Hope to be able to do one a day in the short term.

At least the French government, reported today, has denied trademark protection to "Je Suis Charlie".  Some graphic artist had tried to corner that (like Pat Riley and "Threepeat") within a short time of the killings.

The West is re-discovering the tranquility that comes with forced silence. What is fascinating is that this trend is based on principles of tolerance and pluralism -- once viewed as the values underlying free speech.

Turley discusses the decline of free speech in France and the U.K. in this January 11 blog piece, which contains links to at least a dozen exemplars.

The quote is actually from page 199 of The Friends of Voltaire, by Evelyn Hall, writing as S. G. Tallentyre, describing the attitude of Voltaire toward the suppression of Helvetius' "De I'Esprit", which had recently been publicly burned beside Voltaire's "Natural Law."

What the book could never have done for itself, or for its author, persecution did for them both. 'On the Mind' became not the success of a season, but one of the most famous books of the century. The men who had hated it, and had not particularly loved Helvetius, flocked round him now. Voltaire forgave him all injuries, intentional or unintentional. 'What a fuss about an omelette!' he had exclaimed when he heard of the burning. How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that! 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,' was his attitude now.

S. G. Tallentyre was the pen name for Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a pedant like me, who never wrote anything as bitterly satirical as Candide.

Are we ever going to see that discussion in the mainstream?

I'm guessing not.  People in glass houses, and all that.

Obama's gift to his peers was to not show up for the We-Are-The-World photo op; his absence has dominated the media - at least here - and  allowed real free speech issues to take a back seat, and kept world leaders off the hot seat for their own failures in this area.

David Dayen, writing in Salon:

The right to peaceable assembly is as much a part of the First Amendment as the right to free speech, and in fact they intersect. In 2011 the tens of thousands of Occupiers across the country had no access to a printing press or real estate in a newsweekly. So they used their collective voice, basically all they had to use, to call attention to an economic system that doesn't work for the 99 percent. In their view, the best way to maximize the reach of that opinion was through an ongoing protest, using public spaces to register dissent.

This was not welcomed as a new addition to the public debate, or an example of boldly exercising the sacred, inalienable right to speak out. In fact it was immediately seen as a problem to be solved. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security gathered intelligence on Occupy protests from even before it began, coordinating this surveillance with local police nationwide and even the New York Stock Exchange and private businesses. City councils subsequently passed a host of new laws, presented as protections for health and safety, to criminalize assemblies and justify evictions from encampments.

[...]

At no time did the army of free speech warriors on the right speak up against this state-sponsored repression of peaceful assembly and protest. They did suggest that the protesters should leave the country if they opposed the economic system, and they did whip up fear by equating outlier criminal conduct with the entire movement. Traditional media and government, particularly on the right, worked hand-in-hand to discredit the protests and ensure no backlash when they were inevitably and brutally repressed.

[...]

I'm sure conservatives found the Occupy message uncomfortable, and they had every right to oppose it and offer rebuttals. But they've spent the last week arguing that it's wrong to extinguish that uncomfortable speech, to narrow the zones where that expression can take place. In fact they've called anyone who tries to shut down speech the moral equivalent of a terrorist. Does that also count for the nation's law enforcement apparatus knocking out those who question the effectiveness of unregulated crony capitalism and soaring inequality?

The Kalashnikovs took aim not only at the French cartoonists, but also, at the free-thinking mind.  Pursuit of "la provoc" is a Parisian tradition, stemming from their revolution.  An aggressive secularism and, historically, a check on the Catholic Church, and particularly, a way of keeping the cardinals and bishops velvet slippers planted on the ground.

But, the Muslim inhabitants of the banlieues do not see satire as poking fun at authority, but rather, as the arrogance of the powerful--demeaning the part of their identity that has not been integrated into society.  Equal opportunity mocking is not persuasive.  Irony, criticism and irreverence seen as good things in Western society are seen as being only provocative.

The excesses of fanaticism can take people, in the name of religion, to horrible places. As Voltaire says, "nothing is more terrible than a people, having nothing to lose, fight in the united spirit of religion."    All the more important, therefore, that we honor those courageous and incisive satirists from Voltaire to Stephen Colbert.   The  Charlie Hebdo demonstration in Paris this past weekend, was to me, a productive reaction, acknowledging, in its way, that our terrorist challenge requires more than drones and boots on the ground.

I personally cringe at the sight of women in Burqas.
That is because I associate it with the relegation of women to a status that is beneath the status of men.

But I can't know if any particular women has chosen that way of life, or that religion or that means of expression willingly or not.

So I have to feel the banning of the Burqa as the State banning an expression of a religious belief - akin to the suppression of freedom of expression.

I have seen women wearing surgical masks instead of the part of the Burqa that covers the face. As far as i know, that is not illegal. The law would have to be changed to prohibit all face coverings - for everyone. Men and women.

It's freedom for all or freedom for nobody.

Personally, and I do not defend my reaction - just reporting it - I wish that Charlie Hebdo had not published a rather crummy depiction of Mohammed on its first publication since the slaughter. It is their right. And I defend it and all that. But they are not likely to be the targets once again if a rather crappy cartoon inflames another madman. So I think that at this delicate time they are essentially crying "fire" in a crowded theatre.

I think their intention was to portray Muhammad shedding a tear over the slaughter -  expressing that he would not be on the side of the the perpetrators. But the drawing is so crappy - and Mohammed is made to look so hideous, that I found it revolting - and really insensitive - to French Muslims of course, but also insensitive to people - innocent civilians - whom they may be putting in the line of fire.

Turkish:

Melih Gokcek, mayor of Ankara for the ruling AK party, said on Monday that "Mossad [the Israeli intelligence service] is definitely behind such incidents . . . it is boosting enmity towards Islam." Mr Gokcek linked the attacks to French moves towards recognising Palestine.

Ali Sahin, a member of Turkey's parliament and foreign affairs spokesman for the AK party, last week set out eight reasons why he suspected the killings were staged so that "the attack will be blamed on Muslims and Islam".

Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia's leading tabloids, ran the headline: "Did the Americans stage the terror attack in Paris?" and posted a series of interviews on its website that presented various reasons why Washington might have organised the attack.

In one interview, Alexander Zhilin, head of the pro-Kremlin Moscow Centre for the Study of Applied Problems, claimed the terror attack was US retribution against President François Hollande for a January 6 radio interview in which Mr Hollande urged the EU to lift sanctions against Russia.

Washington used the attacks as "a quick fix for consolidating" US and EU geopolitical interests in Ukraine, Mr Zhilin claimed.

It was on their continent that only a half century ago millions and millions of their citizens (not only Jews) were slaughtered in the most psychotic and sadistic way possible. And, the leaders of that genocide were able to accomplish that, to a large degree, through the carefully designed use of "speech."