Ulrika:
I'm included in the 'bird' category by implication, and I don't like it. And I especially don't like that it allows some men to feel that they can refer to me as a 'bird' - without any attempt at playfulness - and expect me to like it and be flattered by it. That's what makes me 'strident', and why I do take the language issue seriously.
Sorry; I should have been clearer in my original comment.
Re: the hot dogs, Elizabeth David used to get angry when a waiter in a top restaurant brought her a half-bottle of wine when she'd ordered a whole one - just because she was a woman. Or when they implied that women didn't know anything about wine, or only liked certain types.
Re: the whole women saying they aren't feminists thing, does anyone else get 'strident' when young women refer to themselves or their friends as 'birds'?
I am simply not convinced that these three men were terrorists. My feeling is that if there was sufficient evidence for conviction, there would be a trial.
It's a shame to be so cynical too but if Bush or his minions say it, I feel it can't be trusted (and the same with Blair). That's in view of the known lies of both administrations.
Aside from that, calling it a PR move sounds very false against 'treat the bodies with cultural sensitivity'. It's also not very nice for the families of those involved.
So now the suicides are a PR move, according to the latest BBC headline.
The earlier BBC story stated that all 3 men had previously taken part in hunger strikes; the later BBC story - the one on the homepage now - quotes Colleen Graffy as saying that the men didn't use other means of making a protest.
After all, they had access to lawyers, could receive mail and 'had the ability' to write to their families. What more could they have wanted?
Presumably all letters out from Guantanamo are censored?
I'm a TEFL teacher, and when I teach grammar, I usually do it partly in the course of discussion, and partly as a separate session. There are two difficulties. One, the students absolutely love grammar, and want to learn it at the expense of more important things, especially if they're from France or other countries with very formal and traditionalist ways of teaching. Two, I didn't learn any grammar at school, and had to learn it all as I was going along, and I can still get stumped on explaining really complicated points. I can use them, but articulating them so that someone else can understand is really, really hard.
Before I began TEFL-ing, I really didn't know any grammar as separate from vocabulary etc; I learned it through reading. It does worry me that people with university degrees seem unable to learn basic grammar points through reading.
But I think lots of people choose to mess up their grammar, to fit the group they're in - I do it at home, dropping aitches etc, purely because if I don't, I'm accused of talking 'posh' and getting above myself. And I think messing up grammar is also seen as informal, and blogging is quite an informal activity.
The BBC headline was: Guantanamo suicides 'acts of war'. I thought it was suggesting that the camp had committed 'acts of war' in driving these people to suicide. Then I read the story.
I'm interested in just how these suicides showed that the men had no regard for other people's lives.
I'm guessing we won't see any evidence for the act of war theory. Oh, wait, we don't need any. They're in Guantanamo; they wouldn't be there if they weren't already guilty of acts of war.
Larry: I actually have friends who do this, especially when they get hold of a new piece of technology - they certainly prefer to email each other rather than talk. Sitting in the same room, that is. And even when they're talking to someone else, e.g. me, at the same time.
Maybe everybody does it.
Once in Durham I ran into (literally) a group of four people, each talking on a separate mobile phone.
I still wonder if they were talking to each other.
Personally I wouldn't mind the poetry reading - but then, I wouldn't be listening, I'd be reading something else.
I can't help but feel, though, that if this was an attempt to showcase people's work, it hasn't been very successful.
Could the people at the back of the bus even hear the poet, or were they supplied with microphones?
Chad Orzel: I'm so sorry, I called you by the wrong name. Apologies!
Jules: I take your point about debt being the same whatever university you go to, especially in Britain. And average debts have gone up a lot in the past few years, so maybe I was generalising too much. However, as a graduate of an honorary Russell Group university myself (Durham), I can remember exactly the sort of casual arrogance that Chuck Orzel refers to.
I consider 'middle class' to be 'privileged' - I wasn't just talking about the very rich. I probably am over-sensitive about this though. The point is, the middle class never see themselves as privileged (I don't, and I am, and I make myself sick sometimes). Like the girl in one of my sociology classes who insisted that the 'average British family' had two cars, one a Land Rover or equivalent, and two properties, one house in the country, one flat in London.
Adam Blickstein: I'm so glad you joined in. Criticisms of your background and age, at least from me, weren't exactly criticisms of you - only insofar as they perhaps prevented you from reaching out enough for the Democrats, and only that because you didn't seem aware of the possibility. I will admit this is entirely subjective and perhaps this attitude was set up in me by Patrick's post title. And a lot of these criticisms were actually attempts to understand your writing style and how and why it came about.
Writing skills - well, nobody's perfect. The difference when it comes to you is that you are setting yourself up as someone who knows and should be listened to. But why should you be listened to, when people have to struggle to understand you? Nobody in the UK listens to John Prescott in dense and rambling mood. We can't; he doesn't make sense. Larry Brennan's right when he says people want you to be an effective advocate of progressive causes.
I called you arrogant on the grounds that you didn't realise just how privileged you were. Perhaps I read too much into your arrogant responses to the comments, and extrapolated it too far. Reading your posts here I don't think I did read too much into it.
Gosh. Anyone can get into an elite university if they've got the talent.
Well, maybe.
If you're not from a privileged background, you have to work harder to get into an Ivy League university (Russell Group in the UK); you have to be willing to take on an enormous amount of debt; you have to be willing to do ridiculous amounts of paid work in a week, on top of your academic work.
Well, it's worth it. At least for me. I'll defend my education forever; I earned it. But I know other people with ability who thought that it wasn't worth it. Those barriers kept them out, and that, for me, is wrong.
What I resent is the necessity of working harder to get that education than those who happen to come from a richer background than me (And god, my background's only modest - there are people who struggled much much harder than I did). And I especially resent it when those people don't have a clue just how privileged they are - and Adam Blickstein strikes me as one of those people. He's got the same blithe arrogance - dispensing advice and supposedly informed political opinion while he's drunk. And he's going to be somebody people might vote for in the future? Worse, he's on the side I want to win.
It looks to me at the moment as though Republicans can point to Blickstein and say (tapping into a section of the electorate who have nothing but contempt for intellectuals): "Look at the privileged idiot, who can't even get his point across, is this the kind of person you want to run the country?"
How is Blickstein, when he becomes a politician (and he will), going to reach out to these people?
Onto soundbites, they might be misleading but the good ones aren't hackneyed, or maybe it's that the speaker can make them fresh? I'm thinking of Tony Blair here, and his "She was (pause) the People's Princess." Half the truth, and roundly mocked by commentators, but it articulated what a lot of people seemed to be feeling - it connected with them.
Blickstein's style, as evidenced in that post, is never going to do that.
I followed Shelagh's link and was really quite amused by this:
"She sent us some great photo’s of Wales & they can be seen online"
Paula, perhaps those who are advocating torture think that they are treating the people they want to torture, as those people have treated others?
Er, added to the above, I know I've read somewhere that Che Guevara and Mao borrowed tactics from Michael Collins, and that he was meant to be the inventor of fourth-generation warfare. I wish I could remember where it was.
Greg, apologies, I got the impression you meant very recent events. I was kind of assuming the Troubles beginning, well, in about 1916 with the Easter Rising, to take an arbitrary point. But actually I don't know if the words terrorist/terrorism were used then.
Greg: The term "terrorist" isn't a recent concept; it's hung around the Troubles in Ireland for a good few years now.
I'm not sure there's another word either, not one that really fits. Saboteurs seems too small-time, akin to slashing tyres on 4x4s.
Maybe we'll just have to work harder to resist the automatic invoking of terror, to refuse to respond to the pushbutton.
I like "nihilist" better than "anarchist", but it does seem to mean destruction for the sake of destruction, and I'm not sure that's what terrorists are aiming for.
No-one's mentioned "freedom-fighter" yet; I don't suppose for a minute the actual terrorists think of themselves as the bad guys. And if that's the case, torturing them will only make them martyrs.
Note: By using "freedom-fighter" in the way I did, I am NOT justifying any kind of terrorist act or mindset or person. Just to be clear.
I hate the way our governments are going on this, I hate it. And I can't find one rational justification for it.
I think I may have anarchist tendencies...I'm not very good at following rules. If they're rational and sensible, yes. If not, no. But I don't hold to anarchism as a system, so I don't think I can be one.
I agree with Xopher that "anarchist" is a misleading term. Also surely if anarchist means terrorists, presumably the anti-Western kind (if you can have a kind of terrorist) they would, being anarchists, have to try to destroy their own institutions of government (not their actual ruling government, which they possibly do try to do!)? I don't see them doing that at all, in fact it seems that they want more government, not less.
Also I think that the anarchist position is generally predicated on not needing government for people to live happily together as a society, therefore, to advocate or use violence would be to negate their aim.
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| 2006 | 31 |
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