Silence Exile and Crumpets

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Things not foreseen that should have been
There are lots of ways of talking about this.

The simplest is the best.

All of the religious factions and militias and Kurdish nationalists and government police in Iraq have one thing that they can agree on, which is killing queers.

Most weeks, three or four people are hacked, stoned, burned or shot to death for being lesbian, gay, bi or trans. The highest Shia religious dignitary Sistani has again promulgated a fatwa calling for the execution of all non-repentant LGBT people - people talk of him as a liberal and in this degree he is - he allows people to repent on pain of death when most of his rivals would just kill. Contacted by the UN about this campaign of murder, the Iraqi government has refused to acknowledge that it is even a problem.

This is a direct consequence of the war - the Saddam regime, vile as it was, was secular in this respect, just as the Ba'athists in Syria still are. No-one does well in a totalitarian state, but LGBT folk were left alone, mostly.

Those who survive, flee. Through a network of safe houses and incredibly brave people and escape routes to the West.

The British home office is disinclined to regard the likelihood of being murdered by a variety of non-state agents as persecution, because it is not the government that is doing it. The leaders of the diaspora queer community are under death threats - again from Sistani - and live under police protection of a moderately minimal kind.

When troops leave, as leave they will in the runup to the British and American elections, there will be no change, except possibly for the worse.

One of the diaspora spoke to us at Translondon this evening.

He said something amazingly moving to the effect that this is not a movement of Resistance so much as a movement of Existence. Because when everyone wants to kill you, staying alive is the most radical form of resistance possible.

HEEYYYULLPP!!!
Can anyone think of a reason why Windows XP should repeatedly and suddenly shut itself down at random? It has been doing it to me all evening, sometimes almost as soon as I boot up, and sometimes after I have been online for a while, looking at my e-mail and Friends Lists. It does it particularly if I run Spybot Search and Destroy and does it just as Spybot is about to fix problems. It did this even when I ran Spybot while Windows was in Safe Mode.

I need to stress that this is a full Windows shutdown with saved settings, not just my machine closing down.

I tried updating Windows, but that didn't help.

Tinhattery
Some of us, of course, will never accept the idea that Jo Lupo is supposed to be straight. Obviously, it is perfectly possible for a woman to be that frakking butch and be straight, but somehow Eureka never convinces us of this. And the harder they try, the worse it gets, especially if you are a sad person like me to whom close reading of texts is second nature.

In a way, the Taggart thing was so implausible as to be almost funny. Now, though, they seem to be replacing the Taggart thing with something even less likely.( The sleep of reason produces spoilers for Eureka 2.6 )

Rainy tuesday
One of the reasons for this is the ongoing angst of the Kerfuffle and the discovery from lj-user bad_wolf_bitch here that there are unmolested Nazi sites on LJ. Even though the information comes from the hopelessly compromised source of the twit woman who unilaterally thought it smart to involve the California AG's department, it nonetheless disturbs me very deeply. I seriously thought about deleting my LJ on the spot, then moved the whole question to things best dealt with by communities rather than individuals.

What is the point of blogging against racism if racists are there in our corner of cyberspace? I am considerably more concerned about them than I am even about mad Christians who beat original sin out of their children.

I am less convinced than I was that the fannish apocalypse is upon us, but once things have quietened down, and we have all made sure to beahve with more prudence than hitherto, we really need to address the issue of what groups we are prepared to share LJ with.

******
On the bright side, Big Love continues to surprise and delight. Omigod, they actually went there, with Evil Rhonda blackmailing Heather over Heather's unacknowledged sapphic feelings for Sarah - 'I see how you look at her....You want to kiss her on the lips'. Could this be any scarier or more wrong? The weird ex-polygamist campaigner has set her sights on recruiting Sarah to her crusade and Rhonda will make it happen; the campaigner even knows that Rhonda is a manipulative little liar and is prepared to use her for the greater good...And in one of the show's finest touches ever, Rhonda gets to sing on TV and is so good she will probably become a star, and her singing lightens the dying of Roman Grant, the evil old Prophet who meant to marry her. Roman is mortally sick from being shot by a rival church's assassins, but it is his son who brings him home from hospital against medical advice, locks the door even against his own mother and then has him put to sleep like a sick animal. We knew Roman was going to die, but the idea that his son Albie has poisoned him to become the new prophet and throw his weight around is even squickier. Of course, Albie does not regard poisoning his father as murdering him - he talks of taking vengeance against Bill for the plotting that led to the shooting. Between mad evil Albie and silly silly Nikki his sister, all of this is shaping up to make the House of Atreus look like a tea-party I love this show so much, and so few of you are watching it...

In re Kerfuffle
I was impressed, still am, by Giogio's post about the inadvisability of bringing the Califironia authorities into the kerfuffle; one of her assumptions though is that we are in clear breach of copyright. There is a very interesting post here - pointed out to me by Rob Hansen in Making Light that argues something quite contrary and reassures me that maybe the fanfic apocalypse is not as imminent as I feared. Which leaves us with the under age stuff which is more worrying.

The state of Roz
I am not taking a stand on principle over strikethrough, boldthrough and other kerfuffles - the whole thing has got to a point of he said, she said such that I am sure I don't like most of the snarryfic I've seen, would hate most snarrypics and resent LJ taking a stand on this issue but not eg anorexia sites or demented advocates of beating babies for the sake of their souls.

The most important thing I have done is back up my livejournal - I will also burn it onto disc and see if I can store it somewhere else in cyberspace.

I've also got a Greatestjournal and an Insanejournal and will gradually build up friends lists there - I am, boringly, rozk in both places.

More later.

I am still ill and grumpy, but am trying to write

Sincerely
My apologies to people who get test notices - apparently greatest journal won't let me delete posts.

This is me and I am here.