Back foul (but somewhat useful) spammer!

[lovingboth]

OK, to download the document by the academic at Nottingham getting crap for looking after the interest of one of his students who was arrested as a terrorist for reading a book available on a US government website, I had to log into evilfacebook and say yes, Srcibd can spam me and know stuff from evilfacebook.

I've now stopped Srcibd spamming me. How do I revoke their permission to look at my stuff on evilfacebook?

(You can - and probably should - read it without touching evilfacebook, but it's 112 pages long...)

Comments

[barakta]

This. I'm assuming the "subscriptions" by people is scribd and facebook automagically doing it? Ugh.

I might circulate the article amongst our lot if it is good given the abysmal "terrorism on campus" "you need to let us know of any suspicions" stuff we got last yr.

[lovingboth]

Yeah. I think I have opted out of everything short of deleting the account, but..

Oh, it's entirely typical of somewhere whose management think they are only answerable to ghod.

Someone noticed that someone - a Muslim!!! - had a book called 'Al Quaida training manual' and reported them. The anti-terrorist squad got involved, then someone else from the university told the police the book was 'illegal'. That student was doing an MA on terrorism, the document was from the US Dept of Justice / Amazon, actually mostly from the 1950s and written by a different lot (it was renamed by the US to sex it up, and a better version is obtainable from Nottingham's library) didn't seem to matter. He and a friend were released after seven days (thank you Labour anti-terrorism laws) but still appear as a 'major Al Quaida plot'.

Of course, the university's response is what you'd expect - smear and try to throw the student out, then go after the academics who went 'hang on...'

[barakta]

That's totally what the police were asking us as "welfare" bods to do. My colleagues were way way cynical!

[memevector]

See my other reply to lovingboth. I don't think you'll want to circulate the article itself - only a pretty interested person who enjoys reading would get through its entire length. But if someone does a summary of it, that would be well worth propagating. I might do one, I'm not sure yet.

[memevector]

If you've got a downloaded copy now, could you email it to me? I was thinking I might blog about the whole thing. Thanks in advance if so.

I was reading it on-screen on Scribd yesterday (I didn't have to tick any boxes for that so I hope they're not going to spam me). I only got to page 94 though - not the fault of it being on screen, just his prose style which I was a bit overloaded with by then. I appreciate him taking the trouble to write it all up, and it sounds likely to me that it's all true, though I'm not in a position to verify it. But I really don't think he's done himself any favours with the tone and style of his article (which seems to get sarkier and more overtly hostile as he goes along, and is pretty repetitive). "Labour the point why don't you?!" I think it'd be far easier to read if he'd just explained as clearly as possible ONCE and let the facts speak for themselves.

Have you been reading it? what do you reckon?

[memevector]

oh, our comments "crossed" - so you have been reading it then.

[lovingboth]

Will do.

I was ok with the style, but this sort of thing is my reaction to being pissed off too. Plus, given the repeated statements by the university that it's an 'illegal' book, repeating that it isn't seems reasonable.

[lovingboth]

I was more upset by the way whatever he used to lay it out doesn't do widows and orphans properly, but that's probably Word for you.

[memevector]

::amused::

Copy has arrived - thanks.

[rhialto]

Here is a description of the article with what seems like an abstract of it: http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/5/5/terrorism-academia-special-britains-university-of-nottingham.html
I hate scribd for the fact that it won't let you download stuff without logging in, and most if it doesn't work without javascript either. I haven't found a usable copy online yet.