Raquel Saraswati posted some photos from that “shut up” protest in London yesterday, along with some (cough) skeptical comments.
Raquel E Saraswati @RaquelEvita 21 hours ago
That awkward moment when these guys in London used freedom of speech to protest against freedom of speech today.
More from Greg Epstein on the Harvard Humanist of the Year award to Anita Sarkeesian.
Greg Epstein @gregmepstein 23 hours ago
Loved hosting @femfreq, our @HarvardHumanist of 2014 awardee. Humanism requires feminism; feminism=good f/all genders
The Wiltshire police explained that all they were doing was making an assessment of community tensions for the purpose of stamping them out. That’s all. Kindly meant. No harm done. Clear off out of it.
Wiltshire Police has now confirmed that an officer did visit a local shop in Corsham to request the names of those who had purchased the copies of the magazine and issued an apology “to the members of the public who may be affected by this”.
A Wiltshire Police spokesman said: “Following the terrorism incident in Paris, France on 7 January 2015, Wiltshire Police undertook an assessment of community tensions across the county.
Ah yes, that’ll be the problem. When British Authority undertakes an assessment of community tensions, it always does so with an eye to telling everyone to shut entirely up about Islam and its prophet. That seems to be all it can think of to do. If Hitler came back they’d tell everyone to shut up about Nazism, so they would. [Read more…]
Your offer of commemorative badges in support of journalistic freedomhighlighting “Je suis Charlie”, prompts me to suggest a degree of caution following my experience. Tongue in cheek, I asked my helpful newsagents to obtain a copy of the edition of Charlie Hebdo issued after the dreadful massacre in Paris, if indeed a copy was ever available in north Wiltshire. To my surprise, a copy arrived last Wednesday week and although the standard of content in no way matches that of the Guardian I will cherish it. However, two days later a member of Her Majesty’s police service visited said newsagent, requesting the names of the four customers who had purchased Charlie Hebdo. So beware, your badges may attract police interest in your customers.
Anne Keat
Corsham, Wiltshire
The names. Since when do newsagents even take the names of people who buy newspapers or magazines from them? But much more to the point…wtf? Why did they ask?
They’ve apparently apologized now, but I still don’t know why they asked.
Ireland has ambitions to become another Pakistan, the Guardian reports.
The sale of the Charlie Hebdo magazine published after the Paris atrocity is threatening to become the first major test of the Irish Republic’s blasphemy law, Muslim representatives and secularists have warned.
Ireland’s Islamic Cultural Centre has said the presence of a depiction of the prophet Muhammad on the front page of the satirical publication, on sale now in Irish shops, is a clear breach of the country’s blasphemy legislation. [Read more…]
Damn. I was all set to take back much of what I’d said about Prince Charles, because newspaper headlines were saying he was going to urge the Saudi king to stop Raif’s flogging. For a few seconds I was elated, because that would surely make a difference – coming from a fellow monarch and an important ally. But then I read the body of the story and it turns out it’s all just claiming.
Headline in the IB Times: Prince Charles to urge Saudi king to halt blogger Raif Badawi’s flogging [Read more…]
Oh goody, it’s Brown v Board all over again – with reactionary officials defying a federal court in a last ditch effort to deny people civil rights. Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court last night told the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Monday. George Wallace lives!
“Effective immediately, no probate judge of the State of Alabama nor any agent or employee of any Alabama probate judge shall issue or recognize a marriage license that is inconsistent” with the Alabama Constitution or state law, the chief justice wrote in his order.
Milène Larsson interviews the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz for VICE.
It’s tough going, but worth it; very worth it.
He’s annoyed at the New York Times for refusing to publish the Je suis Charlie cover.
The Charlie Hebdo survivors are uneasy about the whole “je suis Charlie” thing. They’re uneasy about being symbols because Charlie has always been about making fun of symbols.
BuzzFeed says Paul Elam and AVFM are the more respectable wing of the MRA movement. That seems surprising. Neither is all that respectable.
A Voice for Men is often portrayed in the media as a relatively sober voice of reason in the abrasive world of men’s rights. “If Men’s Rights Activism has a Gloria Steinem, it is Paul Elam,” Emmett Rensin wrote this week for Vox. “The website is one of the oldest and, if there is such a thing, most respected hubs for MRA activity. Elam and his staff do, at the very least, engage in genuine advocacy on behalf of men.” Rensin didn’t cite any examples of said advocacy. This is not surprising, given that the site’s advocacy efforts are difficult to discern.
On the other hand it does make him a lot of money. That’s respectable in itself, right?
What is clear is that Elam has amassed tens of thousands of followers — and lined his pockets with their donations to the for-profit AVFM, which are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (When asked how this money is spent, Elam told BuzzFeed News that A Voice for Men’s finances were “none of your fucking business.”)
