"Envy and Resentment"

Belatedly, I put my hand on a rather mangled hard-copy of the week-end before last's Jerusalem Post and saw this, which I can't seem to find in the on-line edition. In case you have trouble seeing the paper through the reader provided, it's a very short news-in-brief item, the gist of which is that a periodical of Tel Aviv University's law dept (Theoretical Inquiries in Law) has been ranked top of all law periodicals published outside the US in a recent review. Under the perverse aura cast in this era of boycotts, it's satisfying to note that the review process considered over 200 periodicals published outside the US, including a good number submitted from Boycotting Britannia, and that this relatively young Israeli journal should lead the pack.

Boycott that, you noodles!

I held off publishing partly because I couldn't come up with a title I liked, opting to leave it as the last word of the then post - "noodles" - which seemed somehow too kind. I'd wanted to develop the post along the lines of how this story of the TAU journal outshining all, including the Boycotting Brits, brought to mind an aspect of what I can't help thinking must motivate the BDS bonkers brigade. But then I got too depressed by the task of articulating it and, as usual, gave up on the post, distracted by the horrors perpetually peppering my present - more like plaguing if not persecuting it, but don't get me started...

Anyway, the title came to me just now, as I was reading The Dude on BHL. At least that, for the task of articulation remains apparently too depressing for BBA in these "dark times" and besides, in essence, isn't it just really obvious -- that age-old characteristic of that age-old hatred -- so let the title suffice, since BBA's capacities are currently being diverted (indeed, spent) in the struggle simply to survive the swamp, such that BHL via The Dude or whatever will have to do in the circumstances...

Harry's Place and the Bullies of UCU

I once drew comfort from the assumption, erroneous as I now discover, that UCU's near-Stalinist modus operandi could safely be regarded as confined solely to the contained sphere of operation of UCU itself. Dangerous and damaging as that has proven to be for many union members, BBA's experience being by no means unique in this regard, I felt somehow relieved by the thought that such mechanisms of intimidation & silencing would have no traction outside the fascist organization which UCU risks becoming, oh so insistently, compulsively even (to the point that my caveat of a conditional there - through the notion of risk - ought not really to be there but, hey, only BBA here, still, whatever remains there, and I'll do caveats, the lot, naturally falling back into the patterns of denial which gets one dwelling by the swamp, and then to continue, often flailing helplessly as now...).

Well, how wrong I have turned out to be. For it would appear that people at UCU are not content merely to muzzle the majority of the most effective and trenchant of the anti-boycotters who, as members of this union, have been forced to expend vast quantities of time and energy responding to the vile bile which passes for solidarity within our union, silenced (e.g.) for nothing other than their valiant efforts to stem the virulent antisemitism which has been allowed to become rife in UCU. No, now it would appear that UCU or, at the very least, people closely connected with it and its racist boycott campaign, have set the net far wider still and are presently engaging in their usual threats and tactics of intimidation, only this time it's out there in public, in full view, for all to see, and not merely behind closed academic doors, as has happened to date, in the deepest and most frightening secrecy imaginable, courtesy of UCU HQ, apparently adamant to protect none but the racists.

Today, it's not just us handful of beleaguered academics who emerge black & blue from the experience. No, now it's this whole wide world of a web of ours which is rendered vulnerable to the bullying ways of the boycotters. Today, Harry's Place has been taken down for nothing at all, nothing but the shedding of some light on the goings on within UCU and the racist filth which passes for solidarity on the activists list (aka the Bigot's Playground).

More details to follow, when I know them, and no doubt on Harry's Place, as soon as it is up and running again, which I hope will be imminently; the less time the better, for this is a most dangerous precedent indeed. For now, here's what I could find: Modernity, with some background (and an update), which put me onto this link, amusingly named after the bully in question, and presently functioning as an ersatz Harry's Place while the real site is temporarily down.

I feel bound to break this silence into which I am ever having to retreat, such is the nature of my existence over here by the swamp, this mire of myriad monstrousness - the whole saga involving Harry's Place and the UCU bullies being but the latest example of what, in essence, happens constantly over at the Bigot's Playground. And it's a rather salutary example at that, in so far as it makes transparent what is usually more carefully & heavily obfuscated in - although invariably characteristic to - the style of argument (if it can be called argument) of a boycotter. And no doubt in this salutary property lies the real cause for Harry's Place having to fend off the bullies at present. I feel compelled to speak out today, even if these days I mostly find myself speechless again, beyond words, for I want to register my alarm at this very troubling development, which risks doing to the blogosphere what has been done to my union, which now functions solely as a reliable source for a most abominable hate-fest, thanks to union debates being conducted on terms which ensure that the only speech which ever gets protected is that of the racists.

Update - late the following day...
Phew!

Another UCU Congress... Another Racist Motion

This just in, about what emerged this time out of the swamp of swamps:

The University and College Union (UCU) has today passed a motion that would allow for the reintroduction of a boycott of Israeli academia.

At its annual congress in Manchester, the motion was passed without debate and by a show of hands.

I despair...

I've not forgotten my pledge of the other day but today is not a day for writing. Just despair...

Beyond Words: Post Hydra

BBA has been having a hard time surviving by the swamp since the last post, way back, the upshot of which has been this silence which has prevailed in the ensuing - another spell for which I find myself apologizing to you, yet again... Thanks for your perseverance and understanding in keeping up with BBA through this ordeal, for staying with me in spite of my silence and even growing in number. That must defy some kind of blogging law, surely. Anyway, thank you...

Apparently, such spells have become a regular feature of my job these days - you'd have thought I would have become accustomed by now to the scene around here, to the point that I wouldn't descend into this state time and again. Yet descend I do, each time this beast resurfaces, for I am left incredulous by what I see, unable to make sense of the manifest travesty which is being made of our anti-racism commitments, as I observe those I might once most have expected to understand what's required to promote equality, in fact, massively falling foul of our anti-racism laws, and willingly, knowingly & obviously so - indeed, in some cases, wearing this breach as some kind of preposterous and deeply nauseating badge of honour!

From today's warped perspective, it's an honour not merely incontestably to reveal, beyond all doubt, how much dereliction of duty there is about here amongst critical actors in the fight against racism - our unions and our academics who ought to be showing the way in how the duty to promote equality is to be discharged. It's an honour flagrantly to flout laws aimed at achieving greater social equality and eliminating discrimination in society. It's an honour to expend precious resources and divert the whole academic corpus, away from the pressing core issues we face today, towards instigating, year upon year, the absolute antithesis of that to which this duty is meant to conduce.

I hope it's obvious wherein lies the cause for this silence even if it's presently apparently still too challenging & debilitating for more direct expression, such that, instead, in the interim, this blog has had to speak louder through silence, beyond words...

Just like Hercules, it took some friends to get there in the end, bringing fire to the labour. Here, virtually and anonymously, for this blog has attracted others to come on here to proffer an explanation or at least a clue for this silence, by giving testament when I have been left speechless all this time, flailing about close to the edge, having ventured too near the swamp and the horrors it conceals, then finding myself shocked & terrorized into silence by what I have seen, and by the stalker-bullying ways of this lot, lost in so many senses, not least, lost for a way to describe what the scene over here has been looking like since I was last in touch.

~~~~~~~

This clue can be found in some comments which have been left to my last post by this blog's erstwhile whistleblowers who heroically come on here to perform the necessary task of shedding some light on what has been going on behind closed academic doors around here, when I've manifestly been in no position to do so. If this blog does nothing else, at least that. Thank you!

A word of explanation about the comments: they are extracts from the discussion list hosted by UCU supposedly for its activists to further core union aims & objectives. As you'll see, in fact, what the list confirms and enacts is the exact opposite: a breach of the same. Readers may remember this list under the label it goes by on this blog and elsewhere: the Bigot's Playground. I recognize the text reproduced in these comments as I have had the great misfortune of having had to read these messages, and many others like them, in more or less real time, as they were sent, for I am registered as a subscriber to this list and now no longer have the luxury but to torture myself with it regularly, given developments (masochistically, I fear, for this act continues to be put to little tangible effect to date, as you may well imagine given my silence even on here - well, no effect beyond inducing and worsening this state of terror all this seems to put me in!).

For those with the incredible luck not to be in this 'privileged' position, I thought an explanation might be needed to clarify what is catalogued in these comments: the poster or posters who sent these messages (as 'anonymous') must either be UCU members themselves or people to whom list messages have been leaked (for, yes, even though it's a list whose secrecy is being policed to near-Stalinist extremes (about which, more in a forthcoming post), its contents are apparently all the while being liberally leaked, to the point of making this secrecy a frightening sham whose only objective can be to protect the racists!). The name which appears at the bottom of most of the comments on the hydra thread is the name of the UCU member who originally sent out the message in question to some 700-odd sorry subscribers to that list. Frighteningly, many of the original authors of these messages work as academics here in Boycotting Britannia, would you believe, a few even in top posts at well-regarded universities...

~~~~~~~

In case the language I have been using of late to describe this beast of a boycott strikes some as objectionable, just check out those comments. This is nothing if not terrifying and monstrous, and the comments give the measure of how toxic and poisonous a working environment I am having to face here as BBA in result. Given the nature of the 'argument' on display in these comments, it seems fitting that all this has been, as it were, dumped following the hydra post where I first called upon the myth to capture the scenario unfolding over here.

Since my last blog post, I've been trying to find what it takes to earn some distance from what I observe, sufficiently to react in time to set the context. It would probably have been clearer had our whistleblowers had a more up-to-date post on which to dump this stuff, giving an account of what's been going on in and around the bigot's playground of late, but that post's even more overdue than this one and is, I promise, imminently forthcoming. It's even worse, if you can believe, than that which can be seen through the window on all of this which the hydra comments furnish. Truly frightening happenings around here, over by the swamp...

It was Zkharya who first got me worrying about applying the myth to this context, in a comment over at Engage (a much belated thanks, as ever, for the great honour of the link...). Thinking through one of Zkharya's objections lead me to the realization that I was drawn to use the language of this myth not particularly because of our monster itself, although clearly the obvious parallels in its properties and nature first got me thinking along these lines: the fact that the monster keeps reappearing when it ought to have been put to rest long ago, many, MANY times over; its poisonous & nefarious effects on our campuses, our 'civil' society debates and our principles of equality and non-discrimination - all of which should have functioned by now to rid us of this particular beast when, in truth, the very opposite has transpired, allowing it to grow into such a monster as to defy all that which should so obviously have defeated it; and leaving BBA thereby more terrorized in the experience...

But what gave the myth its salience at the time lies more in the character of Hercules, the labour and not particularly the monster, as a way of representing my feelings about the nature of the role I seem to have landed myself in, merely by dint of having chosen to work in this profession, innocent (or, more accurately, in denial) of the fact that this would entail working in an environment where such beasts would be allowed to keep spewing out this sort of venom, for this long, with this frequency, this ferocity. It was the Herculean task I felt to be required of me in such circumstances which made it have resonance. So Herculean, in fact, that in the ensuing I felt defeatist again, without what it takes to survive in such an environment; and thus, silence once again took over.

My point was not particularly that the boycotters are beastly, although they clearly are, as the extracts which have been attached to the hydra post patently attest. The point, rather, was more to highlight the fight which is required of me, one I would need to feel like Hercules to fight. And since I am not Hercules, what did I do? Yes, BBA, through and through...

I'll even confess, just so that you get a fuller picture, pathetic as it is, that I had qualms about the naming & shaming I was acquiescing in by leaving the comments unmoderated and I even investigated how I might edit some of these hydra messages (there's no way which I discovered...). As you know, even if I try to conjure up an image of a monster in growing into this role I never conceived of having to take on, I have, in fact, been annoyingly decent & civil to these boycotter types: I've not named them or even reproduced their toxic filth on here but resorted, in my meekness, merely to reproducing the objection of anti-boycotters to the same. Oh so Herculean! So if I was bigging anyone up, I was in fact desperately trying to big myself up! And I apparently failed abysmally as things seem to have panned out...

~~~~~~~

Another poster on that Engage thread, YbA, suggests that perhaps a later labour in the myth would be suitable to describe the scene around here:

the Augean Stables (Herakles' 5th Labour) - the anti-boycotters need to divert the rivers of anti-racism and commonsense to wash away the filth

Which made me think of this site, of course, whose title is inspired by the 5th Labour but whose banner is illustrated with a picture of our labour of the swamps (I guess not too many paintings can exist of the 5th Labour for obvious reasons!).

YbA does well to bring up the image of large amounts of dung in describing the problem on our campuses these days - I used scatological references myself at the time the Walt & Mearsh show was playing on my campus, largely to let off steam during a rather nauseating moment which came to pass over here by the swamp. And it's dung - truck loads of it - which is poisoning debates amongst activists in my union and bringing my profession into disrepute.

What, this is solidarity?!

~~~~~~~

I think perhaps I might just possibly have worked myself to a position of greater robustness at present so, tentatively, I hereby pledge to blog more regularly. Thanks for all the links and the appreciation you've shown this blog. I will try to make your clicks more worthwhile from henceforth...

Let's just hope this spirit & pledge survive our imminent UCU Congress and that this swamp of swamps doesn't cause me to retreat into silence anew...

The Hydra of British Academia

Here in Boycotting Britannia, a monster lurks in the swamps, a monster which rises again and again to terrorize some of us who have to walk nearby. It terrorizes us with its most poisonous breath and the polluted air it leaves behind. And it reappears anew each time we thought it had gone away, apparently invincible, blusterously, as if unchallenged by the mechanisms which are meant to protect us from such beasts. Each time it looks to have been vanquished by these important weapons which we have long struggled to design and perfect, the monster returns somehow miraculously rejuvenated, reborn, and nothing seems to shield us effectively from its venom and belligerence; apparently - at least by the appearances UCU is keeping - not the protections aimed at safeguarding us from monsters such as this: our anti-racism laws and our guarantees of equality of treatment. Year after year - with each UCU Congress, swamp of swamps - the monster is resuscitated & emboldened. And with each year, it gets uglier, more beastly, more destructive, leaving greater damage in its wake. Legend has it that the hydra of the Lernaean swamps grew two heads (in some versions, three) in place of each one decapitated by Hercules. The more he fought the monster, the more ferocious and bold it became. As Ovid puts it, in Metamorphoses:

It throve on wounds: of all its hundred heads I cut off one but from its neck two more sprang to succeed it, stronger than before! [9. 69 ff (trans. Melville)]

And so it seems with this beast of an academic boycott: the more we fight it, the more it is cut down, the stronger it seems to re-emerge, year upon year, undaunted by the clear disapprobation of those the union is meant to represent, the overwhelmingly anti-boycott majority in the rank & file (as gleaned in a variety of reliable branch & other polls - short, of course, of the show-stopping ballot of UCU members which the boycotters so fear and contrive to avoid); emboldened, apparently, by a whole compendium of legal opinion, obtained through wasteful expenditure of union resources which are meant to be so scarce, each one attesting to the racist & illegal nature of this campaign, culminating, let us not forget, in the opinion of counsel authored in 2007 by none other than the godfather of our anti-discrimination and human rights laws. If none of this could stop this beast's destructive sweep, what will it take?

Not even half a year after it seemed to have been conclusively & categorically found to be in breach of those laws, marking yet another of those shameful moments when British unions seemed to want to be the instigators of racism, at the very earliest opportunity, the beast returns and UCU is yet again pushing a racist and illegal proposal. (For previous sightings of this monster and the story of the battle against it, see here.)

Remember, the hydra killed with its poisonous breath, just as this boycott beast harms with its venomous hot air, constantly blowing in places like the Bigot's Playground (UCU Activist List) all this time, regardless of the official position; and now, yet again, officially, by the terms of this latest proposed UCU motion, which wants to mandate yet more of this toxic, hateful posturing up & down our campuses, as if they are not already bad enough.

If we look to the Hydra myth for how this will turn out, it's not looking too good. The only way Hercules came out victorious was to burn the monster's severed stumps, thereby cauterizing the wounds and preventing regeneration of any more of those deadly heads. Why does UCU insist on playing so perilously close to the fire?

If only this were just the stuff of myths...

photo credit (Narcisse Berchere after Gustave Moreau)

Update on the Bigot's Playground

I checked the UCU List again at some point after the last posting on the subject. Eight messages had, by that stage, been posted on there since I'd last stopped by, half of which - no less! - were castigating Israel for something or other. We're regaled with the greatest of detail, you understand, when it comes to Jewish wrong-doing - however obscure, you might think, since not even Britain's wrong-doing is accorded this degree of scrutiny, especially not its occupations (plural); and however obviously irrelevant to the core business of UCU. Obvious & malignantly obsessive, that is, to every one other than the boycotters who have made the List their own little bigot's playground for acting out their various messed-up issues.

I find the List is so horrendous & frightening each time I take a look that I need a while to build up resistance to log on again; so I've ended up doing it every three days or so, to keep things as healthy as can be expected in the circumstances.

So toxic is this forum that I quickly stopped allowing these messages to pollute my inbox in real time. I 'graduated' onto the daily option, so that an indecipherable digest would, day in, day out, keep me abreast of what passes for union activism & international solidarity in Boycotting Britannia. When even that was too much, I switched to the weekly option; and now, dear reader, I do it in my own time, when I can face it!

Pretty infrequently, as I said. But last time, when I found those eight new messages, four of which were bashing Israel, that was the last straw and I resolved not to check back again. Effectively, I became unwilling to be an active member of UCU if this is what it takes. Since then, I've been pondering with renewed vigour those perennial questions about my membership in UCU and I've been on the verge of resigning. Nothing out of the ordinary there then!

Today, however, I was catching up over at Harry's Place and the name of one of the List's boycotters-extraordinaire came up so I braved it and logged on, to see what's up. Sure enough: the first two messages I came across concerned - you guessed it - Jewish wrong-doing again (from him, of course). I couldn't be bothered to read the rest - I mean, what's the point?

It's beyond clear that the List has been colonized by boycotters acting out their identity issues & prejudices and every one else is apparently so put off by the spectacle that they are giving the List a very wide berth, just like this BBA was trying to do! In short, the List has been rendered redundant thanks to its having been trifled with by these boycotters and the use they make of it for the purposes of demarcating the boundaries of their sickness.

That being said, despite all this, I still find myself self-berating for having found no better way than this to react to these bullies. I totally agree with one of the valiant anti-boycotters on there, the same heroic academic I quoted in the last post, when he says:

as a Unionist, I cannot and will not abrogate my responsibility to challenge all the spectre of antisemitism wherever it appears, including and especially, in the midst of my own Union

This was in response to the exasperated cry voiced by one amidst what I hope is the silenced multitude of UCU members aghast at the List having been corrupted to serve the boycotters' identity crises & prejudices. At regular intervals, some voice of reason tries to intervene to suggest a separate list be created just for the pleasure of the bully-boycotting-babies wanting to throw their toys out of the pram (invariably when an anti-boycotter rightly raises the issue of antisemitism) so that the rest of the union can get on with its core business.

The expert on antisemitism is right, of course, to flag the important union business which this shameful run of events brings up: if the union is to stand for anything given how bad things have become here in Boycotting Britannia, surely it's to take a firm stand against racism and not allow itself to be overtaken in the waging of the racist campaign which is this bonkers boycott. A campaign which apparently seems to have survived the anti-discrimination & human rights laws which halted the official boycott, existing now in the on-tap outlet which UCU gives for what is effectively bigoted propaganda targeting the familiar scapegoat - since virtually no other wrong-doing gets posted on there, including Britain's own! - sent out courtesy of UCU HQ to a group of academics whose opinions percolate, as they do, through to the rest of society. Judging by what wrong-doing is publicized in this list, it's the familiar target which gets ascribed as the font & essence of all evil. Like I say, pure racist propaganda and this, from a union which prides itself for its anti-racism!

"Excuse me, but you sound just like the far right"

The sound in question was that made by the boycotters over here in Boycotting Britannia over the week-end...

Google Hits

My site meter is revelatory. When I checked it today for the first time in ages, it informed me that one of the top ten Google searches which have lead people to this blog is:

"Lord Lester" Jew

I don't know why I'd still be shocked, given how I've not descended into this boycotted state for nothing. But still, this shocks me. Google explains the significance of searches involving the word Jew. Obviously, whatever the term used, the nature of the inquiry here says it all. The word is just added confirmation - as if one were needed!

~~~~~~

Yet more evidence of how these boycotters seem to be going about dealing & coming to terms with UCU's opinion from counsel. You know, the one which confirms they've been devoting themselves all this time to a racist campaign, tirelessly committed to instigating bigoted discrimination on our campuses. Well, nothing like proving the charge in how one pursues one's defence!

At least that's clear & transparent then, none of the fine distinctions by which this sort of racism is usually masked. Like this one, set in stone as UCU diktat, decreed in the very same boycott motion whose non-boycotting elements are apparently preserved to this day:

criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic

If ever they need evidence that this proposition is false, there they have it - really, really close to home!

If UCU insists that this part of the motion survives, they might want to check out the definition of antisemitism put forward by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (formerly the European Monitoring Centre). As it stands, the proposition enshrined in UCU Motion 30 is just a useful cloak for racists and we all know how UCU has been cloaking in regal cloth and technicolour fibre all summer long a campaign which has now, and very belatedly, been recognized as discriminatory & unlawful.

Since I know of no way one can successfully or even plausibly claim that criticism of Israel - that all & any criticism of Israel - amounts to antisemitism, it's hard to fathom what exactly this part of the motion contributes to anything. It's an inversion, in fact, of how the issue of antisemitism enters the field, since that claim would amount to saying that Israel is exceptional and should be held accountable for its actions in a different way to all other nations; when, in reality, the opposite claim is that which makes the possibility of antisemitism salient. It's precisely when Israel is being held to higher, stricter or more exacting standards than other nations that one is caused to search for some other explanation.

If this part of Motion 30 survives, it would be important for UCU to explain that account has been taken of the definition proposed at the European supra-national level, to which we've often refered to instigate advances in our equality provisions and protections from discrimination. The EU definition rephrases the proposition:

criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic

And that's on the back of the EU having noted the various "ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel" and the criticism it receives (listed in the above link). At the very least, if this part of Motion 30 is to survive, it would need to be restated, factoring in qualification to take in those occasions when criticism of Israel does indeed amount to antisemitism.

Classically. As this Googling activity demonstrates.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And we should not forget, in pondering all of this, that one, and only one, motion failed to be carried unanimously at Congress in the cluster of motions dealing with equality/freedom from discrimination issues - can you guess? Yup, you got it :

Antisemitism in the UK and Europe (Barnet College, Hendon)

This union notes:
The 31% Increase in antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2006 over those in 2005.
The OSCE Berlin and Cordoba Declarations on the rise of antisemitism.
The Working Definition on Antisemitism of the European Union Monitor Centre.
The Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism in the UK.

Believes that:
Antisemitism is becoming acceptable in the UK including on University campuses.
Universities must ensure that staff and students work in an atmosphere free from any racial discrimination and intimidation.

Resolves to:
Produce guidelines on antisemitism as part of its anti- racism campaigning.
Develop programmes with the CRE and The Board of Deputies of British Jews to educate academics and students about the dangers of antisemitism.
Implement all the recommendations of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism especially those relating to campus antisemitism

Notwithstanding that the motion wasn't passed, let's hope that UCU now applies itself to fulfilling the duties highlighted here, notably that it should work to ensuring "that staff and students [are able again to] work in an atmosphere free from any racial discrimination and intimidation." It has been a long time since I felt my workplace offered anything approximating this atmosphere and prime contributor, of course, with the brutal hit of its symbolic baggage, has been this boycott campaign which UCU bent over (and, I fear, near ruined) itself hosting and platforming.

Let's hope that the opinion from counsel obtained by UCU recently will be helpful to our union in understanding its broader duties more effectively in regard to promoting freedom from discrimination & intimidation on campus, rather than sorely exacerbating it. Judging by this boycott experience, there is obviously much to learn.