I’m not really keen on having photos of myself on facebook and flicker accounts. As in, I’d greatly prefer that people didn’t take photos at parties and such and then post the ones of me publicly, without permission, tagged with my name.
Is there any way to discourage people from doing this while not being a jerk?
You’re seeing the ABW on its new server. We’re still working out the kinks and getting the design the way we like it, so things will be up to speed in a few days.
A friend of mine who writes for the anarchist magazine The Fifth Estate recently sent me their headline story for Spring 2009, issue #380. The piece by Henry Reed discusses the exorbitantly long sentences given to “terrorists” who damage property as a way to protest damaging environmental policies, using the case of Marie Mason (“sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison… after pleading guilty to two acts of eco-sabotage”) as a lens for analyzing the phenomenon.
There’s a lot of interesting and scary information in the piece that highlights how much the huge penalties given reflect wounded capitalist ideology rather than actual criminal fears:
For several years I lived in an apartment building on a crowded residential street on one of the last ungentrified blocks in my neighborhood. In one year, the buildings on both sides of my dwelling mysteriously burned. In their place, condos were built. No charges were filed; the police, the courts, and the city government smiled upon these “accidental” fires. The lives of dozens, if not hundreds, of people were put at risk.
Mason and Ambrose, on the other hand, burned down an unoccupied research building in the middle of the night, far from residential housing. No one was intended to be hurt and no one was.
The difference is that their acts were an attack on the “marketplace” ‐ not on humans. Attack the marketplace and you are a terrorist in the eyes of the State. Threaten the lives of hundreds of low-income residents to build condos and you are an entrepreneur and an upstanding citizen.
But what really jumped out at me about the article was a tangent that relates to the issue at hand, but which I also felt suggested a deeper analysis:
Since when have ideas been part of a “marketplace”? Intellectual thought, at its best, has always been a deeply subversive enterprise, unconstrained by the society in which it germinates.
Situationist theorist Guy Debord declared that in modern society the commodity form had colonized all aspects of everyday life, and both Grey and Maloney’s statements illustrate this. They cannot even talk about ideas, which are free, without framing them in the language of the market. Socrates committed suicide as a testimony to the power of critical ideas to resist the social norms of society.
I found this latter quote very profound. An economy is only part of a functioning culture. It’s frightening how much everything, from human relationships to ideological pursuits, is rendered through the lens of capitalist economics. It’s frightening, and it’s unhealthy. My ideas are not a marketplace, and my personhood is not determined by my economic worth alone.
The Iowa Supreme Court this morning unanimously upheld gays’ right to marry.
“The Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution,” the justices said in a summary of their decision.
The court rules that gay marriage would be legal in three weeks, starting April 24.
Amending the Iowa Constitution “requires the votes of a simple majority in both the Iowa House and Iowa Senate in two consecutive sessions, followed by a passing vote of the people of Iowa.” The Senate majority leader, a Democrat, said before the ruling that it was “exceedingly unlikely” that the Iowa Senate would take this up this session, so it appears that marriage equality will be the law in Iowa until at least November of 2012.
You can find a pdf file of a summary provided by the Iowa Supreme Court, or read a pdf of the full opinion. For something shorter, the blogger at WordInEdgewise has written an excellent summary of the decision.
Here’s a few bits from the Iowa Supreme Court’s summary:
Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children. […] Although the court found support for the proposition that the interests of children are served equally by same-sex parents and opposite sex parents, it acknowledged the existence of reasoned opinions that dual gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. Nonetheless, the court concluded the classification employed to further that goal—sexual orientation— did not pass intermediate scrutiny because it is significantly under-inclusive and over-inclusive.
The statute, the court found, is under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of parents—such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons—that are undeniably less than optimal parents. If the marriage statute was truly focused on optimal parenting, many classifications of people would be excluded, not merely gay and lesbian people. The statute is also under-inclusive because it does not prohibit same-sex couples from raising children in Iowa. The statute is over-inclusive because not all same-sex couples choose to raise children. The court further noted that the County failed to show how the best interests of children of gay and lesbian parents, who are denied an environment supported by the benefits of marriage under the statute, are served by the ban, or how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents. Thus, the court concluded a classification that limits civil marriage to opposite-sex couples is simply not substantially related to the objective of promoting the optimal environment to raise children.
Promotion of Procreation. Next, the court addressed the County’s argument that endorsement of traditional civil marriage will result in more procreation. The court concluded the County’s argument is flawed because it fails to address the required analysis of the objective: whether exclusion of gay and lesbian individuals from the institution of civil marriage will result in more procreation.The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and lesbians from civil marriage.
Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships. The County also asserted that the statute promoted stability in opposite-sex relationships. The court acknowledged that, while the institution of civil marriage likely encourages stability in opposite-sex relationships, there was no evidence to support that excluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage makes opposite-sex marriage more stable.
I’m particularly glad that the Court’s decision brought up the best interests of children being raised by same-sex parents, a group that has been too frequently ignored in debates regarding marriage equality.
I don’t have enough understanding of Iowa politics to guess whether or not anti-equality folks will be able to amend the Iowa constitution to remove equal protection guarantees from same-sex couples for marriage laws. But in the meantime, this is extremely good news.
UPDATE 2: PG in comments writes:
I think we’ll be able to gauge the potential for backlash by whether the judges up for retention elections in 2010 (Justices Marsha K. Ternus, Michael J. Streit and David L. Baker) win those elections. Judicial retention elections tend to be pretty pro forma; when a justice loses, it’s indicative of public angst about his/her actions. If the anti-SSM folks can rally people to show up for a mid-term election and vote against the retention of these judges, that’s a bad omen for 2012.
UPDATE: Pam’s post at Pandagon includes some nice quotes of various right-wingers losing their shit.
Curtsy: Box Turtle Bulletin. Image from Dunechaser.
Although most of them don’t come up in the comic, Mirka actually has a lot of sisters. Just one brother, though. Anyhow, I thought this sketch of all the siblings would be fun to post.
Okay, everybody, CALM DOWN. You can stop panicking now. I am delighted – no, relieved – to announce that we finally have a klezmer song about toxoplasmosis.
Via JVoices:
What is toxoplasmosis, you ask? Why, it’s the scary brain parasite that I PROBABLY TOTALLY HAVE. I’m forgetful. Also I get writer’s block a lot. Therefore: toxo.
It’s the only plausible explanation.
Also, if you’re in L.A., you should come to the Doikayt seder tomorrow. I will be there! We will exchange sholem aleychems and then do hipster dances.
(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)
Heads up fans and friends! The Angry Black Blog is moving! Not a big move — it’s still going to be at theangryblackwoman.com, but the blog will no longer be hosted at WordPress.com. I’m putting it on my own server, instead. I’m going to do the physical move Friday, the DNS will probably be propagating Saturday and Sunday. Monday everything should be back to normal.
Sometime this weekend you may notice changes – the theme/template will likely change a lot, you may see a few ads appear, suddenly there will be little pictures at the tops of posts. But it will still be us doing what we do.
If you could please take a moment to check and see if you have any links on your sidebars or heavily trafficked posts to URLs beginning with theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com. If so, please take out .wordpress since now those links will not automatically redirect to theangryblackwoman.com.
Also, I would hold off commenting after Friday evening, just in case you’re not seeing the correct version of the blog.
That is all. Monday begins a spate of much more regular blogging!
Willing to advertise for Verb Noire? Great! Please print this and hand it to people. Thanks everyone. You guys are the best.
On March 8th, which was International Women’s Day, the young man in the two pictures below could be seen walking through the streets of Tehran. His tee shirt reads–and excuse my perhaps awkward transliteration of the Persian–Marg bar Mardsalari, which my wife translates as “Death to Patriarchy.” That he is wearing a hejab–or, in Persian, roosari–speaks for itself. As I understand it, he was arrested almost immediately after the pictures were taken. I have not been able to find out anything about what has happened to him since.
Cross posted on It’s All Connected.
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