Continuing to clear my in-box:
Cynthia Samuels writes to advise of an upcoming piece in Ms. Magazine: "It’s about Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and the women in the Marianas islands, whose miserable working conditions are not regulated because Abramoff lobbied DeLay who has prevented the regulation. It’s an amazing story – apparently these women are victims of a bait-and-switch 'I’ll get you a good job in Saipan' (a U.S. territory) that ends up in a sweatshop with perpetual debt to those who provided transit. If they resist and are fired, there is nowhere to turn but prostitution. If they get pregnant, they’re basically forced to have abortions since they can’t afford to go home and can’t keep the jobs if they’re pregnant. Those aren’t circumstances you’d think a conservative would countenance." I would imagine this is rather a no-brainer for ultra-righties, though - slave labor leading to prostitution adn forced abortion, or forced childbirth but the kid's not our problem because they're fur'ners? Seems any greed-loving conservative would choose the first one as that lines his pockets more, and he won't really worry that much about controlling women from other countries unless it involves cutting off US aid to those countries which would presumably line his pockets. (Incidentally, I should thank the folks at Altercation for leading Cynthia here; I wish Eric Alterman would get his own RSS feed on the MSNBC blog - Keith Olbermann too! - but until then I'm glad I can read him at the Huffington Post.)
Aside from the New Orleans-based Supergirl pages Robin donated to a Katrina relief auction last October, I wasn't aware of any other comic-based relief efforts until Thom "Kneon" Pratt emailed to direct me to the mention in his blog that he colored several pages of post of a Katrina relief comic called Tempest. I thank Thom for this, and wish I still had time to keep up with both comics news sites and blog reading (not that I'm doing all that well with the latter of late)...
Yesterday I expressed surprise to Robin that my sexism-in-baseball post got so few comments and my jargon post so many, and he reminded me that blogosphereic meta-posts (posts about posting) always tend to garner a greater response than anything else. Well, who am I to disappoint? Following up on that post, Justin from Vast Left has, as he puts it, "taken up the charge" and volunteered to update and post new entries to the "Kossary," which appears to be the best way that even those of us who no longer link to Daily Kos have to explain the jargon used by the left side of the blogosphere. As a fairly new blogger Justin has far more energy than I do, so I'm very pleased someone so enthusiastic will be follow through with this. I've always looked at blogs as first and foremost amazing communication tools, and every time we use unexplained in-jokes, jargon and shorthand we end up communicating that much less, so I hope others will start embedding links to the Kossary every time they choose to employ these abbreviations.
Cynthia Samuels writes to advise of an upcoming piece in Ms. Magazine: "It’s about Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and the women in the Marianas islands, whose miserable working conditions are not regulated because Abramoff lobbied DeLay who has prevented the regulation. It’s an amazing story – apparently these women are victims of a bait-and-switch 'I’ll get you a good job in Saipan' (a U.S. territory) that ends up in a sweatshop with perpetual debt to those who provided transit. If they resist and are fired, there is nowhere to turn but prostitution. If they get pregnant, they’re basically forced to have abortions since they can’t afford to go home and can’t keep the jobs if they’re pregnant. Those aren’t circumstances you’d think a conservative would countenance." I would imagine this is rather a no-brainer for ultra-righties, though - slave labor leading to prostitution adn forced abortion, or forced childbirth but the kid's not our problem because they're fur'ners? Seems any greed-loving conservative would choose the first one as that lines his pockets more, and he won't really worry that much about controlling women from other countries unless it involves cutting off US aid to those countries which would presumably line his pockets. (Incidentally, I should thank the folks at Altercation for leading Cynthia here; I wish Eric Alterman would get his own RSS feed on the MSNBC blog - Keith Olbermann too! - but until then I'm glad I can read him at the Huffington Post.)
Aside from the New Orleans-based Supergirl pages Robin donated to a Katrina relief auction last October, I wasn't aware of any other comic-based relief efforts until Thom "Kneon" Pratt emailed to direct me to the mention in his blog that he colored several pages of post of a Katrina relief comic called Tempest. I thank Thom for this, and wish I still had time to keep up with both comics news sites and blog reading (not that I'm doing all that well with the latter of late)...
Yesterday I expressed surprise to Robin that my sexism-in-baseball post got so few comments and my jargon post so many, and he reminded me that blogosphereic meta-posts (posts about posting) always tend to garner a greater response than anything else. Well, who am I to disappoint? Following up on that post, Justin from Vast Left has, as he puts it, "taken up the charge" and volunteered to update and post new entries to the "Kossary," which appears to be the best way that even those of us who no longer link to Daily Kos have to explain the jargon used by the left side of the blogosphere. As a fairly new blogger Justin has far more energy than I do, so I'm very pleased someone so enthusiastic will be follow through with this. I've always looked at blogs as first and foremost amazing communication tools, and every time we use unexplained in-jokes, jargon and shorthand we end up communicating that much less, so I hope others will start embedding links to the Kossary every time they choose to employ these abbreviations.
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