In the wake of the failed academic boycott attempt at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NIJ reports that “Norwegian business tycoon Olav Thon has decided that due to the politicizing of NTNU he will no longer finance a professorate at that institution.” More here. Meanwhile, in case you don’t know who Mr. Thon is, or how much he is worth, here is some background from Forbes.
Archive for December, 2009
This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.
On Thursday, December 10, President Obama will deliver the Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in Oslo. Prominent among the issues that the president may want to bring up is the failed quest for peace that began in Oslo back in 1993, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a series of meetings in the Norwegian capital to formulate the accords that launched the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The feeling that it is time to give up on this process - and perhaps even on peace - is widespread, but claims that everything has been tried are not quite true.
In a comment on my earlier post, David Schraub asks for a link to the SAHRC ruling which found Bongani Masuku guilty of hate speech. A copy of the ruling is pasted below.
One of the drawbacks of writing about antisemitism and its anti-Zionist variant is that, too often, you feel like you’re living the same day over and over again. First there was the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, now Bongani Masuku has reappeared.
I had the dubious pleasure of writing about this most foul of antisemites back in February; almost a year later, he’s turned up in the UK as an honored guest of academic boycott advocates BRICUP. There’s a must-read post by Alana Pugh-Jones on Engage, here. The essence of it: South Africa’s Human Rights Commission has found Masuku guilty of engaging in hate speech. However, since his targets were Jews, I’ll wager that Mike Cushman, Steven Rose, Jonathan Rosenhead and their BRICUP colleagues will be positively salivating at the thought of escorting him around British campuses.
The Strategic Security blog of the Federation of American Scientists is obligatory reading for military affairs wonks (I’m mentioning no names here) and usually doesn’t have much to interest those who think that a MANPAD might be a kind of apartment. However, Z Word readers in the latter category ought to take the time to read this post. It summarizes the content of a paper - written by the post’s author and a colleague - that analyzes current knowledge of Iran’s recently revealed Fordow uranium enrichment facility and attempts some intelligent guesswork about what purpose it might serve within the broader context of Iran’s nuclear program. The last line of the post goes as follows:
It is getting harder and harder to give Iran the benefit of the doubt.
Go and read the rest yourself.
Over a year ago, I wrote about an entry on Zionism for an encyclopedia published under a well-known, trusted imprint: the “Encyclopedia of Race and Racism,” which carries the names of both Macmillan Reference USA (now owned by the Michigan-based Gale, Cengage Learning company) and the Macmillan Social Science Library. At the time, there was quite a storm and the publishers resolved to do something about it. Sadly, their compromise formula makes a bad situation worse, as I explain in this op-ed for the Jerusalem Post.
“Ostensibly sold to voters as a weapon against Islamism, an all-too-real political phenomenon in Europe, this new law in fact makes no distinction between religion and ideology, instead choosing to alienate the primary victims of Islamic fundamentalism and the best allies of Western liberals - moderate Muslims.” So says Michael Weiss in an excellent piece for The Daily News on the Swiss referendum which resulted in a ban on the construction of minarets in new mosques.
It bears saying again and again: far right parties are not our allies in the struggle against Islamism, but our deadly enemies. For these boneheads and their leaders, all Muslims - whether from Albania or Yemen, whether a teenage girl facing an arranged marriage or a cleric preaching hatred - are all the same, all just dirty foreigners.
In the video below, a wonderful example of the species antisemitus lunaticus (not the fellow you see in the still, but the one that crops up at the beginning.) He’s got all the lines: some of his best friends are Jews, he tells the interviewer, in between foul-mouthed rants about the evil nature of, errrm, Jews. By the way, all this took place at an event organized by Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, for whom the phrase “Boycott Israeli Goods” is another way of saying “Kauf nicht bei Juden!”
TEHRAN, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday there was no need to hold talks with the West over the country’s disputed nuclear activities.
“Iran’s nuclear issue has been resolved … We will hold no talks (with major powers) over this issue. There is no need for talks,” Ahmadinejad told state television.
So that’s that. Or is it?
