Maybe he is anti-Semitic, and he was hiding it for the camera. But I doubt you can hide that kind of conviction. Ultimately, I’d like to belief that he just picked the wrong facts to focus on.

I used to get so angry abou Holocaust denial. First because I thought that to deny a massacre on that scale is to remove blame on the Nazis and forget about the main civillian victims of WW2. I also thought that to deny something like that means that we might not deal with the underlying problem and that it will happen all over again.

But then I realised that the Jews are still using what happened to their grandfathers to justify all sorts of injustices, including killing civillians, breaking promises and making the Palestinians a non-people.

So I’ve becomes far less sympathetic to the Jews now, and I’ve rethought my position on Holocaust denial. I just think that a Holocaust denier is ultimately the same as someone who denies that the earth goes round the sun, or that the Bengal tiger is a highly endangered species. They are a moron. All Holocaust deniers aren’t the same in the sense they have different reasons for their beliefs. Some may actually believe the Holocaust happened but deny it because of an intense hatred of the Jews.

And I believe that the solution is to treat them like morons. When some mad scientist declares that the earth a flat disc balancing on the back of four turtles as it hurtles through space, we ignore him. We don’t even give him enough respect to spread his views as a sane and credible source. That’s what Holocaust deniers want in the end, all that attention and shock and controversy and maybe slowly convert the world. Imprisoning them only gives them more publicity, makes them look like matyrs and is a serious breach of the right to free thought/speech.

Instead we should use a form of social power to reject them. There is no better way to silence someone by being aloof and not even acknowledging what they are saying. Sort of like a gathering of 19th century socialites when someone does something unspeakably rude. They stare them down for a bit, then proceed to ignore them for the rest of the evening.

To be honest, I was actually hoping to be somewhere in the middle, preferably just below it, so that my room in the next two years will be decent. I suppose I could be all cheery and comforted in knowing tha tin my 3rd year, they’ll reverse the list. No. No reason to be cheery. Because by then, there will be at least 70 people above me who have gotten firsts. I have just about given up on a first because there was something like 5 SPS firsts last year. I am so fucked.

On a more happy note, I made the pleasant discovery while reading Kant yesterday that this most revered philosopher included aliens in his world view. He was just waffling on about how human beings are always seeking to extend and abuse their freedoms, and the general hopelessness of finding a selfless and just leader among men. Then he puts an asterix, and in a cute little footnote that anyone could have easily overlooked, he says,

“Man’s role is thus a highly artificial one. We do not know how it is with the inhabitants of other planets or with their nature, but if we ourselves execute this commission of nature well, we may surely flatter ourselves that we occupy no mean status among our neighbours in the cosmos. Perhaps their position is that each individual can fulfil his destiny completely within his own lifetime. With us it is otherwise; only the species as a whole can hope for this.”

TARDIS!!!

The thing is, before they go to Oxbridge, their posts are mostly fresh, witty and describe a whole variety of things that are happening to them. But after entering the two greatest schools in the world, their writing becomes tired and mechanical and always underlined by the same thread.

I should be working.

Basically, if you even halfway care about your work, work becomes a constant preoccupation. No matter what else is happening to you: drunken night out, fencing competition, your birthday, etc., there is always that horrible thought at the back of your head.

I should be working.

And I’ve also felt that after having to write so many 2000 word essays that need to be well-organised and technical, all the art has been sucked out of my soul. I don’t feel like writing AT ALL. Which is why weeds have grown over and covered the tombstone of my blog. I honestly wish for more thoughts to fill my head. Please. Any other thought that the neverending recurring theme:

I should be working.

Well, it’s my fault I suppose. Coming to Cambridge is a lifestyle choice. I knew what I was getting into. I wanted to get into it, so badly. But the downside is that work becomes such an integrated part of your lifestyle that you HAVE to think about it on a constant basis. It’s like being gay. You’ve come out and you have to admit to yourself that you can’t help it.

I really should be working. Watch me now as I inelegantly end this post and go back to my essay on globalisation and the death of the nation state.

The ladies are going back home to their beds,
Either lonely or dreams of roses filling their heads.
When outside that fucking February weather,
Is chilling the bone and making soggy coats wetter.

Their sweethearts are labouring, choosing the next 2 for 1,
Shuffling down aisles and having oodles of fun.
Gazing at chocolates ribboned up red and pink,
Wondering if they got the cheapest what the missus would think.

And as the sleet makes the roads slush with black water,
Randy ones are poking at brassieres and red garters.
Picking up the tatty ones, what could be dumber.
When all they need is a trip to Ann Summer’s.

Across the square young boys are nervously poking
At teddy bears, necklaces and other sparkly things.
The old ones look at the intiates sadly and sigh,
Now the poor sods will be at this every year till they die.

And because one of the fucking radiators in my room is broken.

And on Monday I had an 8 course dinner at Charlie Chan’s sponsored by Jardine. 8 full sized courses!!! We all took doggie bags home, and it was all really good. The odd thing was the Peking duck though. THey served the meat and the skin together on a plate..sor of shredded up but also half on the bone. And from the amount on the plate, it was either three ducks or a cassowary. I sat next to the master of magdalene, It wasn’t as scary as it sounds. He was quite nice, asked lots of questions, told jokes. And I’ve been inside the master’s lodge at Peterhouse. Yay!

Ok, must stop now. Have to go off and read about kinship.

Which makes it so awful that he has been forgotten, and so quickly. It started with a huge overreaction over an action that many people around the world thought was justified anyway, then ended with media neglect and Zaidi suffering far more than he deserves. Zaidi is the guy who threw his shoes at Bush.

And right now, he is languishing in an Iraqi prison, having had only one visit from his lawyer and one from his brother, both on Dec 21. His family have had no contact with him since, and have no idea where he is. Zaidi claims to have been beaten and tortured. His lawyer and brother report seeing Zaidi covered with bruises, and his lawyer referred to two medical reports by government physicians that showed injuries consistent with torture. Even if everyone is exaggerating, the fact that there has been no investigation into the claims, no access to a lawyer or family, shows that the Iraqi government cannot pretend, at least in this case, to be any better than Saddam. If the one positive outcome of the Iraq war was regime change, this regime isn’t doing too well at avoiding some of the crimes that Saddam committed.

Besides respecting Zaidi’s rights, I think that his maltreatment shows Bush’s and the Iraqi government’s obsession with good PR above all else. That an Iraqi should be thus treated for expressing an opinion and swaths of the population share, and not having caused any harm (except for making Bush a laughing-stock, which he was anyway) shows how little the Americans and Iraqi government care about Iraqis compared to their own image.

And of course, we the public have blessed Zaidi’s legitimate outburst with the impressive lightning flash of our attention span.

My stuff is mostly unpacked except for a few odds and ends. The first morning I was back, I was too tired to get my water filter out, so I boiled water straight from the tap and made tea. I was too sleepy to notice that anything was amiss until I started drinking the tea and saw that it was a dark and cloudy brown. That’s the one thing I cannot stand about this place, the hardness of the water. I don’t get how anyone can drink out of the tap here without being grossed out by the white bits floating in it.

It’s so nice to see everyone again. Annie and Clare came over and we had like a 3 hour conversation. I’m so glad that coming back has been easy so far (apart from having to rush a sociology essay, which has been done successfully). There was this horrible moment on the plane when I woke up and it was dark and I got this bout of homesickness. But everything’s alright now.

And it even feels good to do the mundane things again, like groceries. Which reminds me that I have to do groceries properly tomorrow. My stupid phone charger died on me today. So I bought a new one. Not a charger. A phone. Over here, the chargers cost more than the phones (well, the cheap phones anyway), so I thought, might as well.

1. Become adept at fixing radiators. When I get back to college, I am quite sure that the radiator under my third window will still not have been fixed. This is a recalcitrant radiator that enjoys misbehaving and causing general mischief during the long cold nights. I resolve to learn how to bring this impudent component of Trinity’s central heating system to heal.

2. Buy eggs. I have had my frying pan for the longest time and Sainbury’s is right downstairs. I have no idea why I went a whole term without cooking eggs. Actually, I do. I do not like washing the pan after making scrambled eggs and I’m too clumsy to make eggs over easy. However, coming back home has made me realise how much i have missed eggs and I promise to make a greater effort to buy eggs in the future.

3. Read more. Haha…yeahhhh….

4. Start jogging.. Right. A very good thing to do when it’s the first winter I’m ever experiencing.

5. Buy proper hot chocolate. None of that nonsense 34 calorie per serving, sugar free, instant cocoa shit. I resolve to get the mother of hot chocolates, but without the marshmallows because even now, the only marshmallows I can tolerate are the ones that I have held over a fire. Not the tiny ones that decide to go skinny dipping in my hot chocolate without permission and end up making a mess of themselves, my hot drink, and my entire afternoon.

There. They shouldn’t be too hard to follow.