have analysed the CH published covers (i.e. first page) from 2005 to 2015. It appears that the big bulk of the covers was devoted to politics and that religions concerned only 7% of the published covers during this 10 years period. As I said in my first message, the religion which has been the most targeted by CH is the catholic one (50% of the first pages with a religious topic) while islam (alone) has been targeted only 7 time (i.e. 20% o the religious topic on first page). With these data it is really hard to sustain that CB was critical of "especially islam" (and thanks for having chaged this in the article). --195.70.12.136 (talk) 16:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
- Feel free to add the stuff yourself. You may get some resistance from people who are adverse to non-Anglo scholarship. I think, for the English speaking-audience we cater to, the question of what flavor of anti-religious discourse was prominent is a little less interesting than the reaction that the anti-Islam stuff garnered. The threats, the echoes of the "draw Muhammad" stuff, and finally the shootings, are what make CH, as I've maintained all along, "notable" to us, even is CH wasn't actually "especially" critical of Islam. Until the Catholics shoot the place up, the satire directed at them will always be a sideshow. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 17:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
- I am going to add one more document (sorry, it's in French again) to the discussion. It has been written by two French sociologists and been published in the newspaper Le Monde on 24 February. To summarise the content in a nutshell, they have analysed the CH published covers (i.e. first page) from 2005 to 2015. It appears that the big bulk of the covers was devoted to politics and that religions concerned only 7% of the published covers during this 10 years period. As I said in my first message, the religion which has been the most targeted by CH is the catholic one (50% of the first pages with a religious topic) while islam (alone) has been targeted only 7 time (i.e. 20% o the religious topic on first page). With these data it is really hard to sustain that CB was critical of "especially islam" (and thanks for having chaged this in the article). --195.70.12.136 (talk) 16:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
- ...or are perceived as such by the Central Mosque of Paris. Ithaca8 (talk) 18:37, 2 March 2015 (UTC)