Les Liens du... Jeudi

[highlyeccentric]

Short pieces, current affairs, hot takes:

• WaPo: India Heatwave: temperatures soar. Welcome to the apocalypse!
  
• SMH, AFP drops investigation into who leaked classified medevac advice
  
• The Independent, Aung San Suu Kyi and Viktor Orban agree 'continuously growing Muslim populations' are their greatest challenge. This is not going to end well.
  
• Ita Buttrose (ABC news), Statement on AFP raids
  

  There has been much reference in recent days to the need to observe the rule of law.

  While there are legitimate matters of national security that the ABC will always respect, the ABC Act and Charter are explicit about the importance of an independent public broadcaster to Australian culture and democracy.

  Public interest is best served by the ABC doing its job, asking difficult questions and dealing with genuine whistle-blowers who risk their livelihoods and reputations to bring matters of grave import to the surface.

  Neither the journalists nor their sources should be treated as criminals.

  
  Here's hoping the principle of How can I not believe, when Ita tells me to still holds, as far as public opinion goes?
  
• SBS / NITV, syndicating the Koori Mail: So, whose flag is it anyway?: a fascinating copyright law situation. The indigenous man, Harold Thomas, who holds the copyright to the Indigenous flag (which he only filed a formal copyright claim for because he opposed its use as a national flag) has sold the licensing rights for Indigenous flag-bearing clothing to a pair of probably-dodgy white people and their entirely new shell company, who have promised to recoup for him the royalties he is not currently getting from, eg, AFL Indigenous Round jerseys. A number of Indigenous-owned companies have been hit with C&Ds, and are very put out (Thomas has historically allowed Indigenous groups to use the flag for activist and charitable purposes, but either he no longer considers this extends to clothing sold by those groups, or his licensees are overstepping. In a more recent statement to The Age Thomas stands by his licensing arrangement with Wooster). There's a lot of shock - many people didn't know the flag was copyrighted, and it is a highly unusual situation for an official flag - and, underlying this, some big incompatibilities between the way Australian copyright law and indigenous traditional ownership work. Given Thomas' past history with copyright claims I am inclined to suspect that his licensees, WAM clothing (owners of which previously ran a business selling fake indigenous art, nice nice nice) are acting with his knowledge at this point.
  
• IMEMC, Israeli army assaults and abducts a guard at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Quite recently on the heels of a police-escorted tour of the mosque by ultra-nationalists, in the height of the final days of Ramadan.
  
• Prejudiced home office refusing research visas to African researchers. UK institutions with research partnerships in Africa are now organising meetings outside of the UK, because *despite the researchers being funded by UK bodies*, the Home Office routinely disbelieves their claims to be legit academics.
  

Good News:

• Millions join general strike in Sudan aimed at disloding the army. Probably good news? Although last I heard from the twitters, they had called off the strike and were negotiating with the generals.
  
• The Northern Quoll has been spotted in the Walyarta Conservation Park in the Great Sandy Desert.

Longer pieces - essay, memoir, natural history, other

• Shea Emma Fett, Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships. Apparently I read this back in 2015. Infer CNs from the title.
  
• Misha Ketchell (The Conversation), Australia doesn't protect free speech, but it could. What I am noticing is that 'free speech' is, thanks to the AFP raids on journalists' homes and offices, being used in two WILDLY different senses in Australian discourse right now. Ketchell here is talking about freedom of the press, or, even more specifically, journalistic and whistleblower freedoms (not, say, the freedom of any old crank to set up a press or other communication medium to spout homophobic nonsense). But then the Freeze Peach brigade are talking about the right to use major communication mediums (newspapers, Facebook, school newsletters - all very different things) to express violent and discriminatory veiws. I have actually historically been okay with Australia's lack of legal protection for free speech, because it means our hate speech laws are much stronger than, say, the US's. I'm not okay with the current status quo re journalists or whistleblowers, but I'm cynically (but I bet you any money rightly) expecting this call for 'free speech' to be coopted toward pushes to water down 18c and protect homophobic/transphobic speech made in the name of religion (or at least Christianity).
  
• Matt Beard, Think of free speech as an action not a right. Case in point: someone writes to ABC's ethics column asking if/how society will protect their 'free speech' right to teach children that homosexuality is wrong. Dr Beard rather deftly defuses this by arguing that the right they want is not a matter of free speech at all.
  
• Rebecca Ananian-Welsh (The Conversation), Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy.
  
• Author I can't ID because I've used up my free views (WaPo) Dodgeball is a 'tool of oppression' used to 'dehumanize others', researchers argue. The WaPo are going for mocker with the scare quotes here, but my response is 'yeah, duh?'. I was HORRIFIED when I found out what Dodgeball involved. We occasionally (as opposed to constantly, as seems to be the case in the US?) in primary school played a dodging game, but the ball was always below knee level.
  
• Alison Pennington (Jacobin Magazine), We need a political vision. On the history of Australian unionism:
  

  Valiant as these victories were, they only contested how much of a cut workers would receive, post production. This had pros and cons. One pro is that combat over wages has drawn workers into a direct confrontation with capital. One main con is that this confrontation took place only after investment choices were all said and done. If we fast forward around one hundred years from federation, the fight for better work conditions is still narrowly conceived of as the fight for fair compensation: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.”

  Howard understands this well. He knows that while Australian workers have fought to improve the conditions and pay of existing jobs, they have not won systematic victories determining the types of jobs available.

  
  
• Jane Caro (Saturday Paper), Flaws in the Coalition's Schools Funding. TL,DR, Gonski was robbed, and private schooling is not a right.
  
• Karen Middleton (Saturday Paper), Fresh documents in Morrison's sacking. I somehow missed the memo re: Morrison having been sent down in disgrace from Tourism Australia? I remember SOMEONE being sacked around the time of the Where the Bloody Hell Are You campaign (only because it was such a Thing, that campaign), but not why - relentlessly dodging ministerial scrutiny re: tender and costing, it seems. Naughty naughty boy.
  

Academic:

• Alison Flood (Guardian), Document casts new light on Chaucer 'rape' case. Asyouknowbob, Geoffrey Chaucer, Canonical Poet, was charged during his lifetime with 'raptus' against a woman named Cecily de Chaumpaigne. The case was dropped, and strong evidence (the sale of properties) suggests that Chaucer or his relatives may have paid her or her relatives off (this financial hypothesis is compatible with both the assumption that the crime was forced intercourse, and the assumption that it was a crime of elopement or illicit intercourse, especially if a pregnancy resulted from either case). Male, and a good number of female, academics for many years have desired to remind us that 'raptus' could mean elopement, or be a charge laid by a woman's relatives against a man who 'carried her off' for intercourse without marriage. Other people (eg: Rachel Moss) think this a weasel tactic. Sebastian Sobecki, in an article I don't have access to, has found evidence that Chaucer was still acting as guardian for one Edmund Staplegate at the time of the alleged raptus. According to Sobecki as reported by Flood, we know (I did not?? And I have read a fair bit about raptus??), raptus was particularly associated with guardian-ward relationships: ie, that a guardian might literally carry off a bride for his ward. Sobecki would like to float this possibility, without committing to it. He does some flannelling around about the problematics of being A Man suggesting Chaucer Didn't Rape Anyone.
  
  I am very interested in this documentary finding, and also not very impressed with the fact that (at least as reported by Flood, and by the evidence of Twitter), Sobecki has not thought about the crime of 'carrying off a bride for one's ward' as one involving a. assault and b. a very high likelihood of forced intercourse, if not by the raptor, then by his ward. This is not... actually... better??? Anyway. I've obtained a copy of the actual article, stand by for Further Hot Takes.

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'. In particular, we can all agree rape is bad, and male academics can be trash fires (but Sobecki may not be, I do not know him or his work well enough to judge). I'm not available to explain the intricacies of medieval raptus law at this time. You can get chunks of Corinne Saunders' 'Rape and Ravishment in Medieval England' on googlebooks if this is an interesting line of historical wossnames for you. The Rachel Moss blog post I linked above has citations, too, I believe.