'We vomit' on Charlie's sudden friends: staff cartoonist who did not die

[kpete]

Here’s Another Perspective
Here are some thoughts from a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist who didn’t make Wednesday’s meeting:

“We have a lot of new friends, like the pope, Queen Elizabeth and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It really makes me laugh,” Bernard Holtrop, whose pen name is Willem, told the Dutch centre-left daily Volkskrant in an interview published Saturday.

France’s far-right National Front leader “Marine Le Pen is delighted when the Islamists start shooting all over the place,” said Willem, 73, a longtime Paris resident who also draws for the French leftist daily Liberation.

He added: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”

Commenting on the global outpouring of support for the weekly, Willem scoffed: “They’ve never seen Charlie Hebdo.”

http://news.yahoo.com/vomit-charlies-sudden-friends-staff-cartoonist-163403612.html

Willem missed Wednesday’s meeting because

“I never come to the editorial meetings because I don’t like them. I guess that saved my life.”
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/01/10/heres-another-perspective/

[CJCRANE]

1. Well, that's an interesting take

on the situation!

[NYC_SKP]

2. Finally. Something from one of them that I can agree with.

It's hecka easy for people to come out for them AFTER the tragedy.

Seeing a lot of it today and yesterday.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Yep. This false cloak of "freedom of speech" politicians are wrapping themselves in is transparent.

[another_liberal]

4. So true . . .

When someone praises "Free Speech" out of one side of his mouth, and then makes excuses for NSA/CIA prosecution of leakers out of the other side, his words have no meaning at all.

[alarimer]

5. Wrapping themselves in freedom of speech, while calling for increased illegal surveillance.

None of the NSA or other agencies (I'm guessing France and the EU have their own) with their data hoovering came even close to tracking these people. More data-gathering is only going increasing the amount to sift through.

I think the haystack is made of needles.

[Fred Sanders]

9. We may all speak freely, just know the government is listening is the new shit we have to swallow?

[Avalux]

6. He speaks the truth. Le Pen is jumping for joy right now. n/t

[napkinz]

7. Marine Le Pen and the French far right are ready to seize the moment.

By Jonathan Laurence

For the first seven hours after the attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, the National Front, France’s far right political party, kept an old feature about the influx of Roma and “gypsies” into French cities on its website. Then, shortly after 6 p.m. Paris time, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the increasingly popular party with the slogan “The French Come First,” appeared in front of three French flags and hammered out her demands—and a selfless offer.*

It is time for “frank and clear responses” against “inaction and denial,” she declared. In other words: The country’s two main political parties have failed to stem the Islamist tide, and you the voters now have all the evidence you need that France requires new leadership. “I intend to assume this vital responsibility so France can defend itself in the war that has been declared upon her,” she continued.

read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/01/marine_le_pen_and_the_national_front_on_the_rise_france_s_far_right_party.html

[Fred Sanders]

10. Thank you. Too many in America have no idea of the right wing danger in Europe. Again.

Not like it is a mass media plan or anything in America to keep folks ignorant....wonder if the government is monitoring my free speech..for the protection of all, of course.

[napkinz]

8. The Attack on Charlie Hebdo Plays Right Into Marine Le Pen's Hand

An additional dimension to this tragedy (attack on Charlie Hebdo) is that it plays directly into the hands of those public figures and politicians who would like to see France regress into an organic national community of blood ties, rather than of citizens. The Islamic extremists who executed the attack on Charlie Hebdo may have murdered journalists and artists, but surely their crime is also against other Muslims in France, who are now likely to be viewed as enemy aliens hostile to the essence of the Republic itself, regardless of their own beliefs. Michel Houellebecq, for instance, who often paints Muslims as a dangerous fifth column, might now perhaps be vindicated in the eyes of unreflective readers; and, in the words of one Lebanese blogger, today might very well be the day that Marine Le Pen became President of France. Le Pen, by the way, has compared the Muslim presence in France to the German occupation of the 1940s. After today, we can only hope that others will not start doing the same.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120712/charlie-hebdo-attacks-religious-violence-europe



France’s Le Pen Says Torture Can Be ‘Useful’ to Fight Terrorism

The leader of France’s anti-immigrant, anti-European Union National Front, Marine Le Pen, said that torture can be sometimes “useful” to fight terrorism, in response the U.S. Senate report on the CIA.

“There can be cases -- when there is a bomb ticking, that can explode in an hour or two and kill 200 or 300 civilians -- where it can be useful to have to make someone talk with the means available,” Le Pen told RMC radio and BFM Television today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-10/france-s-le-pen-says-torture-can-be-useful-to-fight-terrorism.html