Posts Tagged ‘Ed Miliband’
Blogs in June 2011.
I thought I should see what others are doing:
Flesh is Grass has an important post on how the EDL managed to march, unescorted, from Redbridge to Dagenham.
Yaacov Lozowick has given up blogging. Pity, I didn’t agree with him, much, but he has a thoughtful way and articulates many intelligent ideas.
Johnny Guitar thinks about the Troubles, the Good Friday Agreement and the need for a South Africa-style truth commission, just not at the moment.
Weggis on the case against biofuels. Completely agree, it seems so questionable to use food stuff or related material as fuel for the internal combustion engine.
Harry Barnes on Sorting Out The Labour Party, which I think is very optimistic. In the short term they could ditch Ed Miliband, try to be a bit radical, really, seriously distance themselves from the skeleton of New Labour. Chance would be a fine thing.
In related news, I am not surprised that Ed Miliband is less popular than Iain Duncan Smith or William Hague, when they were in a similar position. Frankly, Miliband’s inarticulate, has the charisma of a saucer and he’s politically useless.
Jams looks at an evil cat, great photos.
Mark Gardner at the CST has a reflective post on the situation at UCU and its wider implications, From UCU to MEMO and “Israel’s British hirelings”.
Ten minutes hate on the ‘miracle villages’.
Chris Dillow considers Miliband’s power blindness.
Nick Lowles provides a photo and details of the EDL thugs racial attack in Dagenham.
Sorrel Moseley-Williams ponders Journalists’ Day in Argentina.
Not a blog, but worthwhile all the same. Searchlight on the BNP’s use of Facebook and Twitter.
Rosie looks at Fact and Fiction.
James Bloodworth has a couple of cracking posts, Will the Defence Secretary’s links with Sri Lanka compromise British calls for an enquiry? and Isn’t it time for an apology, Mr Chomsky?
Rebecca provides an update on the Gaza flotilla. Personally, I think the Israeli Government should allow them into Gaza with minimum fuss or hassle. I think Gazans should get as much as they can, after all living under Hamas must be terrible.
Jack of Kent looks at the arrest of blogger Jacqui Thompson and the many unanswered questions.
Greens Engage on Cynthia and Jello.
At Greater Surbiton, a guest post by David Pettigrew, Justice in Bosnia after Mladic.
Eric Reeves has a piece in the Washington Post, In Sudan, genocide anew?
Engage has an abundance of posts which should be read, just a small selection: Open antisemitism doesn’t harm your reputation, Sally Hunt pretends not to understand the term “institutional racism” and Richard Kuper on the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism (by Eve Garrard)
Enjoy!
The Guardian’s Oxbridge Elite, Press TV And The Kirk.
Firstly, thanks to Engage for pointing me towards Ben Gidley’s piece at Dissent, The Politics of Defining Racism: The Case of Anti-Semitism in the University and College Union. Clearly, Dr. Gidley is very knowledgeable on this topic and a pleasure to read, here’s a snippet:
“Racism is mercurial. It mutates over time. Pseudoscientific racial theories are now spouted only by marginal cranks. Notions that different races are different species have come and gone; eugenics has come and gone; words like “Aryan” and “Semitic” are starting to sound quaint. The period since the 1980s has seen the rise of cultural racism, or racism that focuses on cultural differences rather than biological ones.”
In class related matters, the Guardian asked its staff, who’d been educated at Oxbridge and had it helped them in their career. Hmm, not a hard question to answer. Next, they’ll be saying old Etonians dominate the British establishment.
The New York Times on Ratko Mladić, chocolates and genocide. I expect that Ed Herman and Diana Johnstone will be up in arms shortly. Balkan Witness has a good page on Herman and other’s denial. NPR is worth a read.
Time has an informative piece on the psychology of dictators, and I suspect that its findings apply more broadly than many would care to admit.
Political Betting looks at political leadership and finds that Ed Miliband has a lower rating than William Hague (when he was Tory leader, briefly), good graph.
Read the rest of this entry »
Modems and Scraps.
Just a few scraps that occurred to me, the Beeb has a good post on how older technology is helping Egyptians organise after the State clampdown:
“Fax machines, ham radio and dial-up modems are helping to avoid the net block imposed on Egypt.
On 27 January, Egypt fell off the internet as virtually all international connections were cut following an order from the government.
But older technologies proved their worth as net activists and protesters used them to get round the block.
Protesters are also circulating information about how to avoid communication controls inside Egypt.
Call charge
Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others.
Dial-up numbers featured heavily in Twitter messages tagged with hashes related to the protests such as #egypt and #jan25.
ISPs in France, the US, Sweden, Spain and many other nations have set up pools of modems that will accept international calls to get information to and from protesters. Many have waived fees to make it easier for people to connect.
Few domestic lines in Egypt can call internationally to get at the modems, however. The Manalaa blog gave advice about how to use dial-up using a mobile, bluetooth and a laptop. It noted that the cost of international calls could be “pricey” but said it was good enough for “urgent communication”. The advice was posted to many blogs, copied and sent out by many others.
We Re-Build, which campaigns for unmonitored internet access around Europe, said it was also listening on some ham radio frequencies and would relay any messages it received either by voice or morse code. ”
Elsewhere, the ever useless Labour leader, Ed Miliband, is profiled:
“Labour leader Ed Miliband has revealed he was a “bit square” as a youth, eschewing drugs and under-age drinking.
In a GQ magazine interview with Piers Morgan, he said his greatest talent was being “good at the Rubik’s Cube”.
Asked if he had ever been in a fight, he said: “Well, I may have been hit a few times. I went to a tough school.”
Mr Miliband, 41, added that he would not bow to pressure to marry his partner, Justine Thornton, with whom he has two children.
He also refused to “boast about my sexual prowess” when questioned about his romantic history.”
Are you still using Internet Explorer? A very bad idea as the Beeb explains:
“Microsoft has issued a “critical” warning over a newly-discovered flaw in Windows.
In a security advisory, the company warned of a loophole that could be used by malicious hackers to steal private information or hijack computers.
The bug potentially affects every user of the Internet Explorer web browser – around 900 million people worldwide.
Microsoft has issued a software patch to defend against attacks, and said it was working to develop a long-term fix.
The security advisory, which was published on Friday, details how the vulnerability can be used to manipulate users and take over their machines.
Although the flaw is actually inside Windows itself, it only appears to affect the way that Internet Explorer handles some web pages and documents.”
Please, oh please, try Chrome or Firefox instead, better still go for Linux.
Update 1: Here’s the Egypt Resource Page at We Rebuild which is full of interesting stuff.