Sim-O

I found this in the front passenger door pocket of my car. I have no idea where it came from.

Not only was it completely black, very soft and shrivelled, but also a little sticky which scared the life out of me when I put my hand on it without seeing it, much to the delight and disgust of my kids.

@timalmond

Some links regarding the shit that Israel is putting in the way of Palestinian higher education. The last link is the better one, although 2 years old now.

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI):

Israel’s colonial oppression of the Palestinian people, which is based on Zionist ideology, comprises the following:

· Denial of its responsibility for the Nakba — in particular the waves of ethnic cleansing and dispossession that created the Palestinian refugee problem — and therefore refusal to accept the inalienable rights of the refugees and displaced stipulated in and protected by international law;

· Military occupation and colonization of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza since 1967, in violation of international law and UN resolutions;

· The entrenched system of racial discrimination and segregation against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, which resembles the defunct apartheid system in South Africa;

Since Israeli academic institutions (mostly state controlled) and the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics have either contributed directly to maintaining, defending or otherwise justifying the above forms of oppression, or have been complicit in them through their silence

Lenins’ Tomb:

[…] lecturers have voted overwhelmingly in solidarity with Palestinian trade unions who are pleading for a boycott of Israeli institutions, including the academia. […] Disgracefully, Sally Hunt, the recently elected leader of the UCU, has issued a statement condemning the vote, claiming that it isn’t a ‘priority’ for the union. I’m sorry, Sally, that doesn’t fucking cut it. Israeli academic institutions are thoroughly imbricated with the occupation of Palestine, are deeply discriminatory in their own right, and have long provided intellectual, linguistic, logistical, technical, scientific and human support for the occupation. It isn’t good enough to say that attacking the infrastructure of the occupation isn’t a ‘priority’.

Jews sans frontieres:

It may be claimed that as an academic institution, Tel Aviv University stands apart from all this. But it is important to stress that the university was built on the lands of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwannis, a village largely destroyed in 1948 and its inhabitants ethnically cleansed and forced to flee for their lives. The “Green House”, the former home of the head of the village, is one of the few original buildings of the village that remains and currently serves as a restaurant for university faculty. The President of Tel Aviv University refused to acknowledge its history and objected to the posting of a sign on the “Green House” that would explain its origin. The campaign to pressure the university to recognize its history has been led by the Israeli organization Zochrot. [1]

The university not only refuses to recognize its past, but is also an integral part of Israel’s brutal occupation and apartheid regime imposed on the Palestinians, including the current savage bombardment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Typical is the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an external institute of Tel Aviv University, which boasts in its mission statement of its “strong association with the political and military establishment”. Advising governmental decision makers and public leaders on important “strategic issues”, it is no stretch of the imagination to suppose that the INSS has played a direct or indirect role in the current Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Gisha.org:

Since 2000, the Israeli security services have prevented Palestinian residents of the Gaza from traveling to the West Bank for their studies. This is a sweeping ban that does not relate at all to the question of whether, regarding a particular student, there is security information which the security forces might view as a reason for limiting travel. In addition, the army refuses to allow passage from the West Bank to Gaza even if the passage is not through Israel, claiming that it has the authority to prevent Palestinian residents of Gaza from entering the West Bank.

Mark Steel, from 9th January:

Amidst the coverage at the start of the year of all the bombing and lying and murdering and justifying and slaughtering, there was a splendid moment on Wednesday morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. The genetics expert, Professor Steven Rose, was introduced to talk about some new discovery that means we can identify the bit of the brain that deals with morality, which have been called ‘morality spots’. “How can we know about these spots?” he was asked. And with posh English academic authority he said, “Well – we could study the brains of the Israeli cabinet to see if they had no such morality spots whatsoever.”

heh.

Adbusters:

On February 29 last year the BBC’s website reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a ‘holocaust’ on Gaza. Headlined “Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust,’” the story would undergo nine revisions in the next twelve hours. Before the day was over, the headline would read “Gaza militants ‘risking disaster.’” (The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai’s comments). An Israeli threatening ‘holocaust’ may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the Jewish state’s criminal behaviour. With the ‘holocaust’ reference redacted, the new headline shifted culpability neatly into the hands of ‘Gaza militants’ instead.

One could argue that the BBC’s radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel lobby’s well-oiled flak machine is notorious. But, as I will show in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel’s image. The norm is reflexive self-censorship. To establish evidence of the BBC’s journalistic malpractice one often has to do no more than pick a random sample of news related to the Israel-Palestine conflict currently on its website. In a time of conflict BBC’s coverage invariably tends to the Israeli perspective, and nowhere is this reflected more than in the semantics and framing of its reportage. More so than the quantitative bias – which was meticulously established by the Glasgow University Media Group in their study Bad News from Israel – it is the qualitative tilt that obscures the reality of the situation. This is often achieved by engendering a false parity by stretching the notion of journalistic balance to encompass power, culpability and legitimacy as well. The present conflict is no exception.

Read the rest

Related: Beau Bo D’Or – The BBC reinforces the blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza

BBC:

US President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as well as all overseas CIA detention centres for terror suspects.

Signing the orders, Mr Obama said the US would continue to fight terror, but maintain “our values and our ideals”.

Nothing like setting off on the right foot, eh?

The Advertising Standards Agency has decided on whether the ‘Athiest Bus’ has broken any rules.

And I would like to paraphrase here…

Fuck off you witless god-bothering cocks.

Oh, alright. Here’s what they really said

But the body concluded the adverts were unlikely to mislead or cause widespread offence and closed the case.

But

[ASA] said it assessed 326 complaints. Some claimed the wording was offensive to people who followed a religion.

326 people are offended by someone asking them if they’ve ever thought that there might not be a god. That’s what that line is saying

While some of the complaints claimed the adverts were offensive and denigrated people of faith, others challenged whether they were misleading because the advertiser would not be able to substantiate its claim that God “probably” did not exist.

What about all the ads and posters about god and church and stuff? According to their logic, they would have to substantiate the claim that there is probably a god. Which is just as hard.

And if one person can satisfactorily prove to me that there is a god beyond doubt, I will eat my blog.

Via

Just as I’m posting about MPs’ plans to exempt their expenses from the Freedom of Information Act, this comes through…

The Guardian:

Gordon Brown made a dramatic retreat from plans to exempt MPs’ expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

The surprise announcement made during prime ministers questions follows the collapse overnight of a bipartisan agreement between Brown and David Cameron, the Tory leader, to back a parliamentary order exempting MPs’ expenses from the act. The move came after he was challenged by Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell over why he was in favour of keeping them secret.

Fucking good. It’s good that it’s been, how can I put it…? Ah, postponed. But it’s not a victory for Teh Good, because look at that. The two leaders had an agreement.

Brown told MPs: “We thought we had agreement on the Freedom of Information Act as part of this wider package,” he said. “Recently that support that we believed we had from the main opposition party was withdrawn. So on this particular matter, I believe all-party support is important and…

Translation: ‘We had a pact, but something upset them conservative buggers and I’m not gonna do anything silly unless it makes us all look shit.’

we will continue to consult on that matter.”

See? Postponed.

The PM said proposals for reforms of MPs’ expenses would provide “more transparency” than in most other parliaments around the world.

This is the bit that really flumoxes me. I’m not sure what the rest of the reforms are but surely, making expenses exempt from FoI enquiries does exactly the opposite. Shit, I was forgettin’. Enclosing something in quotes makes it the make the words mean the opposite.
Jesus, these politicians are “really clever”, aren’t they?

Cameron made a late decision to order his MPs to oppose the move after learning from Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the Commons, that Labour MPs were being whipped to back it. But Cameron’s action in turn became the catalyst for Brown’s U-turn. It left Labour, despite the chance of winning a three line whip vote, in danger of being isolated and blamed for imposing secrecy on MPs’ expenses, which is very unpopular with the electorate.

That means that Cameron was fine with the obfuscation of their expenses as long as no-one is coersed into approving the law (or whatever the fuck it is). If people do something of their own free will, they’re less likely to break away, and in this situation that means leaks. Really. Fucking. Embaressing. Leaks.
And that fucker Brown? Yes, the move is unpopular. Wonder fucking why? It’s ok to impose secrecy and be unpopular as long as it’s not just Labour that are hated. Even more. As long as politicians as whole are reviled and hated, it doesn’t matter does it.

That’s enough it’s winding me up too much, I’m just starting to swear uncontrollably.
Cunts, the fucking lot of them.

Bring on the Revolution.

A heads-up from Justin on something MPs’ want to keep to themselves:

Unlock Democracy:

On Thursday, the Government sneaked out the draft of the innocuous sounding “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order.” This “statutory instrument” (not an act), if passed, will

“…change the scope of the application of the [Freedom of Information] Act in relation to information held by the House of Commons and House of Lords regarding expenditure in respect of Members of both Houses. This includes information held by either House about expenses claimed by and allowances paid to Members. Such information is no longer within the scope of the Act.”

In short, they intend to exempt the expenses of MPs and Lords from the Freedom of Information Act and thereby close them to public scrutiny. This is to be passed almost a year to the day after the Derek Conway scandal erupted, when it emerged that the MP had been paying his sons as research staff while they were at university, despite not being able to demonstrate that they had actually done any work for him. If the Government gets away with this, scandals such as this will be allowed to continue and we will not be permitted to find out about them.

It is completely outrageous that the Government should seek to do this at all, let alone in such an underhand manner. The Government is planning to put us all on a national identity database, force us to carry identity cards, keep the DNA of millions of innocent people on a database and to read all our emails, phone and internet records regardless of whether we are supposed to have done anything wrong. Their argument is always “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Why, then, is it one rule for us and another rule for politicians?

What’s more, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, one of his first acts was to publish the Governance of Britain Green Paper which asserted that “It is right that Parliament should be covered by the [Freedom of Information] Act.”

This proposal is going to be debated in the House of Commons this Thursday – we don’t have much time. For this reason I am strongly urging you to do the following as a matter of urgency:

• Write to your MP (use www.writetothem.com) and urge them “to sign the Early Day Motion “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 (Jo Swinson MP)” – the text of this motion is below for your reference.
• Phone your MP’s office (the main switchboard is 020 7219 3000) and ask to talk to him or her to ask them to oppose this proposal.
• If you are on Facebook, join our group and invite all your friends to join – ESPECIALLY the ones not normally interested in politics.
• Forward this article to everyone you know either by email or any social bookmarking websites you use.

Please, please do this as soon as you can. We can defeat this proposal if we put pressure on MPs this week. In 2007, a group of backbench MPs attempted to get a similar proposal passed. We beat them then and we can beat them again.

With best wishes,

Peter Facey
Director, Unlock Democracy

TEXT OF EARLY DAY MOTION [EDM 492]

Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009
Primary Sponsor: Jo Swinson (LD, East Dunbartonshire)

That this House notes with concern the provisions in the Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 to exempt remove the expenses of Members of Parliament and Peers from the scope of the Freedom of Information Act’; notes that this order will single out MPs and Peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who will note have to disclose full details of their expenses; notes with concern the regressive effect of this Order on Parliamentary transparency and the detrimental impact it will have on Parliament in the eyes of the public; calls on Ministers to block or repeal the Order in the interest of MPs’ and Peers’ accountability to members of the public.

teh Guardian:

The US president, Barack Obama, looked set to suspend the controversial Guantánamo Bay military tribunals, in one of his first actions after being sworn in yesterday.

Within hours of taking office, Obama’s administration filed a motion to halt the war crimes trials for 120 days, until his new administration completes a review of the much-criticised system for trying suspected terrorists.
…
The halt to the tribunals was sought “in the interests of justice,” the official request to the judges said.

An excellent first move, I must say. Especially if he’s going to hit them targets.

If someone told you a lie, to try and wind you up or manipulate them, you wouldn’t be happy, would you? You’d tell them to bugger off.

If someone asked you why you had someone as a mate when all that mate did was chat shit and try and get you into fights and you replied that, it’s ok, no one believes what they say. You would be laughed at.

So why do people buy a newspaper, when to justify or counter the question of why they buy it, they respond, ‘no-one believes the Sun’ or ‘everyone knows it’s not true’?

If you know it’s full of lies or not true, why buy it?

Oh yes, the football and the racing. Fair enough, but then why not miss out all the bile, hate , contradictions and lies and just buy Shoot* or Racing Post?

If you like fictional stories, go to the library. It’d be cheaper and the stories will be better written too.

The line ‘no-one believes the Sun’ is a lie itself. Because the people behind these news agencies do.

*not being into the girly game of football, I couldn’t think of another footy publication so Shoot might not be the best example of a serious football news resource.