Les Liens du Lundi

[highlyeccentric]

Short pieces, current affairs, hot takes:

• Angela Moon (Reuters), Google suspends some Huawei business after Trump blacklist.
  
• Holman W. Jenkins Jr (yes really) (WSJ), How the US went wrong on Huawei. Paywalled but exerpts quoted at MoneyMaven.io.
  
• Peter Holmes (Buzzfeed), you'd think the Gladys Berejiklian Dux story would've gone away but, like lazarus, it has risen.
  
• A man in a pub in Cronulla strapped pork chops to his feet, and the saga ends with someone winning 61 000 in a lawsuit.
  

Good News:

• SBS news: Sprinter becomes first openly gay indian athlete. Qualified good news, in that it's incredibly brave and not without risk for Duthee Chand.
  
• Guardian: Belgian monks brew 220 y old beer after finding recipe. Good news not because it's particularly accurate historical recreation (in fact they only vaguely took inspiration from the recipe, concluding - accurately - that modern drinkers would not want the taste of historical beer), but because it's a delightful concept involving volunteer palaeography assistants! (Although. Now my inner cynic says Grimbergen could have afforded to pay an early modernist to do the transcription for them...)
  
• Jo Grady elected UCU general secretary. As a watcher of UK University politics (and thus UCU shenanigans) from afar, I think this is probably Good News.
  

Auspol: election specials

• Amy Thomas (Overland), Federal Election 2019: what the hell just happened? Five arguments.:
  

  5. There’s no easy solution, but there is urgency
  If this analysis is true, then it’s not a case of changing Labor leaders or putting more into The Greens, but a question of how we build social movements and a union movement that can fill the political vacuum – and, crucially, challenge racist (and homo/transphobic and sexist) ‘solutions’. Working out how we do that best will be our biggest challenge, and is where our attention needs to turn to now. This column, like others this week, are not the end of the story, but the start of discussion on where we need to go.

  
  
• Sean Kelly (SMH), Labor's bitter lesson: change is hard to come by in this country:
  

  Comparisons with 1993 and John Hewson are everywhere. But 2004 might serve just as well: a government with few ideas wins, at a time of relative complacency, against a leader who voters find concerning. Which set of lessons should be drawn?
  The answer lies in nuance. For example, the simple conclusion that Labor shouldn't take ambitious policy to an election is wrong. In fact, Labor has never won without ambition. The lesson, I suspect, is more specific, about creating losers on taxation. Similarly, there will be arguments that this result repudiates action on climate change. But hasn't Morrison invested months in trying to repair the Coalition's image on this issue? Little here is simple.<
  One fact is hard to avoid, though it is not the only reason for the loss. Labor cannot win without a popular leader.

  
  
• Christopher Knaus and Nick Evershed (Guardian AU), False election claims spark push for truth in political advertising laws. Or, as someone on Twitter put it: Russia doesn't NEED to interfere in our elections, our electoral content laws are so lax we sabotage ourselves.

Longer pieces - essay, memoir, natural history, other

• Joshua Badge (Meanjin blog), Queerphobia is about power, on the Israel Folau situation and the SMH 'queer fascism' article.
  

  Apologists base the notion that faith justifies homophobic activity on the errant assumption that queerphobia is reasonable and inseparable from worship. Moreover, white supremacists and misogynists hold ardent beliefs which they may claim are grounded in doctrine, but we rightly reject all such bigotry. Religion is no trump card for critique.

  When challenged, queerphobes perform pantomimes about censorship and oppression. So it is that we hear about the freedom of speech but never the responsibilities that come with it. To draw a parallel, we might say that we are ‘free’ to defame someone in that no-one can stop us but we are, naturally, liable for the results.

  
  
• Kowther Qashou (Overland), Pinkwatching Eurovision: why a boycott is necessary. On the argument that Israel is a 'gay haven' in the Middle East:
  

  Whether Israel is actually a ‘gay haven’ for Palestinians is debatable. Israel routinely blackmails gay Palestinians into becoming informants, threatening to out them to their families and their communities if they don’t co-operate, thus endangering their lives. Queer acceptance in Israel is also wrapped up in nationalism – what Jasbir Puar terms ‘homonationalism’ – and queer Palestinians in Israel face discrimination from other queer Israelis. As Israel posits itself as ‘enlightened’ and ‘progressive’ compared to its ‘backwards’ Middle Eastern neighbours by holding Pride parades and allowing openly-gay soldiers to serve, it reinforces orientalist notions of the superiority of Israeli and Western cultures. Acceptance of queer Palestinians by Israel is conditional as long as – as Jason Ritchie puts it – they ‘mute or repudiate their Palestinianness’. It is an acceptance specifically constructed to be apolitical and avoid criticisms of the occupation.

  
  
• Christine Adams-Hosking (The Conversation), Koalas are now functionally exinct but what does that mean?. Not good things, is what.
  
• Caroline Haskins (Motherboard/Vice), AirPods are a tragedy. Not, as so many articles are, about the inferior quality speakers, but about the poor functional life and long half-life.
  
• Gideon Levy (Haaretz), Germany: shame on you and your anti-bds resolution.
  
• David Enrich (NYT), Deutsche Bank staff saw suspicious activity in Trump and Kushner files but upper management would hear nothing of it.
  
• Michael Hobbes (HuffPo), Why America can't end homelessness: TL;DR, in 2005-2015 Utah trialed a program giving robust housing support to mentally and/or physically ill chronic homeless persons. It looked pretty good! But homelessness numbers are rising again: not with chronically homeless people, but people experiencing homelessness for the first time. These people are less likely to be mentally ill or to need full-time support: they need support systems like rehab, childcare, unemployment benefits, etc, and they need them *before* they become homeless, not after.
  
• Rob Merrick (The Independent), Theresa May suppressed up to nine studies that show immigration doesn't hit UK wages, claims Vince Cable.

This is nowhere NEAR the complete list of bookmarks I have saved, but it's enough for tonight. I gotta go wash up, and iron clothes.

Comments policy: Everything I said in the caveats to this post applies. I teach critical thinking for a living, but I'm not *your* teacher, and this blog is not a classroom. That means I don't have to abide by the fallacy of 'there's no such thing as a bad contribution to discussion'.

Comments

[meneltarma]

re: the Israel and pinkwashing article

There's a lot in this article to unpack, because a lot of it is true, but I think some vital context is missing in calling to boycot the next Eurovision.

I think, if anything, it downplays the severity of how Israel is pro-queer on paper but a very mixed bag in practice. Legally, and practically, I would compare it to being queer in the United States-- though Israeli citizens actually have more legal protections than I do . (For complex reasons, non-citizens do not, necessarily-- but Israel has a clear pathway to citizenship that the US doesn't, either. But "earned" citizenship can easily be taken away. I also don't see international calls for boycotting the US and its red-hot mess of violence towards queer people because people generally recognize that will harm us.)

More deeply, the Knessit makes the lives of queer Israelis citizens of all ethnicities quite hellish if they want to press for meaningfully equal rights, as they are not afforded the same legal marital status as straight couples (among other things), to be granted "marriage" status you have to have the ceremony performed in another country, and not always then, and while transgender healthcare is part of Israel's universal healthcare, the situation is not great because of the binarism of the Ultra-Orthodox rabbinate who have had way too much influence on matters they consider "religious" like gender, health, and sexuality. The willingness of the government to prop up the fact it has comprehensive (on paper) pro-queer laws while frequently acting against queer people in reality is a real problem, and not one that can be fixed from the outside.

Unfortunately for many queer disabled people around the world, Israel is also one of three countries that does not have a closed-border policy on disabled people immigrating, will recognize their marriages and transitioned genders, and as far as I know, is the only one that lets disabled people immediately access the national healthcare system once they are residents. (I know, because I, a. looked at my immigration options as a disabled person with a queer partner and b. watched an Israeli friend try to navigate the labyrinthine nightmare of getting a "gay marriage" in Israel: he ended up having the marriage performed elsewhere and returning with an internationally recognized marriage.)

None of this is to take shift attention off the problems facing queer Palestinians. Rather, it is to say the government of Israel is only queer-friendly in the most grumpy and begrudging sense because of which religious and political factions control questions of marriage and transition, and until that changes, meaningful freedom for all queer people in Israel (I am including the wide array of non-citizens as well as Palestinians specifically) will be limited to paper protections as long as you don't kick up a fuss, despite the profound, concerted, and tireless activism of people in Israel to make their legal systems equitable towards everyone and push full queer rights up and center. But it's a tough conversation to have when the blackmail hanging over everyone's heads is that civil partnerships could simply lose all functional meaning if the government continues to be run by, and pander to, the right wing, and most people in Israel who are queer do not have somewhere else they can go and have any legal protections as full citizens. Likewise, encouraging everyone who is against the current government to leave is partially how the Israeli army ended up in the mess that it is in: many people of influential military rank either protest-quit or were forcibly retired over refusal to commit war crimes, so... it is not anyone's imagination, the situation has escalated, because the pockets of resistence embedded in the former government(s) no longer have their former blocks of political power; they've been replaced by people with an anti-Palestine agenda.

While I understand the need to protest Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and I don't have an answer on the best way to do that, boycotting Eurovision doesn't address the lived complexity of queer life in Israel or meaningfully make the lives of anyone at risk better-- I am afraid it would actively make it worse. I understand others are strongly pro-boycotting because they don't know what else to do to make that statement as non-citizens.

I don't think there's easy answers other than "the least queer-friendly group in Israel needs to stop having a say in what queer people have the legal right to do" because, unsurprisingly, that group is also the most virulently anti-Palestine and anti-immigrant. But I see a lot of parallels to the situation with Christian Dominionists in America, who-- unsurprisingly-- fund a lot of the politicians and policies that most harm Palestinians and queer people in Israel. One of my current critiques of most boycotting movements is that they don't meaningfully target that money or address Christian Dominionism's coziness with the government at all or seek to expose it and stop it. Probably because it hasn't got the same cultural or social cache as pop culture items, icons, or artists refusing to go to Israel, which is a lot easier than dealing with dark money and apocalyptic cults trying to influence foreign governments.

(If it was somehow unclear from this comment, I am deeply against the war crimes committed against Palestinians and believe they are entitled to a country and equal treatment in Israel whether they are citizens or not. The country of Israel as it exists right now as "a place of last resort" for immigration terrifies me because the idea of leaving America is to escape a totalitarian government, and exchanging one for a different type of totalitarianism isn't... really a meaningful option. I'm also not here to debate if Israel should exist, so if that's what you want to debate with me, please don't. This comment is meant to provide additional, often invisible context for people not particularly well acquainted with Israeli law about the state of queer life in general, both for citizens and non-citizens, based on my friendships with queer Israelis and what their concerns are about the current government and their precarious future because of it. I do not live in Israel or having voting rights there, and cannot provide more specific context than the contents of this comment.)

[highlyeccentric]

Hmm... yes, I think you're right about this pinkwashing article not actually being detailed enough. Ed: or. It is not being detailed enough to be a full appraisal of queer rights in Israel. It IS sufficient to point out that insofar as Israel grants rights to queer people, it does not do so to Palestinians. And... yeah, I know you put the caveat 'none of this is to draw attention away...', but your criticism does seem to be 'this person isn't making a valid critique because they focus on Palestinians'.

Re: 'I don't see anyone boycotting the US', I *do* see people boycotting specific states, eg, agitating not to hold the SAA meeting there, and the resulting debate between 'well that just isolates vulnerable scholars in the south, many of whom are queer' and 'as a professional organisation you *must not* ask your queer and trans members to jaunt off to North Carolina like it's not a major risk'.

I suppose I don't think the treatment of queer people *alone* is reason to boycott Eurovision, but I do think there is good reason to do so, and the way that 'Israel is a queer paradise!!!!' is weaponised against calls to boycott is disingenuous and deserves to be deconstructed.

[meneltarma]

but your criticism does seem to be 'this person isn't making a valid critique because they focus on Palestinians'.

I maybe worded myself badly, then; I think the critique "Israel is not good to queer Palestinians" is not only valid, but important. But the conclusion "a boycott is ergo necessary" has the implication it will somehow help queer Palestinians, while I have the opposite conclusion: a boycot puts queer Palestinians and all queer people in Israel (there are many ethnic minority and Arab non-citizens who are not Palestinian, whose rights are trampled in identical ways, eg Amigzah, I am also concerned for) at further risk. I was trying to highlight the hidden risks of a boycot, which I think I failed to do well in my original comment by focusing on how the law applies to citizens (since many Palestinians have functionally "dual-citizenship" to work and live in Israel).

but I do think there is good reason to do so, and the way that 'Israel is a queer paradise!!!!' is weaponised against calls to boycott is disingenuous and deserves to be deconstructed.
It is absolutely disingenuous, and should be deconstructed, and I hoped to bolster that deconstruction by explaining how the situation works in legality; but I (and many pro-Palestine, anti-war Israelis) worry that Israel's government will continue to consolidate right-wing power the more it is isolated, because this has been the historical trend. As an outsider, I don't have a solution to that, except to amplify their concerns when it seems appropriate to do so and try to talk about US dark money in the government that perpetuates the violence since I have lived experience with what "pro-Israel" Dominionist Christians want, and how they raise money to try to achieve.

I appreciate the opportunity to clarify my comments better, thank you.

[highlyeccentric]

Right, that is a lot more logic-making.

I don't think the article, despite the title, is really serving to provide *grounds* for boycott, it's purpose is to rebut that specific counter-argument. There are other counter-arguments out there that are less easily dismissed, but then, those counter-arguments are nuanced ones that aren't part of a massive pinkwashing PR strategy, so.

I am, as you can probably tells, increasingly convinced that at least the *cultural* boycott is valid and necessary, and causes very little direct harm to anyone (no one has an inherent right to, eg, a local Lorde concert). Eurovision is, politically, always a bit of a farce, but there's also the... call it a morality question. Is it *moral* to indulge in the spectacle of Eurovision, when it's taking place right next to, and completely ignoring, the annual renewed-for-Ramadan shelling of Gaza? I don't believe it is, *even if* boycotting Eurovision resulted in no material benefit to those in Gaza.

[highlyeccentric]

And for the record, if Australia won Eurovision we should not host for practical reasons (duh), but should also ABSOLUTELY be boycotted on the basis of our operation of offshore detention camps with conditions comparable to concentration camps.