Archive for the ‘other’ Category
George Galloway at the UCC Philosoph…
So, Cian’s already covered this in a fair amount of detail anyway but I figured that I’d throw in my two cents into the conversation even so…
The basic facts first; George Galloway proposed the house motion “That this house believies US foreign policy is the greatest crime since World War II”. In opposition was the former Sinn Fein/ The Worker’s Party member and these days film producer Gerry Gregg. Gregg said something to the effect that Galloway had ‘never met a dictator he didn’t take to or take from’ and Galloway freaked out. This led to him walking out and taking a lot of people with him (though some of those I suspect just decided to leave now that Galloway - the main attraction, was gone).
Now, my opinion on this. Personally, I feel Galloway overeacted and was not exactly not being personally abusive himself. As such the whole debate took on a rather childish quality in my opinion. While obviously one has to defend their reputation Galloway’s method’s struck me as rather overly-aggressive and childish.
Will I go see Galloway speak again? Probably. Have I as much potential respect for him as I had before? I doubt it, even though in terms of his opposition to large areas of US policy and Palestine we are on the same page mostly.
The American September 11th Suicide Bomber…
Just heard about this here and here.
Now as I’ve said before , I’m somewhat undecided over the issue of abortion but this sort of crap is terrorism plain-and-simple. The fact that the person who did this was a Christian dosen’t realy make this any different from what a Muslim (or general lunatic) in Palestine or Iraq or any other part of the world does in an attempt to enforce their own views on people. Violence is violence.
This is real poetry…
For those friends of mine who know how much I usually despise poetry and ask me ‘well, what do you think is good?’
Well, this is a start
Why at times I realy hate anti-abortionists….
So, at work today we found (thanks to someone bringing it to our attention) that someone had placed a load of ‘postcards’ (for lack of a better phrase presenting itself) inside many of the books.
These were all full of disgusting pictures of supposedly ‘aborted’ babies and then various political messages against abortion.
Now personally I find these sort of shock tactics for two reasons irritating.
Firstly assuming that it was the people behind the postcards that put them into the books, it’s grossly irresponsible as children especially could come across them and these were images that would turn anyone’s stomach and certainly something that children should not be introduced to.
Secondly, by placing these things in an unsolicited way in the way of people you remove from them the option of not choosing to engage you in conversation. And with such disturbing imagery there is a certain amount of cop-on that must be engaged. If I had such an image placed in front of me without someone at least asking me ‘do you want to see what abortion involves’ and I responding in the positive and there was an abortion referendum tomorrow I would vote yes to abortion simply out of spite. I found the sneaky, childish way that this was done as offensive as anything else.
But that’s what gets to me about a lot of anti-abortionists - this ‘know-it-all’ moral superiority, violently ‘you must agree with us or your a murderer’ attitude. If you want to change my mind, engage me in conversation, not in this sort of childish bullshit.
John Hume at the Philosoph.
So, John Hume, founder of the SDLP spoke at the UCC Philosophical society last night.
He made a 50-odd minute speech to the society. It was quite enjoyable, though I for one was quite suprised at the actual content of his speech which focused a lot on the benefits of the European Union as the ‘greatest forum for conflict resolution ever developed’ (to quote Mr. Hume) and on the need for education in Africa.
I can’t (for reasons of memory mostly) give you a full transcript of his ideas or of his speaking style but if any of you out there ever get a chance to see this man speak, take it.
More later.
Rape and Consent..
Came across this on my travels, hadn’t heard of Fatmammycat’s blog before but this is a realy good piece on the idea of consent. Broadly speaking I have to agree with the assessment she makes of the situation. Interesting stuff.
Twenty and South Park - there’s something wrong there but I can’t tell what…
This is on Twenty Major’s site. Absolutely great - best line ever btw:
‘If you mess this up, so help me god I will rip your balls off with my bare hands - with my bare hands goddamn you!’
Steve Irwin is dead…
Well, just to be another person reporting on the obvious, you can find a serious report on it here or if your more into your gallows humour head over to Cian’s blog and follow the links.
Ken MacLeod…
I’ve enjoyed many of Ken MacLeod’s novels in the past and was quite interested to come across his blog here.
The article ‘against civilised warfare’ which is the most recent post is very interesting and well worth a look.
Anyway, enjoy.