Charlie quotes and links

Assholes deserve to be shunned, not murdered with cruel delight. But being murdered doesn't make their behaviour any more reasonable. It doesn't make them heroes to emulate
- Je ne suis pas Charlie Hebdo: Assholes can't be heroes

Maurice Sinet, 80, who works under the pen name Sine, faces charges of "inciting racial hatred" for a column he wrote last July in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. ...

"L'affaire Sine" followed the engagement of Mr Sarkozy, 22, to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of an electronic goods chain. Commenting on an unfounded rumour that the president's son planned to convert to Judaism, Sine quipped: "He'll go a long way in life, that little lad."

A high-profile political commentator slammed the column as linking prejudice about Jews and social success. Charlie Hebdo's editor, Philippe Val, asked Sinet to apologise but he refused, exclaiming: "I'd rather cut my balls off."

Mr Val's decision to fire Sine was backed by a group of eminent intellectuals, including the philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, but parts of the libertarian Left defended him, citing the right to free speech
- French cartoonist Sine on trial on charges of anti-Semitism over Sarkozy jibe (Jan 2009)

And why have you been so silent on the glaring double standards? Did you not know that Charlie Hebdo sacked the veteran French cartoonist Maurice Sinet in 2008 for making an allegedly anti-Semitic remark?
- As a Muslim, I’m fed up with the hypocrisy of the free speech fundamentalists

Olivier Cyran, who worked for Charlie from 1992 to 2001:

Doubtless I had neither the patience nor the strength of heart to follow week after week the heartbreaking change that has occurred in your team after the turn of September 11, 2001. I did not part with Charlie Hebdo when suicide planes hit your editorial, but the Islamophobic neurosis that has gradually taken hold of your pages from that day has affected me personally because I remember the good times I had spent in this newspaper during the 1990s. The devastating laugh "Charlie" I had loved now sounded in my ears like the laughter of the fool or a pig who wallows in his shit . So far I have not criticised your racist newspaper. But since today you proclaim loudly your pure anti racism and without reproach, the time has perhaps come to seriously consider the matter
- "Charlie Hebdo " not racist ? If you say so ... (Dec., 2013

My comment: Evelyn Beatrice Hall (misattributed to Voltaire) ("I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it") said it better than George Brandis ("People have the right to be bigots in a free country") but both were right.