November 6, 2008
Posted by yaman
As soon as Obama finished giving his acceptance speech, crowds of students began to gather in the streets of Berkeley. By the time I melded myself into the march somewhere on Durant Avenue, hundreds of students had already amassed. We ran down Durant feeling that a huge weight was off our shoulders, that there were [...]
July 15, 2007
Posted by yaman
Earlier this week, I tried to register a name for a new student group with the Office of Student Life (OSL). One of the advantages of registering a group with the OSL is that it makes it relatively easy to reserve rooms for meetings, events, and other activities. I’ve done this in the past and [...]
January 11, 2007
Posted by yaman
Background: On the evening of November 16, 2006, UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was repeatedly tasered by UCPD officers in the library despite the fact that he posed no threat to the officers or to the surrounding students. Later that week, an estimated 400 UCLA students protested the incident. A similar but less populated demonstration followed [...]
December 24, 2006
Posted by yaman
In the fall of 2006, conspicuous posters printed by a marketing firm called BlueStarPR began to appear on the University of California, Berkeley campus. Others reported seeing them in places around the Bay Area. The stated goal of BlueStarPR is to “shape public opinion through knowledge and understanding” by producing “positive and educational posters, advertisements, [...]
December 6, 2006
Posted by yaman
The California Patriot claims to be Berkeley’s “conservative student voice.” Looking through their magazine, though, it’s difficult to come away with anything but the conclusion that they spend a lot more time hating liberals, or rather liberal stereotypes, than they do promoting any sort of coherent and consistent ideology–unless, of course, ‘hate’ counts. Share
November 21, 2006
Posted by yaman
I value the idea of protest, but I have always had an anxious relationship with protests. Attending one for me is always an exercise in the suspension of any sense of self-consciousness–participating does in a sense require being melded into the crowd. Otherwise you can’t help but feel like a moron with all the chants [...]
Up to 52 civilians killed in Nato attack in Helmand, Afghan president’s office says.
How regrettable. How unfortunate. Bombs away!
(Discussion)While anti-Semitism means, rightly, social death, Islamophobia might get you a television spot, a column in a newspaper, or academic tenure.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
(Discussion)
The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were sla…
(Discussion)
A six-year archive of classified military documents to be made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.
Shoot, you don’t need secret documents to tell you that… but viva WikiLeaks either way.
(Discussion)Israeli parliament passes first of three readings illegalizing boycott activism or advocacy
(Discussion)
But what we’re seeing today is just the unleashing of a long-incubated racism, both institutional and incidental. It doesn’t emanate from the Jewish component of Israeli nationhood. It is informed by the Eurocentric cornerstones of the country: the belief, expressed by Israel’s founding fathers and …
(Discussion)More then twice as many Oscar Grant protestors came out to the Walnut Creek Courthouse to show that nowhere in the bay area will attempts to justify the murder of Oscar Grant go unquestioned. While about a hundred supporters of Johannes Mehserle and law enforcement attended the rally, their numbe…
Racists for Mehserle
(Discussion)
In the US, anti-miscegenation laws were on the books until 1967, when the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional. That was the same year that Israel began its occupation of Sabbar Kashur’s home in East Jerusalem. Since then, Israelis have fine-tuned their own obsession with racial purity. Only…
Source: madreblogs.typepad.com
(Discussion)
