We dont need no education: a short update

Hey comrades! Its been a while. So I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you whats been happening... well, largely nothing if I'm honest. There have been a couple of political things I would of blogged about but I have been lazy and because they happened a while ago now, I'm not sure I am going to do a retrospective post as I have done in the past.

But if I do give them a quick mention, one thing was that we had a speaker from the friends of Israel come in to give us a talk on the situation in the middle east.

The main thing I remember was he went shit on shitloads about how the middle east and Israel was so important to us because of the technological innovation and the oil that came from those places which our economies relied on heavily. Now, at the end when he was taking questions, I asked him something along the lines of "as you mentioned oil so much, is it not true that the US and the UK governments are largely supporting Israel for economic interests". He flatly denied it and didn't really answer my question but did make an effort to backtrack on his mention of oil and said Israel does not have any oil so he did not know what I was talking about. He also managed to bob and weave around other questions which concerned Palestine and the wall. He completely glossed over the repression and only went so far as to say "there have been atrocities committed by both sides". I think many anarchists would agree with me and say we should not be supporting the Palestinian rebels either , but I still find this to be rather sweeping over a huge issue. Another reason why I didn't make a blog about this was because it would of been too similar too my other blogs in the sense that it would be condemning the false sense of political neutrality this guy espoused, at the beginning he tried to make clear that he wanted to just give the facts and be un bias, showing both sides. Coming from an organization called friends of Israel, I don't think I was the only one who called bullshit. I don't really know about the organization and what they do but from the name I would suggest they are certainly partisans of one side of the conflict.

So to bring us into the present day, I have now sat all but one of my final A2 exams, the grand finale of which is my film studies exam on Thursday. It will be the longest exam I have ever sat, 2 hours and 45 minutes. For those that might express a casual concern, despite not revising nearly as much as I should of, I think I did alright on all of my other ones. I even managed to get in a bit of an anarchist point of view at the end of a question in my politics paper, "Nationalism is a single doctrine" - Discuss. I finished my politics A level in a black T shirt with the red A on it. I believe the term I'm looking for is fuck yes.

After Thursday, unless I get absolutely terrible results and my parents force me to re sit the year, which I don't think is likely if I find a job in the summer before the next academic year, that will be the end of my school career. I'm not going to university, well at least not now, I may well do it in my adult life, I don't know what will happen. Because I don't know whats going to happen, Im doing two things, or rather doing one thing and not doing another thing. Im setting my expectations low. When I got my AS results of E, D, C B it sort of came as a shock as I walked out of my history exams thinking I had done really well because of the questions, as did almost everyone in my class.

My E was in music technology, which fucking sucks because I think it was largely down to technical fuck ups, I lost my whole mix of one bit of recording coursework accidentally because our teacher had said to apply a mastering effect when we had done. He showed us in Cubase SX3, but all our projects were worked on in the other room, which was Cubase 4. So I opened my project in Cubase SX3 and applied the mastering effect, only to realize because they were different version, it essentially deleted all the effects, levels, everything, off my project. I could not find previous versions or back ups for whatever reason and essentially had to mix it again in a bout an hour. For my sequencing bit of coursework, I think I sent it off with a bass solo. I had recorded a keyboard solo accidentally onto the bass track and I could not for some reason move it back to the keyboard track. I had ignored the problem and had forgot to get it fixed before I sent it off.

In reality, I think my final results will go something like this. Politics - C, History - D, Film - B (music tech was only an AS).

So after Thursday, this blog will no longer be specifically calling bullshit on political stuff at my school like a junior version of Julian Assange only more anarchist and less whistle blowing type liberal. I suspect I will still be writing about education but I will other wise probably plunge into the anarchy and chaos (I use this expression ironically) of miscellaneous topical comment and random rants/articles.

Finally, I just want to express solidarity and post this link to a statement AWOL have made on sexual harassment in activist space since I met one person concerned and mentioned in this interview a couple days ago at Red and Black Social Club.

http://angrywomen.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/awol-statement-on-sexual-harassment-in-activist-spaces/