Lauren Booth On Converting to Islam

Lauren Booth, who is war criminal Tony Blair's sister in law (a fact she's definitely not proud of) converted to Islam a couple of weeks ago during her visit to Iran. This has resulted in a flurry of haters who seized this enlightening piece of news to paint their bigotry, racism, and common misconceptions about Islam. We shall not direct you, as reference, to the Daily Fail's reader comments, who are known for their trollness. Lauren Booth works for Iranian news channel PressTV and has embarked on many trips to the Middle East. Last year, she part of one of the Viva Palestina convoys to break the siege on Gaza. All in all, she sounds like a fahmana, no?

Read her article here.

Rally to Restore Sanity- Best 100 Posters

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Drink Up Ye Merry Yo-ho Yo-ho

Milestone!!!! We have reached 100 blog posts! We really are made out of steel and non-alcoholic beer mixed with something called Canada Dry and shot through twinkling lights of rainbows and bedazzlement! So we feel that the time has now come to introduce to you all our pets. Let us hear you say, OneVoice, awwwwwww.

The little fella up there goes by the name Diego-Angelo. He is an anti-social masochist who veers toward the hermit life, despite having the best damn glass bowl in the country filled with brightly colored stones. He makes works of art from his faeces. He is still a cute baby, and enjoys playing hard to get with a cousin's other turtle, pansily named Lala.

Second up is the resolutely defiant Shit. Shit is so named because of its shitty color, which is a rich blend of greens and browns and greys. Its sexual identity is ambiguous, and has defied death a total number of 30495 times. Shit is somewhat suicidal, which is a bit of an oxymoron there, but it loves jumping out of its bowl (which admittedly, gets cleaned approximately every 83 days) in the early hours of dawn. It is now currently enjoying its 4th year living, despite all of its other friends' death two weeks after taken into domestication.

Sir Thermopolis War III

Mispronunciation of the Day:

Realm. As in ree*lum.

Used in sentence: Psychology helped to discover the third ree*lum of literature.

{} Sir Thermopolis was once the subject of much vitriol acted out in the good old shoe throwing business.{}

Bridging the Gap Between Students and the Administration

We have a new BZU president, a Dr Khalil Hindi who replaced Dr Nabil Qassis. This Dr Hindi is trying a new tack-to facilitate some kind of ceremonious bonding with the students. Therefore an assigned day was given to meet up with students from different majors. It's an interactive meeting, with students voicing their concerns and problems and listening to what the Important People had to offer. Here are some of the student complaints, because we're such a whiny group.

• The university is seen as being more and more under the rotten PA control, and this is manifested through the university's silent stance against students who get arrested by the PA and face up to months in jail for their involvement in non-Fate7 (read Hamas) university related activities. Protect the students dammit! They have a right to education!
• The political atmosphere on campus is strictly restricted to allegiances to either Fate7 or Hamas. This is unfair to the rest of the students who are completely indifferent, and instead want the university to put more pressure on the students to realize the political nature and developments/stagnations/decline or happenings in Palestinian society without fear of censorship/arrest. *This of course, can only come to fruition by the participation of students themselves.
• The university should offer programs or lectures that will educate the students more about their plight, occupation, and normalization.
• For those who have classes at 8 am there are not enough taxis to go around, which results in a large number of tardiness.
• Those who get high grades on their exams but a low average on the basis of being late to their lectures a few times, well that's just plain unfair.
• Honor students do not get enough prestige.
• Failure of certain departments to provide MA scholarships to their students.
• Surveillance cameras everywhere! Hello, welcome to London.
• The classes on the basement floor of the Science building are unfit as an academic environment, with reeking bathroom smells permeating and such.

The President and the other three cronies with him (one was the dean, the other a vice-president we assume...oh hang on, it says on the uni's official page that there are FOUR vice-presidents) all answered thus:

(a) That's unfortunate.

(b) We'll see what we can do.

(c) We'll try our best to fix this.

BZU has a loooooong way to go before it can be compared to 'normal' universities in Europe and America. We feel like we should add "other parts of the Middle East" but we won't. If the administration really cared about bridging the gap between itself and the students, then it should fire most of its faculty and staff. Mostly its faculty- we have never encountered such boorish stuck-up rude creatures. And it should only accept certain students, as there are a good number who are extremely immature, brain-fluffed, and see uni as a chance to snare a good match for a spouse.

Festival for the Return of Winter

Yep, it was as stupid as the title suggests. We do wonder though, why students care and get their groove on for the silliest trivial things ever. Seems like most of them are living an extension of their decadent high school days. Oh and...return of winter? This weather? This burning sweltering weather that has parched our skin dry and afflicted us with heatstroke? Winter, Lord.

The poster does claim to be, for the first time, a cultural national entertaining festival for the students. Dabka performances and a couple of singers provided the entertainment part. We vaguely remember something of this sort, under a different name, last year. Wait the memories are becoming sharper...yes we can remember how we scurried into the nearest building to take refuge from the onslaught of male student belly dancers. They were just out there, shaking their bits with apparently no self-respect and complete disregard to their shocked and amused audience.

Anyhoo, we made our way past the stage that was set up near the administration building, where students were all congregated. We couldn't actually see the dabka troupe performing, but we did see about 7 guys forming their own dabka line, so that was a nice relief. That was it for us, because we're such hardcore revolutionaries and care about the Top Secret Important Stuff (that's TSIS to you) and so we made our way to er..base.

At the end of the day, we heard from reliable eye-witnesses that the festival turned into a freak show, as once again hordes of male students took it upon themselves to showcase their inner Shakira. Last year we went through the phases of WTF to anger (the great stone-throwing youth of Palestine!) to we'resomentallyscarredwejustwannadieforeverandever. It has taken us intensive therapy sessions to finally close our minds to unwanted and unnecessary idiocy. So when the eye-witnesses proceeded to inform us that the festival then changed course and became a crazy Fate7 carnival, we smiled and inquired about their favorite ice cream flavor. That's "national" for you folks.

Good day.

Viva Viva Palestina!

We're a bit late on this not so breaking news anymore-blame miscommunication and faulty internet servers, but here we are.

Finally we can rejoice in hearing about the Viva Palestina “smashing” the blockade and making it through into Gaza. Three cheers for Viva Palestina…hip hip hurray, hip hip hurray, hip hip hurray! Alrighty then back to the informative details. This convoy of approximately 150 vehicles, 370 people from 30 different countries and $5 million of aid has been recognized to be the biggest convoy ever to break the siege of Gaza. This epic journey took four weeks and five days from its starting point in London and traveled through France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Syria. What a trip huh? Wait! it’s not over yet. In Syria the convoy was delayed for eighteen days because of ongoing negotiations with the Egyptian authority. Since Viva Palestina wanted nothing to do with the Israel border and didn’t want to hand the convoy’s aid to Israeli authorities they turned to the Egyptian border and the Egyptian authorities to allow their entrance into Gaza. When the final negotiations were reached, Egypt allowed the passage of all the convoys with the exclusion of 17 members including George Galloway from entering Gaza. We can take an educated guess about why that is and say that it might be because they’re “security threats” who oppose this “security” barrier, and do nothing but incite hatred and intolerance. When the sea journey came to an end at the Egyptian port of Al Arish a new journey on land began. The Convoy then drove the 40Km to the Egyptian/Gaza border at Rafah where they entered the Gaza Strip.

Want Some Aloe Vera for That BURRN

Effective, to say the least. Who else got eerie goosebumps?

Students from University of Michigan, salute. And to think, here in the West Bank, Al-Quds University (Abu Dis) still won't sever academic relations with Israel. For shame.

PS The two IDF soldiers are part of an Israeli hasbara organization called StandWithUs:

"Through brochures, speakers, programs, conferences, missions to Israel, and Internet resources, we strive to ensure that Israel's side of the story is told on university campuses and in communities, the media, libraries, and churches around the world."

Because Rupert Murdoch isn't enough.

We liked Ahmad Moor's take on this:

"Imagine, your voice is negated and occluded by a mass collective refusing to listen. There was something familiar about this.

That’s when it occurred to me – the army stooge was a Palestinian, perhaps for the first time."

UPDATE: Here's the extended video version.

"Remember, the majority of activism in the world comes from student campuses."

Oh how we sighed.

Semester Mid-Point

Having just completed one of the most intensive week of the semester so far, we can finally kick back and relax in a pool of bubbling Perrier water, while our menservants tend to our every whim and need. Thank God we have Saturday off-hurray for three day weekends!

So. We're at that middle station of the semester. Eight more weeks to go. Things that have caught our attention:

• We really miss Palestine as a four season country. Come on, it's almost November and temperatures this week reached 98 degrees. We wanna wear our cute boots and beanies!
• Our embittered selves have been dormant; we smile more often and thanks to the degenerate mob we hang out with, have a repertoire of filthy jokes.
• Since we've reached that gritty stage where its mostly concentrated on taking major classes, our department has gotten a lot more familiar and friendlier.
• We still wish students to be more active and give a damn about the political situation. Negotiations, evictions, settlements, bulldozing a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a Jewish theme park? Cool, I'll pick you up at 7 and we'll go to Tche Tche's.
• We're mostly ok with our teachers, no faults there!
• We're finding that we use a lot of multi-syllable words in every day conversations. Is that a reflection of our major getting to us or are we being general asses, showing off philosophically?
• For some reason, this semester feels like its going to be more enjoyable then the second. Positive thoughts everyone!

Olive-picking!

We're on a roll here. More community hours, whoot whoot! And this time, we weren't so dramatic about being woken up early on a weekend! We are maturing! And a little too hyper! What a fabulous bone-breaking day!

At 8:30, we were to meet up with fellow volunteers in Birzeit the village, in front of some building we passed about 3 times. We were ready! We had our frozen water, sun block smeared onto our faces like a second skin, caps, sunglasses, ipods, wet wipes, cameras, etc. When we first went to sign up a couple of days ago at the student affairs office, the list was long. However, there was only a few people straggling around. Yeah, that piece of information wasn't important or interesting, sorry. Anyhoo, we piled into the cars of the farmers and other volunteers, and we were taken to a stretch of land that had 40 olive trees. The family owning the land were hard at work already. Since we're so friendly looking, we made quick friends with the daughters and sons, who informed us that during this time of the year, they're up at 4 am and return home only once the sun has set, for four consecutive days. Some have to take a few days off from school or their universities, and apparently, our university faculty aren't so lenient or understanding about that. Shame, considering all the sanctimonious crap they spew out, with us being the representatives of a wonderfully cultured traditional land, and how olives are the symbol of symbolism, and how it is our job, nay our duty to follow through with the correct representation of yada yada yada.

We got to work immediately, dividing ourselves roughly into two groups working on two trees. It was fun, and for a while the only sound heard was the plopping of the olives as they rained down on the canvas sheets spread underneath and around the trees. The first hour and half went by pretty quickly--it's true what they say: the most work gets done in the early morning. As we got to know the family more (a father, three daughters, and two sons), we truly began to appreciate what they do. Picking olives is HARD. It starts off as being fun, hanging around the outskirts of the trees, but then you cannot move on to another tree until every singly olive has been picked. This is no exaggeration either, EVERY SINGLE OLIVE must be picked. We amused ourselves by climbing onto ladders then going more primordial by scaling the upper tree branches, but lordy the sun was fierce and we felt dizzy and heavy-headed and with all the sweat dust and dirt clinging to us, suddenly the hours seemed long and distant. Getting attacked by freaking giant mutant grasshoppers broke the monotony a bit. We feel proud that we didn't dance around screaming like our heads were on fire. Cool as ice baby.

MUTANT!

The family were as generous and as hospitable as you could imagine; at around 11 we all sat down to eat a late breakfast that consisted of humus, bread, salads, cake, omelettes, and sardines. After that, the father went off to pray the Friday prayers, and his offspring pretended to laze around, all the while cracking us up as they demonstrated their dynamic relationships between each other and their making fun of some random man who we initially thought was part of their family. Turns out that said random man was there out of his own goodwill, but he couldn't keep his trap shut, bossing everyone around and acting like he had much more experience than everyone else. He'd go around beating the branches with a stick so that in a matter of seconds, we were all under a haze of shimmering dust, coughing and simultaneously glaring at his pretentious self. The father and the other guys came back from prayer, and went on working with us. We loved the father, who is now 3mo to us. Such a sweet kind gentle soul-we'd pick olives for him next year for nothing. The sun by now was heavy and close and burning a hole right through our brains, so our initial enthusiasm turned into lethargy, to the point where we just sat on the canvas and started throwing olives into a bucket after de-twigging them, all the while not minding the thousand and one white spiders having a field day around us.

Our wisecracker. No need to mention the Tapuzina bottle thank you very much.

We have such renewed enormous respect and appreciation for those families who work tirelessly and without so much of a murmur of complaint for very long hours. We have friends whose families own land who hate this time of the year precisely because it's such hard work, but as long as the company and atmosphere are great, we really don't mind. Sure, taking a nap under one of the shaded trees was what we fantasized during our lethargic state, but there's something special about picking olives. We didn't mind the fact that our hands and arms were stained reddish brown streaked with the oil of a few crushed olives, or that each tree took as many as three hours to be completely stripped. Internationals/ajnabiyeen, some independently others in coordination with NGO's love helping out too. Cut off from the sound of cars and streets, being rooted in land made of red earth so carefully cultivated and cared for, making new friends and chatting companionably away, we felt more love and pride for our country. Not to regurgitate all the wasted symbolism of olive trees land and country to nationalism, we felt intense love and pride for who we are.

Falasteen man.

More on Farcical Forgiveness Day

Sunday October 10, 2010 was proclaimed to be Forgiveness Day in Palestine, but having to wake up at 8:00am on this cherished day off from the university didn’t seem all that forgiving! Having no idea what our friend signed us up for , we horse-backed to the Manara (in Ramallah) groggy brained and still very much asleep. You see, for this task, we'd get more community hours, and since graduation doesn't seem that far off any more, we figured the smart thing to do was to get a move on.

Having reached the meeting tent, Bedouin style, we found ourselves attacked and bombarded with questions, information, fliers and stickers. “What’s your name?”, “Are you here for community service?”, “Here pass these out…and these”, and “If anyone asks you what this is for say____” and this is the part where we zoned out…I mean can you blame us? We're not exactly early risers. Moving on, we did as we were told and found ourselves finished just in time to head back home into our feathered beds, or so we thought. Our happiness dissolved under a cloud of tragedy…Forgiveness Day had not yet begun. Our next duty was to walk from the Manara to the Legislative Council building where we would stand and wait for the one and only pompous 'man of the people' Salam Fayyad to come out and share with us and the media words of love, care and encouragement.
While trudging, the forgiveness mob howled 1 through 10 in Arabic followed up by English…we would of never guessed we had phenomenal bilinguals in Palestine.
While standing, waiting for his collaborative self to greet us, we were handed white balloons and flowers which were to be flown and thrown in the air once the speech was completed and 1 through 10 counted for the last time.

Finally the idiot arrived, and what can we say about the speech that was given? Well, nothing of interest really. Only that Sir Fayyad made a vow to officially proclaim 10/10 as Forgiveness Day in Palestine the next time he was chillin with his buddies at Stars and Bucks!

We're that melodramatic when working on weekends. Stop the eye rolling!

And no, it has not passed our notice that this idiotic proclamation of Forgiveness Day 'coincided' with Israel's new law of the loyalty oath. Israel is busy making life more difficult for Palestinians, while the quisling regime is actively diverting the Palestinians' attention from important political and apartheid decisions made against them. Forgive your neighbors, and your insolent children for not becoming the famous doctors you wanted them to be. No need to be so exclusive, forgive Israel for occupying your land for 60 plus years. In fact, just forget about them, and the house demolitions, and the evictions, and the settlement building, and the checkpoints, and all the psychological trauma that comes with being gun-controlled, and all of their racist apartheid laws. Salam Fayyad, we eagerly await your promised 2011 Palestinian state. Wait, we mean the 2011 Collaborator state.

10.10.10

Lightening will strike all famous monuments in the world! Cupid's arrows will be flying everywhere! Rainbow fish are frying themselves!

It's ten ten ten. And that makes for such cute wedding anniversaries. Like three years ago when it was seven seven seven, the amount of couples getting married on that day actually made the news. Anyhow, since weddings are overrated, let's see what REAL news we have for today.

Today in Ramallah, it was announced that henceforth from now, every tenth of October will be Palestinian Forgiveness Day. What utter bullshit, how about we focus on erm ridding ourselves from the occupiers first? Well doesn't that sound grand.

Israel has passed a new law to illustrate just how thoughtfully democratic it really is. Israeli non-Jewish citizens must take an oath of Jewish loyalty to the state. Well, that's not going to sit down too well with the '48 Palestinians in 'Israel', who make up 20 percent of the population. But how dare we be so presumptuous as to enlighten the racist Zionuts what democracy is! Take this from Bibi: "No one can preach democracy or enlightenment to us.There is no other democracy in the Middle East."

Bobby Chinn is Cool

HABIBI!! HIT ME UP!



Here's an open-minded lively guy with enough charisma to turn Queen Elizabeth II into a dancing queen. You gotta love him.

NiqaBitch!

France's new law of banning the oppressive, suppressive, patriarchal, uncouth, subordinate, uncivilised, confining, choking burka is a topic of controversial debate etc etc. Our opinions? While we don't agree with the burka/niqab, and see it as a cultural rather than religious dress (tell that to the Islamophobiacs!), who the hell is any government to dictate to people what they should and shouldn't wear? Those who utilize their brains are definitely not fooled by the pathetic excuse given to justify the law: WE MUST LIBERATE THOSE POOR SOULLESS MUSLIM WOMEN who, for God's sake, can't refuse their husbands sex! And they cannot leave their houses without permission! We're a REPUBLIC, dammit, not some Arabian land where fundamentalists enjoy ruling from the top tier! We must EDUCATE these poor women about their RIGHTS! Convert them to Governmental Christianity! As a bonus, we have indoor plumbing and wall to wall carpeting in our residential areas. Lift the cursed fabric from thy faces! Embrace the world! Breathe in the air! Just remember to say No! Defy your patriarchal society! Life is good without the burka!

We give you this video below. It is amazing in its iconoclastic attitude. The two French women have used a marvellously unorthodox way to voice what they think of the French law:

"We were not looking to attack or degrade the image of Muslim fundamentalists – each to their own – but rather to question politicians who voted for this law that we consider clearly unconstitutional," they said. "To dictate what we wear appears to have become the role of the state."

Sir Thermopolis War II

Sir Thermopolis is in fine form, drilling important little facts into our brains in his monotonous manner. To business it is!

Mispronunciation of the Day:

Thomas. As in, tho*mass.

Used in sentence: Tho-mass Grandgrind strongly believed in developing an education system solely based on facts.

{} In order to increase his sex appeal, Sir Thermopolis has no problem with lifting up a trouser leg and continually scratching his leg for long periods of time. {} FACT!

FAIL!

As we lumbered to our first class of the morning, we noticed for the first time this sheet of paper taped to the classroom door.

The obvious reaction was, WTF? Henning Mankell? Raja Shehadeh? Since when? God, why doesn't this INCOMPETENT university EVER advertise these things! Then we shifted into a reverie, where suddenly we remembered Palfest coming to this university in May. And oh how we laughed. After all, with Birzeit's students, what sheet of paper lasts for almost 6 months on a door? Don't the walls get painted every 6 months? Anyway, just a momentary shake-up before we reverted back to our stupor.

Soldier Shaking it Like Fefe Abdo

Most moral army in the world who employs fresh out of high school greens to keep the brown insolent Palestinians under control. Here we have one Palestinian woman, handcuffed and blindfolded, huddling next to a wall, while a hilarious soldier dances around her.

UPDATE: The woman, Ihsan Dababisa, has told her story:

"They began beating me with rifle butts and legs. One of the soldiers hit my head against the metal of the military jeep until I fainted. Then I found myself in front of a female doctor wearing military uniform. After examining me they moved me to the interrogation center where my journey of torture and humiliation started.

"The officer’s name who began to interrogate me was Beran. He threatened to demolish my family home and arrest my siblings, the interrogation lasted for two hours. After that I was transferred with my eyes blindfolded to another interrogation center, I think it was the Russian compound, where there were three interrogators.

"Soon after I came in they began insulting and cursing using words I do not want to say. One of the interrogators was pulling me from my hair. I was handcuffed the whole time. The interrogation lasted until 11 at night, then they transferred me to Hasharon prison where they accused me of trying to stab someone, and of affiliation with the Islamic Jihad. Lawyers from the prisoners' society defended me and I was sentenced to 22 months in prison. I was released on 6 September 2009."

We can't comment on this. It renders us furious.

The Irene Stopped by Israeli Authorities

On the 26th of this month, a boat carrying Jewish activists set sail from Cyprus to Gaza in the hope of breaking the insufferable siege. Those on board included Ed (or David...no let's stick with Ed since he's the boss now) Miliband's mother, Marion Kozak, 82 year old Holocaust survivor Reuven Moskovitz, and Rami Alhanan, an Israeli whose daughter was killed in a suicide bombing in 1997.

Smuggled weapons must have been deeply smuggled under the boats nail planks or magnetically pulverised into anthrax powder, because according to European Jews for a Just Peace, the organization that launched the boat, the cargo included:

"symbolic aid in the form of children's toys and musical instruments, textbooks, fishing nets for Gaza's fishing communities and prosthetic limbs for orthopedic medical care in Gaza's hospitals."

Israeli naval commandos have peacefully boarded a Jewish aid boat attempting to break a naval blockade on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said at 11:30 A.M. Tuesday.

From Haaretz:

"IDF naval forces recently boarded the yacht 'Irene', and it is currently being led to the Ashdod seaport along with its passengers," the military said in statement that branded the boat a "provocation yacht".

IDF chief spokesman Avi Benayahu deplored the fact that "naval forces and fighters are being diverted from our main mission" to "a surreal assignment" of intercepting a boatload of activists.

"Its entire intention was to generate media attention and (stage) a provocation. This matter is especially regrettable as we are talking about a group of Jews and of Israeli citizens, and even someone who has worn an IDF officer's uniform."

Dear oh dear, how dare a bunch of conscientious Jewish folk, some with Israeli citizenship, have the absolute GALL to stage off such a publicity stunt that hurts the democratic sandy-beached Israel? Such PROVOCATION!!!

Didn't you know, Gaza is NOT under siege. Like, duh!

Today in History

The 28th of September. Hm, what makes this date so darn significant? Oh, pick me pick me! That's the day William the Conqueror invaded England! Wait, no...that's not quite it. Oh, the Beatles' "Hey Jude" peaked at number 1 on the charts! No, still not it. And who cares if Napoleon Bonaparte graduated at 16 from military school this day hundreds of years ago. Today, ten years ago exactly, we were a couple of kids in 5th grade. We went home to eat and indulge in family activities (such as merciless teasing and fights over who gets the chipped dinner plate) when the TV was turned on. Ariel Terrorist Sharon's bloated face filled up the screen as he gloated and waddled into the Al-Aqsa compound with his security forces, a site that is sacred to Muslims in Jerusalem. His provocative visit sparked this anniversary. Two days later, we found our parents hooked on to the tube. On the screen, a boy not much older than us was crouching behind his father's back while Israeli bullets bombarded them. That boy, Muhammad Al-Durra, became the first martyr of the 2nd Palestinian Intifada. The quisling Old Man has since stated that the 2nd Intifada was "one of our worst mistakes." The sooner he brain haemorrhages the better, what a tool. More than 7 thousand Palestinians have been killed so far, and the road map to peace (har har) has never looked so...promising! Good God, Fayyadism has effectively wiped out any resistance to the Occupier, and Palestinian thus are oppressed twice. One, by Israel, and another by the quisling's regime. The result is a desperate acceptance from the Palestinians of their situation, in that they don't agree with the present reality but are powerless to do anything because of a lack of a unified representative voice to convey to the world what they initially want and have sacrificed so much for.

The first Intifada differed in that it was a wholly nationalistic movement. Palestinians were a united front against the enemy, and decisive tactics such as boycotting Israel and refusing to pay their taxes aggravated Israel beyond means, hence their brutal retaliation. The second Intifada was more faction-oriented. Each political group or movement had their own armed wing that carried out various operations. Most important was the posters of the martyrs belonging to their respective group, (well not really.) Israel assassinated and detained charismatic and spiritual leaders, paving the way for the Old Man to take up power. Since then, Palestinian history has witnessed its worst events ever, as civil fighting between Fateh and Hamas, set up by the concerned American government, claimed more than 600 lives. Politics then became solely focused on Fateh and Hamas, with the idiots in charge aggravating the situation even more and not calling attention to the real problem, Israel. And now we have the present, a comically despairing one ruled by a dictator who is more of a dick then a ruler. We need to awaken the resistance again, starting with the ever so impressionable youth, the university students. We need to be united once again. We need to start caring more. We have to galvanize our resistance.

Fisticuffs Mayhem!

Campus isn't our favorite place to be. We consider it a mighty achievement just finding the energy and the resoluteness to get up in the morning and actually take classes. After that, it's either a quick hangout with the like-minded folks or a dash to get home. We will never get the poor souls who consider the university to be their all-time coolio hangout. Some people stay for hours after their classes are done. Even more scary are those who arrive on a day where they have no reason to be there, all for the sake of dallying and faffing about. So, even though this blog claims (actually it doesn't) to be some sort of anonymous News of the World rag but on less worldly issues (sex? what IS that?), news-wise it's more or less mediocre because we simply don't care about all the little things happening, we're not exactly omnipotent, and we don't consider loitering to be in our best interests. Do we have to report on every time the loudspeakers are out with the nationalist songs blaring? Truth is, life is pretty much boring on campus. Altercations between idiots are considered to be...hm the pinnacle of interesting happenings. Somehow, the majority of them, when they do occur, always take place while we're locked up in some lecture room zoning out and wondering whether the guy in front of us deep fried his hair in last year's cooking oil or not. Imagine our moderate surprise when on the student academic portal, Ritaj, a statement condemned the recent fights that had broken out...on campus!! Fights? More than one? And we missed them? When? Where? Who? What kind of getaway students are we? Well well well. The statement didn't mention the nature of these fisticuffs, but here is the link and below is our sorry translation **:

Statement Issued by the University Council

Since the beginning of this semester the university has witnessed sad events that have resulted in the closure of the gates of the university and assault on faculty members and others (And we assume that we must have been hiding under a rock the whole time...seriously? News to us!). The latest event took place on the sidelines of a student activity on Monday 20/9/2010 held in the Kamal Nasser Hall, where there were clashes between students that involved hands, rocks, and sticks. This resulted in injuries and a number of students had to be transferred to the hospital for treatment. Serious property damage was also caused. The participants refused to comply with instructions to use cool logic and reason, and that has been taken into consideration and with our strenuous efforts, all student activities will be suspended for a month. (Fists, stones, AND sticks? Man, that's it, we endeavor to be more..aware of fights from now on!)

The University Council deeply regrets these deplorable practices and sees it as unfitting to the morals and values that prevail within the university. The deplorable practices have intimated other students and faculty alike, and have threatened to spill over outside campus where the warning bells will not be ringing.

Birzeit University has a long and proven history of ensuring a democratic atmosphere, and follows that dialogue is the only way to solve all kinds of issues (Suckers! Armed resistance everyone!). But when groups of students resort to violence (verbal and physical abuse), and ignore the system of the university and the instructions of officials, this represents a serious threat to the reputation of the university and the academic situation, where thousands of students will have no future because they won't choose to come to such a university because of the unstable and unsafe environment (No future! bahahaha).

The University Council will do all that is in its power to keep the university free from interactions that lead to agitation and physical violence, without prohibiting the right of students in intellectual diversity, and will remain faithful in its mission to promote freedom on opinion and calls upon everyone to combine their efforts to achieve this and apply it effectively.

So, anxious to calm things down, and reduce friction, and to prevent the transmission of the manifestations of violence off-campus, the Council has decided:

1. The suspension of all student activities for a month, subject to renewal light of variables.
2. To emphasize the force of order, hence any student activity must seek permission first from the Dean of Student Affairs.
3. The emphasis on preventing students who were expelled for one semester or those with behavioural problems to enter campus, without prior permission from the Dean of Student Affairs.
4. The prohibition of any visitors of students to enter campus, without prior from the etc etc.
5. The transference of all students who were involved in violence to the Committee of Public Order and holding them responsible for the property damage done.

It also calls on students to avoid violent practices (use anaesthesia before castration!) and the denunciation of such practices, and to cooperate fully with the officials to keep the campus an oasis of security and democracy, and to maintain the university as a magnet for female students ( WHAT? hahahahaha, a chick magnet!) and students throughout the nation, and to increase the academic level we all aspire to achieve and which we hold in the best interests for our children in the future.

** Google translation might have been used in abundance.

Wow. It took us a while to stop howling from laughter. Given bet that the fights were of some political nature..or actually..some guy might have hit on some other guy's girl and the girl liked it and told her friends and her friends told her brother and her brother with his friends confronted the guy with the original guy and his friends and ohhh what a lovely world we live in.