Charlie Judeo

"God will never give you anything you can't handle, so don't stress." Kelly Clarkson

By Alex P. Vidal

HILLSBOROUGH, New Jersey -- On the eve of the Paris-based Charlie Hebdo massacre first anniversary, Charlie Judeo crossed my mind.
Charlie Judeo is the gatekeeper, inspector, and elevator operator of a synagogue in Upper Manhattan, New York City I recently "housecleaned" for five hours.
The place was a Jewish congregation, a worship community equivalent to a chapel for the Christian faithful.
While waiting for the assembly to conclude at 10 o'clock in the morning, I sat outside the synagogue and the old man Charlie Judeo engaged me in a brief but thought-provoking conversation when he saw the cross pendant on my necklace:
CJ: "You're a Christian, aren't you?"
APV: "Yes sir, I am."
CJ: "You believe in Jesus (Christ) as a Messiah?
APV (Digging from my Christian Living memory lane, I hesitantly replied): "We, Christians, believe Jesus Christ was a Prophet yes, a Messiah."

SUPERNATURAL

CJ: "Man, Jesus could not be a Prophet or Messiah because he possessed supernatural qualities and was a product of a virgin birth."
APV: "Please elaborate."
CJ: "Jesus could not have possibly fulfilled the messianic requirement of being descended on his father’s side from King David. A Messiah is born of human parents and must possess physical attributes."
Charlie Judeo is a dyed-in-the-wool Hebrew believer, thus I relinquished any attempt to engage him in a debate over faith, which I thought was unnecessary.
I came to operate a dust pan, a sweeper, a rag and a vacuum cleaner; wash the plates, glasses, cauldrons and other kitchen utensils and collect garbage, not to join the Holy Bible versus Torah slugfest.
The steely admonition and religious lecture had to be interrupted. 
I needed to hit the ground running; the assembly was over and it's past 10 o'clock.

CHECK

A good and pleasant person, Charlie Judeo entered the synagogue to check the progress of my work after two hours.
A garbage collector beat him to the draw by 15 minutes. 
"Where is the garbage?" Charlie Judeo demanded.
"The collector had taken it away," I retorted.
"OK," Charlie Judeo snapped back, his moustache gyrating. 
Three o'clock in the afternoon. Time to go.
Charlie Judeo was waiting outside the synagogue. 
The old man escorted me to the building exit and bade goodbye, half-smiling.
"Thank you, Charlie Judeo. Hope to see you again soon," I quipped, waving my right hand. 

Our Charlie Hebdo gives us libel cases, not bullets

“One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.” Ferdinand Mount

By Alex P. Vidal

AS community journalists, we consider it more glorious to go to jail than to be killed like sitting ducks from an assassin’s bullets.

What happened in France as we were preparing for the arrival of Pope Francis here early this month, was unheard of in all the violence related to the practice of free speech and press freedom.  

If editors and cartoonists of Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were Filipinos and the paper was published in the Philippines, they would have ended up in the courtrooms, not in the cemetery, for lampooning political and religious icons.

Lampoon is an interesting fabric in a magazine or newspaper.

Abusive military and government officials are tormented in blind items.
In Western Visayas, we have Tya Barang and Snap Flaks in New Express (I started writing for this paper in 1988); Lapsus Calami formerly Lapsus Linguae in Panay News; Tony Mauricio in the defunct Daily Informer; and Lolo Beloy Jr. in Sun.Star Iloilo.

In France they have Charlie Hebdo, not just a column but the entire magazine using cartoons to ridicule prominent political and religious characters.

Except on rare occasions where targets of media criticism resort to violence, critical Filipino journalists are harassed only by onion-skinned characters through libel suits.

Plaintiffs know they have slim chances of wrapping up a conviction against a crusading journalist, but they nevertheless proceed with the judicial option instead of settling matters in a brutal manner.

GUNMEN

Automatic rifle-toting gunmen storming an editorial room and shooting editors, reporters, cartoonists, and columnists is unimaginable in this country.

Slaughtering the entire editorial staff right inside the newsroom would be the most abominable act to be committed against members of the Fourth Estate in a democratic state like the Philippines.   

It means dealing a mortal blow against the very institution that performs as vanguard of a constitutionally-guaranteed democratic ideal.

Media martyrs in this country are killed by drug lords, gambling lords, rogue cops, corrupt military men and politicians, not because they committed blasphemy and ecclesiastical slander.

When a journalist is murdered, either he was silenced because of an investigative report that would expose anomalies and crimes or for personal motives.

Not because he insulted a religion.

What happened in Maguindanao massacre where more than 30 journalists were killed, can’t be compared to the Charlie Hebdo bloodbath.

Unlike the Charlie Hebdo carnage, the slain Ampatuan journalists were not the real targets.

They were collateral damage.

Because we have laws against libel, enemies of press freedom go to court when they express displeasure and dismay against the “offending” journalists.

DANGEROUS

The Philippines is still ranked as among the most dangerous countries for crusading journalists, according to the International Organization of Journalists.

We have among the highest mortality rate in terms of violence against media practitioners; and the culture of impunity remains mind-boggling because we are supposed to be the freest and the only Catholic in Asia.

The only consolation is, enemies have never commanded a group of maniacs to attack media outlets and execute members of media.

How Charlie Hebdo became known for its anti-Islamic sentiment

“A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.” Albert Camus

By Alex P. Vidal

IT is sad that the massacre on Charlie Hebdo magazine in

Paris, France on January 8 that left 12 people (mostly magazine employees and two policemen) killed occurred a week before the scheduled visit of Pope Francis in the Philippines, thus the incident was not totally discussed in mainstream Philippine media right away.
Scores were killed in a rampage in Jewish grocery store and along the highway as the gunmen, French nationals of Algerian descent, fled before they were killed by elite police forces.

Six of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and staff members killed in yesterday's attack are pictured together in this photo, taken in 2000. Circled top from left is Philippe Honore, Georges Wolinski, Bernard Maris and Jean Cabut. Below them on the stairs, from left, is editor Stephane Charbonnier and cartoonist Bernard ‘Tignous’ Verlhac

Daily Mail reported that satirical Charlie Hebdo has become a byword for offensive statements in France after taking several highly provocative swipes at Islam.

In its report after the massacre, Daily Mail wrote:

The magazine once named Prophet Mohammed as its guest editor, published cartoons of the holy figure in the nude, and once renamed itself Sharia Hebdo with the cover slogan '100 lashes if you don't die of laughter'.

The controversy began in 2006 when the publication reprinted now-infamous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed by Danish artist Kurt Westergaard.

When the images originally appeared they lead to days of protests across the Middle East and in Western cities. The decision to reprint the images landed the then-editor in court under anti-terror laws, though he was later acquitted.

BURNED

The Hebdo offices were burned to the ground in 2011 when attackers used Molotov cocktails to start a blaze early in the morning of November 2.

Also among those killed was Jean Cabut, aka Cabu. Few other countries in the world have a cartoon culture as rich as France, with its insatiable appetite for comics, or Bandes dessinées, as they are called. It's a culture that expresses an incredible understanding of humor -- be its aim contemptuous or educational, exclusionary or inclusive. It was a constant process, one called the freedom of opinion.

There was nobody in the building at the time, and the target was instead thought to be the magazine's computer system, which was completely destroyed.

Riot police were forced to stand guard outside the building for days following the attack, as the editors took a defiant stance, choosing to reprint the cartoon images multiple times.

In 2012 they again printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as a deliberately provocative gesture while violent protests were taking place across the Middle East.

The following year the magazine's office again had to be surrounded by riot officers after they published a cartoon booklet depicting the Prophet naked as a baby and being pushed in a wheelchair.

On the final page of the booklet there was a note from the editor, Stephane Charbonnier, saying the images were 'halal' because Muslims had worked on them, and that they were factually accurate as they had been derived from descriptions in the Koran.

MIXTURE

The satirical publication, widely seen as France's answer to Private Eye, prides itself on a mixture of tongue-in-cheek reporting and investigative journalism.

Hebdo's current office building has no notices on the door to prevent a repeat of the attacks that have occurred in the past.

In an interview with De Volkskrant in January 2013, Mr. Charbonnier revealed he had been placed under constant police protection for four months after one of the cartoon issues was published.

He shrugged off criticism that he was only publishing the images to gain notoriety for Hebdo, and insisted that he was instead defending the right to free speech.

Mr. Charbonnier pointed out that the magazine had poked fun at feminism, nuclear energy and homeland security, but the Islam issues always attracted the most publicity. 
(Please read further: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/charlie-hebdo-attack-targets-democracy-and-the-west-a-1012072.html and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2901681/Hero-police-officer-executed-street-married-42-year-old-Muslim-assigned-patrol-Paris-neighbourhood-Charlie-Hebdo-offices-located.html)