Surveillance Education

 

Any technology created by the US military industrial complex and adopted by the general public was always bound to come with a caveat. To most, the internet, GPS, touch screen and other ubiquitous technologies are ordinary tools of the modern world. Yet in reality, these technologies serve “dual-uses”; while they convenience typical people, they also enable the mass coercion, surveillance and control of those very same people at the hands of the corporate and military state.

Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler, authors of “Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools,” join host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. They explore the software and technology systems employed in K-12 schools and higher education institutions that surveil students, erode minors’ privacy rights and, in the process, discriminate against students of color.

'International law is on a knife's edge'

 

In this episode of One on One, journalist and news editor Sondos Asem is sitting down with Francesca Albanese, an outspoken international human rights lawyer and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. She is the 8th person to hold that role, and the first woman.

She is a self-described “reluctant chronicler of Genocide”, as she has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza since 7 October. Within the past year, she has submitted two reports to the UN human rights council, where she outlined her legal opinion on why the attacks on the Palestinian population constitute genocide.

Middle East Eye spoke to her on 13 November, during her visit to London, where she was invited to speak at several university campuses.

Watermelon Index names and shames companies complicit in Israel's war on Gaza

 

Progressive International has launched a tool that allows workers to challenge company support for Israel

A new database of over 400 companies that operate in the UK and are deemed complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza has been launched by a collective of unions and organisations led by Progressive International.

The Watermelon Index, which the international left-wing organisation describes as “a tool for worker-led resistance against the occupation and genocide in Palestine”, will allow employees to connect with each other and with activists to challenge their bosses over connections to Israel.

Among the companies listed are Barclays, shipping firm Maersk, e-commerce giant Amazon, software company Microsoft and holiday rental outfit Airbnb. 

As well as these multinationals, there are a host of other operations with ties to Israel, in industries including finance, insurance, technology, logistics and energy. Progressive International is focusing its efforts within these sectors. 

A company’s complicity with Israel’s war on Gaza is measured through “the different kinds of support, including financial, military, diplomatic, cultural, trade and social” it provides, according to Progressive International.

The Watermelon Index also contains details of worker-led campaigns that are being mounted against the war, and includes tools that enable workers to organise and connect with each other.  (more...)

Watermelon Index names and shames companies complicit in Israel's war on Gaza

Related:

The Watermelon Index

The Permindex Connection

 

In the spring of 1963, a series of planning sessions was held at an exclusive resort club in Montego Bay, Jamaica, called the Tryall Compound, built at the close of World War II by Britain's Chief of Special Operations Executive (SO E) William Stephenson. Present at various times for the planning sessions were: Major Louis Bloomfield, still an officer, then of British SOE; Ferenc Nagy, a wartime cabinet minister in the pro-Hitler Horthy government in Hungary and later its prime minister; Georgio Mantello, a Romanian-born Jew who had served as trade minister under Mussolini; Col. Clay Shaw, a former officer of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and in 1963 the director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart; Jean de Menil, a White Russian emigre and president of the Houston-based Schlumberger Corporation; and Paul Raigorodsky, another White Russian emigre who had served as Special Representative to Europe for NATO and was a high-ranking official of the Tolstoy Foundation.

Without exception, each of these people was also a member of the board of directors of Permindex (Permanent Industrial Expositions). The subject of their meetings: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963.  (more...)

The Permindex Connection

Attempt to censor Francesca Albanese part of larger Israeli campaign to hobble UN

 

Let’s call upon Bob Rae and the Canadian government to condemn the attempts by Israel and its supporters to incapacitate the UN

Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, just wrapped up a speaking tour of eastern Canada. But pro-Israel lobby organizations have tried every trick in their well-thumbed playbook to bar the internationally-renowned human rights jurist and scholar from doing the job she was assigned by the United Nations for a three-year term in 2022. Hurling the usual epithet “antisemite,” they tried to get the Canadian government to bar her from this country. They endeavoured to get her speaking venues cancelled. They urged government officials not to meet with her. They issued missives deriding her and fed disparaging stories to friendly media.

But these opponents failed to silence her message.

Charged by her employer with reporting to the UN and its affiliates on policy relating to the occupied territories, Albanese has been a rigorous critic of Israeli violations of international human rights law, especially against its Palestinian population. She has condemned Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In an early report, she called on UN member states to push Israel to end the occupation. After Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, Albanese demanded an immediate ceasefire, warning of the risk of ethnic cleansing. On March 26, 2024, Albanese provided further evidence in aid of the International Court of Justice’s accusation of a plausible genocide.

But the blitz by Israel and its supporters on Ms. Albanese is much more than an attack on a single person. It is nothing less than a wholesale offensive against the United Nations itself, at least as it relates to Israel.  (more...)

Attempt to censor Francesca Albanese part of larger Israeli campaign to hobble UN

U of T faculty members criticize university’s User Guide on protest policies

 

UTFA issues letter to Vice-President and Provost Trevor Young

On October 22, the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA) issued a letter to U of T’s Provost and Vice-President Trevor Young criticizing the User Guide to U of T Policies on Protest and Use of Campus Spaces created in August.

In the letter, the UTFA executive committee had “strong concerns about the Administration’s violations of the Memorandum of Agreement.” The UTFA claims that the protest policy “violates the freedom of association and collective bargaining rights of UTFA and other campus labour unions.”

The protest user guide is a guideline for students and other U of T community members regarding protesting on campus. The guide was released almost two months after the 63-day pro-Palestine encampment at King’s College Circle concluded.

In late October, U of T updated the guide to include a preamble and case studies that show “examples of student activities which may violate policy.” 

Based on pre-existing policies, the user guide states that while the university is “guided by a commitment to the right of its community members to express and discuss ideas freely,” “there are limits” to that expression.

The guide states that university policies prohibit anyone from occupying or entering U of T property without permission; setting up tents, encampments, fences, barriers, or other structures on campus; making noise that hinders the speech of guests or that interferes with activities at U of T; putting up signs, posters, or flyers — including those that use chalk, markers, paint, and projections — outside of designated areas; or taking any other action that would be a security threat to U of T campus and community. 

The guide states that anyone who participates in “these prohibited activities” may face “consequences under law and U of T policies, including arrest, suspension, trespass from property, and expulsion.”

The guide cites the Ontario Superior Court order from July 2 — which granted U of T permission to remove the encampment and stated that any police authority could “arrest and remove any person who has knowledge of this Order” for “interfering with… access to University property.”  (more...)

U of T faculty members criticize university’s User Guide on protest policies

The racist cloak of invisibility

 

Supporting Israel's war crimes has given Canadian commentators and politicians the licence to go full bore racist

Not many people like being called racist. Call someone a racist and they usually first and foremost, act offended. This is a basic fact. Try it if you’re curious.

Being a racist, though, is something different. It’s very easy to do racist things without even feeling bad about it. Racism in a society built on white supremacy is everywhere. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere — literally everywhere you might look, you will see racism. And to get any level of power in Canada is very hard for white people if they aren’t, at some level, racist.

When someone is called a racist, they will either be proud of their racism (a minority) or pretend to be offended (a majority). The majority might be actually offended, perhaps even cry that you’ve called them out. So to do racism more comfortably, they need a cover.

And right now, Israel has given a perfect cover to So. Many. Racists.

To be So. Incredibly. Racist.

While it’s been clear from the start of Israel’s aggression that Israel’s leadership believes that Palestinians are inferior and subhuman, the general consensus among western media and politicians that Israel can do no wrong sometimes hides this very important starting point. Indeed, no country hurls itself towards doing genocide without a pre-campaign of mass dehumanization. Otherwise, average people wouldn’t stand to see such violence meted out against fellow humans.  (more...)

The racist cloak of invisibility