Your Happening World (8)

Twenty years ago, yesterday: École Polytechnique massacre: 14 women murdered for being women…

He may have magickally given me an ear infection over the intertubes (the day after he blogged over his ear aches my ears were blocked), but I’m still chuffed to see Michel Vuijlsteke get his share of the glory. His picture of the “bathroom fly” (Clogmia albipunctata) from august 2004 was the first documented sighting of this species in Belgium.

Unexamined priviledges on display at Crooked Timber: is it racist to make fun of Cornel West’s new autobiography or are those who see racism in this thread the real racists? Either way it came across as a bit bullying at first as everybody piled on to make fun of West. Not that his writing didn’t “deserve” it perhaps, but in the context of who West is and how he was designated an officially condoned target back in 2001 when Larry summers tried to kick him out of Harvard it looked like a group of school yard bullies picking on the weird kid whom the teacher had already humiliated in front of the class. It may be fun, but it’s too easy and it ignores targets which need mocking much more.

It may be a few years old, but LarryE’s post on not giving in to rightwing pressure to be “serious” and “respectable” should be required reading to all leftwing activists:

The Red Scare years are hard to grasp at this distance. The level of distrust, of paranoia, of fanaticism, certainly and clearly outstrips what we are living with today – which is not to say it could not become that bad, only that it hasn’t yet. But the one lesson that activists should have drawn from that nightmare is that acquiescence is not an answer. Adopting the terminology, the (dare I say it) frame of the enemy – I use the word deliberately – does not protect you against attack. Most of all, slicing away your friends and supporters will not help you. Spending time and energy going “oh, no, no, no, I’m not one of them” only narrows your base, reduces your potential support, and will not satisfy your attackers.

Casual gaming for the lolcat generation.