highlyeccentric | Les Liens du Lundi (Reply)

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'.