January 2009
Monthly Archive
17 Student Occupations so far this month
Posted by Suzi on 29 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics, Things to do
I am amazed at the wave of student activism that is sweeping the UK. I’m still trying to keep track of it all or at least link to people keeping track of it at occupations.org.uk and that has totally absorbed me over the last couple of days. I rush home from work to update, I bore my friends with long rambles about the rebirth of activism and all my emails are probably filled with links to my website. It’s gratifying to know that some other people have also found it useful - it’s always nice to feel needed.
Obama’s policy of war
Posted by Suzi on 28 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics
It will not come as a surprise to many of you that within days of taking office Barack Obama has sanctioned two missile attacks in Pakistan - which have killed dozens of civilians. He also announced the doubling of US troop numbers in Afghanistan to 60,000. Same old war policies, different face.
Chomsky comments on Pakistan
Chomsky on Democracy Now
Chomsky comments on Obama and Gaza
Occupations.org.uk
Posted by Suzi on 26 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics
I have a new site up and running all about occupations. It’s in its infancy so be kind!
BBC Headquaters in Glasgow occupied in protest
Posted by Suzi on 25 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics
Stop the War have occupied the BBC headquarters in Glasgow. It’s all over the web - they have demanded to see a senior representative of the BBC. It’s great to see so much action being taken. More info about it on LSE Occupation website.
University Students Occupy in support of Palestinians and Tony Benn makes a stand
Posted by Suzi on 24 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics, Things to do
The situation in Gaze continues - over a dozen universities in the UK have seen student occupations some of which seem to have been successful to some degree. The universities so far are:
SOAS - Occupation 13th-16th January
LSE - Occupation 15th-22nd January
Essex - Occupation started 16th January and still going
King’s College Occupation started 20th January and still going
Birmingham - Occupation 20th-21st January ended by illegal police eviction.
Warwick - Occupation started 21st January and still going
Sussex - Occupation started 20th January and still going
Oxford - Occupation 22nd-22nd January
Manchester Met - Occupation 22nd-23rd January
Leeds Occupation started 22nd January and still going
Cambridge - Occupation started 23rd January
Others without websites so far are Newcastle (Occupation started 22nd January), Nottingham (Occupation started 23rd January), Kingston (Occupation started 23rd January), Salford (Occupation started 23rd January) and Bristol (Occupation started 23rd January).
Many of the university students have negotiated good terms with the universities - check their websites for more details on what their demands were.
Meanwhile the BBC has refused to air an advert appealing for aid for Gaza, despite a storm of complaints. Tony Benn went on News 24 on TV and on the Today programme on the radio and instead of allowing them to interview him he gave the appeal instead. Go Tony Go!
The Five Filters - Garage Science meets the Propaganda model
Posted by Suzi on 23 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Tec
K is off to Madrid next week to the MediaLab-Prado Grange Science Interactivos workshop. He is going to be making a project named after and based on The Five Filters from the Propaganda Model as put forward in the book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky called Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. If you’re interested in collaborating you can sign up here and they’ll put you up in a youth hostel.
Change I don’t believe in
Posted by Suzi on 21 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics
While it would be nice to believe that Obama ascension to presidency is going to usher in a new era I remain staunchly pessimistic.
John Pilger points out that “Obama’s campaign was funded largely by rapacious capital, such as Citigroup and others responsible for the sub-prime mortgage scandal” and I guess He who Pays wins. Obama raked in a neat $532,946,511 while McCain came a tardy second with $393,668,650 contributions. So much for democracy - it’s all about cashocracy.
But that’s not all…
Despite Obama’s claim that “America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace” in his Inauguration Speech, 2009 threatens to see an extension of the War On Abstract Nouns. I think that most telling of his speeches was the one at the AIPAC Policy Conference when he said: “I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat – from Gaza to Tehran.” Because he believes “There is no greater threat to Israel – or to the peace and stability of the region – than Iran.”
As President, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade – investments to Israel’s security that will not be tied to any other nation. First, we must approve the foreign aid request for 2009. Going forward, we can enhance our cooperation on missile defense. We should export military equipment to our ally Israel under the same guidelines as NATO. And I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself in the United Nations and around the world.
There will be no sudden surge of change in domestic or foreign policy because if there was any threat of that he would never have got to the White House.
Now he’s there he has appointed exactly the sort of people who will continue the good work of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagon, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman… you get my point. In case you thought they were nice guys below is the list of countries America has bombed since 1945:
China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Belgian Congo 1964
Guatemala 1964
Dominican Republic 1965-66
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Lebanon 1982-84
Grenada 1983-84
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1981-92
Nicaragua 1981-90
Libya 1986
Iran 1987-88
Libya 1989
Panama 1989-90
Iraq 1991-2002
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1992-94
Croatia 1994 (of Serbs at Krajina)
Bosnia 1995
Iran 1998 (airliner)
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
Afghanistan 2001-02
Iraq 2003-Present
John Pilger writes about his appointees if you still had any illusions…
Having campaigned with “Change you can believe in”, President-elect Barack Obama has named his A-team. They include Hillary Clinton, who voted to attack Iraq without reading the intelligence assessment and has since threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran on behalf of a foreign power, Israel. During his primary campaign, Obama referred repeatedly to Clinton’s lies about her political record. When he appointed her secretary of state, he called her “my dear friend”.
Obama’s slogan is now “continuity”. His secretary of defence will be Robert Gates, who serves the lawless, blood-soaked Bush regime as secretary of defence, which means secretary of war (America last had to defend itself when the British invaded in 1812). Gates wants no date set for an Iraq withdrawal and “well north of 20,000” troops to be sent to Afghanistan. He also wants America to build a completely new nuclear arsenal, including “tactical” nuclear weapons that blur the distinction with conventional weapons.
Another product of “continuity” is Obama’s first choice for CIA chief, John Brennan, who shares responsibility for the systematic kidnapping and torturing of people, known as “extraordinary rendition”. Obama has assigned Madeleine Albright to report on how to “strengthen US leadership in responding to genocide”. Albright, as secretary of state, was largely responsible for the siege of Iraq in the 1990s, described by the UN’s Denis Halliday as genocide.
Noam Chomsky had more to say on ‘Brand Obama’ on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. He talks about Obama’s appointees and the election/advertising campaign:
So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize, beat out Apple Company, the best marketing campaign of 2008, which is correct.
So far Change is looking like this…
Joe Bilden (long term pro war supporter)
Chief of Staff - Rahm Emanuel - (long term pro war supporter, and Investment banker)
Secretary of Defense - Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense under Bush)
Secretary of State - Hilary Clinton (pro war)
Leading candidate for CIA director - John Brennan, (Guantanamo apologist)
Secretary of the Treasury -Timothy Geithner (helped with $700 billion bailout of banks)
so far ‘Change’ looks exactly like ‘Same’ to me…
University of Cambridge celebrates 800 years
Posted by Suzi on 19 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Cafés, Environment, Museums, Poem, Sites, Things to do
I was in Cambridge over the weekend and got to see some of the celebrations for the 800 year anniversary of the university. On Saturday night there was a wonderful light show projected on to the Senate House with illustrations by Quentin Blake. On Sunday morning Tim and I wandered to the Fitzwilliam to see the The Chatto Quartet playing Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev’s Piano Quartet in E major in the Gallery there. It was amazing listening to such lovely music surrounded by fabulous art.
We won’t do business with Israel
Posted by Suzi on 10 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics
I can’t believe the horror is continuing on Palestine. How dare the Israeli government perpetuate such atrocities in the face of the outraged international community.
However there is some hope coming out of the situation. There have been massive protests in Norway, and the Managing Director of a VOIP company emailed Israeli MobileMax to say they can no longer do business with them in the light of the Israeli government’s actions.
Here in Sweden the protests continue in Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Will a few more things like this force Israel to rethink it’s actions? Well perhaps not - given what their policy of land appropriation and treatment towards Palestine - but it certainly can’t hurt. Unless people speak out Israel’s actions will go unchecked. Without access to factual information, their actions may even seem justified.
K has been posting up about Israel’s use of ‘New Media’ propaganda which just goes to show that although the face of media is changing - the use of it as a weapon of propaganda isn’t. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - it’s up to us to educate ourselves and use the internet to learn about and spread ideas about a better world and guard against it being used reinforce the social order and power structure as it is. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that government, media, business and those with a vested interest in maintaining their power structures will be using the Internet to further their interests and using this ‘cool’ new medium to reach the ‘youf’.
Rant over! To keep yourself update on Gaza, check out the Media Lens message board, where loads of people are posting really useful information and links up.
Bias, Palestine/Israel and the Media
Posted by Suzi on 06 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Politics
Israel appears to be hell bent on continuing their attack on Palestine - I don’t know whether it’s the desire not to look ’soft on the Palestine’s’ in the face of the upcoming Israeli election or the ending of the ceasefire between Israel and Palestine. What is certain is that the situation is causing untold suffering in Palestine. And in Britain and America the lack of unbiased news story is depressing. American and British politicians and media are generally pro-Israel and apt to portray a biased and unfair description of the situation. John Stewart was commenting on his show that you never hear a politician in America just admitting that it’s a complicated issue - the focus is always why Isreal is in the right. It’s the same in the British press - the use of language, integral bias in news articles, omission of facts and the non-reporting of certain things is something that Media Lens are good at analyzing.
On Saturday we stumbled across a large Palestine demonstration congregating near the Art Museum here in Gothenburg. There seem to demonstrations around the world. The next big one in London is on Saturday but there seem to be daily ones outside the Israeli Embassy as well. Meanwhile for a good idea of what is going on try reading articles by Jonathan Cook a British journalist out in Israel.