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Thursday lazy linking

Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 18 years ago, in 2006, on the World Wide Web.

This week around the web…

  • Pam Spaulding @ Pandagon (2006-01-31): A Towering Figure is Gone remembers the life and legacy of Coretta Scott King:

    This loss is so great because Mrs. King was an advocate for civil rights who believed that phrase was inclusive — those of us in the LGBT family knew that she was on our side. While other figures in the civil rights movement, including Coretta's daughter Bernice, have chosen exclusion, demonization, and marginalization of gays and lesbians, Coretta Scott King stood regally and spoke eloquently about why discrimination of any kind is wrong.

  • Lynn Harris @ Broadsheet (2006-01-31): Ice cheerleader boos Rangers highlights a couple of recent stories about sexual harassment against women at Madison Square Garden, from the bottom to the top of the corporate ladder.

    From today’s New York Daily News: Madison Square Garden is a den of sexual harassment, according to the former Rangers City Skater who is suing the World’s Most Famous Arena, and heaven help the woman who complains about it.

    Courtney Prince, once the captain of the Rangers’ on-ice cheerleaders, sued the Garden for sexual harassment in 2004, claiming, among other things, that management basically pimped the skaters out to VIP guests. (Read the story for the rest of the gories.)

    The other woman who may need heaven’s help is Anucha Browne Sanders, who earlier this week filed a lawsuit accusing Knicks president Isiah Thomas of sexual harassment.

    This is a company that doesn’t have respect for women, Prince told the News. Anucha Browne Sanders is at the top of the organization and I’m a lowly cheerleader at the the bottom. I have to believe there’s something going on in the middle, too. I now see how polluted it is.

    MSG refused a settlement deal in 2004, committing to fight the charges in court.

    Prince says that in the meantime, she’s been the target of threats and attempts to defame her character. Regardless, she says, her perspective on sexual harassment has done a 180. I went into this being anti-feminist and I used to judge women who claim sexual harassment the same way I’m sure people are judging me, says Prince. But it’s been worth it.

    Be sure to follow the links, but only if you’re ready to be mad at men in suits for the next few hours (madder than you already were, I mean). It’s an ugly, ugly business.

  • Kevin Carson @ Mutualist Blog (2006-01-26): Another Free-for-All: Libertarian Class Analysis, Organized Labor, Etc. rounds up, fleshes out, and adds to debate over socioeconomic class, the legitimacy of strikes and other union tactics, and the promise of old school Wobbly tactics such as the use of direct action on the job and the minority union to effect change without collective bargaining (and without the need for an NLRB permission slip, either). He also has some kind words for some comments of mine, here and in various comments sections.

    One of the most important effects of Wagner was to channel union activity into 1) state-certified majority unionism, 2) a contract regime relying heavily on the state and the union bureaucracies for enforcement against wildcat strikes and direct action on the job, and 3) reliance on conventional strikes rather than on forms of direct action more difficult to detect or punish. In short, Wagner channelled organized labor into the kinds of activity most vulnerable to employer monitoring and countermeasures. What’s more, Wagner got the federal government’s foot in the door for subsequent labor legislation like Taft-Hartley, which prohibited the secondary strikes that were so successful in the 1930s.

  • fafblog! (2006-01-25): Q & A: Our Omnipotent President offers a guide for the perplexed.

    Q. Can the president spy on Americans without a warrant?
    A. The president has to spy on Americans without a warrant! We’re at war, and the president’s gotta defend America, and he’s not gonna wait for a permission slip from a judge or a senator or America to do it!

    Q. Things sure have changed since the innocent days of mutually assured destruction! But is it legal for the president to ignore the law?
    A. Maybe not according to plain ol stupid ol regular law, but we’re at war! You don’t go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!

  • Twisty @ I Blame the Patriarchy (2006-02-01): My Jarring Experience has the displeasure of waking up to the second worst part of a film classic. Several commenters independently point out that part of the reason that the worst part of My Fair Lady is so appalling is because that’s not the way it was written to begin with, and that Shaw himself observed that only an idiot whose sensibility has been ruined by romantic comedy would expect things to turn out as, well, the Hollywood writers made it turn out.

  • And, in the comments to No Treason (2006-01-31): Dear Karen (No, Not That One), I discuss a personal pet peeve: using the word suicide bombing as if it named a moral rather than a tactical category of attack.

    “I don’t think it justifies suicide bombings however.”

    There’s nothing about suicide bombings that makes them essentially or even presumptively unjustifiable. The problem isn’t the method of delivery but rather the use of the method to attack civilians. (Would it be better if Hamas bombed innocent people from planes?)

    Guerrilla tactics, even tactics as terrifyingly dangerous as body-bombing, aren’t the problem. The use of guerrilla warfare to attack innocent civilians is.

4 replies to Thursday lazy linking Use a feed to Follow replies to this article

  1. Stefan

    In my defense I think it was clear from context I was talking about the specific suicide bombings that Hamas, et al, use in Israel, which for the most part are directed against civilians. You’re correct, however, in your implication that the issue would be very different if Hamas restricted itself to Israeli military targets.

  2. Discussed at www.unpartisan.com

    Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator:

    Vigils held for King as funeral plans made

    Coretta Scott King’s body was returned here Wednesday as funeral plans for the widow of slain civil

  3. Rad Geek

    Stefan:

    In my defense I think it was clear from context I was talking about the specific suicide bombings that Hamas, et al, use in Israel, which for the most part are directed against civilians.

    Oh, sure. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was ragging on you personally. It was clear enough what you meant, but the use of “suicide bomber” as a synonym for “terrorist” is just one of my pet peeves and I try to mention something about it wherever I see it. (Because while it is usually clear enough what is meant in context, it does tend to be used by statists to pass off guerilla attacks on military targets — such as the Cole or the marine barracks in Beirut — as if they were obviouslly morally equivalent to terrorist massacres of civilians.)

  4. Stefan

    That’s true, suicide bombings against military targets are not morally equivalent to doing it against civilian targets (unless perhaps you think there is no difference). Suicide bombing in particular seems to be a favored technique among terrorists today, although I don’t know if this has been true ever since bombs were invented.

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