Day: September 25, 2011

When and How Will UN Vote on Palestine’s Independence?

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

Many people come to this blog asking when the UN will vote on Palestine’s independence. So here is an update: Mahmoud Abbas has now returned to Palestine, and the Palestinian leadership has decided to push the UN security council to vote as soon as possible. The UN security council will start debating the issue tomorrow (Monday). Potentially, the vote could be postponed for as long as several months.

I find this entire show staged by politicians to be very cruel towards the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine. There are mounting tensions in the area that only grow because of all of the fiery speeches made by politicians. I’m afraid that if the UN vote doesn’t take place soon, we will see many more violent eruptions in the area that will become more and more bloody as the time progresses and there is still no vote in sight. And this is precisely what the US is trying to make happen:

According to a report from Haaretz, the Obama administration is engaged in behind-the-scenes efforts to delay voting on recognition of Palestine as an independent state in both the General Assembly and the Security Council.

A “silent agreement” is reportedly in place between several Western countries to postpone the U.N. votes through a number of bureaucratic stalling tactics, the use of which are being promoted by Washington.

So let me tell you once again: the way I see it, the US has done everything in its power over the years to ensure that the conflict between Israel and Palestine remains in this simmering stage forever. Obama is shilly-shallying on the issue right now but this attitude on his part is something we have seen, time and again, from every US leader for decades. (I remember I would gag every time I saw Clinton’s smirk as he talked about Israel and Palestine.)

A permanent conflict in the Middle East is extremely useful to the US. A perennially besieged Israel provides the US with an excuse to launch an attack at any country in the area that can be accused of threatening Israel. At the same time, people are much more likely to see Israel as the cause of any war in the area because latent anti-Semitism still clouds many folks’ vision of world politics. This strategy brings the US a lot of power in the oil-rich region and allows Americans to shift the blame for everything that might go amiss onto those genocidal, intolerant Israelis and those barbaric, terrorist Palestinians.

In the meanwhile, Palestinians and Israelis alike are paying the price for these political machinations.

Do You Know Why University of California Is in the Toilet?

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Because of this:

Senior administrators now officially outnumber faculty at UC. And would you like to know how much the university that is supposedly broke pays its useless paper-pushers? See here. The only job of these bureaucrats is to make the lives of the faculty and the students so miserable that very little actual education takes place. And they are amply compensated for producing reams of useless paperwork.

This is why it is not at all surprising that University of California has been circling the bowl for a while now.

Why Are Some People So Fixated on Sarah Palin’s Pregnancy?

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

There is a really fun discussion going on in my Stupidometer post between Brad Scharlott, the person who is planning to publish yet another boring book that will obsessively analyze Sarah Palin’s most recent pregnancy, and your favorite blogger. For those who are interested in why some people have this decidedly unhealthy obsession with Sarah Palin’s reproductive apparatus, let me explain how this works.

Between the ages of 2 and 3, a child goes through what is known as the Oedipal stage of development. This is a moment when the child begins to formulate his or her gender identification and figure out his or her place within the relationship between his or her parents. If any sort of trauma accompanies this stage of development, the child will remain fixated on this stage and will keep replaying the “Mommy, Daddy, and I” drama over and over again.

People who never managed to pass successfully through this stage of development are the same folks who always end up being part of love triangles. Have you ever met a woman who always seems to fall for married men? That’s where her issues come from. At the same time, such people also see figures as authority as their absent Mommy and Daddy. They endlessly rummage in the personal lives of politicians, movie stars, etc. because this allows them to relive their Oedipal crisis over and over again. Have you ever met a man who seems obsessed with when Sarah Palin’s water broke?  He is simply manifesting his profound desire to stick his head under his Mommy’s skirt. The same individuals who promote the insane Babygate stories are also hugely interested in whether Sarah Palin and her husband will get married or divorced and whether there has been cheating in their marriage. They seem to hate Todd Palin even more than they do Sarah Palin, which fits perfectly with a textbook description of the Oedipal fixation.

This is why we need to be very attentive to our children in the crucial years of their development (between birth and 3 years of age.) People who don’t manage to pass successfully through any of the developmental stages will relive the trauma for the rest of their lives. And then you will see those sad middle-aged folks dedicating their existences to endless discussions of politicians’ uteri.

Russian Politics Is Hilarious: Russia’s Next President

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

While the US politics is dramatic and filled with tensions, Russian politics is absolutely hilarious. Probably, not for the Russian people, but for those of us who observe the events in the country from the outside, Russian politics offers an endless supply of material for jokes.

The people of Russia are preparing for the elections. Today, Russian leaders made an announcement that Prime-Minister Putin will “run” for President. As you must remember, Putin had moved out of the Presidential seat for the last elections and allowed his puppet Dmitri Medvedev to take his place. This was done to pretend that Putin respected the Constitution that didn’t allow him to run for the third term. Now, after Medvedev’s interim Presidency during which this poor puppet didn’t dare to breathe without Putin’s approval, Putin will move back into the President’s office once again. When his new two terms expire, he will probably perform the same trick: appoint some interim schmuck as President, sit out his term as the Prime-Minister, and become President all over again.

This has all been decided before the elections because the elections in Russia have become such a joke that nobody in their right mind takes them seriously. To give an especially egregious example, one of the leaders of one of the strongest parties of the opposition discovered – to his huge surprise – that at the polling station where he and his family voted, not a single vote had been given to his party.

Putin’s ruling party has become so shameless that it just ships in fake ballots by the kilo and substitutes all the actual ballots people deposited in the voting booths.

This is why when I hear people talk about “democracy in Russia” and the “collapse of the Soviet Union” I always have uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion

~ Clarissa ~ 12 Comments

Here are some of the posts and articles I especially enjoyed this week. Feel free to self-promote in the comments.

A brilliant post on who, when and how should be able to exercise the choice whether to be a parent or not: Why choice for men is wrong.

BlagHag, a great atheist blog, has moved and here is its new home.

On horrible working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses. Shame on you, Amazon!

Vatican is being predictably transphobic. Raise your hands everybody who is still expecting anything positive to come out of Vatican. Yeah, me neither.

A scientist in Canada padded his resume with non-existent studies. But, of course, honest researchers and Canadians like myself don’t have a chance in hell of getting hired in Canada.

Always make sure you don’t sign away your right to your own lectures.

A homebirth midwife pays out $1,9 million to a family whose child’s brain damage she caused during an irresponsible home delivery. Maybe this will finally send a message to money-hungry homebirth advocates who stop at nothing to make a buck.

A response to my post on whether the expression white trash is racist.

A map of sexual fetishes from which I discovered that I’m an extremely boring, conventional person. Something tells me that this will be the most popular link of all I provided here.

A really great post on masturbation and banned books.