"France Bans Public Protests Over Cartoons"

Jason Ditz:

“There will be strictly no exceptions,” cautioned Interior Minister Manuel Valls, saying that any demonstrations will be broken up by security forces. France had previously closed a number of embassies across the Muslim World fearing protests. 

The position of the government is odd, however, as they had publicly spurned calls to censor the magazine, saying free speech is inviolable in France, and are now banning public speech in criticism of the move.

The French Government regards the rights of the media inviolable in regards to publishing inflammatory cartoons that will certainly cause violence elsewhere, yet refuses to allow protests in France.  

It's starting to look a bit like a candy machine.  People push buttons in the western countries and out pop's violence and death on TV, far far away.

Free speech and the right to mock religions and their icons are a natural right of free people, but bigotry and racial hatred are coming along for the ride.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/09/21/france-bans-public-protests-over-cartoons/

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Quebec: This is What Calgary Thinks of You

From the Calgary Sun, during the last election:



The Calgary Media had no real legitimate arguments against Stephane Dion's platform in the last election so they ran a never ending series of ad hominem attacks. Most of them were harmless and a few were actually funny.

This cartoon went a few steps further and mocked a man merely because English is his second language and he sounded funny. To me this is an expression of racism and xenophobia and not funny. One wonders why this type of thing plays so well in Calgary, a diverse place with the usual amount of higher education.

Its sort of like kick a red-head day, with large numbers of people who don't have red hair saying, hey its just harmeless fun...

Imagine if you are a recent immigrant to Calgary, probably struggling with English and its weird verbs and illogical idioms and you see something like this. What's the message?

I know that there are many Francophones who dislike Stephane Dion and might find this funny, but remember the Sun is taking aim at you too. If this is how they view someone like Dion imagine what kind of hatred they would throw at a Quebec nationalist.

Oh sorry, I forgot, Mr. Harper has had a hate on for you for some time.

Update: Edit "funny" to "not funny". Please recommend this post