Tag: Charlie Hebdo

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general freedom individual achievement

Crybaby

San Francisco Freedom Forum, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Illustration

I’m not a crybaby. “Believe me” … as one fellow running for president is fond of saying.

Yesterday, however, at the San Francisco Freedom Forum, I was admittedly glad that the ballroom was dimly lit. Listening to speakers from across the globe tell their stories of struggling for freedom, I became … well, verklempt.

The event, organized by the Human Rights Foundation, is an expansion of the long-​running Oslo Freedom Forum. It featured speakers such as:

  • Hyeonseo Lee, who not only escaped from North Korea, the world’s most totalitarian regime, but later returned to help her family get out as well.
  • Yulia Marushevska, the Ukrainian anti-​corruption crusader, whose powerful YouTube video, entitled “I Am a Ukrainian,” helped the world see the Euromaidan protests.
  • Anjan Sundaram, the journalist with chilling tales of the totalitarian regime of Rwanda’s President Kagame, who recently overcame term limits through a referendum wherein 98 percent of the country supposedly voted to allow him to stay in power until 2034. Embarrassingly, Kagame spoke at Harvard and Yale on democracy and human rights. Sundaram recalled a Rwandan who explained, “We don’t know where the state ends and we begin.”
  • Zineb El Rhazoui, who co-​authored the comic book The Life of Mohamed with slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier, and now lives facing an ISIS death sentence.

And many more.

For me, Rosa María Payá, with the Cuba Decides campaign, was the biggest tear-​jerker. She spoke about the murder of her activist father, Oswaldo Payá, at the bloody hands of the Castro regime.

As a father, it made me … (give me a moment) … think about how important freedom is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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San Francisco Freedom Forum, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Illustration

 

Categories
national politics & policies

Deep Thinker Kerry

John Kerry, Charlie Hebdo, Paris Attack, terrorism, Common Sense, Illustration

Comparing Friday’s horrific shootings by Islamist terrorists to the events of last January, one-​time presidential candidate John Kerry noted that there is “something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo… . There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of — not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘OK, they’re really angry because of this and that.’ This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve [sic] one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for.”

Yes, Kerry pulled himself out of the fire pretty fast, but, even if he earnestly believes that (as Reason characterized it) “killing cartoonists is less appalling than killing concertgoers,” this was a thought better left unexpressed.

What could Kerry have been thinking?

Here’s a guess: John Kerry sees himself as a reasonable man. Reasonable men try to understand things. And in the course of trying to understand things, a reasonable man will likely explore all sorts of ideas, make uncomfortable comparisons, follow challenging arguments wherever they lead.

But Mr. Kerry does have a job: Secretary of State. This makes him a key mouthpiece for the United States of America … to the world, and about world events.

A Secretary of State should know that standing up for rights is his public duty. It is not spinning theories about motivation that could ominously pass as justification for slaughtering some folks but not others.

His statement may betray him mid-​thought, but hey: “everything we stand for” includes free speech and the press.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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John Kerry, Charlie Hebdo, Paris Attack, terrorism, Common Sense, Illustration