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katlalog
060323 12:23 Women's rights
Oglala defy new South Dakota abortion legislation.
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.
"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she said to me last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."
060323 12:17 Cartoons
I've been wondering what's going on with South Park. Got terribly quiet after first the Tom Cruise / Scientology thing and then the Virgin Mary thing. The world finally got too sensitive for satire, it seems. Then Chef leaves. But South Park isn't quitting.
060323 11:58 Transport
Bike lane stories now with pictures.
One cycle path in Newcastle has a flight of steps in it and crosses a dual carriage way - it's not for the faint-hearted.
060310 16:10 The world outside
Winter just won't quit this year.
060309 14:02 Civil liberties
Was talking to someone last night about things i won't be taking on the plane tomorrow, or to England in general. Pieces of clothing, for example, that might have a different connotation there. My Palästinensertuch, for example, a checkered (head)scarf of arab origin that used to be worn by european pro-palestine anarchists but has since then become a fairly neutral item that you see a lot in Germany, especially in Berlin, on fairly normal people with no obvious political affiliation. It's more a fashion thing than a political statement these days. However, i don't think i should risk walking through British customs with it or walking around with it in London. You never know.
Another obvious items is my swiss army knife, which i can kiss good-bye if i forget to put it in the check-in luggage. Also, nothing even slightly political for reading on the flight. People have been stopped, searched, questioned and sent back for books they carried.
I don't like having to think like this, having to take Big Brother and political and religious nutters into considerations when packing my travelling bags. We live in darkening times.
060302 23:15 Racism
Do you know what a Sundown Town is?
It's a place that forcibly kept blacks out after dark.
These towns used to greet visitors with roadsigns such as Negro, don't let the sun go down on you here
, No Mexicans After Night
and Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark
.
All told, Loewen says, he found evidence of more than 150 sundown signs in 31 states. But he wasn't researching the sundown signs . They were just symbols. He was researching sundown towns, which he defines as "towns that were all white on purpose." He found lots of them -- far more than he expected when he began his research in his home state of Illinois about five years ago.
060301 12:46 Culture / environment
On his mailing list, Warren Ellis, eloquent as usual, puts into words my main reasons for leaving England. Keyword: miserable.
I am so fucking cold I could die. The heating in the pub appears to be broken, the rain is freezing, we've been having bursts of snow and sleet, and, I tell you, it's nasty. There are places where it's colder, places where it's snowier, but Britain leads the world in just basically bloody disgusting weather. Our climate may be more stable than most, but it's just an unpleasant, soul-chewing place to live. And you wonder why Brits are all miserable gits.
And just to underline that point, a day later he writes:
It's the sun. We haven't seen that since November. There are blinded people all over Southend today.
No link. You'll have to sign up to his mailing list. And you can find that yourself.
060301 12:16 Women's rights
This might seem tasteless but it's angry defiance. Absolutely no one will ever take away my freedom over my body. So, as abortion is becoming illegal again, not only in Battlestar Galactica (i'm with Baltar from now on), but also in the freedom loving countries of this our planet, here's the DIY instructions.
quote of the month
And the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.