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The proposed visit of the controversial historian David Irving to the NUI, Galway Literary & Debating Society has been cancelled. In a statement the Lit & Deb said the cancellation was “due to security concerns and restrictions imposed by the university authorities”. |
http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/17384
Great news.
Good ‘ol wiki gave me this: "Laser pointers can temporarily blind cameras,[43] and higher powered lasers can damage them. However, since most lasers are monochromatic, colour filters can reduce the effect of laser pointers. However filters will also impair image quality and overall light sensitivity of cameras (see laser safety article for details on issues with filters). Also, complete protection from infrared, red, green, blue and UV lasers would definitely require use of completely black filters, rendering the camera useless."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_camera
Any infomation on the strengths / weaknesses of various different camera types, which have greater resolution, IR capacities ect ect would also be welcome.
Here is an interview with the commission vice president Margot Wallström.
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+ YouTube Video |
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ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don’t have Flash installed. |
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The European commission is also pumping in millions of Euro in "information campaigns" in Ireland right now.
Here is the wikipedia entry on what the Lisbon Treaty will mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lisbon_Treaty
What are your thoughts?
* Different organizations and individuals from Venezuela with tradition in the social struggles linked to different anti-authoritarian and critical leftist approaches, with whom we have converged at the space called INSURGENTES, set position before the exhumations of the Caracazo.
* Diferentes organizaciones y personas de Venezuela, con trayectorias en las luchas sociales, vinculadas a diversos planteamientos de izquierda crítica y anti-autoritaria, que hemos confluido en el espacio INSURGENTES, así como otras organizaciones sociales, políticas y activistas del país y de diversos lados del mundo, fijamos posición ante las exhumaciones del Caracazo.
Well apparently September is fashion season in London. This is probably not common knowledge in the left blogosphere. In fact, as somebody who invariably dresses in bad leather jackets and beanies, catwalk events barely registered on my radar until the shitstorm kicked up a few years ago about so-called ’size zero’ models. It was a strange moment in time, when – on the surface – the Daily Mail seemed to be saying things that feminists had always said. At the time I was skeptical about the simplistic and depoliticised manner in which images of skinny women were connected to anorexic behaviour. Equally I was instinctively uncomfortable with the demands made that city councils – such as London or Milan – should issue ordnances regulating the size and shape of women who appeared in public.
Today the rhetoric is still being regurgitated, if in a less hysterical manner. This is in part because the fashion industry has moved on. This year the media have been congratulating some designers for using models who are a little less thin. Mark Fast, in particular, has won attention for his apparently bold decision to use a size 14 model. Yet implicit in such praise has been the same, actually quite unwarranted, vitriol towards skinny women that has been pedalled since the size zero controversy first blew up.
As the Telegraph’s Daniella Agnelli put it in her praise for Fast’s decision, “Mark’s vision is of a more womanly woman.” (My emphasis). Elsewhere the shift has been repeatedly described in terms of models beginning to look more like “real women”. In this sense the attacks on skinny or size zero celebrities are not all that different from more traditional, and more explicitly sexist commentary about women’s appearances. Skinny women are deemed not only to be aesthetically unappealing but to stand outside the boundaries of true womanhood. When a woman becomes too thin she is seen to negate her human and feminine essence.
Perhaps the chief red herring in all of this is the appeal to nature. Skinny celebrities are constantly contrasted with those of a more “natural” appearance. You only have to consider it for a minute to realise that this line of thinking is utter nonsense. If I asked you to draw a picture of what a woman looked like “naturally” you would not be able to. This is because throughout human history the shape and appearance of both male and female bodies has been mediated by culture and by social circumstances. It has varied by place and time. As such, to deliniate a certain range of body shapes – usually around sizes 12-18 – as natural, and all others as a perversion of nature, is somewhat arbitrary.
Meanwhile it remains completely acceptable to be utterly vitriolic about the appearance of skinny women. Thus the likes of Paris Hilton and Victoria Beckham face constant rants about how scrawny they are. Part of the logic behind such attacks is that such women promote anorexia and bulemia. I remember, when the shitstorm about skinny celebrities was in full swing, seeing an article in a women’s magazine by a woman who claimed that a particular femal celebrity – and indeed a particular picture of her – had “caused” her daughter’s anorexia. We recently have been treated to the mirror image of such arguments with claims that fat celebrities encourage obesity.
Behind both of the above a frankly disturbing approach to women’s bodies. Women may be fat or thin, famous or unseen. But the point is surely that women’s bodies are NOT a public utility. They should not be expected to shape their bodies in such a way as to promote healthy eating or positive body images or to meet any other public interest criterion. If many women are risking their health and well being to copy ultra-skinny filmstars this raises questions that are far broader than ‘what can we do about air brushing’ or ‘how can we change the shape of female celebrities’. Rather we should be asking about the way such images are recieved and responded to, rather than simply taking this as a given. We should be asking about why our culture is so top down, why millions want to ape a a tiny number of people, and why men and women apparently respond differently to certain cultural signals – why for example a picture of some muscular male celebrity doesn’t drive millions of men to excessive gym use. This, of course, would mean talking about power, politics and patriarchy, rather than simply BMIs and waist measurements.
Security officers stopped the man when he rushed toward the stage at Bilgi University, where Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been giving a lecture.
Other demonstrators unfurled a banner and chanted "go away IMF, you’re stealing money," said Gillian Morris, a CNN intern who attended the session and witnessed the incident. Turkish security officers dragged the protesters out of the assembly hall.
Strauss-Kahn, who joked about the incident afterward, was not hit.
The head of the International Monetary Fund is visiting Istanbul ahead of a World Bank/IMF conference scheduled for next week.