The CBC talked to Francine Prose about her hostility to Charlie Hebdo today.

Prose tells As It Happens host Carol Off that despite her objections, she supports the magazine’s right to free speech.

“Free speech is indivisible. If you believe in free speech you believe in any sort of free speech — that you can say anything you want. And that’s absolutely what I believe in and I would include in that everything Charlie Hebdo has done.”

But she says that doesn’t mean Charlie Hebdo deserves the award.

No, it doesn’t; she’s right about that much. They are two separate things.

“We defend the right of neo-nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois but that doesn’t mean we give them an

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Suzanne Nossel’s reply to Deborah Eisenberg, also in Glenn Greenwald’s collection, is very elucidating.

We believe that honoring Charlie Hebdo affords us an opportunity to inflect global opinion on an issue of longstanding concern to PEN and to free expression advocates worldwide, including many in the Muslim world: namely, efforts to devalue, ban, or punish acts deemed to constitute the defamation of religion. Such assaults come both from governments and from vigilantes, and they are not acceptable in either context.

That pulls a little against some of the other things she says, which are on the “speech all speech no matter what the content” side. This is saying that it’s not just a matter of all speech no matter … Read the rest

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From PEN: Rejecting the Assassin’s Veto.

The “assassin’s veto” over speech has become a global phenomenon in recent years and, even more vividly, in recent months, when we’ve seen killings not just in Paris but also in Copenhagen and Bangladesh. Reflecting the intensification of violent intolerance for speech considered offensive by some, former PEN American Center President Salman Rushdie has commented that while he would write The Satanic Verses again today, he does not believe that he would survive the reprisals in this era.

Charlie Hebdo has positioned itself in the firing line of this battle, refusing to accept the curtailment of lawful speech by those who meet it with violence. It is undoubtedly true that in addition to

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Glenn Greenwald is collecting

the key documents giving rise to the controversy that has erupted inside PEN America over the award the group is bestowing on Charlie Hebdo.

He starts with an email from Deborah Eisenberg to PEN’s Executive Director Suzanne Nossel on March 26.

What a wonderful thing to give an award to some person or institution that courageously exemplifies freedom of expression – and how entirely in keeping with the objectives of PEN. But as a member, up until now anyhow, of PEN, I would like to express myself freely on PEN’s decision to confer the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on the magazine Charlie Hebdo.

It is clear and inarguable that the

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You have got to be kidding.

The New York Times reports:

The decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has prompted six writers to withdraw as literary hosts at the group’s annual gala on May 5, adding a new twist to the continuing debate over the publication’s status as a martyr for free speech.

It’s one of those cases where there wouldn’t be a “debate” if so many people weren’t industriously getting everything wrong.

The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi have withdrawn from the gala, at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Gerard Biard,

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Padraig Reidy reports at Little Atoms that Queens University Belfast has canceled a scheduled symposium on

can you guess what?

On Charlie Hebdo.

The irony is so multiple and reflexive that I think it may be about to suck the entire universe into itself and then disappear.

The symposium: Understanding Charlie: New perspectives on contemporary citizenship after Charlie Hebdo, was due to be hosted in June by QUB’s Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities. But delegates, including Oxford University philosophy professor Brian Klug, were informed via email on Monday (20 April) that the event would not go ahead.

The email informed speakers: “The Vice Chancellor at Queen’s University Belfast has made the decision just this morning that

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I started to say I hate to agree with David Frum, but then I paused and decided I don’t, really – I’ve seen or heard him say reasonable things more than once, so it’s fatuous to hate to agree with him just because he’s a conservative.

He wrote about Garry Trudeau v Charlie Hebdo a couple of days ago, starting with a compliment to the Anglo-American liberal instinct to sympathize with the underdog.

This is not a universal human norm. Across much of the modern world, human beings still follow the ancient Roman rule,vae victis—woe to the loser. But the liberal tradition appealingly sees its core task as standing up for the weak against the powerful.

“Hold off,

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Here is Chris Moos in the very act of showing “brandishing” the cover of the January 14 Charlie Hebdo.

Via Chris on Twitter… Read the rest

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More pusillanimous bullshit from university students shocked at the existence of cartoons that mention Mohammed. It’s the University of Manchester this time, which is extra annoying on so many levels…

First the headline

Charlie Hebdo cover revealed at debate on campus

Omigod you don’t mean it?!! The cover of a satirical weekly newspaper “revealed” at a debate on campus??!? Oh my god everyone run for cover, climb the trees, launch the lifeboats, pass the brandy – whatever shall we do?????

The subhead:

In a debate over free speech on campus, the controversial front cover of the memorial edition of Charlie Hebdo, depicting the prophet Muhammad, was revealed unannounced

Oh oh oh oh. The anguish, the terror, the sharp pain in … Read the rest

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The Wiltshire police explained that all they were doing was making an assessment of community tensions for the purpose of stamping them out. That’s all. Kindly meant. No harm done. Clear off out of it.

Wiltshire Police has now confirmed that an officer did visit a local shop in Corsham to request the names of those who had purchased the copies of the magazine and issued an apology “to the members of the public who may be affected by this”.

A Wiltshire Police spokesman said: “Following the terrorism incident in Paris, France on 7 January 2015, Wiltshire Police undertook an assessment of community tensions across the county.

Ah yes, that’ll be the problem. When British Authority undertakes an assessment of … Read the rest

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A letter to the Guardian…

Your offer of commemorative badges in support of journalistic freedomhighlighting “Je suis Charlie”, prompts me to suggest a degree of caution following my experience. Tongue in cheek, I asked my helpful newsagents to obtain a copy of the edition of Charlie Hebdo issued after the dreadful massacre in Paris, if indeed a copy was ever available in north Wiltshire. To my surprise, a copy arrived last Wednesday week and although the standard of content in no way matches that of the Guardian I will cherish it. However, two days later a member of Her Majesty’s police service visited said newsagent, requesting the names of the four customers who had purchased Charlie Hebdo. So

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Here we go again. Another student union at another UK university says another “no you may not have a cartoon of Mo on your table/Facebook page/stall” to another student union secular society. This one is Manchester.

Outrage has been sparked on Twitter this week in light of a tweet from the University of Manchester Free Speech and Secular Society (FSS) accusing the University of Manchester Students’ Union of unjust censorship in preventing them from displaying a copy of the Charlie Hebdo magazine at the Refreshers’ Fair last Tuesday.

That’s a woefully inelegant sentence, but you get the idea.

The reasons for the censorship of the Charlie Hebdo front cover were laid out in an e-mail from the Students’ Union

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From last week – Christiane Taubira herself gave her view on whether or not Charlie Hebdo is allowed to make fun even of religions.

Lors de la cérémonie d’obsèques de Tignous, l’un des dessinateurs tués dans l’attaque de Charlie Hebdo, Christiane Taubira a évoqué le “droit de se moquer de toutes les religions”.

À la question “peut-on rire de tout ?”, la ministre de la Justice a livré sa réponse aux funérailles de Tignous à Montreuil le 15 janvier 2015.

Christiane Taubira a alors indiqué : “On peut tout dessiner, y compris un prophète parce qu’en France, pays de Voltaire et de l’irrévérence, on a le droit de se moquer de toutes les religions qu’en France”.

At the funeral for

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