Eric Dubos, who hunts with several French packs, posted this image of a red deer supporting free speech.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Stephane Charbonnier “Charb”: “I’d rather die than live on my knees.”

Meanwhile, after his murder by Islamic fanatics, the yellowbelly New York Daily News has on its cover this photo of Charb holding up a cartoon from which the Muslim imam has been pixilated but the hook-nosed rabbi left in.

The Daily Caller is publishing a growing list of all the mainstream media outlets so cowardly that they are declining to publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons. These include the Associated Press, NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, CNN, The Telegraph, the Jewish Chronicle, the New York Times, ABC, and CBS.

Let’s hear it, on the other hand, for the Berliner Zeitung, the Berliner Kurier, and La Tribune, the only European papers so far which did.

Never Yet Melted, some readers may remember, was banned by Google Adsense back in 2013 for republishing, as news, Charlie Hebdo cartoons. It didn’t even take a terrorist attack to get Google to censor Mohammed cartoons.

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I am moved to republish this:

Mattheus van Beveren, Mohammed, leaning on his Koran, Trodden upon by Angels Bearing the Pulpit, Liebefraukirke, Dendermonde, Flanders, late 17th century

Among the slain: from left, clockwise, Stephane Charbonnier, known by his pen name Charb, editor of Charlie Hebdo; Georges Wolinski; Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac; Lead cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut; and contributor Bernard Maris.

The best current account is from the Daily Mail:

Four of France’s most revered cartoonists – Stephane Charbonnier, Georges Wolinski, Bernard ‘Tignous’ Verlhac and Jean Cabut – were among 12 people executed by masked gunmen in Paris today at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Two masked men brandishing Kalashnikovs burst into the magazine’s headquarters this morning, opening fire on staff, also shooting dead contributor Bernard Maris, 68.

Police officers were involved in a gunfight with the ‘calm and highly disciplined men’, who escaped in a hijacked car, speeding away towards east Paris. They remain on the loose, along with a third armed man.

Charbonnier, 47, known by his pen name Charb, was the editor of the weekly magazine, and once famously said ‘I’d prefer to die standing than live on my knees’. He also declared, in the face of animosity from extremists, ‘I live under French law, not Koranic law’.

Cabut, 76, also called Cabu, was Charlie Hebdo’s lead cartoonist, Wolinski an 80-year-old satirist who had been drawing cartoons since the 1960s and Tignous a 57-year-old contributor to the publication.

The gunmen reportedly asked for the cartoonists by name before shooting them dead and yelling ‘the Prophet has been avenged’. …

[T]here were unconfirmed reports that one of the gunmen said to a witness: ‘You say to the media, it was Al Qaeda in Yemen.’ …

Mr Charbonnier, who once said ‘a drawing has never killed anyone’, was included in a 2013 Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam article published by Inspire, the terrorist propaganda magazine published by Al Qaeda.

In 2012 he said: ‘I don’t feel as though I’m killing someone with a pen. I’m not putting lives at risk. When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it.’

Charbonnier said that he didn’t fear reprisals. After publishing naked pictures of the Prophet in 2012, he said: ‘I have neither a wife nor children, not even a dog. But I’m not going to hide.’

He added: ‘It should be as normal to criticize Islam as it is to criticize Jews or Catholics.’

Georges Wolinski, who lived in Paris, was married twice, first to Jacqueline Saba, with whom he had two children, Frederica and Natacha, and then in 1971 to Maryse Bachere. They had one daughter together, Elsa-Angela.

Cabu’s drawings first appeared in a local French newspaper in 1954. He was conscripted to the Army for two years for the Algerian War, but that didn’t stop his creative talent, which was put to use in the army magazine Bled and in Paris-Match.

In the 1960s, 70s and 80s his career flourished, with the artist co-creating Hara-Kiri magazine, working on children’s TV show Recre A2 and eventually working on Charlie Hebdo as a caricaturists.

His most controversial moment came in 2006 when his drawing of the Muslim prophet Muhammad appeared on the cover with the caption ‘Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists’ with a speech bubble containing the words ‘so hard to be loved by jerks’. …

Victim Bernard Maris was an economist who contributed to the newspaper and was heard regularly on French radio

As well as the AK47 assault rifles, there were also reports of a rocket-propelled grenade being used in the attack, which took place during the publication’s weekly editorial meeting, meaning all the journalists would have been present.

When shots rang out at the office – located near Paris’ Bastille monument – it is thought that three policemen on bicycles were the first to respond.

‘There was a loud gunfire and at least one explosion,’ said an eye witness. ‘When police arrived there was a mass shoot-out. The men got away by car, stealing a car.’

Survivor and Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Corinne ‘Coco’ Rey was quoted by French newspaper L’Humanite as saying: ‘I had gone to collect my daughter from day care and as I arrived in front of the door of the paper’s building two hooded and armed men threatened us. They wanted to go inside, to go upstairs. I entered the code.

‘They fired on Wolinski, Cabu… it lasted five minutes… I sheltered under a desk… They spoke perfect French… claimed to be from al Qaeda.’…

‘They were wearing military clothes, it wasn’t common clothing, like they were soldiers.’

Once inside the gunmen headed straight for Charbonnier, killing him and his police bodyguard first, said Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman.

Minutes later, two men strolled out to a black car waiting below, calmly firing on a police officer, with one gunman shooting him in the head as he writhed on the ground, according to video and a man who watched in fear from his home across the street.

The witness, who refused to allow his name to be used because he feared for his safety, said the attackers were so methodical he first mistook them for France’s elite anti-terrorism forces. Then they fired on the officer.

‘They knew exactly what they had to do and exactly where to shoot. While one kept watch and checked that the traffic was good for them, the other one delivered the final coup de grace,’ he said. ‘They ran back to the car. The moment they got in, the car drove off almost casually.

Full article.

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French policeman murdered.

According to Twitter analytics tool Topsy, there have been more than 70,000 tweets using the JeSuisCharlie: hashtag so far today.

Social media are exploding with world-wide indignation over the massacre in Paris. This evening, Parisians are marching at the Place de la République, “for freedom of the press, democracy, and the Republic.”

A Parisienne demonstrates in solidarity with those killed. Photograph: Seán Clarke.

Three Islamic gunmen armed with fully-automatic AK-47s walked into the Paris offices of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo around midday today and opened fire, killing at least twelve people. 10 journalists and two police officers were killed, and another five people were seriously injured. The shooters were picked up by a getaway car driven by a fourth terrorist. The killers then drove to Porte de Pantin in north-east Paris, where they abandoned the first automobile and hijacked another car.

Guardian story.

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TIMELINE OF PAST EVENTS

Mohammed Overcome by the Fundamentalists

8 February 2006: Charlie Hebdo republishes the Danish Mohammed cartoons, adding its own “It’s a Drag Being Loved By Idiots” cartoon as a commentary on the cartoon controversy.

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“Charlie Hebdo Must Be Veiled!”

7 February 2007: Charlie Hebdo and its’s publication director Philippe Val went on trial before the Correctional Tribunal of Paris
facing accusations by Islamic Organisations of France and the Grand Mosque of Paris that reprinting the cartoons was a violation of French laws prohibiting “publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion.” The charge carried a possible six-month prison sentence and a fine of up to $28,530.

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22 March 2007: Charklie Hebdo & Philippe Val acquitted.

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Translation: “One hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing!”

2 November 2011: Charlie Hebdo intended to commemorate the Islamic victory in the elections in Tunisia by temporarily renaming itself “Sharia Hebdo” and appointing the Prophet Mohammed “guest editor” and putting his portrait again on the cover.

The “Sharia Hebdo” edition had not even appeared, when during the night the paper’s Paris offices were fire-bombed and its web-site attacked and taken down.

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Captions: “Untouchables 2 — Must Not Mock”

Captions: top: “The film which embarrassed the Muslim world.” Mohammed says: “And my buttocks. Do you like my buttocks?” below: “Mohammed a star is born!”

19 September 2012: France closed 20 embassies and Charlie Hebdo’s web-site was shut down and its offices surrounded protectively by riot police after the magazine published its raunchiest Mohammed cartoons yet.

Dan Greenfield (very amusingly) compares the Western elites determination to believe in “the Religion of Peace” with Nigerian email investment opportunities, and finds that the root of those elites’ delusion lies in their determination to pretend that the world we are all living in is the same as the world they desire.

Western elites, who fancy themselves more intelligent and more enlightened than the wise men and prophets of every religion, and who base their entire right to rule on that intelligence and enlightenment, are not in the habit of admitting that they have been played for fools. …

In 1993, Israel cut a land-for-peace deal with a greasy Egyptian bloke named Yasser Arafat. The Cairo-born Arafat would turn his gang of terrorists into a government and police force, and rule over an autonomous territory, in exchange for ending the violence. Clinton smiled beatifically as hands were shaken and a new era of peace was upon us.

The era, however, has yet to show up.

Over two decades of terrorism have not shaken the belief of the American or Israeli establishments in the “Two-State Solution”, which has solved absolutely nothing, except perhaps the problem of how to make the Middle East into an even worse place. As the violence increased and the pathways to peace decreased, American Presidents and Israeli Prime Ministers redoubled their concession offers and their faith in the Two-State Solution—now an article of faith in most circles. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt; it also laps at the shores of Tel Aviv, flows out to the English coast and floods cities across Europe.

Ask a Eurocrat for the time of day and he’ll calculate how much to charge you for the subsidies to the artisanal clock farmers that it will take to answer that question. Ask him about Islamic integration and he will instantly tell you that everything is going smoothly and the problems only exist in the minds of a few bigots and the pages of a few sensationalized tabloids.

Muslim integration into Europe is going swimmingly, much like the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the Arab Spring. It’s going like a house on fire, not to mention a bus, a lot of cars and two towers on fire—on the other side of the Atlantic. Whatever problems there are, as with the peace process and the spring process, are undoubtedly the fault of someone who isn’t a Muslim. …

Most people project their own desires and motivations on to others. Americans assumed that Muslims just wanted democracy, free enterprise and apple pie. Muslims assume that Americans are conspiring to destroy them through a byzantine series of plots and conspiracies, because that is what they would do in our place… and that is what they are trying to do.

Good article, read the whole thing.

Dan Greenfield is fed up with all the cant about Islam as just another religion.

Islam is not a spiritual religion, even its paradise is a materialistic place, a fantasy harem where the physical pleasures of life can be enjoyed without restraint. That gives it an advantage over Judaism and Christianity, just as it gives the Saudis and the Pakistanis an advantage over the Americans and Israelis. There is no angst in Islam, no spiritual seeking and no room for doubt. The marching orders are always clear and individual deeds and thoughts matter less than a willingness to always obey.

Islam came out of the desert and it has never left the desert, instead it has brought the desert with it along with its codes, its deep hatreds, its constant deprivation, its deceptiveness and its nomadic expansionism. Where Islam goes, the desert rises, its tents, its red knives and its insecurities. It was backward even at the time of its birth and it has only become more so, but its singlemindedness is an advantage in an age of effete leftectuals and eurocrats dreaming of a transnational world.

While the leftectuals dream of windmills, the Saudis hire foreigners to pump their oil and then sell it to them, the money goes to fund the Hegira, its mosques in every city from Dublin to Moscow to Buenos Aires and Toronto, the fatwas, the bombs, the websites where the masked faithful hold up AK-47’s, the Islamic science courses and sessions on learning to love the Hijab and then the Burqa,

The Saudis just want what everyone wants, for everyone to acknowledge their greatness and live like them. They can hardly be blamed for that when the West spends almost as much money promoting democracy and its own way of life to people who still execute witches and blasphemers. They may be savages, but they fell ass backward into enough black gold to fuel a global religious war, and they’re using it cleverly and cunningly to transform our societies and wage war against us even while attending dinners at the White House. It’s smoother work than our diplomats are capable of.

You can hardly blame the desert bandits for being what they are, but you can blame the apostles of reason for preaching about a golden age of tolerance and enlightenment from every purloined pulpit and then turning away the heartland to a religion that is nakedly brutal and intolerant at home.

An honest look at Saudi Arabia, at its cruelty, its slaves, its intolerance of other religions and even of women, should be enough to tell even the dimmest Eton or Harvard grad exactly what the West is in for. No matter how many specialists in Muslim tolerance show up at universities, there is the Grand Mufti explaining that Mohammed commanded the eradication of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore there can be no churches allowed there. …

There are two Islams. The real Islam of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and an imaginary Islam that exists only in the mosques of air and card table Korans of academics apologists and political pundits who have decided that Islam cannot be bad, because no religion can be bad, not even one which kills and kills, it must just be misunderstood.

Read the whole thing.

Tony Stafki, The Battle of Lepanto

(In the contemporary painting above: “The Catholic ships form a cross and the Muslim ships form a cresent. – The standard of the Holy Cross which was blessed by Pope Pius V can be seen on Don Juan of Austria’s ship which is leading the charge. – Papal ships (St. Peter’s keys) – The miracle of the wind: just before the armies met the wind completely switched in favor of the Catholic ships. – Devils can be seen amongst the Muslim ships (they were summoned from hell by the Muslim leader). The devils have peacock feathers as swords, a manifestation of their pride. – Our Lady of Victory with a sword in one hand ready to crush the devils and the other hand outstretched to the Muslim souls. – St. Michael leading the Angels – There are small white lights by the oars on the Muslim ships representing the souls of the Catholic prisoners.)

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October 7, 1571, the fleet of the Holy League, an alliance of the kingdoms of Spain, of Sicily and of Naples, of the Republics of Venice and of Genoa, of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, of the Duchy of Savoy, of the Papal States, and of the Sovereign and Military Order of St. John, decisively defeated the Ottoman Empire’s main battle fleet in five hours of fighting at Lepanto at the northern edge of the Gulf of Corinth.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, was shot twice in the chest and once in the left arm in the course of the battle.

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The News Junkie linked an excellent essay by Michael Novak on How the 1571 Battle of Lepanto saved Europe.

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Rev. Fr. Luis Coloma, The Story of Don John of Austria, trans. Lady Moreton, (New York: John Lane Company, 1912), pp. 265-271:

The Turkish fleet came on imposing and terrible, all sails set, impelled by a fair wind, and it was only half a mile from the line of galliasses and another mile from the line of the Christian ships.

D. John waited no longer; he humbly crossed himself, and ordered that the cannon of challenge should be fired on the “Real,” and the blue flag of the League should be hoisted at the stern, which unfurled itself like a piece of the sky on which stood out an image of the Crucified. A moment later the galley of Ali replied, accepting the challenge by firing another cannon, and hoisting at the stern the standard of the Prophet, guarded in Mecca, white and of large size, with a wide green “cenefa,” and in the center verses from the Koran embroidered in gold.

At the same moment a strange thing happened, a very simple one at any other time, but for good reason then considered a miracle: the wind fell suddenly to a calm, and then began to blow favorably for the Christians and against the Turks. It seemed as if the Voice had said to the sea, “Be calm,” and to the wind, “Be still.” The silence was profound, and nothing was heard but the waves breaking on the prows of the galleys, and the noise of the chains of the Christian galley slaves as they rowed.

Fr. Miguel Servia blessed from the quarter-deck all those of the fleet, and gave them absolution in the hour of death. It was then a quarter to twelve.

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Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)