As usual, please use this thread to throw your brickbats at egregious spin tactics and churnalism, but don’t forget to throw the odd bouquet when it’s deserved as well.
Politics
Pushback Awesome: another community having the anti-harassment policy debate
This time it’s the science fiction writing community undergoing Deep Rifts over a disputed implementation of an existing anti-harassment policy at Readercon following a verified harassment incident, complete with yet another round of but-we-don’t-need-no-stinkin-policy-anyway backlash. [nb: updates 1 & 2]
Disability funding: shirking the NDIS is a disgrace
Eleanor Gibbs has a cracker of an article in New Matilda on the national disgrace that is the continuing roadblocks to the National Disability Insurance Scheme:
Book Review: Am I Black enough for you? #AWWC2012
#AWWC2012 Book Review: Am I Black enough for you?
Heroic women: Grans lock on
VicForests has been clearfelling coupes near Toolangi (Mt St Leonard) in the Central Highlands of Victoria. This cool temperate rainforest is part of the tiny remnant which remains to us in this, the most cleared State in Australia. It’s the… Read More ›
Acronyms of the Day
RWA & SDO – two personality traits that prop up the kyriarchy
Well done rationalia forum, you’re my final Skeptic straw
A page on this blog is now titled “Critical Thinking” instead of its previous title “Skepticism”, because that name has become tarnished by the long-lasting and widespread ‘Skepchicks should STFU’ campaign being waged by so-called “skeptics” and “rationalists” who reject the utility of applying critical thinking to social structures, at least if that critical thinking is being done by feminists.
Unleashed Guns: One More Massacre
Those who fight for the right of [anyone] to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.
Media Circus: sigh/meh/whatever
Forgive me readers, it has been a while since my last media spin tactics thread. As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis elsewhere, on any current sociopolitical issue.
Deleting blog comments: exercise of Property Rights vs Free Speech
This accusation of suppressing speech online keeps on coming up (it’s a fundamental plank in the ongoing FTBullies smear campaign): the allegedly terrible awful no-good horrible “crime” of deleting comments on a blog. To which I say bah humbug pish tosh harrumph and quote a 2010 comment here: you have a right to access the Internet, not to access my audience via my resources
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Hoyden About Town 