Why AP didn’t run the Charlie Hebdo cartoons

La position du Guardian : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/328903

Et ce merveilleux xkcd :

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png

#liberté_d'expression

Charlie Hebdo and the Limits of the Republic
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/20528/charlie-hebdo-and-the-limits-of-the-republic

France’s iconic law on the freedom of the press passed on 29 July 1881, still enforced today, was designed in part to exclude the Republic’s Muslim subjects. While the law protected the rights of all French citizens, including explicitly those in Algeria and the colonies (Article 69), it did not protect the Republic’s subjects, who are the vast colonized populations throughout the French Empire. This was not a mere oversight: less than a month before, on 28 June 1881, the same parliament had passed an equally iconic law on the indigénat. Under the indigénat, a bizarre parallel system of justice, natives (indigènes) could not publish newspapers, or even speak or gather in public. The indigénat bypassed due process, required no trial, and involved a colorful variety of fines and punishments.

While the law also excluded a variety of colonized subjects of various creeds throughout the Empire in Africa and Asia, its Algerian context is particularly instructive because it specifically targeted Muslims. In colonial Algeria “citizens” were all those who were not Muslims, and the terms musulman, indigene, and sujet usually (though not always) overlapped. Muslim was a racialized legal category stripped of any religious significance. For instance, in a beautiful show of absurdity, several court cases confirmed that even if they converted to Christianity, natives remained legally Muslim, that is subject to discriminatory laws and stripped of citizenship.[1] The famous 1905 law on the separation of Church and State was also meant to be applied to Algeria. Tellingly, this never occurred because authorities, in particular, wanted to control what imams said in mosques. Imams remained civil servants of the French state until 1962.

(…) This does not mean, however, that this colonial history can seamlessly explain events this week.

#colonialisme #race #liberté_de_la_presse (via @caroiza)

Et :

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.

►http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/unmournable-bodies via @evaspiek