Please, God or Allah or Jehovah or Brahman or Earth Mother or Shakti or whatever you call yourself..

[Surya Gayatri]

Please, God or Allah or Jehovah or Brahman or Earth Mother or Shakti or whatever you call yourself....please, please, please MAKE IT STOP!



"IF YOU ARE CHARLIE, THEN I AM KOUACHI (terrorist brothers)"



"I AM MOHAMMED"



"DOWN WITH CHARLIE"



French flags torched as Charlie Hebdo protests erupt from Algiers to Zinder

Fresh unrest erupted Saturday in Niger, with French citizens told to stay indoors amid anger in several Muslim nations over a Prophet Mohammed cartoon published by Charlie Hebdo this week. Four people were killed on Friday at protests in Zinder.

Police fired tear gas at a fresh demonstration in Niger on Saturday against French weekly Charlie Hebdo's publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, according to AFP. At least 1,000 youths assembled at the grand mosque in the capital Niamey, some of them throwing rocks at police while others burned tyres and chanted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Greatest&quot .

At least two churches were set on fire and France's embassy in Niamey warned French citizens to stay indoors after rioters also ransacked several French-linked businesses, including telephone kiosks run by Orange.
...
"We've never seen that in living memory in Zinder," a local administration official said. "It's a black Friday."

There was also bloodshed in Karachi, Pakistan, where three people were injured when protesters clashed with police outside the French consulate, officials said. Among them was an AFP photographer, who was shot in the back.

Washington condemned the violence, stressing the "universal" right of the press to publish any kind of information freely.

Read and view more:
http://www.france24.com/en/20150117-charlie-hebdo-protests-niger-pakistan-algiers-zinder-france/

[Warren Stupidity]

1. It is clear that this has nothing at all to do with religion.

Or so I have been told on DU.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Actually, it doesn't...

at least not a much as you might prefer to think. if you look at riots historically, various excuses have been made over the years, but it's almost always an underclass that feels pressured and screwed who riots.

Islam is a uniting factor for them, but it's hardly the cause of the riots. Try poverty, discrimination, and the general hopelessness of life for them with nothing left to lose.

Here, we've had labor riots, race riots, and a few others but the common factor was that nothing left to lose attitude. Not religion.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. "at least not a much as you might prefer to think" let the hedging begin.

" but it's hardly the cause of the riots" - well you were doing better with "not as much as you might prefer to think.

What I find fascinating is that you and the rest of the liberal apologists for Islamic fundamentalism know better what is the "cause" than the people protesting and rioting themselves. Despite the simple fact that they are all loudly proclaiming that they are in the streets, sometimes peacefully, sometimes rioting, to defend Islam from blasphemy, you know better, you know what really motivates them.

[sabrina 1]

8. How about killing them in their own countries, torturing them, imprisoning people

in their own countries for OIL.

Would it be better to be a terrorist for RESOURCES or for Religion?

I see more dead people from the bombs and drones for OIL than I do for religion.

So, how about we stop terrorizing people for OIL? How about we stop supporting their dictators for a while?

Or is being killed different when it is not for religion? More humanitarian like?

[Warren Stupidity]

10. we are bombing turkey?

I didn't know that.

[sabrina 1]

12. Is it different to terrorize people for Oil, than it is for Religion?

Turkey, in case you didn't know, helped with the bombing for oil.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. Turkey had huge protests over Hedbo.

Which you claimed had nothing to do with religion but were because we are it seems bombing Turkey. I want to know when the bombing of Turkey began.

[sabrina 1]

22. YOU said we are bombing Turkey. I said that Turkey's government

has been an ally of NATO, hasn't it?

So which is a worse way to die, because of oil or because of religion?

[Warren Stupidity]

25. You said we were killing them in their own countries. I want to know which Turks we are killing.

[TreasonousBastard]

33. I don't know that much more than you, but...

a lot of people in France are noting the poverty in Muslim ghettos.

When we have race riots here, is it because they are pissed off about how they are being treated or because black culture encourages violence? No matter how you might try to weasel out of it, that is the same argument you are making about islamists-- they can't help themselves.

I am nowhere near an apologist for any religious fundamentalist, but when violence occurs it is necessary to look beyond the religion for other root causes or you just get more problems.

[oberliner]

5. "poverty, discrimination, and the general hopelessness of life..."

What makes you think any of these people protesting are hopeless about their life or are in poverty?

And the claim of discrimination is so preposterous as to be barely worthy of a response.

Muslims in Karachi and Niger are facing discrimination?

[TreasonousBastard]

34. The French observers talking about it...

and I trust their word over yours.

Other parts of the world have their particular problems. Would you want to live in Pakistan or Niger?

In a part of the world where the majority of the population claims to be Muslim, one would normally not think it unusual for a majority of the criminals also being Muslim.

[oberliner]

35. We may be talking about two different things

I certainly would not want to live in Pakistan and Niger - that is kind of my point.

That people in Pakistan and Niger can be made to believe a cartoon drawn in France impacts their life in such a negative way that some would kill random countrymen in response (and others would cheer such an action) is a sorry state of affairs.

[Surya Gayatri]

3. Religious rabble-rousing used to avoid and ignore unpleasant

realities on the ground. A worldwide phenomenon, aided and abetted by a money-grubbing and sensationalist Fourth Estate.

Before the days of 24/7 self-styled "news" outlets and so-called "social" media, this sort of
"Mexican" wave of whipped up insanity didn't happen.

[oberliner]

6. BS

Very patronizing to the protesters.

How about we actually acknowledge that they may believe what they say they believe?

[Surya Gayatri]

9. Well, then the world is terminally f-ed up...

If these are the beliefs that they truly espouse, we're up shit-creek!

[oberliner]

11. There needs to be a war of ideas

We need to do what we can to help people to turn away from this sort of thinking.

[Surya Gayatri]

13. And, who is filling their brains with this nonsense?

Those same rabble-rousers I spoke of (crazy immans, radical websites, ad infinitum).

I fear these people don't do nuance very well.
Fundamentist believers, of whatever stripe, tend to see the world in a Black/White paradigm.

[oberliner]

16. But what motivates those rabble-rousers?

I feel like it is wrong to dismiss them as just being crazy.

[Surya Gayatri]

23. Crazy like a fox, as we used to say...

They know just the hot buttons to push in order to get the desired reaction.

All the better to keep their enthralled masses from seeing what's going on in their own backyards...i.e. rampant corruption, lack of everything from decent education to available medical care.

"LET'S YOU and HIM FIGHT", classic mass-psychology manipulation.

"LOOK AT THE BIG, SHINY PROPHET BASHER" over there--don't look at what I'm doing to screw you over right here.

[oberliner]

30. What percentage of them do you think are acting under pure religious zeal?

That is to say, how many of them genuinely believe that they are doing what their religion orders them to do?

[dawg]

14. It has way more to do with respect than it does about religion.

Non-Muslim Westerners know how sacred their faith is to many Muslims. But we are willing to flippantly piss on their most cherished beliefs any time it suits us with no regard at all for their feelings.

It isn't God or Mohammed they are marching to defend. It is their own dignity. And if we fail to understand that, we will never manage to repair the rift between our peoples.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. "It isn't God or Mohammed they are marching to defend. It is their own dignity."

So you are another one who knows better than these people do themselves why they are out on the streets.

[dawg]

19. Just giving my opinion.

But I guess you're the guy with all the answers.

[oberliner]

18. This is 100 percent absolute BS

Niger is 99 percent Muslim. Their dignity is unaffected by a fucking cartoonist in France.

[dawg]

21. Says you.

If you ask me, their dignity is affected a lot more than their God is.

The West strides the globe like an arrogant colossus.

[oberliner]

31. Not true

Says the millions of people in Niger who are not protesting who are not burning down churches and who are not impacted in any way by these cartoons.

There is a tiny tiny minority of people who are doing any of those things.

[Pooka Fey]

7. K&R

[kelliekat44]

20. This:

"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.' Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. "

[Surya Gayatri]

24. Excellent post, kellie. And you can include France in the observation...

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society."

Would that the leaders on all sides of the divide might heed this mise en garde.

[libodem]

26. I tend to call on Mrs God

Men have fucked this place up.

Oh, Dear Goddess,

Please speak to your Husband and tell him to whisper into the ears of men that: GOD IS LOVE!

Any other practice is blasphemy.

[Surya Gayatri]

27. She has myriad names: Shakti, Durga, Parvati, Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Kali...

The list of her names and forms is without end.

True that: "Men have fucked this place up."

"GOD IS LOVE!

Any other practice is blasphemy."

[libodem]

28. .

She does have many names.

I try to meditate and send love into the universe to induce healing vibes.

Its hard not to hate this but hatred only dissolves our own inner peace and darkens the collective unconscious.


(I love it that India celebrates the Goddess in festivals each year.)

[Surya Gayatri]

29. As they say, "think globally, act locally..."

And, 'silent sitting' or light meditation, if practiced by the majority of earthlings, would turn this place into something indescribably different and better!

Hinduism does know about the creative and healing power of the feminine aspect within all of us--male and female.

[moondust]

32. War of the Worlds

Coming soon to a theater neighborhood near you.