A Big shout out to ‘Sean’ who had a letter published in today’s Cancer asking:
As far as Mr Siddique is concerned, is he a ‘Muslim in Bristol’ or an ‘Islamist in Bristol’?
Such a good question that I’ve ripped it off and made a graphic for future use. In return Sean gets the Bristol Blogger’s prestigious ‘Bristolian of the week’ award.
Meanwhile, honorary Bristolian status goes to Chris Gale from Chippenham, a regular poster on Kerry McCarthy’s blog, who today attempted to introduce a dose of reality into the pages of the Guardian, whose editorial line and world view increasingly resemble something that might have been devised by Beatrice Webb’s vicar.
Meanwhile, a new award: Brain Dead Bristolian Academics of the Week.
This first award goes jointly to Dr. Geetanjali Gangoli, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol; Dr. Jutta Weldes, Politics, University of Bristol and John Moore, lecturer in Sociology & Criminology, University of the West of England who have all signed a letter, also in today’s Guardian, announcing “Israel must lose”.
“We are obliged to take sides,” they continue. That’ll be with the Islamists of Hamas then presumably? What a bunch of gormless twats.
You might also like to note what kind of ‘academics’ we’re talking about here.
John tells us, “My principal current research focus is the history of punishment … [and I] seek[s] to introduce a postcolonial perspective to histories of punishment”
So when this glorious Hamas victory and the Islamist Middle East he’s promoting arrives he’ll be able to see some historical punishment techniques delivered by postcolonialists right up close won’t he?
Meanwhile, here’s what Bristol University’s Dr Geldes – who appears to be trying to make the art of parody redundant – tells us she gets up to (at our expense of course) besides her extreme reactionary politics:
I am particularly interested in the various intertextual relations between popular cluture (sic) and (world) politics … I am currently working on two papers. One examines representations of in/security in the televsion (sic) show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguning (sic) that Buffy performs a post-structural understanding of in/security.
Intellectual stuff or wot? It rather looks like the city’s leading academic illiterate and world authority on Buffy the Vampire Slayer has condemned Israel. That’ll have ’em quaking in Tel Aviv tonight.
Anyone know the university’s Disney Studies Department’s position on the conflict?
“My principal current research focus is the history of punishment … [and I] seek[s] to introduce a postcolonial perspective to histories of punishment”
and
“I am particularly interested in the various intertextual relations between popular cluture and (world) politics … I am currently working on two papers. One examines representations of in/security in the televsion show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguning that Buffy performs a post-structural understanding of in/security.”
What? Did I read this right? Can it be true that my taxes go to pay plonkers to spout this shit to young impressionable students?
On Mr Siddique, you might be interested that he is the vice chair of radio Salaam Shalom, a Bristol based interfaith Jewish/Muslim radio station
http://www.salaamshalom.org.uk/about.html.
Hardly matches your portrait of a local Abu Hamsa.
Oh dear spectator. Can’t you see that these are mere titbits.
You seem to be ‘caught’ in a spiral of negativity inacpable of understanding that our influence grows disproportionately large as a result of your fetishisation of us.
Really.
Of course, we don’t know what job the Bristol Blogger does, or, indeed any inconvenient facts about him or her at all. So the pointing and giggling at people who, among other things, display their concern at hundreds of civilians killed and thousands maimed, all goes one way.
You know perfectly well what I do. I do this blog. It’s got almost three years of “inconvenient facts” on it.
I also sell my Labour for wages. Unlike you I don’t dress this up as a revolutionary or political act.
CRAP ARREST OF THE WEEK
For being out of tune…
A young Jewish man was arrested in London on Sunday (11th) after
singing at the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sacks, during his
speech at an End Hamas Terror (pro-Israel) rally.
Perched on the edge of a Trafalgar Square fountain, Dovid Von Neumann
accused the Rabbi of being unrepresentative of the Jewish community in
his claims that British Jews supported Israel”s current military
action. He then sang the well known child”s Chanukah song “Sevivon
sov sov sov” (Spinning-top, spin spin spin).
The ongoing Israeli bombing of Gaza began during the festival of
Chanukah when Jewish children around the world receive the
traditional gift of a four sided spinning-top (sevivon in Hebrew,
driedel in Yiddish). Today these are mostly made from plastic, but
once upon a time they were cast in lead – hence Operation Cast Lead,
the name given by Israel to its current Gaza incursion.
Dovid explains: ‘I wished to highlight the insidiousness of how the
current Israeli invasion into Gaza was named after a child”s toy made
from a highly toxic material – lead – and how Palestinian children
have been at the mercy of such randomly falling deathly devices. It”s
as if Israel had the lead sevivon in mind as a metaphorical present to
Palestinian children.’
Dovid was held for a number of hours by Metropolitan Police until the
demonstration was over, then released without charge.
“a fight for western values of secular democracy and human rights against those that would unleash a medieval theocracy upon us all.”
You’d think if it were really true, we’d be able to find a much better way of doing it than shooting any fucker that moves
1000 dead Palestinians and some people are more concerned with a few nutters.
The actions of Israel are a boon to the Jew haters.
From Parliament
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab):
I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.
I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.
I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.
My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that
“500 of them were militants.”
That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.
“1000 dead Palestinians and some people are more concerned with a few nutters. ”
That would be because it’s usually those few nutters who create the problem in the first place.
How many have died in the Congo during the last couple of weeks? How many in the Sudan and Chad? How many in Zimbabwe? Are their lives not worth the same amount of hand wringing from lefties here in the UK? Or, could it be that in those other places there is no way to bash the US or Israeli governments?
As for Kaufman, I always thought the man was an idiot, now I know he’s got a carbon footprint the size of a fucking sasquatch with all his flying to and from Israel.
Rosso,
this borders on a “the Jews have brought this on themselves” argument. I doubt you’d have much truck with someone excusing racists because of the actions of muggers and drug dealers would you?
As for Kaufman. Three things:
1. He’s barking. And the Labour Party know it. Remember the ’97 election when he was virtually removed from all contact with the outside world for fear of what he might come out with?
2. Can you point me to any examples, articles, speeches or statements from the Israeli government or its supporters where they’ve ruthlessly and cynically exploited the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians? So far the only people I’ve come across mentioning the Holocaust are Kaufmann and our very own Farooq Siddique, who are both implacably opposed to the Israeli action.
3. Kaufmann is complaining about people cynically exploiting the Holocaust by, er … cynically exploiting his own dead grandmother!
Well Hamas certainly seems to see death and destruction and the fall-out from it in a cold strategic way, as a “success”.
After the Israeli forces deadliest-ever offensive in Gaza which reduced much of the enclave to ruins … Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has claimed a “great victory”.
“God has granted us a great victory, not for one faction, or party, or area, but for our entire people … We have stopped the aggression and the enemy has failed to achieve any of its goals”
Here we go blogger:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1
Israeli Minister Warns of Palestinian “Holocaust”
“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, told army radio.”
Shoah being the Hebrew word for Holocaust.
Shoah is the Hebrew for “catastrophe”, a word which though it is applied to the fate of European Jews in WWII, can also be applied to other catastrophic events.
The word “holocaust” means “completely burned” (from the Attic Holos Kaustos, sorry, I can’t use the Greek font). It was originally used to refer to a burned offering made on an altar.
The translators who worked on Matan Vilnai’s speech (it was of course made in Hebrew) were heavily criticised at the time for choosing to translate the word shoah as “holocaust” rather than “catastrophe”.
Lollo Rosso, you are being tendentious, and you know it.
Understand things can be lost in translation, but the word “Shoah” – I have never seen it used except in the context of the Holocaust.
I’ve already said that my Hebrew isn’t up to arguing the toss on this so I’ll accept your argument that the Minister was referencing the Holocaust.
However this apparent threat of genocide is not an example of the “Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploiting the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians”.
Basically he’s not using the Holocaust as a guilt trip on us is he?