It’sYesterday was [ahem], international women’s day and, for good reasons, I was at the New Yorker’s Cartoon Bank searching for “tofu“. Give it a go, and you’ll not be unhappy. But search for “feminism” and you’re going to end up annoyed. Few of the results are by women (an endemic problem) and the ones that the New Yorker has are neither particularly feminist, nor – with perhaps this exception – particularly funny. Two years ago, there was an International Feminist Cartoon Exhibition and some fine drawing hit the net. Not this year which, judging by the quality of 2003’s entries, is a great shame. It’s not like Ann Telnaes is the only feminist cartoonist around.
I know I began the last big post with the observation that the World Bank was to blame for my having to use Microsoft Outlook (the only mail program compatible with Google’s fab new search gizmo) only to admit, by the end of the rant, that in all likelihood the World Bank itself didn’t itself force me to switch to Microsoft. A reasonable person might suggest that I tend to see the World Bank’s invisible hand when it’s not really there. I’d advise that person to stop reading now. For the rest of you, here’s an iconographic thought experiment.
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I shit you not. The US embassy in Accra decided that it was going to spend February this year celebrating Black history month in Ghana. Posters were plastered througout the city. Concerts and conferences were convened. Living historical figures, or at least people who could comment on them for money, were flown in. But for whom?
We’ve a splendid new article over at the Voice of the Turtle, freshly posted. It’s an overview of, and exhortation to, the political cadres that are formed within every Brazilian Landless Peasant Movement land occupation. And it’s far more compelling than its title – The Training of Political Cadres: theoretical structure, experiences and present situation – suggests. Here’s a sneak preview. Keep Reading »
Hmm. How odd. Today’s mass action on campus, for which there were posters almost everywhere, didn’t happen. Not only didn’t it happen, but the posters were removed, only two people remember seeing them, and the major grievance of students who weren’t excluded is that the espresso takes too long to queue for. There is no war. We have never been at war.
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Being the digital hoarder-type, I’ve managed to accumulate over 2GB of mail since, er, 1997. Much of it is trivial ephemera, but there are historically significant bits of ephemera too. Having a pretty poor memory, I’m not apt at keeping track of it all. Not to worry, you say. Delete it, and if it’s important, someone will have stuck it up online. This may well be the case. But that would mean that I could get online. And I can’t. The World Bank is to blame.
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DK sends news of a German zoo importing four Scandinavian penguins in order to de-gay two of its male birds. The quotes from the zookeep are priceless – read em here.
Who’d have the imagination to photoshop this?
This is a little late, being an idea that struck me on the road to Makhathini, where I’ve been spending the last couple of weeks (more on that soon). The storm around Harry Windsor was dying down even then, but for no reason I can recall, I remembered a talk given by Nkosi Phathekile Holomisa, head of Contralesa (Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa). A man of royal blood, he had this to say about his title in society, and the history of British colonialism: Keep Reading »
Right. Few words. Lots of pictures. A day at the protests today as students at the university somewhat unexpectedly decided that they’d had enough of being lied to by the administration. Photos here and analysis tomorrow, when I’ve more information. Too much hearsay to make much sense of it at the moment.
