[News] Glasgow University students occupy computing science building in support of Gaza

[Semprini]

Originally Posted by Ebeneezer Good!

There is fuck all to blow up in Scotland and smeato will keep us safe.

Hamas just dont care about the Palestinians. Only power. And what about the times when Hamas was killing Isrealis. Where was everyones morals then?. Hamas were firing rockets at an old folks home.

Put your left hand on your right elbow. Then try to touch your left hand with your right hand without removing it from the elbow. While doing this, put your tongue in front of your bottom teeth, and try to bite your left ear.

This is what people see when they read your posts on this matter.

[crazydiamond85]

Originally Posted by Dec

Can the people who obviously know fuck all about this situation please pipe the fuck down? Israel is committing genocide on a widespread scale, if you don't understand this, shut up or read a book.

couldn't agree more

Originally Posted by Kirsten

I want to wring your fucking neck

you're not the only one
the guys an ignorant fucking tard

[Cam-E]

The less cynical side of me is quite pleased that there are still folk idealistic enough to believe in this kind of protest, even if they did come across as a bunch of diddies every time I walked past their protests. They had a sign up which said that we must "severe links with weapons manufacturers." They also referred to BAE systems as "death-merchants" and said the university shouldn't associate with people who make "weapons for murderers." As opposed to weapons for kittens, then.

[Blank_Frackis]

Originally Posted by Cam-E

The less cynical side of me is quite pleased that there are still folk idealistic enough to believe in this kind of protest, even if they did come across as a bunch of diddies every time I walked past their protests. They had a sign up which said that we must "severe links with weapons manufacturers." They also referred to BAE systems as "death-merchants" and said the university shouldn't associate with people who make "weapons for murderers." As opposed to weapons for kittens, then.

There's the usual question, though, of whether they're really idealistic or just affirming that studenty part of their identity which states that "we're students so let's go on a protest!"

The problem I have with this kind of thing isn't that I support Israel blowing up civilians (I don't) it's that it's clearly not been motivated by the actions of the university. I'm at Strathclyde, so I can only speak for the protest there, but the "ties to BAE" turned out to be that BAE gave one student in the engineering department £5000 as part of a scholarship. So unless the protesters were outraged by the fact that one student has been allowed to be given money by a massive corporation which happens to, amongst many other things, provide arms to the Israel Defense Forces, or they were up in arms over the even more obscure Eden Springs link (the university buys bottled water from an Israeli company who has its source in the Golan Heights), their actions have been motivated by them wanting to protest over the situation in Gaza, latching on to the university as an obvious target and then trying to find whatever link they can to justify it. That's not really idealism driving them to protest, so much as the desire to protest encouraging them to invent a cause.

[Dec]

The Eden Springs thing isn't obscure at all, it's one of the things that ties together all the campus protests up and down the country.

[Blank_Frackis]

Originally Posted by Dec

The Eden Springs thing isn't obscure at all, it's one of the things that ties together all the campus protests up and down the country.

It could be the basis for a thousand protests, it doesn't make the link any stronger. People don't spit fury into their breakfast cereal when they discover that their university happens to buy bottled water from a company which has its source in the Golan Heights and it has essentially nothing (unlike the BAE link) to do with what's happening in Gaza. You can make these kinds of links with thousands of organisations if you look for them.

In any case, Strathclyde had already decided to stop using Eden Springs for environmental reasons, so protesting them over it was completely pointless.

[Cam-E]

I do see what you mean, when I first saw the protesters I kind of felt like they were missing the point. Seemed like they wanted to protest the situation in Gaza, then found a way to link it to the university. All of their protest literature basically condemned the university and BAE systems, with very little focus on the details of the situation in Gaza. It became about stopping Glasgow Uni from associating with a weapons manufacturer rather than helping the people who are being injured and killed in Gaza.

[djtoast]

It saddens me that those with the most commitment to putting effort into what is often very worthy causes so frequently do it in a way that alienates huge swathes of their target audience.

After collecting over 600 signatures, the student movement has the right to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the Students' Representatives' Council, to debate how Glasgow University students can show solidarity with Palestine.

The education act 1996 prevents the SRC from political involvement that is not directly relevant to student issues, so our protesty friends can demand a meeting all they want but the SRC is simply not empowered to "show solidarity" with a foreign people. Nor is it, frankly, either relevant or indeed helpful for it to do so. The SRC's remit is to help students in real and practical ways, not to massage their liberal whims, which is as much as this amounts to. The short-sighted and frankly idiotic election of Mordechai Vanunu to the posistion of Lord Rector should have proven that - it may have mumbled a message about his (admittedly discraceful) plight - but it shouted from the rooftops how misguided our students were, or could be.

In regard to the other matters, what need was there for a protest? You wanna collect money for the DEC, do so. You want to petition the university to donate resources, do so. I can't help feeling that there are more direct and efficient and successful ways to get things done.

But using partisan language like "We are the many they are the few. Long Live Palestine. Long Live Gaza" in this context is devisive and makes it harder for the university to act; you can't blame the american jewish lobby for preventing the americans from acting more favourably on the one hand, and with the other write language that invites a backlash; this attitude will only ever succeed in preaching to the converted which is exactly the opposite of what is needed in terms of bringing about change: what we need is sane, reasoned arguments not rabid rhetoric. They could probably have collected 6,000 not 600 signatures if they'd been asking for something more meaningful in a more reasonable way, is my guess.

"We're on a building~!!!1 Sign our petition to hold a meeting that will be 1) illegal and 2) ineffectual!"

vs

"Excuse me, will you sign this petition to the Israeli embassador to the UN asking his country to stop directing weapons at civilians in the Gaza strip in contravention of international law?"

or

"Excuse me, will you sign this petition to the british foreign secretary demanding sanctions against Israel in light of the attrocities they've perpetrated in the last weeks/ years/ decades..."

It could doubtless be expressed better than I've managed but you get my point.

[Cam-E]

I wish you'd been there when my friend told me I was a pansy comformist for not signing their petition.

[djtoast]

They asked me to sign it on tuesday and when i said "wouldn't that contravene the education act?" the guy looked at me like i asked him that in inuit.

He turned to the guy on my left and asked him, and got the reply "as president of the QM, I'm actually on the SRC council, so, um..."

They should do their homework better.

[Westy]

Students in "sit about and do fuck all" shocker....

Lazy bastards.

[Cam-E]

Hey, i'll have you know that I sometimes actually get out of bed in the morning and think about going to uni before I climb back into bed, sleep half the day, and spent the rest playing Xbox.

[djtoast]

Originally Posted by Westy

Students in "sit about and do fuck all" shocker....

Lazy bastards.

well that's exactly it - so many students are desperately apathetic - to their degrees, okay, that's their choice, and i was at the laziest end of the scale in that respect...

but in terms of politics students have often been at the front line of really important issues, and it's sad to see that dwindle almost to nothing in this country within maybe 15 years.

so of those students who are motivated to get off their arses and get involved (and i do salute that) it's all the more galling that they seem to be aiming as poorly as a... no, i won't make that joke, but it seems that so often now student protest has a desperate lack of clarity.

if you want to rope someone in, your lasso has to reach them in the first place, and from the sidelines of political activism you just simply miss most folks. [/dodgy metaphor]

[erithromycin]

Student politics has been cut into three distinct streams, in part by the Education act but also because of the changing nature of tertiary education.

The first stream, one that I will freely admit to having been a part of, is what I will call for want of a better term 'pragmatic volunteers'. These are people who participate in campus politics in order to provide services for students, in order to gain skills or experiences that they think useful, to acquire the "value adds" or "transferable skills" and so on. You'll see these folks in some student unions, in bodies like Glasgow's SRC. I've known lots of them. They are the kind of people who will go on to be Guide Leaders or Ernst & Young employees or Education Officers at the British Army Museum. Or unemployed, in fairness.

The second stream are folk that I will call "clubbable". They like to be members of institutions, and if they can't be in the Bullenden Club they'll settle for the GUU Board. There's loads, as long as they don't fuck up too badly and let grownups do the heavy lifting they can be a lot of fun, and they throw excellent dinners and balls.

The third stream are, well, junior stormtroopers blinded to reality by ideology, or blinded to ideology by cold personal ambition. I'm lumping the vile calumnies of the NUS and their endless mewling as the cadet branch of the Labour Party and the witless prattling and tantrums of those Socialist Workers, and hell, the dizzy optimism of the gratuitously outnumbered Liberal Democrats and so on and so forth. The Education Act was, in part I suspect designed to shut them up, to let groups mentioned above to get on with volunteering or throwing parties and to put a spoke in the tedious (and not too student friendly) debates of the NUS.

All that's an aside. Most folk are apathetic, though that's my bitterness leaking through. Most students are too busy being students, and the political component of that has been defined away from the mainstream perception. They don't pay enough attention to hold the third stream to account when their promises fall short. There aren't enough of the first hanging about to keep them in check. I'm still waiting to see what the NUS promised after the Strathclyde Referendum. We don't even really have a loony left any more. Just apprentice Marxists in heavy coats lingering in the ill-fitting shadow of Scargill, hoping that the light of Chavez will shine on them.

Which hides the point of this post, which is that while I'm sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians I'm also effectively a zionist, even if it's with a small 'z'. When these occupiers started throwing out anti-Semetic slurs, it's NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF time. "WIth us or against us" hasn't done anyone in the region any favours in, oh, the span of human history, and I don't see why it should start now. Concrete and meaningful action, that I could support. This kind of idiocy? Not so much.

[triggerhappy]

Originally Posted by erithromycin

Or unemployed, in fairness.

Hi!