Les Liens du... Jeudi

[highlyeccentric]

Short pieces, current affairs, hot takes:

• The US Holocaust Museum would like people stop calling the US border camps concentration camps, in part because they seem to be under the ill-informed impression that concentration camps are only a thing that happened during the holocaust. Or possibly because they're looking to curry favour, and/or really dislike Alexandria Occasio-Cortez. Or all three. On a rather more historically responsible note, the Auschwitz Memorial picked the second half of June to retweet a bunch of their older material on orgins and development of (Nazi) concentration camps. And see link in the longer reads for update on Jewish-lead protest in the US.
  
• The original doesn't deserve traffic, but Nadia Shammas has screenshots of Danny Dannon's NYT article calling for Palestnian 'national suicide'.
  
• Pete Buttigeig facing local backlash for not addressing racism in his town's police force.
  
• Asylum seeker who set himself on fire to be charged with attempted suicide and arson. PNG law, Australia to blame.
  
• The Chaser, Rich Christians fund giant needle to pass camel through. Although, sigh, despite the strong start it had to end on a swipe at Folau's tattoos. Which I got into several too many arguments about on Facebook, but: it's neither helpful nor appropriate to the style of biblical interpretation Folau (likely) practices to keep making the tattoos a focus. Also it's racist. Fun times.
  
• Janelle Nanos (Boston Globe), Wayfair employees plan walkout to protest furniture sales to migrant detention centres. I gathered from twitter that the walkout happened, but afaik it effected no change.
  

Good News:

• Royal Historical Society issued a statement in support of trans students and scholars, and has a survey on the teaching of lgbt histories and the experiences of lgbt historians up at the moment.
  

Longer pieces - essay, memoir, natural history, other

• Yoav Gonen (thecity.nyc), Minimum wage hike is a net loss for those whose benefits fall. Oh. America. (We do have some situations that produce a similar net loss in Aus, but they are... less common. And generally they involve only dealing with one or two Federal authorities, not the bizarre tesselation of authorities providing benefits in the US.)
  
• B'tselem, Khan al-Ahmar: the last days of a Palestinian community?, photo essay. This is from mid-June: I can't find anything about what might have happened since.
  
• Jason Bittel (Slate), Why are there so many squirrels in cities? The morality campaign to make boys good. By providing squirrels to be... kind to? The logic of this whole situation seems wonky, but the end result is urban squirrels in the US.
  
• Daniel Mallory Ortberg (Shatner Chatner), As a trans man thanks for being so welcoming, funny there's no trans women here
  
• Tae Phoenix (Forward), I was one of the 36 Jews arrested for protesting ICE: never again is now.
  

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

[conuly]

Squirrels were imported to American cities. Huh. I wonder if we could do the same thing with, say, rabbits, another cute woodland denizen that would make our parks adorable. (But only where they're native, of course. God knows Australia doesn't need any more of the pests.)

[highlyeccentric]

... from my two visits to Chicago rabbits seem to be thriving in suburbs and parks there

[conuly]

Well, I don't know of any in Central Park. Or the North Shore of Staten Island, which is where I live.