essentialism

I have a utopian ideal. I am pretty certain I am not alone in this. Mine is couched, sometimes overridden, sometimes decimated, by my cynicism. I have been referred to as both cynical and jaded. I sometimes describe myself as an optimist with a health dose of cynicism. I wish there was reason to be otherwise — perhaps this is the basis for my utopianism. More times that I would like to recount in recent weeks, any utopian outlooks I have have been quashed.

The current politicking about refugees is beyond description. I literally fled from Australian in the wake of the Tampa situation in 2001. The wikipedia entry on the events surrounding the Tampa describe it as

I have recently read Lee Hall’s (2006) Capers in the churchyard: animal rights advocacy in the age of terror and revisited the edited volume Terrorist’s or freedom fighters? Reflections on the liberation of animals (2004). I found Lee Hall’s book to be one published at a very necessary time and it was quite scathing of welfarist and ‘militant’ approaches (albeit not un-problematically), the latter being promoted and supported in Terrorist’s or Freedom Fighters. I am working my way through producing a review of Capers in the churchyard, yet felt the need to comment following a recent interview with Steve Best on CUIT’s Animal Voices (Toronto).