It was at a heavy price but it was a proud moment, wasn’t it, when all the leaders of the Western world and beyond gathered in Paris to parade in defence of free speech and civil rights. Even Enda Kenny was there, although not in the front row: he still managed to get his few words in to show he could speak French and that he knew the difference in the first person singular of the verb ‘to be’ and the first person plural of the same verb.
In the end, the world breaks down into those who are in favour of civil liberties and those who are against. Those who are allies of the West and those who are not….Hold on. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the West, isn’t it? How’s its free speech and civil liberties holding up?
Actually, not too well. A majority of the 9/11 plane hi-jackers – 15 out of 19 – were from Saudi Arabia. Immediately after 911, George Bush arranged for leading Saudis, including several from the Bin Laden family – to be got out of the US for their own safety. Osama Bin Laden himself was a Saudi. The Taliban got weapons and money from the Saudis. Tony Blair closed down a British inquiry into Anglo-Saudi bribery on grounds “national interest”. There are allegations that the Saudis are supporting Isis. And of course even as the parade in favour of free speech was being held in Paris, the Saudi authorities were administering their most recent bout of lashing to a blogger named Raif Badawi because he supported free debate.
Two things at least emerge from that little examination. Western leaders, supported by most of the Western media, can engage in an exercise in hailing free speech ( no, this wouldn’t be a good time to mention the broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin, Virginia) while at the same time violating those freedoms when they feel like it in the form of Guantanamo Bay, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the use of Shannon airport to support torture by the Americans.
The second thing to emerge is the three-letter word:oil. Just as baptism with water is said to wipe away all sins in the Christian religion, oil is the cleanser of choice by the Free World.
Spot on
Perhaps you have seen the story were BBC Raidio 1 recently censored the word “Palestine” from a hip-hop song because it followed the word “free”. Free speech doesn’t mean you speak freely.
If it is not in the interests of the US then everyone of influence is afraid to challenge it!
Same with Israel, the elephant in the room!
Labour, Conservative, Republican, Democrat, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, same meat, different gravy. The parties identified represent business interests. Let us recall rhetoric used about arms control initiatives in the Middle East as the Saudis were sold laser-guided components, cluster bombs, surface to air missiles, French Leclerc tanks and frigates, British Tornadoes and American F-15XP fighter jets.
“The US sold well over $28 billion of arms in the two years following the 1991 Gulf War, of which the Saudis accounted for $17 billion. Sales of weapons to the Middle East in 1993 were running at $46 million a day.” (Fisk 2005:848)
A cursory glance at news broadcasts on any given day will provide televised pictures from some of the most deprived countries in the world. Famine is a fact of life for many at the present time. Many news items include the presence of heavily armed individuals in the background. While the representatives of the rich and powerful strutted arm in arm around Paris in a spontaneous show of solidarity and support for free speech, people in Ireland continued to bail out bankers, homeless people died in the streets, food banks were opened in England and the blood of innocent men, women and children flowed into desert sands.
Apparently blasphemy is still a crime in Ireland . Can you imagine ?…and there’s Ireland’s leader standing up supporting a magazine that wouldn’t be allowed on the news stands in Ireland.This is the same place that wouldn’t recognise Joyce or even Edna O’Brien. Don’t get me started! Politics is really the art of hypocrisy and it all comes down to cash in the end. Oil drives a lot of the barbarity , so the quicker we can harness other energy sources that are not tied to despotic , barbaric regimes , the better .Mind you , there’s a conspiracy theory going around already, that the whole thing in Paris with all those world leaders was actually all Photoshopped and CGI manufactured anyway. ..”.You’ll believe a pig can fly, folks!!!”
How come that every time one’s eyes fall upon S-word, i.e. Saudi, one automatically thinks of and links it with Paudie O’Se?
Could the reason be that the otherwise estimable Paudie was a highkicking cheerleader for Charlie H.? If ever there was a caricature of a corrupt politico, CH was surely the one. His CV was straight from the central casting collection of cliche, thus: growing up without a make he was prompted to enter politics on the make. Which, once made, CH then went on the take, and the take and the more than you could shake a gaudy silver teapot at.
Indeed, so many of the moneyed class so fell under the spell of CH’s often less than honeyed words that such was their yearning to be in the same photo frame as the shameless beggar on horseback even while being compelled to stay nameless. Hence, PAYY: Pay As You Yearn.
Paudie O’Se/ Saudie O’Pay.
With that Oh, Lawdie ! Overture out of the way(phew) one turns hurriedly to the far more enhancing spectacle of the chancer CH’s successor promenading sans souci down the endlessly enchanting boulevards of Paris with his peers in fearless defence of CH and Freedom of Expression (FoE) against its foes
That would be, ca va sans die, Enda the Enthusiast.
Enda’s never-ending enthusiasm in the past for Vivisection 31 was gifted a more recent reminder when he gave the wink and the nod to Sean ‘Stick or Carrot’ Barrett to open up and spill his gut feelings on the Shinners into that ever willing receptacle, The Unionist Times.
That this was the first time ever in the never less than dignified history of The Free Southern Stateen that its Can of Cola dared to pull off such a cunning stunt as this was, no doubt, enough to shock the rest of the media into staying shtum. The current Can of Cola will have no truck with his silent predecessors’ cowardly chorus of: ‘I’d like to buy the world a Pig in the Poke’.
Point of Information, and in the interest of clarity: the second CH mentioned above is: Charlie Hebdo. Which, although it took chances like the chancer CH their chances were of a different order entirely.
Such as pluckily defending its right to abuse all and sundry to the death, in defiance of the Goliaths of Ballybullyboy. Or, the Chucky Heads, in Enda’s lexicon.
All, yes, but ….sundry? One of the former cartoonists with CH, the plucky satirical magazine, might be inclined to disagree, not least when Goliath comes in the guise of a Star-spangled David.
In 2009, Sine (as the cartoonist Maurice Sinet signed himself) had a go at Jean Sarkozy, son of the then Prez, for converting to Judaism for financial reasons on his marriage to the Jewish heiress of a mega electronic company called, yes, The Darty Group.
When a weighty mainstream pol cor protested to the then editor of CH, Sine was called upon to grovel and apologize. On refusing to do so, he was shown Le Cul de Sac after twenty years service. Which led Sine to sue CH for unfair dismissal for which he was awarded 40 thou euros in court.
Couldn’t happen in the Free Southern Stateen, naturellement. Like we don’t have a Darty Group, for starters nor do weighty pol cors in the mainstream media put themselves about with narrowfocus, blinkered assessments.
Now,some carping critics might point to the piece Kathy Sheridan penned in The Unionist Times in which she twinned CH and the Kingsmill Massacre in the one sentence.Or, ‘nuanced ‘piece as she modestly put it herself.
These carping c’s point out, with a sneer and a jeer, that there was as much chance of Kathy S. mentioning CH and,say, the Rising Sun bar massacre in the same sentence of The Unionist Times as there is a chance of the T.K.in T.K. Whitaker standing for Torrens Knight.
Perkie is, naturellement, not among these c. critics. For starters, he would never – ever -describe the slimline La Sheridan as being ‘weighty’. Indeed, the more he dips into the still, calm, reflectiveness of La Sheridan’s nuanced Nous Somme Charlie piece the more he came under her influence.
An influence which reminded Perkie’s inner Calton Weaver of another nuanced one:
The mair I kissed her the mair I loo’ed her
The mair I kissed her the mair she smiled
Till I forgot my mither’s teachin’
Nuancy Whisky soon had me beguiled
Whisky Whisky Nuancy Whisky, Whisky Whisky Nuancy -o !
Sin e.
*where
Thank you Jude for pointing out one of the largest elephants in the room which seems to be completely ignored by most of the mainstream media.