'We can assassinate you at any time" - journalists face abduction and murder in South Sudan
Hakim was home alone with his two dogs, relaxing one night in March, when his cellphone rang. The man on the other end of the line asked a simple question: “Do you know that we can assassinate you at any time?”
In seconds, the line went dead.
Harassment is nothing new for Hakim. The 30-year-old has been questioned by national security operatives many times. But none of those experiences was quite like the assassination threat.
Continue reading on The Intercept
Pierre Bourdieu's photographs of wartime Algeria
If you know the work of Pierre Bourdieu, you probably know it as sociology, or perhaps philosophy. Whatever you call the discipline he worked in, the man remained thoroughgoingly concerned with the dynamics of power in every context. This interest extended even to his artistic endeavors, such as the photographs he took in Algeria in the late 1950s and early 60s, when he worked in that country as a university lecturer. The time and place of the Algerian War would have given anyone plenty to document, visually or otherwise, but it proved, for obvious reasons, an especially rich intellectual ground for a Frenchman thinking about power dynamics.
Continue reading on Open Culture
Egyptian actress "kidnapped" by "Islamic State" pranksters
The video, which is part of Egyptian broadcaster al-Nahar TV's 'Mini Daesh' comedy series, was aired this week and featured actress Hiba Magdi, who was left streaming with tears by the end of the ordeal which lasted almost half an hour.
