Month: September 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.

Mystics

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

You know what annoys me a lot? When some repressed (not to be confused with oppressed) grad school geek gleefully insists that St. Teresa of Avila’s visions had nothing to do with her religious feelings but were a product of her lack of sexual fulfillment.

“Well, just read her writings,” they tell me.

I have. And I see no evidence that St. Teresa did not, in fact, have genuine mystic experiences.

“Look at the Bernini statue, then!” they suggest.

I have. And I believe Bernini is as entitled as I am to have his vision of the mystics and a lot less entitled than I am to have an opinion on female sexuality.

These cheap attempts at psychoanalyzing people whose reality and depth of religious feeling we cannot even begin to understand bug me.

Student Writing Woes

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

I teach two really good groups of students this semester. They are active, engaged, do the readings, and we have really great discussions in class.

Today, though, I sat down to grade the first mini-essay (1-2 pages long) one of the groups handed in this week. And I realized that I wouldn’t be able to give a single one of these students a grade. The essays are all abysmally poor in quality. Endless, confusing sentences, sentences with no verbs, countless “they” and “them” that refer to completely different things, wild generalizations, boring repetitions, the words “interesting” and “important” in every other line, a passive construction in almost every single sentence, vague disquisitions apropos of nothing in particular, apostrophes appearing where they have absolutely no place, etc.

Incas suddenly become a “Spanish culture.” Jews practice Islam. Jarchas are people. Columbus single-handedly wipes out the entire indigenous population of the Americas. Ferdinand and Isabella help the Visigoths to destroy the Roman Empire. And it isn’t that the students don’t know these things. I have no doubt that if I asked them questions about these subjects in class, they would answer correctly. The problem is this horrible carelessness that pervades every instance of written communication.

This will be a very long semester.

Governmental Bureaucracies Squeeze Small Businesses

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

Let me tell you a story of a day-care in Montreal that is being persecuted by the government’s bureaucrats. On a regular basis, bureaucrats descend on this truly excellent day-care and do all they can to make the owners, the teachers, the kids and their parents as miserable as possible. Here is a list of some of the requirements the bureaucrats have imposed on the day-care during their most recent visits:

1. The custom of bringing in bunnies from the neighboring farm for the kids to pet has to be abandoned because petting bunnies is dangerous to the kids.

2. An aquarium with goldfish cannot be installed in the day-care because kids can catch salmonella. From a closed down and locked aquarium. Probably by osmosis.

3. A carpet where children sit and play should be removed and kids should sit on the floor instead. Carpets are, apparently, unhygienic.

4. Children should not be fed soup. Even though they like soup and parents are happy that kids eat it. In case the day-care still insists on serving soup, beans should be added to it. Why beans and not something else is never explained.

I’ve been to this day-care on many occasions and I can testify to the fact that it is really great. Kids have to be dragged out of it to be taken home because they love being there so much. The day-care doesn’t get a dime in any kind of governmental funding. As a result, the government that allows its own state day-cares to do anything they want persecutes this private day-care viciously slapping endless fees and fines on it. This drives the day-care costs sky-high.

This is only a small instance of what I see as a full-scale effort to destroy small business in Quebec.

Who Buys All That Zara Stuff?

~ Clarissa ~ 19 Comments

Who could have thought that Zara could have possibly made its owner so rich? Just look at number 7 on this list of the richest people in the world:

In Spain, Zara is looked down upon as a chain that offers clothing for moneyless wannabes and poor housewives. In the US and Canada, many people have no idea of the contempt Zara evokes in Europe, so they buy the brand as if it represented some sort of high fashion. What is surprising to me is that Zara is the only clothing brand that got its owner on the list of the richest people in the world.

Am I missing something here? Is Zara a lot more popular than I thought it was?

How Much Does an HPV Vaccine Supporter Cost?

~ Clarissa ~ 24 Comments

And this is how Merck, one of the pharmaceutical companies that want to convince us we all need to be medicated all the time for everything, has bought itself an HPV vaccine supporter in Rick Perry:

Over the past five years, it turns out that Merck [the company that manufacturers the vaccine] gave over $350,000 to the Republican Governors Association, a period in which Perry was heavily involved with the group, and the RGA in turn gave $4 million to Rick Perry.

And wait some more! Merck’s lobbyist on the vaccine issue was Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff. Toomey recently co-founded a super PAC that plans to raise over $50 million for Perry’s campaign.

The reason Bachmann is still against the vaccine has nothing to do with anybody’s religious or political beliefs. She simply hasn’t been paid yet by Merck.

So much rubbish has been said and written recently about the vaccine in an attempt to present it as some sort of an ideological issue. I have even seen hints that being in favor of this vaccine is some sort of a feminist and progressive statement.

The Merck CEOs, in the meanwhile, are laughing all the way to the bank as they imagine the silly rubes they have been able to dupe into believing that womanhood and human sexuality are potentially lethal by nature.

If you are a pseudo-Liberal who wants to attack me for this post, don’t waste your time. You, guys, have Merck on your side, which means you have won already. Soon, the HPV vaccine will be mandatory for everybody. So you can just relax. As you are reading this right now, Merck is probably busy buying out everybody who needs to be bought to force people to take their garbage.