alexist

According to this week's JC, George Galloway was censured by the National Union of Students for the following:

"Hizbollah has never been a terrorist organisation. I am here to glorify the Lebanese resistance, Hizbollah, and to glorify the resistance leader, Hassan Nasrallah."

The NUS motion pointed out that Hizbollah has been implicated in several attacks, including the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. It further pointed out that Nasrallah is an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier.

Galloway's response? "NUS is out of touch with public opinion".

Nothing like hating Israel so much that you glorify Holocaust denying Islamist fascists. So much for being a socialist. Respect, the biggest joke of a political party in existence.

new flat is in N3. It's not very far over the N3/N12 border, but on the other side it is. Our GP surgery's catchment is N12 and N20 only. So we'll have to go through the hassle of finding a new GP. Since many of Barnet's surgeries are full, it could be a pain...

I just got back from seeing Tideland (new Terry Gilliam film). It was.... odd. I liked it, I think. I was prepared for some rather discomforting scenes (an early one was mentioned in the Guardian review) but wasn't fully prepared. I'll spare you the gruesome details. Suffice it to say that I was actually kind of glad the drinks machine was out of order (no non-diet in cans either) and hence I hadn't gotten any snacks.

There was one thing that annoyed me, though. The characters all spoke with Southern accents. The setting was blatantly not the south. My immediate reaction was "Alberta" (no idea why) and it turned out I wasn't far off. It was filmed in Saskatchewan. I can't think of anywhere in the US South that looks like the Canadian prairies. Maybe central Texas. But most of the south is much wetter, not to mention hotter, than Saskatchewan. (And the southern plains states tend to be flatter.) Compared to this, Brokeback Mountain (Alberta standing in for Wyoming) was a perfect substitute. At least they're both in the same mountain range.

(The film was partly funded by some Canadian film group, so of course they had to film there...)

I did like Howard Jacobson's column on Richard Ingrams' suggestion that anyone supporting Israel should declare whether or not they're Jewish. It was an exceptionally noxious suggestion coming from Ingrams, who, among other things, once declared that he wouldn't read any pro-Israel letter if the writer had a Jewish name. Because, of course, being Jewish automatically amounts to bias...

And his logic was as follows:
"Otherwise, the idea gains ground that Israel has a fifth column of politicians, commentators, businessmen, etc, in this country all seeking, at this time, in their different ways, to excuse or explain away Israeli atrocities in Lebanon and Gaza."

Of course, yes. Nasty tinge there. Are Catholics or Muslims a fifth column? (Remember, here, the idea that Jews have a split loyalty and act against their home countries is a recurrent anti-Semitic theme, and to suggest it is not nice.)