From the River to the UC

It’ s old news, but people are now gearing up to override the veto.

To recap, a bill passed the ASUC Senate urging divestment from companies that allegedly supplied Israel with the materials to bomb Gaza, and was vetoed by ASUC President Will Smelko during the spring recess.

Here is the article about the passage of the bill.

Here is the article about its veto.

Here is a toxic and hysterical editorial celebrating the veto. Here is a less toxic, though even more hysterical editorial condemning the veto.

Here is a new article with more updates.

My thoughts:

I am not terribly excited about my student government grand-standing over foreign policy issues, particularly when they can’t seem to manage their affairs at home. But…

Here’s a quote from the pro-veto editorial:

The measure attacks Israel, an open democratic society that has long been a close American ally. Its government is elected and subject to the rule of law. Its judiciary is independent; its military is under civilian authority; and its press is free.

On the other hand, the measures favor Hamas, an extreme Islamic group that expelled the opposing Fatah party in Gaza by force after winning a 2006 Palestinian election. (Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.) The rulers of Gaza offer no protection under law, no independent judiciary and no free press.

They permit no opposition. Rather than building a civil society, they launched a rocket war against innocent Israeli civilians from behind schools, hospitals, mosques and government agencies, using their own residents as human shields. Yet, the bill holds them blameless for the Palestinian plight. That the supporters of this action singled out Israel for rebuke while ignoring the fanatical regime in Gaza suggests that their agenda is political not ethical.

And here is a graph!

The Internet-in-Brief, 10/20/09

• What’s driving up college tuition? According to the Atlantic, the Atlantic has nothing but baseless speculation to offer.

• What with the 6.5% average increase in the cost of public education, at least we have our libraries back.

• WE HAVE YOU BY THE BALLS, REPUBLICANS! (and libertarians). “Presidential election outcome changed voters’ testosterone.”

• The Washington Post is dead: “The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.”

• The Clog is creeped out by the cyborg beetles project. Me, the Clog, and Professor Brian Harvey*? Dear boyfriend, the research project you’ve been assigned to is a priori creepy.

*”That’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard of.” – Brian Harvey, from a totally legit source, bro!

Hey, and if any of you non-porn-surfing readers still care about Iran (or ever cared), the Iranian Student Alliance in America (what a mouthful) is holding a rally at 12 on Thursday, on Sproul Plaza (of course). Other happenings that day:

2-3:30 – Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, 5th floor – Panel Discussion with Dr. Arash Naraghi and Omid Memarian

6:30-9 – Chevron Auditorium, I-House – Documentary screening (subject matter: the June election), Theatrical Performance, Panel Discussion with Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, Reese Erlich, and Alireza Eshraghi

9-10 – Sproul Plaza – Social Justice Week Candlelight Vigil

These are some really interesting people they’ve snagged for the event, so if you were glued to your screen during the Week that Twitter Did Something Useful (… like I was…), you might want to check this out. That said, if you were glued to your screen during the Week that Twitter Did Something Useful, like I was, you are probably also a pale, fragile shut-in who can’t stand being around so many yelly people.

Haha just kidding I am totally awesome and cool I AM NOTHING LIKE THAT

The Internet-in-Brief, 10/18/09

• Groundbreaking FRONT PAGE journalism from the Daily Cal! Also, groundbreaking, incisive blogging from the Sqlog over a week later!

• America definitely not founded by secularist humanists, but by Judeo-christian* artists with poor Flash skills. (* And by Judeo-christian, we all know I mean Judeo-christian.)

• Furloughs: that hot mess everyone was protesting about? Not saving us very much money.

“If the goal of the furlough program is savings to the general fund, I think our conclusion is quite clear that this program is poorly designed,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UC Berkeley, which conducted the study.

“Also, I just got a better offer over at Tulane. See ya!” Jacobs added. He swiftly turned on his heel, hoping to make a quick getaway, only to find that the exit to the University was now crowded with a veritable legion of quality academics, all of whom had received more appealing job offers at private universities.

The line was moving quite slowly, and he was beginning to tire of the smell of tweed and Camembert. A younger professor, his youthful eyes yet retaining a spark of eagerness, turned to Jacobs. “I think I will miss this place.”

“Eh,” said Jacobs.

• The dregs of our own culture capture our hearts and minds!

The episode that transfixed the nation last week — a spaceship-like balloon floating through the Colorado skies with a 6-year-old boy named Falcon believed to be inside — was declared “a hoax” by the Larimer County sheriff’s office on Sunday.

“It has been determined that this is a hoax, that it was a publicity stunt,” the Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said at a news conference in Fort Collins, Colo., one day after re-interviewing members of the now-famous Heene family about the case. “We have evidence to indicate it was a publicity stunt done with the hope of marketing themselves to a reality television show sometime in the future.”

[...]

Richard Heene and his wife have been enmeshed for years in the culture of reality television and self-promotional Web postings. The family appeared twice on the ABC show “Wife Swap,” including as recently as last March. Mr. Heene wanted his own show about his family, and he had worked with at least one production company on a proposal. On Friday the cable channel TLC said it had turned down the proposal months ago. He has posted YouTube videos claiming to show proof of life on Mars, asking whether Hillary Rodham Clinton is a “reptilian.”

• I am back to blogging! This is only because I now have no hope in going to law school!

Religious pamphlet hander-outer is “a psychotic sex addict who was housing children in tents in his backyard”

Since (as we all know) America is Jesus’s favorite country , like any other red-blooded American, I too find it galling whenever another country manages to beat us at something. It’s mostly been China pummeling us with their massive consumer base and accelerating industrial strength, but lately, even shamefully small players, like Austria, will manage to top us. For instance, in the heinous sex crimes area. Fortunately, we Americans are making a comeback!

…on Friday, Mr. Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, were arraigned on more than two dozen counts of kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment and other charges in connection with Ms. Dugard’s abduction in 1991 as she walked to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. She was 11.

Ms. Dugard and her two daughters — both fathered by Mr. Garrido, the police said, when Ms. Dugard was a teenager — had been living in a squalid compound hidden behind Mr. Garrido’s plain single-story house.

[...]

According to the authorities, Ms. Dugard, 29, and her children, 11 and 15, lived in a dirt-floor compound about the size of a tennis court and consisting of several ragged tents, hand-built sheds and small efforts at creature comforts: a set of wind chimes, for example, and a dingy couch.

Mr. Probyn said Ms. Dugard had told her mother that she sometimes was forced to live in a box, and the police said that at least one of the sheds was soundproof. As investigators prowled the compound this week, a wire cage could be seen next to a tent.

Apparently the police missed several opportunities to investigate Garrido’s backyard, even after a 911 call that said that “Mr. Garrido was a psychotic sex addict who was housing children in tents in his backyard.” Damn those crank callers!!!

So how was it that they finally figured out that Garrido was, indeed, a psychotic sex addict housing children in tents in his backyard?

His arrest on Wednesday came after he attracted attention from the campus police at the University of California, Berkeley, two days before, when he wanted to hand out religious pamphlets. A university spokesman, Dan Mogulof, said Mr. Garrido had been accompanied by two children, who caught the eye of campus personnel because they were “almost robotic.”

I’m sure you have, at one point or another been aggressively approached by gaunt looking middle-aged men yelling about homos or some shit. Well. One of them was a psychotic sex addict housing children in tents in his backyard.

Holy shit.

Also, good job UCPD! For the first time in your long history of yelling at people on bikes, shining flashlights into trees, and harassing certain well-known student publications on Sproul, you’ve done something worth doing!

Yay!

The Internet in Brief: 8/03/09, Oh God She’s Blogging About Iran Again

• In case any of you thought even for a moment that I’d lost my huge boner for Iran, here’s more Iran news! Apparently Shane Bauer, a UC Berkeley alum, has been detained in Iran, along with his SF journalist girlfriend and some other dude. Bauer graduated only two years ago (class of ’07), having apparently double majored in Arabic and PACS. He graduated with honors, but the NYT doesn’t say in which. I’m going to guess PACS. I don’t mean to malign that particular department, but seriously. Frankly, I’m more impressed to see an Arabic-speaking white American who isn’t gay. That is quite an achievement.

Bauer is, according to his website, a “documentary photographer and journalist whose work focuses on the effects of social, economic, and political realities on the lives people around the world.” His site is actually incredibly cool, I really recommend you spend some time looking through it.

One might question the wisdom of Americans deciding to go hang out in Iran at the present moment (ESPECIALLY WITH PERSIANKIWI DOWN!), but apparently they didn’t just decide to go hang out in Iran, they lost their way while hiking in Iraq.

Well. Hiking in Iraq, huh? I’m sorry, I’m going to continue to question their judgment.

In any case, best wishes to Bauer and Shourd– I hope they can soon return to their respective homes in Emeryville and Oakland.

• While I’m fairly optimistic for Bauer and Shourd, jailed Iranian dissenters are getting their “fair” trial, and shit is sad.

Kids are getting tortured in jail; it’s not particularly hip for college bloggers to blog on torture unless they’re mentioning John Yoo, but here’s a quote from Mousavi anyways:

“The teeth of the torturers and confession-extorters have reached to the bones of the people,” he said.

“Witnessing such trumped-up trials, the only judgment that the conscience of humanity can make is the moral collapse and discredit of its directors.”

Apparently Mousavi, Khatami, and Rezai (all presidential candidates) are p. much united in their disgust for the trials.

Last Thursday marked the 40 day anniversary of Neda’s death (important, because Iranians mourn for exactly that period of time). It’s said that the prior Revolution proceeded in 40 day steps– it’s too early to tell, but I don’t know if there will even be a second 40 day step. There’s not much news from Iran, thanks to the internet clampdown, so I’m guess I’m just going to STFU at this point. :(

• Not even libertarians like Bill O’Reilly. But then again, libertarians don’t like anyone.

• The O’Reilly / Olbermann war is over?

• And while we’re on the topic of unlikable pundits:

Serious Business: A preemptive eulogy for UCB? No one’s listening.

Two days ago, my favorite source of sudoku puzzles ran an article where Birgeneau responded to the allegedly “widely-circulated blog post on the Atlantic Magazine Web site.” Man, I can’t believe I missed seeing that! Maybe I should check out the Atlantic site more often, or maybe read the Daily Cal Blog regularly for Berkeley-related internet news.

Dickish sarcasm aside, I’m sure I would have caught this blog post if I bothered to check Twitter, ever.

Here’s the blog post in question. Here is an excerpt:

The damage to the university is likely to be irreversible. It will be less able to compete with other institutions in the hiring of distinguished faculty. Funding for complex research will be less accessible. Tuition fees will inevitably rise, as they’ve already risen, putting the place out of reach for the underprivileged. Staff will be let go. Programs will be zeroed out. No doubt Berkeley will remain an estimable institution, and a significant player in the intellectual and economic life of the state. But its days as one of the very greatest universities in the country are clearly numbered.

Birgeneau’s solution? More private funding!

Daily Cal commenters band together to make me agree with them, and therefore feel bad about myself:

As long as the Top Cop at Cal hauls in a cool $200k per year *I* will not give one blue dime to this school.

This is the wrong path to go down. A lot of our brightest students (those in the middle to upper middle income range) turn down top privates in order to go here because they can save tens of thousands of dollars a year. Once that incentive is gone, you may well see a brain drain on our university. Who wants to go to a school that can’t retain top profs and offers few student services? If Birgenau actually wants to make this work he needs to increase Berkeley’s appeal FIRST. If you’re going to ask for market value, you need to make sure that market value is high and increasing not plummeting as it currently is.

My advice to students: graduate quickly because soon the diploma will be about as meaningful as one from CSU.

But then again, the Daily Cal comments section is still the Daily Cal comments section:

I would also like to point out, if it were not for those hippies, the draft would still be around and you would probably be overseas being shot at.

Moreso than the budget crisis, etcetera, etcetera, the Daily Cal comments section gives me anxiety about getting a degree from Berkeley, out of all institutions.

On the other hand, I shouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s a small minority of the campus that bothers to comment on dailycal.org. (Sometimes I like to imagine what their lives are like. *thoughtful silence*)

In reality, no one else is listening. This is because students are stupid and pretty much useless. Good riddance, I say.

*takes a dump on a student’s chest; increases pay for UC execs*

The Internet in Brief: 7/22/09

• The Daily Clog has a post on the future of telekinesis. I see your mind explosions and raise you subvocal phone calls!

The first is very old (like a year!) but I still find it horrifically creepy. I guess it’s still not as bad as that research project on remote controlled beetles… :(

There’s a lot of fucking weird shit out there, and as a sheltered liberal arts major, I reserve the right to be really freaked out by it.

• Oh, remember four years ago, when your math SAT II score wasn’t in the 90th percentile and your parents regretted giving birth to you? Ahaha, oh right, you’re not me. Riley Waggaman has a new blog, where he gets to hate on college counselors, college fundraisers, college everything, just like we do, except with real facts and real quotes!

“It’s annoying when people complain about the money,” the Vermont-based counselor, Michele Hernandez, said. “I’m at the top of my field. Do people economize when they have a brain tumor and are looking for a neurosurgeon? If you want to go with someone cheaper, or chance it, don’t hire me.”

Burn. kill. destroy.

• Remember how the whole Panda thing was a really big fucking deal and all those coop kids kept getting in your face with self-righteous rhetoric, while all those fratty assholes kept complaining about how there’s not enough disgusting faux Chinese in Berkeley? I’m glad that there are people out there who really honestly think that Panda is an affordable student-friendly option, because that means there are parents out there who still pay for their kids’ shit! The last thing I got out of my parents was a dying houseplant and a demand to know why I’m at Berkeley and not at Harvard… I’d like to know that as well; at least at Harvard I’d have 24 hour study time at the library during finals week.

Anyways, Panda might be out, but the shit is still on, with lots of anonymous commenters complaining about the horrible food at Heavenly Foods they probably never tried because there’s perfectly good corporate faux Mexican across the street– though you know, that kind of gets old when you eat it every day ifyouknowwhatmean. (Paaaaanda…)

The latest Daily Cal comment disaster involves some non-anonymous jerkoff blabbing about how the shutting down of Heavenly Foods is exactly what students want and need, thanks to some survey.

Oh yeah, that survey, the one that Beetle Aurora “Huge Fucking Oatfield-lovin’ Hippie” Drake wrote about here. Quoth my favorite Green-Party-voting-tofu-eating-gun-control-espousing blogger:

The questions are clearly designed to elicit a “Yay Lower Sproul spending” response, and discount those who don’t want to see it.

In short, it is pretty obvious which side I fall on in the Panda debate, but that is not even the point.

I am fucking sick of the shitty rhetoric surrounding the “controversy” and I am fucking sick of people talking shit about Heavenly Foods as though suddenly doubling rent is a fair and logical policy, as though being spiteful to small business is the same as being “in touch” with student concerns, as though Heavenly Foods deserves to go out of business.

You guys fucking suck as people. At times like this I really wish I could puke at will so I could go around to all your frat houses and barf on your shoes. Then I would stare wordlessly into your soulless, empty eyes and pray to the god that isn’t there, pray that one day you will be reincarnated as a big old plate of orange chicken. And then I will eat you with a large Mountain Dew, and I will cry.

Serious Business: “Bleaching” the UC; or, Fuck those Whiteys

I know our readership prefers videos of farts and poops to “sober, thoughtful commentary”, but unfortunately I only have so many farts and poops to offer you.

I’ve been fairly out of the Berkeley news loop, given that I’ve been spending about 60% of the last two weeks not in Berkeley. Also someone other than Andrew Sullivan is blogging over at the Daily Dish for the time being and that’s enough anti-incentive to keep me away from blogosphere. So to speak.

The last sober, thoughtful commentative post was put up about four days too late, and now that I’ve spend the last hour or so reading up on the recent queef in the face that the UC administration has offered up to the student body, my blogging Tourette’s forces me to comment on this particular op ed.

The writers (Christine Hong, Catherine Lee, and Andrew Leong; incidentally, it’s also illustrated by Alan Chen) complain that the administration has been brutally dismissive of the impact of new admissions policy as well as the UC Berkeley cuts on the Asian (and APA) population.

Although intended to promote greater African American, Chicano/Latino and Native American admissions, the new policy, as the UC’s own commissioned study and data indicate, will have negligible impact on the designated target populations while decreasing Asian and APA admissions rates by 10-20 percent. At the same time, white admissions are projected to increase by 20 percent or more. Far from diversifying the UC student body, this misguided policy will result in the latter’s dramatic bleaching. As Professor Emeritus of ethnic studies Ling-Chi Wang, notes, the new admissions policy is essentially “affirmative action for whites … extremely unfair to Asian-Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other.”

Oh wait, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time:

…white admissions are projected to increase by 20 percent or more.

What? I didn’t quite hear you.

…white admissions are projected to increase by 20 percent or more.

IRL News 7/20/09: No more 24 Hour Library Hours during Finals Week

Upon remembering, for the first time in a month, that we have a Twitter, I dutifully logged in. I momentarily considered writing an update, but then this comment came to mind:

Don’t use the twitter account, for God’s sake. Take the names, but don’t use them. Even Kanye won’t use Twitter. Do you really want something called a “microblog”? Jesus Christ. Next you’ll be having guest posts by Cory Doctorow.

by Don’t talk to me May 16, 2009 at 12:13 pm

So I thought better of it, and instead went and checked out the twitters we follow*. (*meaning, I suddenly realized there are a bunch of Berkeley twitters that we ought to follow). As it turns out, there’s a great little news item that got buried on the Daily Cal website. Fortunately, whoever maintains their Twitter has their priorities straight:

Chancellor Birgeneau at Regents meeting Wednesday: No more 24 hour library days during finals: http://tr.im/sHOk
4:42 PM Jul 16th from web

Apparently no one’s realized this yet, as none of my Asian girl friends have updated their Facebooks with angry, borderline suicidal statuses, but never fear, asucpres to the rescue!

@dailycal in light of this really bad news the ASUC’s library on the top floor of Eshleman Hall WILL stay open 24-hours during finals
5:55 PM Jul 16th from web in reply to dailycal

Well, that’s a relief. I’ll be sure to get there first thing in the morning, so I can steal one of the coveted spots both near an outlet and away from the incessant buzzing of the vending machines.

This post might be full of bitter snark (I am pretty grumpy in the morning; plus it is like 90 degrees out), but I do think this is a disaster. I might be lucky enough to have my own room in a fairly quiet apartment (other than the guy who lives beneath me who occasionally plays techno at full blast at 5 in the morning), but I can’t help but feel like I should have just gone to a fucking private school.

In other news, Twitter is still pretty stupid.

Internet in Brief: 6/28/09

• Breaking news from Fox about a mural created by Black Pine Circle School’s… class of 2007? Eyeroll. In any case, apparently Berkeley kids think “capitalism will fail,” also something about marijuana. Not sure exactly what.

Fox News procured a quote from Berkeley College Republicans (yes, our BCR) president Danae Condos, who might have just been the only resident of the city willing to speak to Fox News:

Condos, a 19-year-old student at the University of California-Berkeley, said she doubted that school administrators would allow any and all symbols.

“They wouldn’t allow a swastika symbol,” she said. “It shows where the school’s standards lie. If you’re seeing this at one of the top-notch schools in the area, imagine what’s going on it other schools that don’t have the same privileges.”

Look, dude. A swastika and a hammer-and-sickle are completely different things. One represents an ideology that advocated the deaths of millions of people; the other represents an ideology that accidentally resulted in the deaths of even more people.

But whatever happened in the past, the present reality is that here, in the United States, the swastika, as a white supremacist symbol, is meant to be a symbol of exclusion, discrimination, and a repugnant worldview that refuses to treat people as people, while the hammer-and-sickle is a mostly empty concept referring to a vague and ill-thought-out vision of a different world. It’s not even edgy anymore, so the only people (who aren’t washed-out, aging hippies) who cling to it are pallid, wishy-washy, completely harmless shut-ins.

In any case, if you actually look at two photos that Fox put up on their site, it’s obvious that the hammer-and-sickle and the marijuana leaf are the most interesting parts of the mural. The rest are what you’d expect would happen if you give a bunch of kids a chance to leave a “legacy”– just a bunch of boring, insipid inside jokes. It’s like being at my boyfriend’s incredibly tedious CS commencement all over again.

“My favorite memory is eating <insert gross food> at <insert late hour> with friends!!! ^_^”

Everyone does that shit, no one cares, just keep walking you goddamn nerds.

• Local rockstar Robert Hass is good at writing, wins more things. Like, things and stuff.

• Kind of old, but it’s still really funny, so I figured I’d post it: Lindsay Lohan tries to dance up on Justin Timberlake, is “shooed away,” ends up twittering photo of JT and some other girl in order to get him into trouble with his girlfriend Jessica Biel. from WWTD, here and here.

• That one guy’s death might have eclipsed Iran on Twitter, but despite some mainstream headlines, the revolution is not dead. Twitter, which isn’t even very effective for organizing in Iran itself (since no one can access it except through a proxy, ergo we’re only getting twittered at by resourceful nerds), is just a way for Iran addicts to get their fix… *bites nails; scrolls furiously*

• Finally, here’s a CNN story (even though I’m still mad about #cnnfail) about the children of gay parents. This post is pretty full of Republicans already, but here’s one more– a Limbaugh-listening Republican son of two lesbian mothers.

“When you grow up with Lesbian mothers, you can’t get your ears pierced to rebel,” he says. “I became a Republican.”

Today, Levey sees his parents’ choice not as an expression of rebellion, but as a desire for something that’s actually a conservative virtue — a loving family.

“I believe in family values, but family is about taking care of your children and respecting one another,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is.”

Happy pride.