Liberté? Censorship in the West | Teju Cole The New Yorker | Kabir Chibber Quartz

I came across these two articles amidst the hubbub of the media’s portrayal of events in Paris after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and feel they need to be shared. Each point out the bigger picture, censorship and colonialism in the West.

One written by Teju Cole for the New Yorker January 9th, Unmournable Bodies

“Unmournable Bodies” article by Teju Cole for the New Yorker, the Eiffel Tower dark after attack on Charlie Hebdo

“This week’s events took place against the backdrop of France’s ugly colonial history, its sizable Muslim population, and the suppression, in the name of secularism, of some Islamic cultural expressions, such as the hijab.

Rather than posit that the Paris attacks are the moment of crisis in free speech—as so many commentators have done—it is necessary to understand that free speech and other expressions of liberté are already in crisis in Western societies; the crisis was not precipitated by three deranged gunmen. The U.S., for example, has consolidated its traditional monopoly on extreme violence, and, in the era of big data, has also hoarded information about its deployment of that violence. There are harsh consequences for those who interrogate this monopoly. The only person in prison for the C.I.A.’s abominable torture regime is John Kiriakou, the whistle-blower. Edward Snowden is a hunted man for divulging information about mass surveillance. Chelsea Manning is serving a thirty-five-year sentence for her role in WikiLeaks. They, too, are blasphemers, but they have not been universally valorized, as have the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo.”

The other submitted by the author Kabir Chibber, a number of hours ago on January 11th, for Quartz Boko Haram is turning into the next Islamic State

World Leaders in Paris Today 2015-01-11 Quartz Biggest Hypocrites re: Free Speech

Kabir Chibber states “These are the biggest hypocrites celebrating free speech today in Paris.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The schoolgirls were kidnapped 8 months ago and are still missing.

Boka Haram #BringBackOurGirls Quartz

This week, Boko Haram used a 10 year old girl as a suicide bomber. Last week, Boko Haram committed its worst atrocity yet, killing as many as 2,000 people in Baga (Nigeria). Most of the victims were reportedly children, women and elderly people who “could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents,” The Guardian reported. Civilians gave up on trying to count all the bodies.

Kabir mentions that the recent massacre barely made a ripple in the international media. Not enough people are paying attention!

I caught this the other evening and thought it interesting. An interview with Nawaz Gerges, Middle East expert talks about the clash of ideologies on ‘Consider This‘ – an Al Jazeera America news show. He mentions that France’s secular ideology (i.e. dis approval of Muslim traditions such as women wearing the hijab (headscarf and veil in schools) causing some young people (mostly men) to feel disenchanted and disenfranchised in their place in the country. This can wind up motivating them to become recruits into the extremist groups. At the same time, he mentions that the extremists are trying to divide Western society. They recruit the disaffected militants (like the Paris gunmen who are like pawns) to carry out their missions like ‘hit men’ for the larger cause. As I listened to this interview I recalled George Bush Jr.’s (the President at the time) reaction and statements to the public on the day of the 2001 synchronized terrorist attacks in the United States, and thought, he was sort of guilty of the same thing. By talking about an ‘Axis of Evil’ and pointing to the Muslim world he was driving a wedge into international relations. Even if he had specified a smaller segment of militant extremists, somehow the ‘stamp’ of Muslim stuck as ‘someone to be feared’. Am I wrong or missing something?