Your Happening World – Page 14

Your happening world (9)

Published on March 22, 2010

Your monday slice of linky goodness:

Don’t be mean to squid (Kate Beaton rules ok.)
How the media portrays both the EDL and the antiracist counterprotestors as violent. This is largely due to overreliance on police statements — first priority to them is “maintaining public order” and they blame the counterdemonstrators for making this difficult. Having racists march through their cities in an attempt at intimidation is not a problem as long as nobody tries to stop them. Because that’s when you get riots. Like in Stoke.
Not a new phenomenon of course. Remember the Battle of Cable Street.
Despite police resistance however, the UAF protesters still managed to drive the EDL off the streets.
It’s teh gays what caused Srebrenica! Umm, no. But Christ, what an asshole.
That odious little twrp Kammmm tried to smear Kurt Vonnegut’s reputation again. On the whole I liked Flying Rodent’s response more than Chris Bertram’s.
Your slice of comic book history for today: The DC Ratings Scandal of the mid-eighties, when the rightwing political climate and several high profile “smut busts” of comics retailers scared DC into self-censorship, as told by somebody in the frontlines back then: Stephen Bissette. (Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8, more to come. Whew.)

Your Happening World (8)

Published on December 7, 20091 Comment

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.

Your Happening World (7)

Published on November 20, 2009

Bwahaha! Texan anti-gay marriage legislation may actually outlaw all marriages there. Serves the fuckers right.

When a Canadian diplomate favourably compares the Dutch and English treatment of prisoners in Aghanistan with his own country’s policies, how bad must they be? Answer: quite bad, but the government doesn’t want to know.

Any suggestions for the 10 Popular science books SF writers would benefit from having read?

Thierry Henry audits for the Feench handball team:

You can’t blame the Irish for being livid, nor the French for being disgusted but philosophical. Bad refereeing is an intrinsic part of football and had the shoe been on the other foot (the ball on the other hand) the reactions would have been the exact opposite. But I thought better of Thierry Henry.

Neither Blair nor Balkenende is EU president. Thank ghu, even if it means we have to keep Balkenende longer. Bet the British tabloids are eagerly awaiting any hint of a sex scandal on the part of Herman van Rompuy, if only to be able to pun on rompuy-pompuy…

Lieberman is the Democratic Sarah Palin.

Ideas I wish I’d had: Nobody’s Favorites, a look at comics’ worst characters, the ones that nobody likes. Some I agree with, some not and some are so obscure nobody even knows them.

Ideas I wish I’d had, part II:Thursday WHO’s WHO.

Friday bitchfest: Professionalism.

Your Happening World (5)

Published on October 15, 2009

A Pillow Book for Cats — Ursula Le Guin revealing a talent as cartoonist.

Fisking McArdle — almost as perverse an activity as sounds like and she won’t learn a thing anyway, because that’s not why she writes her crap, as this guy realises all too well, but he can’t help himself.

Over at Livejournal, Ross TenEyck had to do jury duty and described the experience for those of us living in a post-Napoleonic law system.

Continuing the legal theme, this judgement (pdf) in which queen bee of the Birthers Orly Taitz is slapped down for wasting the court’s time.

Meanwhile in Holland, the news that Brown is sending more troops to Afghanistan, but only if the Afghan government does x and the NATO allies do y and all the planets are aligned, has given fresh ammo to the people who’d like to extend the Dutch mission once again. We were promised back in 2001/02 that it would be one deployment with no extension, then we got an extension but with the promise that it would end in 2010, no matter what happened and now we have to extend this once again, because we can’t leave our allies behind. Must think we’re born yesterday.

Your Happening World (3)

Published on September 30, 20093 Comments

Read:

A reasonable definition of Hipsterism, of which Trainspotting, though it will have no cache among hipsters themselves, is a formative work, is the assumption that there is no position which the middle class subject can not occupy, both class and identity politics have been overcome, or at least class has been subsumed into identity and identity is for the other. The middle class assumes a kind of transcendent, post-historical emptiness into which all cultures can be incorporated. This is not simply hyper-consumerism it’s also a metaphysical claim, a claim to superiority, thus while others are bounded by ethnicity, class, gender; limited, objects, with a finite set of facets and characteristics, the hipster, viewing everything as simply a lifestyle choice, views her own not just as one lifestyle among many but the lifestyle of lifestyles.

Read. That the American rightwing is loony and over the top is a given as is liberal outrage towards the messenger if not so much the message. Remember: America is not Chile. America is not Chile. America is not Chile. Is it?

“THE…. [Sodomite] Hal Duncan”.

Listen.

Nobody asked for this. Did they?

Americans. Thick as shit. (But don’t flatter yourself your country is any better).