Rad Geek People's Daily

I laughed out loud at reading the latest riposte to David Horowitz's BS, as David Mazel tests the free speech mettle of Right-wing campus newspapers (including the University of Alabama's own Crimson White) by submitting an ad proclaiming in bold letters that 1) abortion is not murder and 2) God is an abortionist [Salon.com]. The results?

In an April 2 article in Salon, Horowitz wrote that his own ad had been accepted by 14 of 48 papers. His 29 percent acceptance rate is certainly nothing for the left to cheer about, but it sure beats my own paltry 9 percent.

Of course, I should be clear that I don't think Right-wing campus newspapers should have to run left-wing outsider ads any more than neutral or Left-wing campus newspapers should have to run Horowitz's crap. But I do love a good skewering of the Right's hypocrisy from time to time. (Oh, damn, I'm criticizing David Horowitz, but I'm not running a David Horowitz banner ad on my page! I am such a PC thug that I am censoring his free speech!)

It behooves you to check out http://security.tao.ca if you are an activist or otherwise concerned about online privacy. Tons and tons and tons of great resources.

Beth Sundheim of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics would have made me laugh out loud if I weren't in a public computer lab with her perfect response to Cathy Young's latest article in Salon.com's on-going love affair with every trendy antifeminist they can find:

How comforting it is to know that when Phyllis Schlafly's reactionary carcass is finally laid to rest, Cathy Young will be poised to assume her frilly pink mantle.

The Nuremberg Files drama continues as a huge coalition of reproductive rights groups files an amicus brief asking the US 9th Circuit Court of appeals to reconsider its ruling of First Amendment protection for the NF's terrorism. [Choices Campus Community]

David Greenberg's Riot Act - The last century's racial disturbances have a common cause: police brutality [Slate.com] provides a good discussion of the past century of riots by black citizens and its links to the white supremacist corruption of the police department and justice system. On the other hand, it has a lingering problem: it attempts to cast all race riots as black people rioting and attacking white people. This neglects the truly vicious white supremacist assaults on blacks in towns such as Tulsa and St. Louis. The article even tries to lump the 1919 Chicago white supremacist riot as a black-initiated race riot similar to Watts, L.A., or Cincinatti.

Yes, I know the article is an attempt to show how the rioters were provoked by massive police brutality and that oppressive police treatment of blacks has got to stop if we want to end the violence. But it has a subtle effect in reinforcing a few dangerous premises. It reinforces the conviction that racial problems mean black problems, and don't have anything to do with the active brutality of whites. And similarly, it makes it seem as though racial violence is something that blacks initiate, even if we see that initiation as justified. In the vicious race riots of the early 20th century, that simply was not the case. All of this leads to a continuing view of blacks as a problem to be solved, as the (Greenberg's words) the violent and the lawless element of a race riot.; What about the white thugs in Tulsa who dropped dynamite on black ghettoes from airplanes? What about the white St. Louis rioters who raped and tortured black women and men by the thousands? Blacks are not the only racial troublemakersof the twentieth century.