Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
‘Far from being ‘sacred’, as some have claimed, freedom of speech is always contingent.’ Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP In times of crisis, those who would like us to keep just one idea in our heads at any one time are quick to the megaphones. By framing events in Manichean terms – dark versus light; good versus…
Today, in the wake of the Paris’ tragedy, some journalists, here and there, also on Gawker, try to understand what this very “different” newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, actually is. And yes, I say “is” because the newspaper itself is not dead and will be published normally next Wednesday and the weeks after that, despite the slaughter…
Over the past week, millions of people who had never heard of French magazine Charlie Hebdo have come into contact with its controversial covers and cartoons. And many have come away with questions about those cartoons, including a nagging sense that their depictions of Islam and people of color have been insensitive, or even racist….
Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters As many as a million people, joined by 40 world leaders, filled the streets of Paris on Sunday in solidarity after two separate terrorist attacks claimed 17 innocent lives last week. The day before, more than 3,000 miles to the south, a girl believed to be around 10 approached the entrance to a…
Since the terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the country’s Muslim community, despite universally and repeatedly condemning the attack, has come under a wave of misguided “reprisal” attacks. The attacks are being mapped by a respected British anti-Islamophobia group, Tell MAMA UK (MAMA stands for measuring anti-Muslim attacks). This map details the incidents since they…
After 9/11, Le Monde declared: ‘Nous sommes tous Américains.’ The love affair was short-lived: as soon as the French declined to join the war against Iraq, American pundits called them ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ and French fries were renamed ‘freedom fries’. When Obama took office, relations warmed, but the tables were turned: the new administration in…
The internal staff email chain began with a Jan. 8 email from Al Jazeera English’s executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr, asking his reporters to interrogate whether the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper was “really an attack on free speech” and whether the slogan “Je Suis Charlie/I Am Charlie” is “alienating.” Describing the incident as a…
Getty Images The NYPD slowdown has been a reality (albeit, one mostly unacknowledged by the NYPD) ever since two officers were killed in their squad car in Brooklyn on Dec. 20th. While Police Commissioner Bratton finally admitted to the slowdown yesterday (and also declared that it was over), the AP has some remarkable details about…
About 700,000 people take part in marches across France following three days of deadly attacks in the Paris area that took the lives of 17 people. BBC News – France attacks: Huge marches for victims.
The hostage situation at a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday, in which four people and the gunman died, has been called an “anti-Semitic attack” by French President François Hollande. It’s just the latest crime to fit that description in a country that has seen a rash of anti-Jewish incidents in recent years. Soon after Friday’s…