Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Now, We Must Stand Up for the Truth!

 

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As the LaRouche Oasis Plan begins to be discussed as the physical economic alternative to the systematic destruction and depopulation of Gaza, students, faculty and citizens of the United States, disengaging from the perpetual war practices of the Anglo-American establishment, have thrown the rigged American Presidential electoral scene into turmoil. In response, Wall Street and the City Of London have decided to shut anyone and anything opposed to their plans for more war and genocide.

Now, for Americans, the vigorous defense of the United States Constitution—not merely the First Amendment, but the Constitution’s Preamble—requires, at this moment, that all other “issues,” including those of legitimate concern, be placed in the background. The militarization process that appeared, in one guise, on January 6, 2021, now appears in another, on American college campuses. In this most recent attempt to use the “armed might of the state” to police, not only the thoughts, but the very communication of any ideas that oppose our decades-long, trillions dollar policy of perpetual warfare—expressed most recently in the recent Congressional vote on Ukraine and Israel—they have revealed that another, alien policy, not in the interests of the United States—or Ukraine, or Israel, for that matter—is at work.

To whose benefit is the present policy of perpetual war? From whence does it originate? And how do the present conflict in Southwest Asia, the NATO/Russia war in Ukraine, the pending confrontation with China in the Pacific, and the earlier disastrous “failed wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, reflect the same policy, of the same alien forces—a policy which, if unchecked, must lead to thermonuclear war? Who is sparking these wars, and how can ideas, like the LaRouche Oasis Plan, reverse this process?

We must answer these questions, and then we must stand up and tell the truth, to set the nation free.

Speakers: Harley Schlanger and Cliff Kiracofe




Palestinians are being forced to pay in blood for a Palestinian State

 

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Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter spoke with Dimitri Lascaris about Israel's looming military defeat. According to Ritter, the genocidal war that Israel launched in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks have exposed a range of Israeli vulnerabilities and the limits of Israel's brutal military power. Israel, he believes, may be forced to seek a face-saving exit from the horrors it has perpetrated.



Netanyahu’s Mass Atrocity Machinery: What Will You Do?

 

Netanyahu Israel Zionism atrocities Gaza genocide hospitals targeting deflection spiritual warfare military billionaires universities administrations politics Zionism

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

~ Deuteronomy 30:19

Our lead story in Money & Markets on the Solari Report last week was on the uncovering of mass graves in Gaza. ... Hundreds of bodies have been uncovered. Some had their hands tied behind their back and were shot. Some had organs taken. Watch the disgust of a Sky News reporter as the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem tries to blow off the report and then spin a tale when caught.

Those who consume corporate media know nothing of gruesome mass graves in Gaza. Instead, they are ingesting stories about student protests at American universities. My expectation is that these protests are professionally organized and financed, with scripts written for paid agitators to say things that can then support more “hate crime” charges and legislation. The best defense is a good offense.

This is called a “whiteout.” School protests keep the real story out of the headlines—shocking slaughter and mass atrocity in Gaza as the land grab proceeds and the engineering of mass famine accelerates.

From what I can hear and see, the corporate media are largely silent on the mass graves. Much of the freedom community is silent, too. Many American churches continue to trumpet support for the criminal syndicate leading the genocide. The governor of New York has raised an Israeli flag over the governor’s residence. The U.S. Congress passed almost a hundred billion dollars in appropriations to keep mass atrocity going in Ukraine and Israel, a package that did not include a dime to stop the invasion on our southern border but instead funds accelerated migration from the Middle East, flying even more people from that region into the U.S. as American bombs encourage them to leave.

The real stories of mass atrocity in Gaza keep sneaking out on TikTok. American private equity and venture capital firms, including KKR, own approximately 60% of ByteDance, the company that owns the TikTok app. The Congress—filled with legislators alleged to be dual-passport citizens—is now trying to make sure that the criminal syndicate can assert control over ByteDance, which will allow them to squeeze out the Chinese founders and investors by picking up their much smaller 20% equity position for cheap.

The criminal syndicates love to use the Chinese foreign bogeyman as a stalking horse. They love to use politicians to lower the price at which they can buy—and raise the price at which they can sell. Those capital gains fund political contributions and kickbacks.  (more...)

Netanyahu’s Mass Atrocity Machinery: What Will You Do?


With no universities left in Gaza, student protests bring hope

 

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Student protests are resonating with Palestinians, who face the destruction of nearly all universities in Gaza. Palestinian university presidents signed an open letter saying the protests serve as a “beacon of hope.” We look at what has been lost and what remains.

In this episode: 

  • - Jehad Abusalim, Executive Director, The Jerusalem Fund
  • - Heigo Parsa, University of Toronto Student 
  • - Jasmine Al-Rawi, University of Sydney Student
  • - Sesek Duran, National Autonomous University of Mexico Student 
  • - Sundos Hammad, Right to Education Coordinator, Birzeit University



Sam Husseini – ‘Student Protests for Palestine Are Historic’

 

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TNT Radio host Patrick Henningsen speaks with independent journalist and regular US State Dept correspondent Sam Husseini, about the unprecedented show of support on U.S. college campuses for the Palestinian issue, and the predictable backlash by the Israeli Lobby and U.S. establishment- all of who are desperate to silence the historic wave of dissidence against one of humanity’s most grave injustices, as Israel continues its ongoing genocide of the native Palestinian population in the Holy Land.



Beethoven Versus Geopolitics

 

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Contrast the image of man fostered by imperial hybrid warfare, in which nature favors the strongest, while the rest are involved in a daily struggle to survive, with the ideal presented in Schiller's poem, "Ode to Joy", set to music by Beethoven.  Since his Ninth symphony premiered 200 years ago yesterday, the Schiller-Beethoven collaboration offered a shining example of a better world, in which all men are brothers.  In the midst of the present degeneration of culture, in a world overwhelmed by genocidal wars and induced famine, we must fight for the ideal vision of the 9th symphony.





Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Silence about racist mayor speaks of pro-Israel immorality

 

Canada Quebec Hampstead Jeremy Levi mayor bigotry racism genocide ethnic cleansing discrimination incitement immorality Zionism politics oppression authoritarianism

An openly racist authoritarian, clamoring to kill more Palestinians, leads Canada’s most Jewish municipality. Yet few pro-Israel voices criticize the genocidal fascist’s offensive statements.

Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi, top politician in the Montreal suburb of 7,500, recently bemoaned Muslims praying at McGill and posted an anti-Sikh, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian National Post article headlined “Just ignore Sarah Jama’s keffiyeh. Next she’ll be wearing a turban”. He also posted an article about Republican senators calling Palestinian refugees a national security threat and previously made that argument in a controversial post noting, “Given the recent behavior of the pro-Palestinian group, Canada should reconsider its immigration plan for Gazans. Their values seem incompatible with ours, and I have no desire to welcome more hatred into our country.” Replace “Palestinian” with “Jew” and it echoes the language that led to the ignoble rejection of European Jewish refugees in the lead up to World War II, as La Presse columnist Rima Elkouri recently highlighted.

While the mayor of a municipality that is 75 per cent Jewish says besieged Palestinians refugees shouldn’t be allowed here because they are “incompatible” with “our” Canadian “values”, he believes God gave him Palestine. Despite 150-year-old family roots in Canada, Levi recently posted a statement by a Hampstead rabbi claiming, “The world is right, we are not simply indigenous to the Land; far beyond that. It is ordained and granted to us by God.”

A racist religious zealot, Levi is also deeply authoritarian. For months he has been pushing to repress all manner of protest against Israel’s genocide and in recent days has repeatedly demanded the state repress the student divestment encampment at McGill. Levi posted to X, “It’s time for the university administration to urgently bring in the police and remove the protesters one by one with necessary force” and then demanded that “Montreal tactical teams should swiftly intervene at McGill, even if it requires force.” In case there was any doubt about his aim Levi tweeted support for the police violently arresting US students in a post noting, “This is how woke garbage is handled in Florida under DeSantis.” In his post showing the violent arrest Levi labeled the police action “the proper way to deal with the misguided Hamas supporters. Use any means necessary and throw them out.”  (more...)

Silence about racist mayor speaks of pro-Israel immorality


Chris Hedges: Israel's Master Plan For Gaza Is Horrifying

 

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Chris Hedges explains Israel's master plan for Gaza and it is horrifying.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper.





Israel’s Brutality Against Palestinians Draws on British Rule

 

British Mandate Israel genocide ethnic cleansing imperialism colonialism oppression Zionism culpability crimes against humanity racism apartheid

Britain’s “mandate” over Palestine from 1920-48 left an apparatus of repression which Israel inherited and still uses today in its ferocious war on Palestinians.

Israel’s present use of collective punishment against Palestinians owes much of its origins to British rule in Palestine. 

So too do the aerial bombardments, military raids, use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and the infrastructure of military law deployed against an occupied, overwhelmingly civilian population. 

Britain ruled Palestine during its “mandate” between 1920-48, and its repressive infrastructure came into full force during the 1936-39 Great Arab Revolt.

In 1936, Palestine erupted into a national uprising following two decades of peaceful resistance against British rule and several failed uprisings over the 1920s, as the political and economic situation became dire for the Arab majority.

The uprising called for an end to British support for Zionist colonization and a guarantee of Palestinian self-determination. Britain, however, saw it as a threat to its rule and responded with brutal repression. 

By the end of the revolt, 10 percent of the adult male Arab population were either killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled by the British.

This brought the revolt to an end but also devastated Palestinian society and left it defenseless against Zionist militia groups during the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe). Then, over two-thirds of the Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed from their country to establish the State of Israel. 

Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi has argued that the armed suppression of Arab resistance during the revolt was among the most valuable services Britain provided to the Zionist movement.  (more...)

Israel’s Brutality Against Palestinians Draws on British Rule



LAPD’s Failure to Protect Peaceful Protesters at UCLA from Right-Wing Mob Shows Real Priorities

 

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In 1991, Frank Donner, former director of the ACLU’s Project on Political Surveillance, published a book entitled Protectors of Privilege, which provided a history of police suppression of left-wing and labor protests in the United States.

A key chapter in the book focused on the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), whose reactionary political function was epitomized by two of its most notorious chiefs: William Parker and Daryl Gates, who were overtly racist and supported anti-democratic paramilitary policing practices.

The LAPD’s true colors were on display at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) at the end of April when its officers stood by for hours as hundreds of right-wing vigilantes attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators in what Al Jazeera described as a “really shocking and ugly scene of violence.” The LAPD then aggressively broke up the pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ encampment using flash bangs and riot gear, arresting around 200 of the anti-genocide protesters who were entirely peaceful. (none of the vigilantes were arrested).

On May 2, a day after the break-up of the encampment, I visited the UCLA campus and witnessed students and university employees clearing the protest area.

Though many of the students were refusing to speak to any media, I managed to interview one, Lisa Cooper, who described herself as a seasoned organizer originally from New York who had joined the protesters in solidarity with them.

Cooper told me that she helped run a wellness center in the encampment that brought in acupuncturists who administered treatment to students who had either been physically attacked or were dealing with emotional trauma and the stress of living in the encampment while studying for mid-terms.

The students believed they had to do something in the face of the horrific atrocities going on in Gaza.

Cooper said that dissent was currently under siege in the U.S. and that the protests provided an opportunity to get people thinking about societal problems and realities, and that the students involved felt empowered by their experience, which they would take with them into other aspects of their lives.  (more...)

LAPD’s Failure to Protect Peaceful Protesters at UCLA from Right-Wing Mob Shows Real Priorities



Support pours into U of T encampment

 

Canada University of Toronto encampment Palestine solidarity community Judaism Gaza genocide divestment military Zionism JDL administration

As the Peoples’ Circle for Palestine encampment grows, the University of Toronto continues warning against violence breaking out. But four days in, demonstrators and their supporters continued celebrating peacefully while restating their demands and drowning out a counter-protest.

The encampment at the University of Toronto’s King’s College Circle, referred to by those there as the Peoples’ Circle for Palestine, had grown to nearly 200 tents by its fourth day, May 5, up from the initial 55 when students took over the area. They are demanding the university divest from companies and institutions with ties to Israel and its military.

Donated food, water and even tents have also continued pouring into the encampment from the general public, to the point that the organizing students have had to re-donate much of it to local food banks. 

“We want to make sure that we're sharing the love and ensuring that unhoused folks also have what they need,” says Erin Mackey, a fourth year student and spokesperson with Occupy U of T For Palestine.   

On social media channels, some who criticize the encampments have raised questions as to who is funding them, going as far as to make baseless accusations that Hamas and “professional protesters” are behind them.

Mackey laughs those claims off.

“We're getting [support] from the community. People are reaching their networks and into their pockets, because they want to end this university’s complicity in this genocide,” she told The Media Co-op at the encampment. “The amount of support has been overwhelming but really heartwarming, because there's so many people who are standing together.”  (more...)

Support pours into U of T encampment


Monday, May 6, 2024

Why Students Are Setting Up Encampments in Support of Palestine at Universities Across British Columbia

 

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Pro-Palestine encampments are spreading across BC university campuses

Over the last week, students at universities in British Columbia have set up encampments in support of Gaza amid ongoing bombardments carried out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government.

Students at the University of British Columbia joined students at McGill University in Montréal as the first two Canadian universities to set up encampments following growing solidarity protests in the United States and globally to bring attention to Israel’s attack on Gaza, which has now extended into Rafah – the last safe refuge for displaced Palestinians.

In February, Canada joined other countries in warning Netanyahu’s government that an attack on Rafah would be “catastrophic” given “1.5 million Palestinians are taking refuge in the area.”

Students have laid out a number of demands, including calls for UBC’s “divestment from Israel’s settler colonial occupation,” participation in a “global academic boycott” of Israeli universities, demands to “end to the genocide in Gaza” and also “keep police presence off campus.”

“Students and the world cannot sit in silence while an institution supposedly based in knowledge and education fuels war crimes,” a statement from UBC students said.  (more...)

Why Students Are Setting Up Encampments in Support of Palestine at Universities Across British Columbia


Deport former Canadian General Rick Hillier to Israel!

 

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On May 1, 2024, Canada's National Post newspaper published a deranged op-ed by former Canadian General Rick Hillier. In his latest Rant of the Week, Dimitri Lascaris dissects Hillier's fascist tirade.



Jewish Israeli scholar Maya Wind on her new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel

 

academia complicity Gaza genocide Israel education Judaism Palestine solidarity oppression racism military narrative control privilege settler colonialism landgrab appropriate dispossession Zionism Hebrew University books University of Haifa Ben Gurion University

In 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called on international scholars to break ties with Israeli academic institutions. In response, Israeli academics claimed to be simply bystanders to the apartheid policies of the Israeli state. A new book reveals just how deeply Israeli universities are entangled with the Israeli state’s systems of oppression. Maya Wind is the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel. She is a scholar of military expertise and a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.





From Ramallah To Ottawa: Palestinians Picket Canadian Government Office

 

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“Canada is seen by many Palestinians as a U.S. lackey and will be painted by the same bloody brush.”

Palestinians gathered outside the Canadian representative office in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank last week, expressing support for student protests being held at North American universities and calling on the Canadian government to impose a full arms embargo on Israel.

Rawan, a Palestinian-American who has lived in Ramallah since 2019, told The Maple that the April 30 protest included youth and student activists, community organizers, and “everyone we could convince to show out.”

“We decided to join this protest [...] because of the Canadian government’s political, material and diplomatic support of Israel, and its complicity in this genocide in Gaza through the continued allowance of military goods being sold to Israel,” Rawan explained.

She said the Canadian office was chosen because the United States, Israel’s leading international patron, does not have an embassy in the area, and Canada is widely regarded among Palestinians as being a “lackey” of the U.S.

Demonstrators carried signs that praised American and Canadian student protests, which have faced police crackdowns and violence by Zionist attackers in recent weeks. One sign read, in Arabic: “The student struggle leads the masses.”

Another sign held by a protester read: “KKKanada, where’s that arms embargo?”  (more...)

From Ramallah To Ottawa: Palestinians Picket Canadian Government Office


Canada is Losing Its War Against Russia So It Has Threatened Senior Army Officers With Court Martial for “disloyalty”

 

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A senior Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) officer, who is the Assistant Chief of Staff at the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), faces court martial, “dismissal with disgrace”, and loss of his military pension for having disagreed with Canadian, American, and British military planners of  Ukrainian battlefield operations against Russia. His disagreement was in private, when the officers were asking for his professional assessment, and didn’t like what he told them.

Colonel Robert Kearney was charged by the Canadian military police on April 23.  The charge sheet says he faces “five (5) x counts of Conduct Prejudice to the Good Order and Discipline pursuant to section 129 of the National Defence Act.”  

Public disclosure was delayed by the Department of National Defence in Ottawa until Monday, April 29, when a press release claimed Kearney had been under investigation since another officer filed a complaint against Kearney last November. According to the ministry statement, the military police had “received a complaint of a senior CAF officer allegedly making derogatory and disloyal comments about Senior CAF and NATO members.”

Section 129 of the law refers to “any act, conduct, disorder or neglect”,  but it doesn’t define what “good order or discipline” means in the Kiev and Lvov bunkers where Canadians tell the Ukrainians what to do.  Canadian sources believe the law has rarely been used against an officer of colonel’s rank, and never in a court martial of an officer for warning that military plans risked loss of Canadian lives and resources.

Canadian military sources believe Kearney is being court-martialed now because the Canadian government’s policy to finance, arm, train, plan, and direct Ukrainian operations against Russia is being defeated, and that the military collapse east of Kiev now risks loss of more territory and the lives of Canadians currently working in the Ukraine and at cross-border bases in Poland and Romania. At least one thousand Canadians have been counted by the Russian Defense Ministry on the battlefield since the start of the Special Military Operation; by March of this year, 422 had been confirmed killed in action.   

“The timing of the alleged offences,” says a Canadian veteran who served with US and NATO units in Afghanistan, “was when the Germans took over command of NATO’s rapid reaction force which has been building up men and materiel, including heavy tanks and F-16s, in Romania for a plan to attack Russian forces around Odessa. Kearney’s court martial is a warning to his fellow officers not to object or predict destruction of the NATO forces engaged.”  (more...)

Canada is Losing Its War Against Russia So It Has Threatened Senior Army Officers With Court Martial for “disloyalty”

Related:

Mutiny in the Canadian General Staff – How Political Ambition & Ukraine-Russia War Aims Are Being Covered Up in Ottawa

The walls are closing in on the ability to dissent, says cancelled Chris Hedges

 

Columbia University NYPD IDF crackdown mass arrests lockdown student activism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide Zionism complicity repression suspensions cancelling Chris Hedges online news censorship oppression

It’s clear nothing is going to impede the Israeli assault on Gaza. They’ve sold out their own hostages: Chris Hedges



Toronto Public Library accused of anti-Palestinian racism after abrupt removal of work by Gazan poet

 

B'nai Brith freemasonry racism Palestine Toronto Public Library cancelling Gaza poet Independent Jewish Voices Canada Toronto Library censorship discrimination exclusion

Toronto Public Library branch removed a poem by a celebrated Palestinian poet killed in an Israeli airstrike in December, following pressure from pro-Israel lobby group B’nai Brith Canada, a move that advocates are calling a clear example of anti-Palestinian racism.

News circulated on social media last week after B’nai Brith posted on X (formerly Twitter). The organization claimed the display presented “a biased and unbalanced anti-Israel perspective,” adding that the poem, If I Must Die, “glorifies martyrdom” and pressured the library to remove it from the display.

B’nai Brith, which celebrated the poem’s removal, did not respond to Ricochet’s request for comment.

Willa Holt, communications coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices, calls the decision to remove the poem from a publicly-funded library “shameful.” 

“B’nai Brith values the state of Israel above all else, prioritizing a nationalist view of Jewishness that does not speak to me,” Holt said. 

“Palestinians should be represented in educational resources and to silence a prominent Palestinian – one who was murdered by the same regime B’nai Brith supports uncritically – is a cowardly and unjustifiable move during an ongoing genocide.”

Holt says B’nai Brith is doing more harm than good for Jewish Canadians by “conflating any anti-Zionist statement, and any critique of the Israel state, with antisemitism,” creating confusion and obscuring real instances of antisemitism.  (more...)

Toronto Public Library accused of anti-Palestinian racism after abrupt removal of work by Gazan poet




Sunday, May 5, 2024

‘This is the student intifada’: Canadian students set up Palestinian solidarity encampments across the country

 

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University of Toronto students told they could stay if they remain ‘peaceful’

Despite a 10 p.m. deadline Thursday, University of Toronto students remained in their encampment through the night, peacefully demonstrating and demanding that the administration disclose all investments and completely divest from Israel. 

As of Sunday morning, the encampment remained standing.

“I have a lot of energy, optimism and hope, which I know are things that are hard to come by, but it is moments like this that make me feel hopeful and optimistic because there are 150 students here who are willing to risk arrest, willing to risk suspension to stand up for what is right,” said Erin, a student and organizer with the group OccupyUofT. 

The King’s College Circle encampment was set up in the early morning hours on Thursday. Student activists, staff and alum with banners, signs, and Palestinian flags knocked down the fencing and put up dozens of tents. 

An “entry point” on the south side of the encampment was established and for most of the day, visitors passed freely in and out of camp. U of T students are facing the unique issue of dealing with this pre-established perimeter around the lawn, which was put up by the administration just days before. At some U.S. encampments, students have been able to establish a perimeter, such as at UCLA, where demonstrators used plywood and other materials to create walls.

As the Thursday deadline drew closer, the administration informed demonstrators that although the university “respects [its] members’ rights to assemble and protest.” Demonstrators were told that they must clear their encampment or they would be removed, because “protesting will not be allowed after 10 p.m.” 

Immediately, encampment organizers began soliciting support on social media and through their personal networks from progressive communities and groups, many of whom travelled to the U of T campus for a 7 p.m. rally to “protect camp.”  (more...)

‘This is the student intifada’: Canadian students set up Palestinian solidarity encampments across the country



Labour activists organizing for Palestine

 

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Organizers draw links between Israel’s war on Palestine, Indigenous genocide, and the growing housing and economic crisis in Canada

Barely 24 hours before this year’s International Workers’ Day rally in St. John’s, police and masked workers displaced unhoused people living in a tent encampment on the grounds of Colonial Building. 

The camp’s dismantling came less than 48 hours ahead of the arrival of the first cruise ship of the tourist season — a move that fueled protesters’ anger at a provincial government they say is putting tourist revenue above the needs of residents. 

On Saturday, local community groups spoke at the rally in Bannerman Park with deep emotion, some of their voices cracking as they described the eviction. Others were shaky, dripping with anger. All of them drew connections between the plight of Palestinians, settler-colonial genocide against Indigenous peoples, and the housing and economic crisis this province is currently experiencing.

“The Beothuk were victims of genocide and settler-colonial violence,” organizer Daniel Smith said, opening the rally. “A land acknowledgement is meant to be an explicit reminder of the historic and ongoing injustices and genocide against Indigenous peoples here and everywhere — this includes Palestine.”

Nicolay Hristozov, an organizer with Labour For Palestine St. John’s, said Palestinian workers “have a long and underappreciated history of using organized labour to fight the occupation of their homeland.

“But when every attempt to stand up for their rights is met with Israeli bullets, when the occupation drags on into its 57th year with no end in sight, when the exile of Palestinians has been going on for over 75 years, Palestinian workers need international solidarity,” he said.

“Don’t let anyone make you apologize for caring about Palestine. Palestinians live in our communities. They are our neighbours, our co-workers, our friends, our comrades. And we’re here to show them that they are not forgotten.”  (more...)

Labour activists organizing for Palestine


Israel’s ‘friends’ mimic Mussolini’s Blackshirts

 

Canada Palestine solidarity Zionists JDL assault UCLA police fascism Blackshirts thugs goons student activism slander smears Kinsella mendacity calumny

Amidst sustained opposition to the holocaust in Gaza, Israel’s supporters are acting more and more like fascists. They have been pushing to restrict civil liberties, dismantle democratic organizations and expand policing for months, but now want to deport protesters, buy arms and ban protests.

Straight out of Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts playbook, a Jewish Khananist mob attacked a peaceful student encampment at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on Wednesday. The middle of the night assault with sticks, fireworks and chemical irritants left dozens injured. As was sometimes the case with the Blackshirts, the assault legitimated the deployment of state forces the next night to dismantle the camp.

While the incident at UCLA is the most egregious example of Zionist fascism in North America, I wrote about the phenomenon in January and February. Since then, Canadian Zionists have turned more fascistic.

Recently film producer Jonathan Pottins told the Toronto Police Service Board that his anti-Palestinian milieu is buying arms. “Everyone I know is getting armed and that should scare everyone,” Pottins told the public meeting.  The former head of the violent and racist Jewish Defence League Meir Weinstein has been organizing day-long firearms courses in Toronto under the slogan “Every Jew a .22”.

Alongside seeking arms, Israel supporters regularly respond to videos of large numbers protesting Canadian complicity in the genocide by calling for protesters to be deported. The racist and dehumanizing rhetoric is increasingly being taken up by mainstream voices. Recently Warren Kinsella, a self-proclaimed anti-racist, brought this thinking into the mainstream with a Toronto Sun column blaming the anti-genocide protests on the failure of multiculturalism. Taking this outlook a step further, the mayor of the Montreal municipality of Hampstead Jeremy Levi recently posted: “Given the recent behavior of the pro-Palestinian group, Canada should reconsider its immigration plan for Gazans. Their values seem incompatible with ours, and I have no desire to welcome more hatred into our country.”  (more...)

Israel’s ‘friends’ mimic Mussolini’s Blackshirts


The student Intifada rises at Montréal universities

 

Canada McGill University student activism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide boycott divestment sanction racism oppression apartheid encampment

CD reports from the McGill Palestine solidarity encampment

Students from all four Montréal universities came together over the last week to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and pressure their institutions to cut ties with Israel. Following the lead of the camps protests in the United States, they set up an encampment on the grounds of McGill University on April 27, calling for a ceasefire and demanding that Montréal’s halls of higher learning disclose their investments in companies complicit with the genocide in Palestine and divest from those companies, in addition to cutting ties with Israeli academic institutions.

In the specific case of McGill University, two student groups, McGill Hunger Strike for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine, created a dataset of McGill’s investments in companies with links to the State of Israel. They found that “as of December 31, 2023, McGill University held approximately $74 million in direct investments and $5.5 million in undisclosed investments in companies complicit in upholding the apartheid regime of Israel and financing its genocide.”

McGill students have pointed out to the media that there is a proud precedent for divestment at McGill, as it was the first Canadian university to divest from its holdings in apartheid South Africa in November 1985.

In December 2023 it announced it would divest from all direct holdings in the Carbon Underground 200, that is the top 100 public coal companies globally and the top 100 public oil and gas companies globally.

Safa, a graduate student at the Université du Québec a Montréal (UQAM) who is participating in the McGill campus protest, pointed out that the call for divestment is not new to Montréal universities and that while the wave of US campus protest in solidarity with Palestine certainly had an influence on the establishment of the encampment at McGill, students there but also at UQAM and Concordia University have been organizing around BDS at Québec universities for decades.

“Last month, UQAM became the first university in Canada at which all the student unions voted to adopt a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) mandate against Israel,” Safa said, noting that organizers are now seeking to win support for an academic boycott from various university faculties. Safa stressed that it’s a tougher battle at McGill, which has particularly strong ties with Israel and where the administration has consistently refused to listen to the students or work to find common ground.  (more...)

The student Intifada rises at Montréal universities

Related:

“And I Went Down to the Demonstration”


Canada McGill University student activism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide boycott divestment sanction racism oppression apartheid encampment


Saturday, May 4, 2024

The rise of Neo-Fascism in the West

 

Neo Fascism crisis economy NATO neoliberals stealth police repression Germany Gaza politics racism fratboys

For the past six months, the U.S. government and its Western allies have employed brutal repression to silence critics of Israel's genocidal regime. 

At the same time, they've employed extreme violence and other forms of aggression to maintain their position of global dominance. 

NATO military spending, already at stratospheric levels, is soaring ever higher. 

In this context, on May 3, 2024, Dimitri Lascaris spoke with Vijay Prashad about the rise of neo-fascism in the West. 

Vijay Prashad is a historian, author, journalist and political commentator. He is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Editor of Leftword Books, Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.





Students Step Up Pressure On University Of Toronto To Cut Ties With Israel

 

Canada University of Toronto student activism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide Israel divestment JDL boycott sanction academic freedom community support finance complicity

“A fence is not going to stop us not wanting to contribute to genocide.”

University of Toronto students established a protest encampment in solidarity with Palestine on Thursday morning, as part of a string of similar actions that have taken place at university campuses across North America, including six in Canada.

Approximately 150 students set up more than 50 tents at the university’s King’s College Circle. Throughout the day, the protest was peaceful. The students read books and newspapers, studied for assignments, rested in tents, enjoyed picnics, played soccer, and sang cultural songs.

The students’ key demands included calling on the university to disclose its financial holdings, and divestment from any companies that contribute to “upholding the occupation of Palestine.”

The students also called on the university to cut ties and partnerships with any Israeli academic institutions that operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories “or sustain the apartheid policies, occupation and illegal settlement of these territories.”

The students published their demands to the university administration last month.  (more...)

Students Step Up Pressure On University Of Toronto To Cut Ties With Israel


Suspended US students get education offer from Houthis

 

Yemen Sanaa University student activism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide suspensions repression invitation

The doors of Yemen’s Sanaa University are open for those who back Palestine, the institution has announced

Sanaa University, reportedly run by the Houthi militant group, has offered students suspended from US universities for staging pro-Palestinian protests the opportunity to study in Yemen’s capital.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested during demonstrations which have been held at dozens of US college campuses in recent weeks, resulting in many of them being suspended.

“We are serious about welcoming students that have been suspended from US universities for supporting Palestinians,” an official at Yemen’s Sanaa University was quoted as telling Reuters. “We are fighting this battle with Palestine in every way we can,” he reportedly claimed.

Sanaa University had issued a statement applauding the “humanitarian” position of the American students, saying they could continue their studies in Yemen.  (more...)

Suspended US students get education offer from Houthis


Jill Stein on getting assaulted by cops & campus crackdown

 

Jill Stein Palestine solidarity Judaism student activism police assault crackdown Zionism ADL censorship education tyranny Gaza genocide deception

In a disturbing assault caught on camera, Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein was attacked and arrested by police at Washington University in St. Louis. She, along with her campaign manager Jason Call and hundreds of others, were arrested for peacefully protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

As they held their ground, cops attacked Dr. Stein with a bike and pinned Jason to the ground. They recount the aggressive story in this week’s interview.

This campus beatdown is the latest in a long line of fascist attacks at colleges around the country, with students and professors hospitalized as US leadership looks on. President Biden, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, corporate media journalists, and countless members of congress have condoned or even encouraged these police attacks, giving them the green light to escalate their violent methods.

And Dr. Stein has a theory for why:

“The red flags are flying all over the place that they really are losing their stranglehold,” she says of the global empire. “It’s a scary moment because the bear has been cornered and knows that it’s under attack. The empire is striking back in every way that it can because its days are numbered.”

The growing protests around the country are a sign that things are changing and people are committed to that change. “It’s a very distressing and disturbing moment but it’s important to also recognize that behind that is this power of a different world rising up.”



Defend Your Constitutional Right to Free Speech

 

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With FISA reauthorized, you can be spied on through the issuance of warrantless wiretaps.  The House just voted that opposing Israel's policy makes you an anti-Semite, and therefore a legitimate target of "anti-Semitism monitors".  And whether you realize it or not, this is backed by both Biden and Trump, who are defending Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing.  Now is not the time for complacency, our constitutional liberties are threatened by zealots in both U.S. parties.



Friday, May 3, 2024

Columbia crackdown led by university prof doubling as NYPD spook

 

Columbia University student activism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide NYPD surveillance espionage Israel counter-terrorism crackdown police violence

Rebecca Weiner is a Columbia U. professor who also serves as intelligence director of the NYPD. Mayor Eric Adams credits her with spying on anti-genocide student protesters and directing the militarized raid that dislodged them from campus.

The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school’s own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared.

During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force.

“She was the one that was monitoring the situation,” Adams explained, adding that the crackdown was carried out after “she was able to — her team was able to conduct an investigation.”

On April 30, dozens of police in riot gear descended on Columbia’s Hamilton Hall after students seized the building earlier in the day, citing a request from the administration. Several hours later, officers used a heavily armored NYPD BearCat vehicle to enter the building through the window on the second floor and arrested those inside, while another team swept up members of the encampment outside.

Starting on April 17, students at Columbia escalated their ongoing protest against Israel’s genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. They encamped on school grounds, stating their refusal to leave until the university fully divested from its Israeli-related investments. That protest model has since spread to over 100 other universities in the US, and even been taken up abroad, with similar actions occurring at Leeds University in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris.

Just a few hundred meters from the Gaza protest encampment, Weiner maintained an office at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an “Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs” who simultaneously serves as the “civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau.”

In that role, according to SIPA, Weiner “develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence.”

The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau currently maintains an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where it coordinates with Israel’s security apparatus and maintains a department liaison. Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureau’s offices in Israel and New York.  (more...)

Columbia crackdown led by university prof doubling as NYPD spook



Rabbi supporting pro-Palestinian students at McGill University

 

Canada Rabbi Dovid Feldman McGill University student activism Judaism Palestine solidarity Gaza genocide boycott divestment sanction oppression ethnic cleansing supremacy Zionism racism encampment

On May 2, 2024 Rabbi Dovid Feldman from Neturei Karta International speaking in support of students at their pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University in Montreal. This rally took place one day after winning a victory against an injunction to ban the encampment as anti-Semitic.


Canadian students camping for Gaza aren’t antisemitic—they’re building brave new alliances for justice

 

Canada Montreal McGill University Concordia student activism Palestine solidarity encampment Judaism boycott divestment sanction complicity oppression ethnic cleansing apartheid racism dissent

At McGill, Jewish, Palestinian, and other students are working together to upend their university’s complicity in Israel’s assault on Gaza

For a supposed hotbed of antisemitism, the scene at McGill’s Gaza protest encampment was distinctly Jewish: giant bottles of kosher grape juice and matzah bread piled on the ground, the fixings for a Passover dinner.

On Sunday, when I visited the university’s campus, now the source of daily national headlines, a large group of students were settling in for this religious ritual.

Passover tells the story of Jewish struggle against enslavement in Egypt—including the Pharaoh’s commandment to kill every newborn boy. It’s also the most justice-oriented of our holidays, demanding we apply the imperative of liberation to the present.

“In the midst of Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza,” one Jewish student read out to the circle, “these verses now resonate with unbearable urgency.”

As students passed around the flat matzah—symbolizing the meager “bread of affliction” baked quickly while fleeing Egypt—they wove in the current reality of Palestinians in Gaza, enduring a catastrophic famine imposed by the Israeli blockade.

In the middle of the circle, a large painted tapestry depicted Passover’s other symbolic foods. In the background, a large Hebrew banner hung on a fence: “thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s home.”

Many were first-time participants in such a meal. People drummed and sang Jewish songs.

This environment—of respect, curiosity, and support for freedom, apparent at Passover and through the rest of the camp—is what B’nai Brith claimed this week represents a “horrifying normalization of antisemitism on university campuses.”

It’s what the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs claimed was a “toxic” situation full of “calls for violence and antisemitic slogans.”  

I witnessed no such thing.  (more...)

Canadian students camping for Gaza aren’t antisemitic—they’re building brave new alliances for justice


Historic student movement for Gaza reaches Canada

 

Canada McGill Palestine solidarity student activism Gaza genocide encampment boycott divestment sanction complicity youth Concordia McGill University

Students who’ve set up camp on McGill’s campus have faced torrential downpour, a court injunction, and threats of police violence. 

But they’re refusing to move until their demands are met: divestment from companies, weapons makers, and universities implicated in Israel’s assault on Gaza.



“Our university is complicit”

 

Canada University of Toronto encampment student activism Palestine solidarity boycott divestment sanction complicity Gaza genocide

Inside the pro-Palestinian student encampment at the University of Toronto

University of Toronto (U of T) is ground zero for pro-Palestinian activism in Canada as Occupy for Palestine (O4P) mobilized encampments at King’s College Circle. As previously reported by The Media Co-Op, students breached the fenced perimeter around the Circle on Thursday, May 2, racing to evade campus security and set up tents at 4 a.m. The encampments follow weeks of pro-Palestinian student activism sweeping across post-secondary campuses in Canada and the United States to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as end partnerships with Israeli universities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

O4P organizers describe an atmosphere of quiet tension in the days leading up to the encampment. The university’s preemptive fencing of King’s College Circle came as students began occupations in institutions including McGill and the University of British Columbia. 

Renewed action follows a two-day occupation of U of T’s Simcoe Hall that ended on April 3 after students secured a meeting with President Meric Gertler. Students say that Gertler was unprepared and dismissed their demands in a letter posted on the university’s website.

After rushing to set up their “People’s Circle for Palestine” with supplies, a tarp for prayer, and a wide perimeter of tents, student organizers reiterated three main demands, asking the school to disclose all investments and financial holdings, divest all financial holdings that “sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlement of Palestine,” as well as end partnerships with Israeli universities in the occupied West Bank. 

“Ultimately, we know when the university responds – when there’s public pressure and when their reputation has been harmed,” explained Erin Mackey, a political science student at U of T and a media liaison at the camp. “This university needs to listen to its students and be on the right side of history. It’s not a question of persuading President Meric Gertler, he doesn’t have a backbone.”  (more...)

“Our university is complicit”


The Enemy Is Among Us?

 

student activism Palestine solidarity repression Gaza genocide targeting oppression arrests expulsions evictions demonization Zionist lobby

Anti-genocide groups are being targeted by media and government

Well friends, the verdict is in! If you are opposed to Israel’s slaughter of something like forty thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, or the clearly enunciated plans by that nation’s government to ethnically cleanse the rest of historic Palestine, making the developing Eretz or Greater Israel a legally Jewish state, and are prepared to protest or speak up about it, then you are an antisemite Jew-hater and probably even a holocaust denier. If you are a student demonstrating against the slaughter you are increasingly being referred to by talking heads and the media as a pro-Hamas terrorist. That you must be condemned and sanctioned or even criminalized as a consequence of the labels is only fair in a country that apparently has come to believe that Jews and Israel, uniquely, cannot be criticized due to their cited ad nauseam victimhood and their anointment by God no matter what the First Amendment to the US Constitution relating to freedom of speech might say. After all, it’s just an old piece of paper though it might strike some as a bit odd that a group of people carrying out a genocide are being given a pass while those trying to stop it are being beaten, going to jail and, in some cases, being denied that degree they earned from four years at college.

That antisemites and even evil foreign governments like China are behind the recent student demonstrations over the atrocities in Gaza is gradually becoming part of the new Gospel, ritually endorsed by the cowering university administrators themselves as well as by a large majority in Congress, the White House and the mainstream media. Pro-Palestinian groups are being routinely shut down and their supporters clubbed, gassed and arrested while Jewish groups supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” are being allowed to express their rage violently, as occurred at the University of California in Los Angeles on last Tuesday night with police standing by to let the pro-Israel attackers (who were mostly non-students) have access to beat on the pro-Palestinian campers. It was an alignment of hearts and minds that apparently serves both justice and God, who has declared Jews to be his “chosen.” The University of Southern California’s administration has labeled pro-Palestinian groups as “homegrown violent extremists” as an excuse to shut down graduation ceremonies later this month. Governors in Texas and Florida have declared war on those despicable antisemites, insisting that there will be no Jew haters in their states and expressing a willingness to use police and national guard to make sure that that is the case. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has vowed that any student who speaks up or demonstrates against Israel will be expelled from college. National Guard troops have also been called in to clear campuses in a number of other states, with more than a thousand demonstrators being arrested and removed on Tuesday alone.  (more...)

The Enemy Is Among Us?