BREAKING: Abattoir goes international, welcomes new involuntary organ donors!

Black & white photo of equipment and staff at a U.S. Army medical facility circa WWI.

The Abattoir is quickly expanding its involuntary organ donor pool – we are now operating in Australia!

It turns out some prominent Australians feel so very strongly about other people involuntarily donating organs, it is only fair and just that they live by this principle themselves.

Thanks to commenters gijoel and mathscatherine, who provided candidate names and links to evidence that unquestionably qualifies these donors, we are now happily harvesting organs from:

 

  • Bernie Finn, Victoria, Australia “Liberal” MP.
    (qualifying criteria: commenting on unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape, “Babies should not be killed for the crime of his or her parent.”)
  • Tony Abbott, former prime minister of Australia.
    (qualifying criteria: calling abortion decriminalization “effectively infanticide on demand.”)

 

Remember, people: our mission is SAVING LIVES of children, women, and men who die every single day for lack of a life-saving donor organ. #savingbabies #prolife

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The Abattoir.

Once upon a time, I had another blog called Perry Street Palace™. It was (and still is imho) a wonderful place, with its own zoo, an extensive library, and of course a bar. But perhaps its most ambitious operation was The Abattoir.

The Abattoir has been sorely neglected since I joined FtB, and definitely needed some updating. Thus I am proud to announce the Grand Reopening of The Abattoir, in its sparkling new location, Freethought Blogs!

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Welcome to the Abattoir!

Black & white photo of equipment and staff at a U.S. Army medical facility circa WWI.

Here, we perform extractions of lifesaving organs–whether people consent to them or not!

Don’t worry! The Abattoir does not harvest organs from just anyone, willy-nilly. That would be morally reprehensible, barbaric, and inhumane. You see, all of our involuntary organ donors meet one, and only one, very specific criteria: they would eagerly and happily force other people to donate lifesaving organs  without the donor’s consent. And these donors do so with absolutely no regard for the harm this may cause, whether physically, psychologically or financially. Since all of The Abattoir’s donors feel so very strongly about this particular principle, it is only just and fair that they live by it!

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Amazon Union Win a “Huge Shock.” (not an April Fools joke!)

via NY Daily News:

Amazon workers in N.Y. vote to form first U.S. union in company’s history in ‘huge shock’

Workers at the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island voted decisively to form the first U.S. union in the mammoth multinational company’s history, according to a count of the historic labor election completed Friday.

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The election was instantly viewed as a possible watershed moment for the American labor movement, which has weakened in recent decades.

“Weakened?” WEAKENED?! There are many, many more accurate words I can think of to describe what has happened to U.S. labor movements and unions: decimated, demolished, shattered, destroyed, conquered and obliterated are just some of them. I guess the Daily News misplaced its thesaurus today?

Christian Smalls, a fired Amazon worker who objected to the 27-year-old company’s COVID protocols, led the recently created Amazon Labor Union to the victory over the Seattle retail giant, which is known for pulverizing labor efforts by inundating workers with anti-union messaging.

“Pulverizing.” See? Much better.

At the New York warehouse, a fulfillment facility known as JFK8, management hung “Vote No” banners on the walls and held required union-busting meetings. But the workers would not be denied.

“Amazon has proven willing to put basically unlimited resources into anti-union campaigns, and these workers really won against all odds,” said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University. “It’s really a historic victory and probably a huge shock to Amazon.”

You can read more here (@ NY Daily News).

One of the takeaways that struck me is the social media angle. While America’s Owners have developed and deployed extremely effective union-busting tactics (“required union-busting meetings”… WTF is with that?), the organizers here:

led a creative labor push that leveraged social media, including Twitter and TikTok, to succeed at the city’s lone Amazon fulfillment facility, a place where many workers are relatively young people of color, according to The City news outlet. “This is Gen Z,” Smalls, 33, told the outlet.

This suggests to me that there is only a very small window here for labor organizers with younger workforces to succeed in their unionizing efforts, before the Amazons of the world begin using the same platforms to deliver slick, Gen Z-tested, anti-union messaging to neutralize the threat.

If you’re wondering why this is a really big fucking deal, ask yourself this: if unions did not shift meaningful power, e.g. better working conditions, benefits and pay to employees, why would U.S. corporations be willing to put “basically unlimited resources” into crushing them?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PZ!

Happy birthday to my godless mentor, esteemed FTB comrade, and beloved friend, PZ Myers.

At my old blog, I would throw a virtual birthday party for him every year on this date, and celebrate with a collection of quotes, quips and bon mots that he’d written on his blog over the previous year. When his obsession was strictly cephalopods, it would look like this:

cameo photo of PZ Myers surrounded with purple balloons and floating presents, with a plate of fried calamari and black-colored cocktails in martini glasses.In 2016 I served fried calamari and Barchetta’s Spezia cocktails, made with vodka, caper brine and squid ink, with whole caperberry garnish. (I’ll have to come up with a spider-themed menu… hmmm.)

These days I’m not up for throwing a big bash, not even a virtual one. But I do want to celebrate PZ’s completion of another orbit around our sun. So today, I thought I’d share a quote from PZ that has long inspired me.

The general context of the quote is this. Back at ScienceBlogs in The Year of Our Lard 2009, PZ wrote a scathing, righteous screed about an apparently very terrible book by some Christian apologist named Terry Eagleton. PZ was stuck on a plane for 8 torturous hours with nothing to read but a SkyMall catalog (which, ♥♥♥! cultural anthropology FTW!), and a copy of this Eagleton book someone (evil?) had just given him in New York. He read the fucking thing twice.

As he was wrapping up, he wrote this:

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Happy International Women’s Day! Or, not!

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The day was first professed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the idea arising from women’s rights movements in industrializing nations around the turn of the last century. Its purpose is to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history, as well as engage in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

March is also Women’s History Month. <-That is a website curated by the U.S. Library of Congress that showcases women’s battles and triumphs with interesting and informative stories, audio, video and still images.

If you are a dude and still reading this post: here, have a cookie. (I baked them myself.) That’s for seeing the word “women’s” and not immediately deciding to GTFO.

However, if you are a dude blogger, social media influencer, or a Big Willie with a platform of any kind? [Read more…]

It’s Day 28 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends TONIGHT. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.

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Today, the last day of Black History Month, we’re going to listen to Black people speak about Black joy.

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10 exceptional people who are using Black joy as a form of resistance: Black joy is about “manifesting the joy that you need, deserve, or desire,” says Kleaver Cruz of The Black Joy Project.

Kleaver Cruz of the “Black Joy Project” is just one of many who have been encouraging Black people to choose joy as a form of resistance.

Cruz notes that Black joy is a type of “internally driven” happiness that can happen when someone consciously chooses pleasure as a way to combat the traumas of racism.

Black & white photo of a black person from the waist up facing a light wall, wearing a dark jacket, on the back of which is graffiti-esque large white text: "BLACK JOY IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE".(image: The Black Joy Project via Instagram)

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It’s Day 27 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends February 28. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.

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Since before I started this Black History Month series, one of my ideas for a post has been the Harlem Renaissance. I’ve been collecting snippets, links, materials, even writing a few words here and there, but I’ve come to realize there is so much material to cover, and from so many potential perspectives (culturally, politically, artistically etc.) that I have come to realize a blog post would invariably give short shrift to a subject of majestic depth and brilliance. Further, so much work has already been documented that the world reeeeally doesn’t need a white blogger regurgitating the words of Black historians, or worse, the words of the people who actually lived it.

Instead, I will post some resources that I found especially informatve. Whether you want to take a deep dive or stick a toe in the water is up to you. Just know that the legacies of those who lived and worked in Harlem during the 1920s are still very much with us today, so broad and profound was their impact, even on a white supremacist society.

BlackPast on the Harlem Renaissance. BlackPast’s mission:

“is dedicated to providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of African America and of people of African ancestry around the world. We aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge to generate constructive change in our society.”

There is so much material here. It is an excellent resource and repository for Black history, not just USian but the African global diaspora as well. This is the kind of work I think of when I look for potentially powerful antidotes to erasure – provided white people and especially educators avail themselves of it.

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Louie Armstrong, circa 1938
(image: William P. Gottlieb Collection / Library of Congress)

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It’s Day 26 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends February 28. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.

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Closeup color photo of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson from the chest up, with her right hand raised, and smiling. She is wearing eyeglasses, a dark suit jacket over a cheetah print shirt, a string of white peals, and a gold band (the underside of a ring) is visible on her right middle finger.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
(image: Kevin Lamarque/AFP/Getty Images)

We are presently witnessing Black history being made, with President Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some facts I have learned (from various sources):

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