Why is Charlie Hebdo OK, but not Dieudonné ?

Video in french

French Prime Minister Valls slammed for "fear" of Front National

Politicians of left and right have condemned French Prime Manuel Valls after he said yesterday that he was “afraid” for France, over the rise of the Front National.

“I am afraid for my country, I’m afraid it will be smashed apart because of the Front National” Manuel Valls said in a programme on French television and radio on Sunday evening.

Citing his “anxiety”, he called on people to make the effort to vote in the upcoming local elections, amid predictions that as many as 60% of eligible voters might abstain.

A poll published on Monday (by Odoxa for French radio station RTL) suggests that the far-right populist party will win 31 %, the highest number of votes in the first round of elections, on 22 March.

The same poll suggests former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s mainstream right wing UMP party would garner 29% with the ruling Socialists coming third on 20%.

In the second round, both the UMP and the Socialist party could benefit from the ballots of any voters keen to prevent FN victories.

“The role of the Prime Minister is not to be afraid, but to act and to get results,” said Brice Hortefeux of the UMP, a former interior minister during Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency.
“It is the failures of the government which fuel the rise of the Front National”, he added.

Emmanuelle Cosse, leader of the EELV, an environmentalist party, said the correct response to the Front National was not “with fear”, but rather by “political battle”.

The EELV held three ministerial posts as junior partner in a coalition government with the Socialists after François Hollande’s election to the presidency in 2012 but the party walked out of the government when Valls was chosen as Prime Minister in March 2014.

French lawmakers postpone religious neutrality debate until after elections

France's parliament announced on Wednesday it would postpone a debate planned for this week over proposals to impose religious neutrality in private nurseries until after regional elections at the end of March. Groups protecting Christian, Muslim and secular interests have criticised the bill.

The draft law, proposed by the Radical Left Party, part of the parliamentary majority of the Socialist Party, was adopted by the Senate in 2012 and validated last week by the National Assembly's Laws Commission.

It was due to be debated in the lower parliament on Thursday, but lawmakers said they were postponing it until after the elections due to its sensitive nature during a campaign period.

Bruno Le Roux, president of the Socialist Party group of MPs, expressed "regret" the debate coincided with the campaign for elections in France's département administrative districts, arguing the bill "does not pose any great difficulties" in legal terms but "leads to debates that are often far from the reality" of its proposals.

The proposals would oblige private nurseries, daycares and other establishments that watch over children aged six and under, and that receive public funds, to guarantee they are free from signs of religious expression on their premises and among their staff.

Establishments that do not receive public funds would be given the means to oblige employees who have contact with children to abide by restrictions on religious expression, in a clear reference to the case of Baby Loup, a nursery that fired a staff member for wearing an Islamic hijab.

In the past week, groups representing religious communities as well as France's secular values have come out against the draft law.

"Extending the obligation of neutrality in religious matters to the private sphere is not in the spirit of the Law of 1905," said bishop Olivier Ribadeau Dumas of the Bishops' Conference of France, referring to France's law that officially separates Church and State but guarantees religious freedom.

Abdallah Zekri, president of the Observatory Against Islamophobia within the French Council of the Muslim Faith, denounced a "tendency towards a policy of systematic religious intolerance, specifically led against Muslims".

Zekri said the bill threatened "the spirit of living together shown by French citizens on 11 January", a reference to public demonstrations condemning attacks by religious extremists in Paris.

The bill also garnered condemnation from Jean-Louis Bianco, a former Socialist government minister and now president of the Observatory of Secularism, a government body in operation since April 2013.

Bianco said it was "paradoxical" that the Radical Left Party would "attempt to adopt a proposal that is also part of the campaign platform of the Front National" and that he saw in the bill "a great danger for cohesion of the country itself".

The bill will enter debate in the National Assembly on 11 May.

a reply to: theultimatebelgianjoke

France triumphs in battle of Waterloo coin

Napoleon may have lost the main battle 200 years ago but this week the French won a minor battle as they prevented the minting of a euro coin commemorating the anniversary of the famous battle.

Two hundred years may have passed since the Duke of Wellington and his allies routed Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo but the defeat is still something of a sore point in France, it seems.

Belgium wanted to create a special €2-piece coin in honour of the Anglo-Dutch-German victory near Brussels on June 18th 1815, to commemorate an event that shaped the continent.

But Paris put up some resistance on the grounds that the coin glorifies a conflict that split Europe, which runs contrary to today’s efforts to unite Europe.

In a letter to the Council of Europe President François Hollande said the project would be a “symbol that is negative” and “risk… engendering unfavourable reactions in France”.

The coin was expected to go into production next month but the pressure has paid off and the coin idea has been tossed.

Which has left the Belgians a bit miffed.

"I am a bit surprised by all this agitation," Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt said in a statement.

"Europe has plenty of other issues to deal with and challenges to overcome without wasting time and energy on this."

Belgium now faces having to scrap around 180,000 of the coins already minted which were to be sold as collectors' items in special boxes at a price of eight euros.

"Once you have got rid of them all, there will be a loss of 1.5 million euros," Manuela Wintermans of the NUOD finance ministry union told AFP.

France has not reacted publicly but it may have to fend off accusations of hypocrisy after it struck its own commemorative €2-euro coin to mark the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings last year.

Britain however, which has its own currency does have a £5 coin commemorating the famous battle.

Belgium is preparing to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo with a huge sound-and-light show planned and a re-enactment of the battle.

Hundreds of performers will take part in the open-air evening event titled "Inferno", which will have space for up to 12,000 spectators, director Luc Petit told a press conference at the battle site.

A special battle reconstruction on June 19th and 20th with 6,000 participants -- twice the size of the annual Waterloo re-enactment staged by history enthusiasts -- has already been announced.

Frenchs :

Belgians :

If you skipped it : Jon Stewart gave his point of view on Dieudonné

Video - Comedy Central

And now, it's Cynthia McKinney who recommends him ...

As mentionned in this post, the problem spreads to UK as well.
Now it's Jazz music who is being silenced in Manchester because ...

Dieudonne handed two months suspended jail sentence

he controversial comedian was prosecuted for condoning terrorism through a Facebook comment following January’s Paris terror attacks.

Dieudonne was arrested on January 14 after writing “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” on Facebook, a mix of the slogan “Je suis Charlie” that became a global rallying cry against extremism and Amedy Coulibaly, one of the assailants who killed a policewoman and four Jews.

His arrest was one of dozens of cases opened for “condoning terrorism” or “making threats to carry out terrorist acts” after the attackers killed 17 people in the January 7-9 shooting spree that also targeted satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

This wasn’t Dieudonne’s first brush with controversy. Earlier, he had gained infamy, most notably for his trademark “quenelle” hand gesture that looks like an inverted Nazi salute, but which he insists is merely anti-establishment.

The prosecutor had called for a fine of 30,000 euros, which if he fails to pay up could turn into a prison sentence.

During the trial, prosecutor Annabelle Philippe said Dieudonne had presented “in a favourable light the acts committed by Amedy Coulibaly.”

But Dieudonne said he “condemned the attacks without any restraint and without any ambiguity.”

Separating anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism

The Israeli Zionist ministry of propaganda has successfully blurred the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. With clever adeptness and manipulation they have succeeded in spreading a form of domestic terror to Europe and the United States. This form of terrorism as defined by the Thesaurus is “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to civilians in order to attain goals that are religious or political or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear.” Use of the Holocaust as propaganda invites fear and hysteria.

Netanyahu drew thunderous applause that followed the words loudly proclaimed as if he owned them: “Never Again.” I felt sick as he spoke of the deadly rise of anti-Semitism, a hatred of Jews bound together with the destruction of Israel. “Never Again,” a powerful and highly charged statement, was used here to create a lie in the suppression of the crimes of Israeli Zionism, covered up and justified as a means to “defend itself.” What? To defend itself from a repeat of Hitler’s program to rid Europe of all Jews? Is that the vision of a Jewish State only, a place of safety for all Jews to be protected from a hostile world, with walls, and born from the blood of apartheid and ethnic cleansing? Is this not insanity to pursue an agenda with complete disregard to human values except for Jews?

Now as Europe and the United States struggle to wake up, to question the blind support of Zionist Israel, those who speak out and say “No,” continue to be vilified. Israel’s shouts of anti-Semite are attempts to drown dissent. Can one really believe there still exists the possibility of another incarnation of the Nazi Holocaust? Is this not designed for empathy and support from those who still fantasize the lost dream of Israel as a beacon of light? It is not difficult to observe the strong emotional responses, particularly in Jews and Germans, upon hearing reference to the ashes of the Holocaust as a justification for Israel to “defend itself. ” “Never again” would refer to a justification to commit atrocities against Palestinians for the past 70 years. It must stop.

As the memory of the Holocaust is ignited, cries of “anti-semite” grow and create fear. Useful for the purpose of taking the focus off internal brutal assaults, land stealing, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, it is a distortion in my view and obscures the genesis of a new rise of anti-Semitism in the last decade. True anti-Semites hate Jews. Rising up against Israel is about standing against an ideological, nationalistic and racist government.

I feel particularly as Jews we have a responsibility to remain vigilant and to speak out against victimization. The pursuit of a just society is a fundamental concept of Judaism, which teaches involvement and concern with the plight of our fellow human beings. Every life is sacred and we are obligated to do what we can to help others. The Torah states, “neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor.“ (Lev. 19:16) There is nothing anti-Semitic about speaking out against the suffering perpetrated on the lives of Palestinians.

The distinction between Zionism and Judaism remains in constant need of clarification and discussion. Fanatics closed to discussion believe in their moral superiority and create political terror so as to silence and deny. The charge of “delegitimizing Israel “ requires one to question what the Israeli government is hiding and whether Israel has not delegitimized itself through decades of illegal human rights abuses. I believe these abuses have contributed profoundly to the rise of true anti-Semitism in the world today.

In order to provide an example of mainstream media manipulation I reproduce here the post of another member.

Dreamingawake



New York Times published piece about Netanyahu’s racism, then rewrote all of it

He also has the CI... I mean mainstream news, in his pocket too apparently.

On March 17, the day of the 2015 Israel election, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Jewish Israelis that Arabs were voting “in droves” (alleging, in a conspiratorial manner reminiscent of white supremacists in the US Jim Crow South, that “Left-wing organizations are busing them out”). Second-class Palestinian citizens voting is supposed to be a very bad thing in Israeli democracy.

The New York Times published an article about the incident—and more generally about Netanyahu’s bigoted, jingoistic, far-right tactics to attract more votes—titled “Netanyahu Expresses Alarm That Arab Voter Turnout Could Help Unseat Him.” The piece was written by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone. At least, for the moment, that was the case.

Several hours later, the NYT published a rewrite of the article—a rewrite not just of parts of it, but of all of it. According the the website NewsDiffs which tracks edits to “highly-placed articles on online news sites,” between 5:13 pm and 9:08 pm on March 17 100% of the article was re-written to mostly erase the focus on Netanyahu’s racism.
- See more at: mondoweiss.net...

Source

Before and after graphic is included-kinda small resolution/font.

Second conviction in a week for Dieudonné.
This time, a 22500€ fine for insults towards Patrick Cohen.
Article in French :
Propos sur Patrick Cohen : 22.500 euros d'amende pour Dieudonné

Who is the plaintif ? Video in french where he is facing an excellent french Journalist : Frederic Taddeï


Chosen extracts :

1:26
You have a responsability when your run a debate show, not to propagate conspiracy theories. To silence 'sick brains' ... like people who think we never walk on the moon, that 9/11 was faked or that gas chambers never existed.

2:10
Alexandra : People are free to think what they want, no ?
Cohen : NO !
...
You have the right to think what you want first, in the respect of the existing law.
Taddeï : Fine, I never ran into troubles.
Cohen : Negationism ... that's something !

3:25
Taddeï : If I tell you now, that I have suspicions on the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole shooter involved in the JFK murder. I'm against the official thesis. Am I a conspirationist ? Do I need to be put under arrest ?

The statement of Dieudonné about Cohen was part his show 'Le Mur' :

Tu vois lui, si le vent tourne, je ne suis pas sûr qu'il ait le temps de faire ses valises. Moi, tu vois, quand je l'entends parler, Patrick Cohen, je me dis, tu vois, les chambres à gaz... Dommage !

You see him, if wind changes direction, I'm not sure he will have enough time to pack things up. Me, you see, when I hear him talk, Patrick Cohen, I tell to myself, the gas chambers ... shame !

Obama says he doesn't text; Jay Z says he does

President Barack Obama's got 99 problems and they include multiple rappers claiming false friendships with him.

On "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Thursday night, Obama put both Kanye West and Jay Z on blast for claiming they're in closer contact with the president than they are in reality.

In a characteristic brag, West recently said during a lecture at Oxford University that he can "call Obama out of the blue," adding that "Obama calls the home phone." The president was complimentary toward the Chicago rapper — who he's previously called a "jackass" — but said he doubted that was true.

"Look, I love his music, he's incredibly creative, but I don't think I have his home number," he told Kimmel.
And he also raised doubts about Jay Z's claim that "of course" he texts with the president.
"Yeah, I've spoken to him on the phone and had texts from Obama, of course," the hip-hop legend and business mogul said on a radio show in 2013. Jay Z also rapped in 2009 that he has Obama "on the text."

But Obama undercut Jay Z's brag on Thursday night when he told Kimmel that he doesn't text or use a smartphone.

"I don't text. I email. I still have a Blackberry," he told Kimmel, while discussing his tech habits. Obama said that for security reasons, he can't use a phone or any of "that new fangled stuff" that includes any sort of recording device. The conversation came in the wake of the controversy over Hillary Clinton's private email account.

Obama and Jay Z are close. The rapper has hosted a fundraiser for Obama and his megastar wife, Beyonce, sang at Obama's first inaugural ball and lip synced at his second inaugural. But their relationship may have been strained when Jay Z rapped in 2013 that he got "White House clearance" for his trip to Cuba that spring, a lyric that raised eyebrows and caused a minor controversy.

President Obama has since announced an historic opening of U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba and an easing of the trade embargo against that country.
Back in 2013 The White House denied giving Jay Z any special treatment.
Time will tell if there's a reason the president says he doesn't text but the rap mogul says he gets texts from Obama.

What's the point with Dieudonné ?

Can there ever be any interest about making jokes around holocaust ?
Yes. It can shed light on unexpected situations :

Some Italian jokers have requested for information at Yad Vashem concerning their grand-ma allegedly killed by gasing at Maifdanek. For that they filled out the official formulary and sent them there. After a time, the site presented that lady as a real victim of the holocaust with all the infos provided. Only problem, it's an invented person with following identity:
Name: Edith Frolla (anagram of Adolf Hitler)
Date of Birth: April 20th 1889 (the same day as AH)
Profession: painter
Lived in Rome at 29 via della Lungara, which is the address of the Regina Coeli prison.
The picture: it's one of the most common picture of Magda Goebbels.

Conclusion: no verification whatsoever of the data entering Yad Vashem. Nice, isn't it.

Article in french

a reply to: theultimatebelgianjoke

Yesterday, a guy I work with, went to the local "tabac" (tobacco, press, magazines, etc.) In walks Vallis, with a couple of body guards and journalists in tow. He looks at the cashier and warmly says bonjour, shakes hands, turns to a client and does same, the turns to my colleague, stops smiling, looks him up and down slowly, then pointedly turns around without a word and leaves.

This colleague happens to be of Algerian descent. He can't speak arabic, is from christian immigrants, born here and unfamiliar with Algeria, but has the distinctive look of his origins.

Vallis is only worried about losing to the Front, they are not that different...

a reply to: Bluesma

That doesn't surprise me unfortunatelly ...
I guess you do know why Dieudonné nickname him 'El Blancos' :




I just happened to buy this month's issue of 'Siné Mensuel'. There is some sort of open letter from cartoonist Lindingre towards Richard Malka the lawyer of Charlie. I'm not sure I can reproduce it here since it's only in the paper version but if you have the opportunity to put your hands on one, it's worth reading.

originally posted by: theultimatebelgianjoke
Fortunately, in Belgium we happen to organize this year a special French-themed event to celebrate the bicentenial anniversery of the Battle of Waterloo.
The biggest French trashing of our recent times is something that deserved a proper live re-enactment :
Waterloo 2015

Waterloo To Wall Street and everything in between

The scam that's playing itself out now began on June 18, 1815 with a courier working for Nathan Rothschild. The courier was reporting on events in the Battle of Waterloo, and he reported what he saw to Rothschild; which was that Napoleon was being beaten. The story of how Nathan Rothschild was able to take advantage of these circumstances is below. The result was that he created his own empire after he acquired ownership of the Bank of England (The principal bank among the twelve Central Banks of the World today). The Fed is the privately owned and controlled American Central Bank.

"When Nathan Rothschild received the news on June 20, he informed the government, who did not believe him. So, with everyone believing Wellington to be defeated, Rothschild immediately began to sell all of his stock on the English Stock Market. Everyone else followed his lead, and also began selling, causing stocks to plummet to practically nothing. At the last minute, his agents secretly began buying up the stocks at rock-bottom prices. On June 21, at 11 PM, Wellington's envoy, Major Henry Percy showed up at the War Office with his report that Napoleon had been crushed in a bitter eight hour battle, losing a third of his men. This gave the Rothschild family complete control of the British economy, and forced England to set up a new Bank of England, which Nathan Rothschild controlled." (1)

This pattern of crisis creation (the financing of both sides of every conflict) and the manipulation that flows from it has continued throughout the world's financial circles, from that day to this, including both World Wars and hundreds of other conflicts besides. The pattern is simple but depends heavily upon instilling the very real fear of monetary collapse coupled with playing the margins on stocks and investments "in times of war."

In 1929, stocks were being sold on credit to millions of people, without the necessary collateral to back those sales. Just as the banks very recently have virtually given credit cards to people without jobs, so that they can collect very large interest payments until the card holders go under with the usurious debt that they rapidly accumulate.

The same kind of thing on a much larger scale happened, by design, with the 'Housing Bubble.' People were 'given' homes without the necessary qualifications for those loans that had formerly been required, but now were no longer mandatory. Consequently when the balloon payments came due, the 'owners' went bankrupt and the properties went back into available housing stocks. The banks picked up sizeable payments until the inevitable happened, and then they simply 'resold' the property to another unqualified buyer, at an ever-higher rate.

To assure that the banks didn't get taken in by the same buyer, congress made declaring bankruptcy for the ordinary citizen, a very difficult and punitive proposition at best. At the same time congress left the corporations with every possible consideration for escape. At some point all this red-ink began to catch up with the lenders, and that's when the Bubble began to burst. In 1929 it was bogus stocks while in 2007 it was bogus home sales: yet in both cases the plan was to 'sell' something without a real basis for repayment, so that eventually the entire scheme would have to collapse upon itself. But in the mean time there were tens of Billions to be made! These bogus home-purchases were also then leveraged and resold in packages of massive potential that in reality consisted mostly of worthless paper; without a hope in hell of ever actually being paid off.

As their failures began to mount, these same financial institutions then appealed to the government for a bail out. These bogus financial obligations which had been created, knowing that they would fail, were no different that the bogus stock options and purchases that were 'bought' largely on credit without any real collateral at all in 1929. In both cases the instability of the institutions who engaged in these criminal transactions, caused their parent corporations to appeal to the government to save them from what should have been certain failure-which is where the Fed and the government are now with Bear Sterns and their inability to absorb the huge and unnecessary losses they created. These corporations are the same ones that make up the rules as they go along; whether it's bogus foreclosures or an outrageous rate of interest with no valid reason for the increase: but when it comes to the way they pay or play-they always demand to be rescued, while ordinary people are simply thrown to the wolves.

Once the government's rescue attempts are exhausted, and the various 'institutions' finally begin to fail in reality ­ then the rich and powerful will step in, just as they did in 1929 or 1815 to pick up the pieces for literally penny's on the dollar. Multiply this scheme out across the world, and know that those with unimaginable wealth will again be able to behave as did the Kings and Dictators of old: because during any real Depression real wealth calls all the shots-while the rest of us learn how to live in abject poverty compounded by debt-slavery amid the loss of all those freedoms that we gave up without even a whisper of resistance!

What was done in Napoleon's time was almost primitive, but thanks to computers and to Greed-unbounded, the Owners can now do far more, far faster, to far more people than could have ever been imagined before in history. And because of the scale of these crimes: what was done to England initially can now be done to the whole world-or so the owners believe. Unless the population rises against them, they will certainly try to do this all over again, but for everything of value today, instead of just for a major bank and one colonial Empire.

Here's a practical example of how money can still be made, while its origins simply disappear, courtesy of Douglas Shaw:

"Bear-Stearns went from $170 a share to $30 a share then the government gave them $200,000,000,000 but they still dropped down to $2 a share. So who got "OUR" $200,000,000,000!

The $200 billion was to prop up several failing banks, not just Bear Stearns. Bear-Stearns then got an additional $30 billion from the taxpayers (every time, every place you see "the government," especially regarding MONEY this means the taxpayers, as "the government" has no money, never did, never will! Over the weekend, Bear-Stearns and Morgan negotiated a sale for $2 a share which is less than the assessed value of their Manhattan real estate. This $2 is subject to shareholder approval.

...

a reply to: Odhinn

So the concepts of international public debt, privatized central banks and high speed trading can be traced back to Waterloo. Interesting coincidence if you know that 10 km from the battelefield of Waterloo is located the lake of Genval.
What's up with the lake of Genval ? It's there that a belgian company has its headquarter and main datacenter.
The company is called SWIFT and is responsible for operating the international monetary transfer system that bears its name.
No matter which marktplace claims to be biggest, all electronic transactions of all markets in the world are centralized there ... the heart of the financial system is still beating where it all started.

And as a strange coincidence of the troubled times we are going through, the city mayor of Waterloo, Serge Kubla, got charged a couple of weeks ago with corruption about various public markets.

About the Rotschield's and Dieudonné ... we need a jewish economist for that : Jacques Attali

Transcript and translation :

I would like to start first with two Jewish funny stories.
Before switching to something less funny.
The most embarrassing thing with stories is when the others know already about them.

The first one is the story of two old Jewish persons sitting on a bench in Montevideo after their return from the camps, on Sunday afternoon, it's warm, they are bored.
After a long silence one says to the other :
'Did you saw that Brazil defeated Argentina 2-0 in football (soccer) ?'
And after 15 minutes mute, the other answers :
'Is that any good for us ?'

I tell you that one first, because I think that you will ask yourself 'Is that any good for us' about all the other things I'm about to mention...

The second is the one that summarize – better than any other economical theory – what's going on today :
It's about Shlomo calling David and telling him :
Listen, I have a truck full of trousers – a bargain – the trousers are at 1$ piece. Do you what them ?
Great says David, I take them. Then David calls Jonathan, tells him that he has a wonderful bargain to offer him : a truck full of trousers, 2$ piece.
Jonathan then calls Saul, 3$ piece, and the story goes on.
Until finally Moshe ends up calling Christian and offer him as a bargain, a truck full of trousers at 49$ piece.
Then, the day after, Christian, furious, calls back Moshe : you are a thief, you sold me a truck full of trousers but they are all useless ! They only have one leg, no one can wear them.
Then Moshe explain : but please Christian, the trousers, you are not supposed to wear them, it's just in order to buy/sell/buy/sell/buy/sell …

And should you be able to get the joke then you have understood perfectly what is going on at the moment with the international financial market.

Hey ultimate Belgian!
I'm visiting friends in Lille, going over to Belgium for dinner tonight.
They claim the Belgians are terribly prejudiced against the french, and are horrible with them over there.
Is that true from your experience?

a reply to: samsamm9

It's really pretty simple for most people, or at least sane and rational people.

Charlie Hebdo spared no one, it's a political and religious comic which targets all religious beliefs, all political groups and satirizes everything.

Dieudonné is a "comedian" who targets specific people and religious groups based on who he hates and who he wants to attack using the excuse of comedy. He praises fascism, makes light of mass murder, is directly and repeatedly anti-semitic and tries to explain it all away through excuses.

One is a genuine criticism of organized religion and politics through satire, the other is an abusive anti-Semite using comedy as an excuse to be an anti-Semite.