Standing on the Barricades

Returning to Gray is Beautiful Last year I announced my intention to write a series of posts for the PS Commons (we’re now calling these “letters”) around the gray is beautiful theme.  Predictably, things got in the way. I did write soon thereafter on controversies surrounding Israel/Palestine and Turkey/Kurdistan.  But then ...
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Charlie Hebdo and the Appeal for French Context

White & Black Analytics

The attacks on the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January 2015, during which fourteen people were killed, pose a specific problem for the white left. The call to contextualize Charlie Hebdo foregrounded a structurally white French context, in which people of colour ...

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Vilnius and Warsaw: Our Common Cause

Upon receipt of the Freedom Prize

Mrs. President, Mrs. Chair of the Parliament, Mr. Prime Minister,

I am moved and embarrassed by this honor bestowed by the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania on a Pole -- a Polish journalist and editor of Gazeta Wyborcza. I treat it as a sign of recognition for my friends and colleagues ...

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A Postcard from France: A Canadian in Avignon

To provide some context for what follows: I live in France, in the small southern city of Avignon. My wife, Audrey, is French, but I’m not. I, like so many others here, am “an immigrant.” Recent events have made the last few days emotionally and intellectually complex. I’ve been, at ...

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A Postcard from France: A Canadian in Avignon

The Weird Global Media Event

It will be made of half-facts and one-and-a-half facts. And made quickly, as the desire for a media story quickly outstrips the reliable data. Certain corrections will later have to be made -- silently. It is only global in appearing to speak of a world; somewhere indifference reigns. But it does ...
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The Weird Global Media Event

When the Far Enemy becomes Near

Reflections on the Charlie Hebdo killings

The heinous killing of 12 journalists and staff from Charlie Hebdo needs to be interpreted with at least two different focal lenses. There is a French (or French-European) dimension, but there is also an international dimension of these killings, one that connects the spread of ISIS with the strategy of the two ...

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When the Far Enemy becomes Near