Carriage Towne News gave my silent movie work a nice mention in its online and print editions. My next movie is Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera at the Plaistow, NH library on Friday, January 19.
Personal
Harvard groups’ endorsement of murder
As a former employee of the Harvard University Libraries, I have to say something about the groups there who excused the mass murder of innocent Jewish civilians. The Reuters article says:
A coalition of 34 Harvard students organizations said they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” following decades of occupation, adding that “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
Saying that the Israeli government is 100% to blame implies that the people who committed the slaughter are blameless. That’s an endorsement of murder.
I’m disgusted though not surprised. We’re talking about a university that booted a dean for being a defense attorney in a criminal case. Harvard should not suppress the groups making these statements — it’s already bad enough that FIRE has given it an “abysmal” rating for free speech — but it should distance itself from them in the most emphatic terms. It has failed to do this.
A personal note: An album of songs I’ve written for February Album Writing Month (FAWM) is up on Bandcamp. It’s living room recordings, so payment is optional. All the money that I get on Bandcamp through the end of March 2023 will go to Doctors without Borders.
Thug threatens pro-China freedom activist — and me
I’d wondered if China’s thugs would ever threaten me for all the posts I’ve made about the China Worldcon. Well, you know what they say: Be careful what you wish for, or you may live in interesting times. Before the sun came up this morning, I had my life threatened on Twitter. Since originally posting this, I’ve received new information and updated this post.
Let’s start at the beginning. In today’s news I read that one Xiaolei Wu was arrested for threatening violence against a pro-Chinese freedom activist. I did a search on Twitter to see what I could find about Xiaolei Wu and found a post by a person using that name. As we know all too well, names on Twitter prove nothing, but this person claimed to “represent the future of China” and was begging to the Chinese ambassador for help. I later learned that the holder of this account is an impersonator, so I was threatened, but as a bad joke and not by the same person who was arrested. Here’s the reply I got:
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