[LINK] Some Friday links

• Broadsides' Antonia Zerbisias reports that, already, some people are criticizing Michelle Obama in ... suspiciously charged ways.


• Centauri Dreams reports that astronomers have taken the first infrared image of a planet, this one being a gas giant that swoops amazingly close to its primary and superheats portions of its atmosphere. And we know which portions.


• Daniel Drezner lets us know that Jessica Alba knows more about the history of the Second World War that Bill O'Reilly. Seriously.


• Paul Wells shares the exciting news that "[t]he era of federal-provincial bickering is over. It is now the era of federal-provincial open threats," what with the Quebec finance minister warning the Conservatives to be careful because, you know, if federal elections come ...


• Joe. My. God. reports that a spokeperson for the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland said that gays shouldn't adopt because they die early. Sigh.


• Over at Passing Strangeness, pauldrye writes about the Republic of Ezo, an attempt by progressive feudal lords in Japan at the beginning of the Meiji period to make the northern island of Hokkaido an autonmomous state.


• Slap Upside the Head reports that at least one American conservative thinks that GLBT folk want to join the military because they want to have sex, with heterosexuals of course.


• Windows on Eurasia reports that Moldova may be about to leave the largely irrelevant GUAM group and that Russian oligarchs really like blogging.

[PHOTO] Welcome to Yankee Stuff

Welcome to Yankee Stuff
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This is a photo I took this summer past of Yankee Stuff, a store that--as Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn puts it--stood out for "proudly displaying the red, white, and blue (and several small Canadian flags) on Bloor Street in Korea Town," promising ""Winners Quality at Ed's Prices... THAT'S WHY CRAZY PRICES!" ("Ed's" refers to "Honest Ed's," the nearby huge discount/bargain store).

After seeing a 50% recession sale on all items, Bradburn returned after Christmas to the store only to find that, "based on the wrapping paper covering the display window, the recession had claimed another victim.

The lesson? Be careful of naming your sale after an economic event, as said event may come back to bite you."

[BRIEF NOTE] Tamil protests in Toronto

CityNews carries a complete report of the day's events.

It has been an extraordinary day in the downtown core, a spectacle rarely if ever seen in this city. The cause: a day long downtown-wide massive protest by Canadian Sri Lankans, designed to attract attention to what they call acts of genocide in their homeland.

The human chain demonstration stretched from Bloor St. to University Ave. and Yonge St. and snaked all the way to Front.  

But it was at that final destination that the crowds truly tried to make their point. As many 5-10,000 people wound up at Union Station, causing such an overwhelming sea of humanity that police were forced to close off the roadway for a time.

Mounted units, traffic cops and even the RIDE spotcheck command post were all called into action while chaos prevailed around the transit hub. The assembled multitude was peaceful, a remarkable achievement for such a large gathering, but it was inside the typical transit hubs where chaos reigned.

Police were able to finally open a small corridor to allow pedestrians and travellers to get through.

A man named George was one of those caught in the gridlock while attending a library convention downtown. He didn't seem to mind the inconvenience it caused. "I'll support the protesters, it's a good cause," he confirms. "But, you know what? There's thousands of people that have been affected."

But while police did their best to clear the way, when commuters finally did get down to Union Station it was hardly clear sailing. It was so crowded in the subway the line waiting to get in stretched all the way back to the area where passengers pay their fares.

And it was almost as bad uptown. Busy Bloor Station was so filled with passengers, the TTC was forced to stop all its trains before they entered the station to ensure safety.

It was a long day for authorities, who were hopping since the protest began earlier in the morning. Drivers were also affected, as the protestors kept to the sidewalk but provided an endless visual distraction for blocks.  

It was an amazing sight, all the more so because it stayed so peaceful. "There are probably thousands, tens of thousands of Tamils here all trying to bring some attention to their cause," confirmed CityNews reporter Francis D'Souza at the height of the madness. "You can see them on the street corners here trying to hand out pamphlets just to let people know what they're actually talking about."

He believes they more than achieved their aims. "Their message is 'stop Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka.' If that's what they wanted, that's what they're getting right now. Because the hundreds of thousands of commuters who use Union Station every day are trying to get through and listening to their message."

How busy was it at the height of the protest? D'Souza reveals he was forced to get out of the CityNews vehicle and walk to the scene. His cameraman and all his equipment didn't get through the gridlock until 25 minutes later.

The protestors had promised their massive march would end at 6pm. True to their word, as the dinner hour struck, the crowds slowly began to disperse and left the area, creating yet more headaches for an already swollen public transit system.

By all accounts, the protests have ended peacefully without any untoward events. (That sound you hear in the distance is the collective exhalation of relief made by Toronto politicians and Canadian police.)

[BRIEF NOTE] On those political lesbians

A couple of other people have commented, at length, on this rather remarkable Julie Bindel article from The Guardian in which she issues a call to feminists--and women in general--to embrace the label of "political lesbian." What does this mean? It comes out in Bindel's 2005 interview with the feminist Sheila Jeffreys who started off the whole concept.

She became a lesbian in 1973 because she felt it contradictory to give "her most precious energies to a man" when she was thoroughly committed to a women's revolution. Six years later, she went further and wrote, with others, a pamphlet entitled Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism And Political Lesbianism. In it, feminists who sleep with men are described as collaborating with the enemy. It caused a huge ruction in the women's movement, and is still cited as an example of early separatists "going way too far".

"We do think," it said, "that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women." Although many of the more radical feminists agreed, most went wild at being told they were "counter-revolutionary".

Further down, Bindel relates her choice of sexual orientation seemingly not to innate orientation so much as to a political reaction against a particular--if common--socially-bound pattern of heterosexual life.

When I was growing up on a council estate in Darlington, the expectation was that I would one day marry a local boy, settle down and start producing kids. Frankly, the thought horrified me. I was surrounded by men - my father and two brothers - and at an early age I had picked up on the stories of domestic violence, child abuse and general unhappiness that seemed to emanate from neighbouring households. I was also struck by the drudgery on display. While men were out drinking, embarking on fishing trips and generally enjoying their freedom, women were stuck cooking for them, cleaning for them, and running around after children. For women, heterosexuality seemed a total con.

At 15 then, having only ever had one, non-serious, boyfriend, I came out as a lesbian. Three years later, I moved to Leeds in search of the scary-sounding feminists I had heard about and, having joined a group that campaigned against pornography, finally met the RFs. They engaged me in discussions about heterosexuality in the pub, and critiquing this mainstream sexual culture made sense to me - after all, the women I had met during my childhood clearly hadn't benefited from it. The RFs told me that, to them, lesbianism was a choice that women could make, and not a "condition" we are born with. "All women can be lesbians" was the mantra. I loved the sense that I had chosen my sexuality and rather than being ashamed or apologetic about it, as many women were, I could be proud, and see it as a privilege.

Might I go on the record as saying that choosing your sexual orientation for political reasons is a waste of the sexual fluidity that exists in a goodly number of people to a greater or lesser degree? I'd always thought that the whole point of coming out was to let people express their sexual and romantic inclinations without regard for political or cultural convention whether hegemonic or counter-hegemonic. I know that I'm not a woman and can't testify from lived experience, and I can imagine that gender relations can stand to be reconstructed on healthier lines on a broad scale and in some particularly, sure, but rejecting the very possibility of heterosexuality? At all? Because it's politically and/or culturally inconvenient? I may as well start trawling for a girlfriend, then.