exnihilo wrote:What point are you making?
Lid wrote:I'm sorry, David, as much as I disagree with the motives of the incubators, or whatever they've called themselves now, and as much as I agree with everything else you've written, it's your crusade against international law I have to disagree with. This is not a UNSC resolution here, this is from the General Assembly of the United Nations. A country that so defies the United Nations, a place where they quite happily take a seat in, cannot stand in defiance of a resolution of that body, no matter how begrudging it is of it. It's abhorrent.
exnihilo wrote:What point are you making?
exnihilo wrote:We live in a strange world because countries with the veto power use it from time to time?
RedCelt69 wrote:exnihilo wrote:We live in a strange world because countries with the veto power use it from time to time?
If your definition of "from time to time" covers every time the UN seeks to condemn Israeli thuggery, then yes.
It is a strange world wherein the body representing the nations of the world can be muted by 5 permanent member-nations which have the power of veto. Israel is the main example of blatant US misuse of their veto. The matter of immunity from prosecution of US troops in the ICC is another.
Strange, indeed.
exnihilo wrote:There have been, according to the quickest glance at WikiPedia, 131 resolutions concerning Israel. Of those, how many were vetoed? And of those which were vetoed, how many sought to portray Israel in the same fair and balanced way you just did?
Jono wrote:The Veto might be (arguably) undemocratic,
Jono wrote:but it just reflects a fact of life! Without the economic and military support from (some of) the nations with the veto, any action by the UN would be toothless. Without an army to enforce it's peacekeeping, or economic blockades.In short, international law can roundly be considered the law of the battlefield. Whoever has the biggest stick wins! The veto is merely a less threatening way of imposing a political will, without having to resort to rolling out the tanks.
RedCelt69 wrote:Do you believe your portryal of Israel is "fair and balanced"?
Jono wrote:Is this what the protest was all about then? The SA is a bit bureaucratic, so lets go protest instead?
...
The old guard might think that the Association is made of “bureaucracy and fail!” (As somebody put it to me the other day). Sure. I know better than most that the wheels turn very slowly, and that the hoops are more plentiful than we’d like. Yet plenty of us have navigated them successfully this year! We’ve even managed to eliminate some of them.
...
With that in mind, I’m throwing down the gauntlet. I want to see each and every one of you involved with the occupation who isn’t graduating this year, standing for the Association elections. Nominations open the week after next, so you have ample time to research the roles available and formulate some kind of campaign team. Moreover, win or lose, I expect to hear of an active involvement with the Association next year (whether through the SRC, societies, subcommittees, or whatever else).
...
The Association happens to be the best (read: the only) way for the student body to affect any kind of influence on the University. If any of you want to affect a real change, you’ll take up my gauge, put your money where your mouth is, and some other rhetorical flourishes too!
mhuzzell wrote:
First and foremost, I want to correct what seems to be a widespread assumption: that the "old guard" were the ones who set up the occupation. That there is an 'old guard' at all is merely mythical. Several of the people who were involved in setting up the Gaza solidarity occupation were involved in some campaign or another at this university previously (eg, Lower Rents Now or the renewable energy campaign, though in all but one case probably not both; I don't think any of them are old enough to have worked on Ethical Investment or FairTrade), but they were by no means all or even the majority, for all I know -- being among what some might consider the 'old guard' myself, and having been totally uninvolved in the planning of the occupation.
Second, that the people in the occupation were in any way homogeneous. We were not; many of us probably would not have agreed about many political issues besides this one. We were not even all leftists -- the occupation included many who considered themselves moderate, apolitical and even conservative.
Third, I'd like to clarify that the bureaucratic stumbling blocks in dispute are not, at least primarily, the ones set up by the Students' Association. Rather, the University itself makes it difficult for students to voice their opinions or actually effect change in the University. Instead, we may only beg and plead with the Union, who, if they choose to listen to us (as they didn't with LRN, but do with most sustainability issues), are permitted to come, tamed and cowed, to the University's governing bodies and there, with proper supervision, are sometimes allowed to -- as you aptly though perhaps accidentally put it -- affect change.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think the SA has the potential to be a really good, really powerful force for students' interests -- especially with Dr Richardson being so much more open to dialogue than Brian Lang seems to have been. However, I also think it's important that they not be the only negotiating tool available to students. On which note, with Dr Richardson's pledge to keep open office hours to hear from all sections of the university, I am -- as I still am for Obama -- cautiously optimistic.
As for your gauntlet-throwing: I don't know about all the people in the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, but I've had words with several who were there who I'd like to see elected for other reasons, and many of them are reluctant. Given the testimony of all of us who have experienced the thankless, harrowing, degree-draining slog that is the SRC, can you really blame them?
mhuzzell wrote:Finally, I have to object to your implication that I am the first 'reasonable member of the PSC' to have shown myself on this thread (at least, I assume you mean me since I am the only self-identified occupator to have posted recently). This thread descended to a fairly base level of discourse shortly after it started, and it was not the protesters who pushed it there. Those writing from the occupation were having to defend themselves and their actions against savage attacks (no pun intended) from almost the very beginning. I'm not saying that they/we were entirely blameless or reasonable, but we were no less reasonable than our opponents.
Even you, you know, have not been entirely innocent. Just now, simply in the course of constructing your clever linguistic trap -- with your opinions couched in a poisonous shell of loaded but unargued-for assumptions and claimed 'objectivity' -- you have compared we poor "pointless people" with "the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch-burners or the Stasi". Do you really believe that, just because your searing barbs of rhetoric are eloquently phrased, they hurt any less, or are any less likely to put their victims on the defensive?
mhuzzell wrote:I'm not saying that they/we were entirely blameless or reasonable, but we were no less reasonable than our opponents.
mhuzzell wrote:Finally, I have to object to your implication that I am the first 'reasonable member of the PSC' to have shown myself on this thread (at least, I assume you mean me since I am the only self-identified occupator to have posted recently). This thread descended to a fairly base level of discourse shortly after it started, and it was not the protesters who pushed it there. Those writing from the occupation were having to defend themselves and their actions against savage attacks (no pun intended) from almost the very beginning. I'm not saying that they/we were entirely blameless or reasonable, but we were no less reasonable than our opponents.
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