How many punches, precisely, are they allowed to throw?

Stephanie Zvan has articulated her thoughts on self-defence and the application of violence, and her arguments mirror my own:

[CN: on top of all the Nazi stuff, talk about the threat of sexual assault]

Yesterday I asked whether the people still telling me not to punch Nazis after Charlottesville were telling me to be martyred or to stand aside while someone else is.

Mostly I didn’t get any answers. I expected that. That’s what happens when “Just say ‘no’ to violence!” runs into situations where violence is inherent and inevitable. Ironically, the act of making an option unspeakable makes the pro-rational discussion with Nazis crowd unable to discuss current events rationally. Weird. (Not at all weird.)

I also ran into a couple of people yesterday who would prefer martyrdom to enacting any violence. That’s fine. I can’t relate to it in any way, but I don’t have to. It’s a personal choice. But it being a personal choice means you don’t get to impose it on me or anyone else. You don’t get to choose that someone else dies in the name of nonviolence.

I detest violence. I would much rather use every other tool in my toolbox to resolve conflict. But I will not write violence off as an option, especially when the threat of it is sometimes the only thing preventing injury to begin with. Arguing that I am obligated to take these blows strikes me as insufferably arrogant.

Read more here.

-Shiv

The “liberal echo chamber” is not a thing

I has data:

The media landscape is distinctly asymmetric.

The structure of the overall media landscape shows media systems on the left and right operate differently. The asymmetric polarization of media is evident in both open web linking and social media sharing measures. Prominent media on the left are well distributed across the center, center-left, and left. On the right, prominent media are highly partisan.

From all of these perspectives, conservative media is more partisan and more insular than the left.

The center-left and the far right are the principal poles of the media landscape. 
The center of gravity of the overall landscape is the center-left. Partisan media sources on the left are integrated into this landscape and are of lesser importance than the major media outlets of the center-left. The center of attention and influence for conservative media is on the far right. The center-right is of minor importance and is the least represented portion of the media spectrum.

Conservative media disrupted.
Breitbart emerges as the nexus of conservative media. The Wall Street Journal is treated by social media users as centrist and less influential. The rising prominence of Breitbart along with relatively new outlets such as the Daily Caller marks a significant reshaping of the conservative media landscape over the past several years.

So there it is. Right-wing politics are coalescing around conspiracy websites, while left-wing politics remain broad in scope. The echo-chamber is not ours.

Of course, as a person who is paid to fact-check bullshit, I could have told you that. The “liberal bias” my blag has been accused of is actually just a reflection of right-wing politicians’ tendency to charge through reality as if facts are porcelain pots that can be broken if enough force is applied. It’s not like I’m hiding my criticisms of left-wing woo; it’s just that woo is a little too busy twirling in a corn maze to get anywhere, so the focus will be proportional to the batshittery that is getting somewhere.

-Shiv

“all laws are for the good of the community, and any who challenge them must be against it”

I have always struggled to properly articulate my position on freedom of speech, as a legal concept created by the state. Canada (wisely, in my opinion) has defined theoretical boundaries at which point your speech is understood to also be an act of violence, and treated accordingly in theory–rather than conceiving of speech and violence as infinitely separable per the USA’s First Amendment. Even with the limitations on what can be literally said, though, power continues to distort the ability of some participants to speak their minds, per this naive liberal ideal. Or, to borrow the Markteplace of Ideas–some of us are cash poor and can’t afford to set up a vendor.

Enter political anarchists: (emphasis added)

[Read more…]

An open letter to all the dudes who send me angry messages

I remember the last time I went camping. It was one of those days where the angry fusion hateball fired scorching rays that could ignite the Earth, in every direction, followed by so much rain the tents would float and you’d be scrambling together a raft like you lived in a page of Huckleberry Finn. After the downpour subsided there was this two hour in-between phase in the day where everything was still wet-dog soggy but the angry fusion hateball spat hot coals at us and turned the whole damn forest into a sauna. But you know what sticks out the most, more than the violently indecisive weather?

The fucking gnats. My god, the cloud of bugs was so thick you’d be forgiven for thinking the storm was starting again. And for some fucking reason, they keep flying into your ear, that momentary buzz so deeply unsettling it sends a bolt down your spine and moves your body before your brain knows what’s happening, a kamikaze pilot with no regard for its personal safety. You gonna spray DEET in your ear? Hell no. You gonna keep spasming every few seconds because what the hell that noise does not belong in your ear canal BUT IT’S THERE HEY HI HELLO BZZZZZZ.

In that respect, dude who sends me messages, you are not dissimilar. I can’t tell you apart from the last guy who messaged me, I won’t be able to tell you apart from the next guy that messages me, your noise makes me twitch, and you have no. god. damn. idea. how mediocre you are.

“Diversity of opinion”? Are you fucking kidding me? Y’all have nothing new to say! I could literally replace you with a scarecrow with a Twitter thread pinned to it and I wouldn’t notice the difference. I know what you’re going to say next. I know what you’re going to say after that. I know what you said before I had the displeasure of your derivative company, even without checking your timeline. And after you’re done ejaculating your divine insights all over my inbox without any consideration for my boundaries, you’ll go on to the next “uppity bitch” and do it to her too.

And nothing, nothing, you say to her will be new.

You’re not a god. You’re not a genius. You’re not part of something greater. Your opinion, which could go with you to the grave tomorrow and no one would notice, will never move mountains or split seas.

I have never opened one of your messages and thought “oh, wow, you know I haven’t thought about how crazy I am. What a thoughtful thing to say.” You are a third grader drawing dicks in crayon on a paper airplane while pretending that makes you an aviator. Oh, but please Mr. Dick Plane, lecture the actual pilot on how to land a 747 with your “grade six physics.”

You have created nothing except a moment of irritation, something that triggers the instinct of the body to move away, a sickly droning in my ear.

Something that could go away, if only I had enough DEET.

Quarrying for headstones

Dawn Paley and I agree that the naive idealism with which Canada is perceived really ought to be shattered at this point:

When Mexico’s Peña Nieto visited Ottawa in June of last year, he and Trudeau jogged together in front of the press, and later stood before the cameras and promised deeper co-operation. Media buzz about the men’s “chemistry” overshadowed the nuts and bolts of their encounter. The two leaders issued a joint statement on economic growth, noting that the privatization of Mexico’s state oil company means new opportunities in the energy sector. Canada is working to influence emerging energy sector regulation in Mexico, and promised to “share best experiences on consultation and engagement to enhance participation of Indigenous communities in the energy sector.” The irony of the statement is not lost on anyone following conflicts between oil and gas companies and Indigenous peoples in Canada, from Elsipogtog in New Brunswick to unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia.

Policing and military activities were also central to the bilateral meetings: Trudeau signalled Canada’s ongoing support for the so-called drug war in Mexico, which by a recent estimate has led to the disappearance of 300,000 people and caused the homicide rate to double over the past 10 years. Trudeau and Peña Nieto promised increased collaboration between the RCMP and the Mexican Federal Police, which, along with the army, has been the primary agency driving the militarization of the country under the pretext of the war on drugs. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights noted that, in 2015 alone, the Federal Police massacred 16 civilians in Apatzingán, in the state of Michoacán, and participated in a suspicious confrontation in the same state in which 42 civilians and one officer were killed.

As I documented in my book Drug War Capitalism, the militarization of Mexico serves a purpose that has little to do with narcotics: the protection of Canadian mining projects. Federal police and soldiers have been used to break strikes and protect mining company officials. Canadian mining projects have been sites of violence on multiple occasions, and private security forces and hit men have killed a number of high-profile opponents in areas as diverse as northern Chihuahua near the U.S. border, and southern Chiapas near the border with Guatemala. Evidence has also emerged that Canadian resource extraction companies have co-operated with organized criminal groups. A 2012 report prepared by global accounting firm Deloitte estimated that 75 per cent of foreign mining investment in Mexico came from Canada. In the chilling words of Jennifer Moore from MiningWatch Canada, “Mexico is a graveyard and Canada is quarrying for headstones.”

I recommend Briarpatch Magazine in general, and you can read more of Paley here.

-Shiv

These shitbirds are legion

Holly Wood champions her coining of the term “shit-toweling” to describe the facile arguments mass-flung at anyone who dares to speak of discrimination. I like it a lot:

This behavior coming from men is what I’ve decided to call shit-toweling. Shit-toweling describes the practice of trivializing or otherwise diminishing the compounded suffering that women and other marginalized groups experience over the course of their lives. Most typically, shit toweling is done by white men in an effort to defend a member of their own in-group from having to face accountability for reprehensible actions towards marginalized others. While there are many ways to shit-towel, the aim is always to discredit and silence feminist critique.

When men try to stifle women’s right to grievance with bad-faith arguments so badly construed that it insults everyone’s intelligence, it is the emotional equivalent of when a man wipes his ass with a towel and then flings it in your face. An example of shit-toweling would be a man trying to defend male privilege by insisting that those who criticize male privilege aren’t themselves being inclusive…

…

These shitbirds are legion. They wildly outnumber the minority of men stupid enough to risk their entire career by hitting send on a company-wide misogynistic diatribe. At breakneck speed, these men trip over themselves to defend the first amendment rights of professed shitbags as if Google has any civic obligation whatsoever to retain socially hostile staff. Last time I checked, software engineers have not yet organized for the collective right to academic freedom. Their opinions are not protected speech. They can be terminated at will. Especially if what the things that employee says jeopardize a company’s ability to retain and recruit new talent. While women’s discomfort is obvious, I know from having lots of friends in this world that there are plenty of male engineers who would also have an issue with working alongside an outed bigot and chauvinist.

The shit-toweling continued all day as men in other industries would go on defending this kind of antisocial workplace behavior as if professed sexism and racism are things any company that employs human beings should continue to tolerate in 2017.

Fuck the shitbird legion.

-Shiv

Removing your tumour erases your medical history

Bob Vulfov has some very serious words for some very serious people:

Thank you very much for coming in today to discuss the tumor currently growing inside your body. Luckily, we caught this fairly early on, so we have a few treatment options available to us. As you can see on this X-ray, the tumor is currently about the size of a baseball in an all-white baseball league. I could surgically remove it as soon as tomorrow afternoon. However, I will not be doing that.

I view this tumor as an important symbol of your body’s history and heritage. Removing the tumor would be yet another example of misguided medical correctness in today’s liberal America. I protest this surgery and refuse to whitewash your rich medical history. The tumor must be kept prominently displayed inside your body.

I understand why you’d want to remove the tumor. By removing it, we would stop the cancer from spreading to other parts of your body and you’d be on your way to recovery. Don’t you think, though, that your body’s fight against cancer should be commemorated in some way? What better way than by leaving the tumor completely intact? Medical Justice Warriors all want to dismantle the very fabric of everyone’s medical history and remove important memorials such as tumors, goiters, and gallstones. I want to celebrate that history and leave a monument to those awful memories inside your body forever.

Read more here.

-Shiv