Sim-O

A big number two at number two, beaten by a man who was a number two and had two (cont. p. 94)…

background 1, 2.

You remember I decided to join Tim in spreading some lurve on Youtube?

Well, it’s been 6 days (sooner than I expected to be honest) and we have a result with Patrick Holford…

I think I might have to wait a tad bit longer for Iain Dale…

Update:
Lets see how long this one takes then, eh…?
Tanya Byron

Tim has found out that it is possible to Googlebomb Youtube…

I found out about this after I linked to this ‘Ninja Cat Fail’ video in this post, using that nice Mr Draper’s name in the linked description. The next day, I was looking for a clip of the man, recognised the 2nd-to-top result (screengrab), and realised immediately that I alone had artificially/externally provided the only ‘relevance’ to this query.

Tim wants Google to fix it and thinks the best way to do that is to make a big thing of it till Google realise what’s happening.

I’m just think it’s funny and am curious to know how little influence I have in the results.

So I am going to link to …

• Iain Dale
• Patrick Holford

… and count the years roll by before I’m on the first page of results.

@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.