The drone war is obscure by design. Operated by armchair pilots from clandestine bases across the American west, the Predators and Reapers fly over Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan’s Tribal Areas at invisible heights, where they are on orders from the CIA to kill “high value” targets with laser-guided “surgical” precision thousands of feet below. But because of where the Hellfire missiles land, and because the program is operated in secret, verifying their precision and their lasting effects isn’t easy.
For years, US officials have downplayed the number of civilian deaths in particular, even as a chorus of independent reports have offered their own grim estimates. The latest, according to new research by the United Nations and Amnesty International: 58 civilians killed in Yemen, and up to nine hundred in Pakistan. In a speech in May, President Obama finally broke his silence on drones, acknowledging that civilians had been killed—he didn’t say how many—and promising more transparency for the program. “Those deaths,” added the President, “will haunt us for as long as we live.”
For journalist Madiha Tahir, the numbers are important, but they’re not the whole story. Her documentary “Wounds of Waziristan,” which premieres above, features interviews with the people who live in the southern part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, bordering Afghanistan, under the eyes of the drones, and in the wake of their destruction. The film switches up the typical calculus that drives the drone debate at home. Tahir, who grew up between Pakistan and the U.S., points out that drone strikes aren’t just about the numbers of casualties, or the kinds of ethical arguments that arise around “just war” concepts like proportionality. The effects of the drone war have as much to do with the way those casualties rip apart communities and haunt the living, in distant places that exist on the fringes of law and order.
“Because drones are at a certain remove, there is a sense of uncertainty, a sense that you can’t control this,” Tahir says, describing the attitude among the people who live in Waziristan. Already haunted by the legacy of British colonialism and the laws it left behind, this part of the Tribal Areas is now ruled with a brutal fist by the Pakistani military and various insurgent groups. But the buzz of the drones, sometimes seven or eight overhead a day, signals another kind of indeterminate power. “Whether its true or not, people feel that with militants there is some degree of control. You can negotiate. There is some cause and effect. But there is no cause and effect with drones. It’s an acute kind of trauma that is not limited to the actual attack.”
For the operators of the drone program, who have launched more than 300 missile attacks in Pakistan since 2008, the political vacuum of the Tribal Areas have encouraged a special kind of war-on-terror calculus. As the New York Timesreported last year, the American government has been counting all military-age males in a strike zone as “militants,” which leads to skewed figures about who exactly has been killed. The Obama administration has executed “signature strikes,” drone attacks based on a so-called “pattern of life” analysis in which simply suspicious behavior is enough to qualify for an attack. And in a so-called “double tap” maneuver, a second attack follows an initial strike, killing those who have come to recover bodies from the scene.
“When an attack happens, the media claims to know how many militants were killed,” says Noor Behram, a journalist in the Tribal Areas who has been photographing the casualties of drone strikes for years. “Actually, you only find body parts on the scene, so people can’t tell how many have died.”
In one interview, Tahir speaks with a man from South Waziristan named Karim Khan, whose brother and son were killed in a drone strike. “What is the definition of terrorism?” he asks her, and she returns the question to him. His tired eyes light up.
“I think there is no bigger terrorist than Obama or Bush,” he says. “Those who have weaponry like drones, who drop bombs on us while we are in our own homes, there are no greater terrorists than them.” …
Israel has agreed to free 26 Palestinian prisoners under the terms of the renewed so-called peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
“The release of 26 prisoners has been validated this evening,” said a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday.
Israeli prison authorities say the inmates will be released at least 48 hours after their names are published.
Tel Aviv had said 104 Palestinians would be freed in stages following the start of negotiations on July 30.
More than 4,500 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons, many of them without charge or trial.
An Israeli official claimed last week that the move was linked to a deal with the Palestinian Authority in exchange for continued settlement construction in the occupied territories. But the Palestinian Authority has vehemently denied the allegation, saying the construction activities seriously threaten the talks, that resumed in July after a three-year halt.
Earlier this month, a large number of Palestinians from different political movements took to the streets of the West Bank city of Ramallah to call on the Palestinian Authority to pull out from the talks with Israel.
Supporters of all Palestinian factions, including the Islamic resistance movement Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, gathered in central Arafat square to protest against the talks.
The protesters said the talks are useless and acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas must withdraw from the negotiations. They also demanded the Palestinian Authority take the regime in Tel Aviv to the International Criminal Court for its crimes against the people of Palestine.
Israel has recently announced plans to build about 3,000 more illegal settlement units on the occupied Palestinian land.
The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.
Is Noam Chomsky an anarcho-syndicalist or proponent of the Federal Reserve? A fearless political crusader or defender of the Warren Commission JFK orthodoxy? A tireless campaigner for justice or someone who doesn’t care who did 9/11?
A Loyalist from Northern Ireland becomes Jewish, he plans to move to Israel and settle and start a new life. He exclaims that Palestine was a “political invention” and tells Palestinians who have lived there their whole life “you have had a nice holiday, time to go home”. This is an extremely valid argument as this man has never set foot on the Land of Israel or Palestine. This Snippet was taken from the BBC documentary called Shalom Belfast.
We are not dealing here with Jewish race or gene. Taking on the Jewish religion in this case introduces a set of supremacist non ethical beliefs. This is what Jewishness is all about.
Tonight, the Keene city council could have made history as the first ever political designation to reject arms manufacturer LENCO and the federal government’s pushing of the BEARCAT police attack “tank“.
They could have heard the voices of the people who were crying out against this intimidating monstrosity that will inevitably militarize the Keene police even more, and as city councilor Carl Jacobs appropriately pointed out, distance them further from the community they supposedly serve.
They could have. But they didn’t. The BEARCAT passed 9 to 4.
Despite the outpouring of opposition in the community against the BEARCAT, not a single councilor changed their vote from December, when they originally voted in favor of it. That vote was 13 to 1. Why were the numbers different? The new city councilors who took office in January were the ones to vote against it. So, the councilors who originally voted for it completely disregarded all the input they received from the community in various forms:
In a Keene Sentinel online poll, 72% said they city council was wrong to accept the BEARCAT. (Only 12% favored the BEARCAT in the poll.)
City councilor Bettina Chadbourne related during tonight’s meeting that of the 80 phone calls she received from various members of the community, (old, young, business owners, men, women, etc) only ten calls were in favor of the BEARCAT.
A random walk down Main St. would show anyone who bothered to ask people that the supermajority of people oppose the BEARCAT.
Most letters to the editor of the Keene Sentinel were in opposition to the BEARCAT.
During the meeting the councilors who favored the BEARCAT got no applause from the packed room, while the councilors who spoke in opposition to the BEARCAT were blasted with applause.
The reasons given for supporting the BEARCAT by the councilors were pathetic. Mitch Greenwald believes the Department of Homeland Security has our best interests in mind. Dale Pregent believes it will help in a flood. Janice Manwaring trusts the Keene Police to be good boys with their new, violent toy. Look for video here at Free Keene soon.
Not one of them changed their minds. The emails they received, the calls, the personal contacts – none of it mattered. None of it outweighed what the Keene police wanted. […]
Congratulations to the people calling themselves the Keene Police and City of Keene. Tonight they succeeded in proving that they don’t give a damn about what the people in the community want and effectively destroyed even more of the precious legitimacy that is so crucial to people seeing them as something other than an occupying criminal gang. Even though the advocates of peace lost in the vote, we won in the long view, because the aggressors have shown their hand yet again. They don’t care about your desires to live in a peaceful place. They only do what aggregates more power and money to them and their buddies. It’s clear they are the masters, not the servants. … Full article
“September 11 – The New Pearl Harbor” is a 5 hour documentary that summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9/11. While aimed primarily at a general, uninformed audience, the film also contains some new findings that may be of interest to advanced researchers.
This film is intended as an educational, non-profit operation, and must remain so in order to fulfill all the requirements for the usage of copyrighted material. As such, the entire film is made available online for free from day one. Any purchase of the actual DVD will be considered as a form of donation to the author, in recognition of the time spent to put together this material. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs is encouraged.
At the bottom of the page you will find more information related to this film, including the links to order the DVD, and the TRAILER.
Index for DVD One
INTRODUCTION
0.01:02 – 12 parallels between Pearl
Harbor and September 11
0.14:10 – The debate: main issues
PART 1 – AIR DEFENSE
0.14:55 – Where are the interceptors?
0.16:12 – The “incompetence theory”
(radars, transponders)
0.22:00 – The military drills
0.29:40 – Specific warnings
0.33:08 – The chain of command
0.38:10 – Promotions, not punishments
0.39:50 – The Mineta case
0.47:38 – Debunkers: “Mineta was mistaken”
0.53:18 – The Mineta case – A summary
PART 2 – THE HIJACKERS
0.57:15 – “Piss-poor student pilots”
0.59:38 – Marwan al-Sheikki (UA175)
1.01:52 – Ziad Jarrah (UA93)
1.03:06 – Hani Hanjour (AA77)
1.04:00 – The debunkers’ positions
1.06:00 – 2 simulations of the Pentagon attack
1.13:10 – Someone knew?
1.16:40 – Airport security cameras
1.20.15 – The missing black boxes
PART 3 – THE AIRPLANES
1.26:50 – Passenger planes or military drones?
1.28:20 – Impossible speeds
1.37:30 – What happened to the passengers?
1.38:35 – The cellphone calls
1.48:30 – The debunkers’ position
1.50:38 – If not from the planes, from where?
Index for DVD Two
PART 4 – THE PENTAGON
0.02:35 – Downed light poles
0.03:30 – The missing plane
0.04:30 – The official version
0.05:24 – Problems with the official version
(wing, ailerons, tail, engines)
0.13:09 – The mystery hole
0.14:10 – The debunkers’ explanations
0.16:20 – Conclusions on damage analysis
0.17:00 – The missing tapes
0.18:30 – Security video analysis
0.23.40 – Pentagon summary
PART 5 – FLIGHT 93
0.24.15 – The empty hole
0.28.00 – The debunkers’ explanations
0.33:00 – Plane crash or bomb explosion?
0.34:50 – The debris field
0.37.20 – The shootdown hypothesis
0.38:50 – The small white plane
0.41:40 – “Let’s roll”
0.44:25 – Summary of Flight 93
PART 6 – THE TWIN TOWERS
0.45:10 – Introduction
0.47:45 – The Towers’ small dirty secret
0.53:10 – Larry Silverstein
0.56:15 – NIST vs. Architects & Engineers
0.58:00 – Robust or fragile buildings?
1.04:45 – The initial collapse – Explanation #1
1.05:45 – The initial collapse – Explanation #2
1.07:35 – Problems with the official explanation
1.18:00 – The full collapse – No official explanation
1.18:50 – Law of physics violated
1.20:50 – The Twin Towers and freefall
1.27:50 – Debunkers’ response to A&E
Index for DVD Three
(Twin Towers continued)
0.00:20 – The hypothesis of controlled demolitions
0.01:08 – Debunkers: “Impossible to place explosives”
0.07:34 – Explosions in the Twin Towers (witnesses)
0.15:00 – “Fuel in elevators shafts” theory
0.23:25 – Debunkers: “Explosions not recorded by tv cameras”
0.30:26 – Squibs
0.33:00 – Explosive force (montage)
0.35:00 – Ejecta
0.38:00 – Diagonal cuts
0.40:15 – What happened to the hat trusses?
0.42:20 – Extreme temperatures
0.45:30 – Debunkers’ explanations
0.46:45 – Twisted and mangled beams
0.47:40 – Molten steel
0.51:05 – Molten concrete
0.53:50 – Pulverization
0.57:40 – Victims vaporized
1.02:20 – Conclusion on the Twin Towers
PART 7 – BUILDING 7
1.05:10 – Introduction
1.06:35 – Official version by NIST
1.09:36 – Collapse computer simulation
1.11:00 – Fire computer simulation
1.12:20 – Debunkers: “Building 7 weaker”
1.14:25 – Preknowledge
1.19:00 – Symmetry
1.20:00 – Freefall
EPILOGUE
1.22:30 – John McCain
1.24:35 – The last word
General Information
CONTACT: redazione[AT]luogocomune.net (replace [AT] with symbol).
SOURCE FILES: Here you can download the “Pentagon video analysis” by digital expert P.P. Murru (in Italian). All other sources used in the film are easily retrievable online.
OTHER LANGUAGES: You can access the Italian version of the film here, and the French version of the film here.
PUBLIC SCREENINGS: A 3 hour version of the film is in the works. It will be made available as soon as ready to those who wish to organize a public screening.Please contact me for details.
COMMENTS: Serious, constructive criticism is always welcome, from both sides of the fence. I don’t have a forum in English, but you can always send your comments to my address above. The comments deemed of general interest will be published here, together with my answers.
ERRORS & OMISSION: I have tried my best to acknowledge every source I have used in the film. Should I have missed someone, please let me know. Errors & omissions will be listed here as soon as they are reported.
ORDER DVD – You can order the 3-DVD set of “September 11 – The New Pearl Harbor” from Amazon (US residents) or from luogocomune (rest of the world). Other films by Massimo Mazzucco are also available.
Most readers have probably heard of Marc Rich. He was the Jewish criminal who was pardoned by Bill Clinton just prior to the former president’s leaving office in 2001. Rich was the original founder of Glencore, the company whose exploitive activities in the African nation of Zambia are documented in the video above. Some years ago he was indicted for tax fraud, and the film goes into his criminal past in considerable detail. It will probably come as no great surprise that Rich’s pardon was sought by officials of the Israeli government.
Clinton also cited clemency pleas he had received from Israeli government officials, including then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Rich had made substantial donations to Israeli charitable foundations over the years, and many senior Israeli officials, such as Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert, argued on his behalf behind the scenes.[27] (Speculation about another rationale for Rich’s pardon involved his alleged involvement with the Israeli intelligence community.[28][29] Rich reluctantly acknowledged in interviews with his biographer, Daniel Ammann, that he had assisted the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service,[15][6] a claim that Ammann said was confirmed by a former Israeli intelligence officer.[14] According to Ammann, Rich had helped finance the Mossad’s operations and had supplied Israel with strategic amounts of Iranian oil through a secret oil pipeline.[6] The aide to Rich who had persuaded Denise Rich to personally ask President Clinton to review Rich’s pardon request was a former chief of the Mossad, Avner Azulay.[23][30] Another former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, had also urged Clinton to pardon Rich,[2] whom he said had routinely allowed intelligence agents to use his offices around the world.[3])
Also not surprisingly, the pardon was recommended by our current Attorney General, Eric Holder.
Somewhat less familiar, perhaps, is the name of Ivan Glasenberg. It is Glasenberg who heads Glencore today. Wikipedia lists Glasenberg as a “triple citizen,” that is to say, he reportedly holds citizenship in Israel, Australia, and South Africa. So far as I’m aware, the CEO hasn’t been indicted for anything, but as you’ll see from the video, Glencore has engaged in some highly questionable business practices in regards to its copper mining operations in Zambia. Here it has extracted enormous wealth from the ground—Zambia has been blessed with the third largest copper reserves in the world—yet the country ranks among the poorer nations on earth, with a majority of its citizens subsisting on two dollars a day.
Directed by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, the above documentary is entitled “Stealing Africa.” It was released in November of last year and originally aired on the BBC—which probably explains the omission of the Israeli connection or the absence of any mention of Glasenberg or Rich even being Jewish. Glencore today is called Glencore Xystrata as a result of a merger which took place in May of this year, just a few months after the documentary’s release. Also, just as a matter of interest, Marc Rich died in June of this year. Glasenberg, still among the living, is listed by Forbes as having a net worth of $6.7 billion.
A little bit more on the documentary is available from the website Why Poverty:
In Ruschlikon, a sleepy village in Switzerland, the wealthy residents are receiving more tax revenue than they can use since the arrival of Ivan Glasberg, CEO of commodity giant Glencore. Yet in Zambia, where Glencore owns a majority stake in the country’s biggest copper mining operations, tax is an issue that’s contributing to its poverty…
Glasberg netted $9.6 billion when Glencore went public in 2011. The receipt of of his taxes overwhelmed the public coffers of Ruschlikon so much that the mayor decided to lower the town’s tax rate by 7%.
Not so fortunate for the residents of copper-rich Zambia – where Glencore owns a 73% stake in the Mopani Copper Mines (one of the biggest mining operations in the country).
Unfortunately, Zambia’s copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia’s copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they’ve extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world.
So why hasn’t copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia yet made the residents of Ruschlikon better off? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia’s case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens.
The film also gives us some insight into why so many governments, particularly in poorer parts of the world, seemingly do nothing to stop rampant corporate abuses. This is true even in Zambia, which ironically at present has what appears to be a fairly decent government—with some committed officials striving to act in the public interest. But the problem is, quite simply put, Glencore is more powerful.
Director Christoffer Guldbrandsen
Producer Henrik Veileborg
Produced by Guldbrandsen Film
As debate over the merits of “stop and frisk” policing continues, a new YouTube video has added fuel to the fire by revealing the disturbing tactics of two Philadelphia officers.
Titled “Police unlawful harassment and racial profiling,” the video is dated Sept. 27 and shows two pedestrians being stopped by police officers after saying “hi” to a third, unseen individual on the street.
“You don’t say ‘Hi’ to strangers,”one officer, identified as Philip Nace by the Philadelphia Daily News, said as he confronts the two pedestrians and pushes one against the car. The other individual is recording the scene on his smartphone as it unfolds.
After Nace tells the man to put his phone away because he’s “under investigation,” the phone is set down but continues to record.
“Investigation of what? I was walking,” the man said, to which the officer replies, “That’s not what I saw … if you keep running your mouth I’ll split your wig open.”
The two go back and forth, with the man asking Nace why he’d been stopped, and Nace offering that he doesn’t know what information the police have on them.
“Are you accusing me of robbing somebody?” the pedestrian asks.
“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Nace said.“I said we could’ve got a call, that somebody wearing the clothes you’re wearing just robbed somebody. That’s why we stopped you. Is that wrong of us?”
When asked if he’s permitted to grab pedestrians in this manner, Nace replies,“I’ll grab you any way I got to… Why don’t you shut up? Everyone thinks they’re a [expletive] lawyer and they don’t know jack [expletive].”
At one point, the officers attempt to justify their actions by claiming the two pedestrians were jaywalking. Nace also accuses the two pedestrians of “weakening the country” by “freeloading.”
The race of the two pedestrians is not clear in the video, but “stop and frisk” tactics are increasingly coming under fire as demeaning, and for unfairly targeting minorities without sufficient cause.
“This is exactly what the city of Philadelphia says its cops don’t do,” Mary Catherine Roper, senior staff attorney for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News. “The only way we stop it from happening is if the police department acknowledges that it does happen and takes steps to root it out.”
In August, a federal judge ruled New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy unconstitutional on the grounds that it is a form of racial profiling.
Meanwhile, a new study released in September revealed that “stop and frisk” tactics are causing a large proportion of the public to mistrust the police. The lack of faith can become so severe that even those who are victimized become reluctant to report crimes.
As Philip Zelikow prepares to teach an online history course, we peel back the layers of propaganda from the former Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission. From cover up to predictive programming, we examine the ways that Zelikow helped to shape (and write) the history he’s now teaching.
Located in Boston, Northeastern University is a four-year college and graduate school offering degrees in law, political science, African American studies, and various other fields. The school seems to be generally well thought of, and is even involved in a research program to develop high-resolution images of human brain activity. But recently the university, or more specifically some of its faculty members, has come under attack by Zionists.
This of course is not new. Faculty members who criticize Israel have found themselves targeted at one university after another in America. Norman Finkelstein is probably one of the more famous cases in point, but he is not by any means the only one. Attacks at Northeastern have focused in the main on Denis Sullivan, professor of International Affairs and director of the school’s Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development; Economics Professor M. Shahid Alam; and Berna Turam, who also teaches in the International Affairs program.
On July 5, 2013 the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) wrote a letter to the university’s president, Joseph Aoun, calling for Sullivan’s and Alam’s dismissal, and also complaining about a campus student group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), whose activities—along with classroom comments made by the professors cited—are said to be causing Jewish students at Northeastern to “feel unsafe and uncomfortable.”
The issue has received considerable coverage in the Jewish newspaper, The Algemeiner—this of course would be the same Algemeiner which just a couple of months ago published some fairly rancid accusations made by an official with the Simon Wiesenthal Center against musical entertainer Roger Waters.
In an October 4 article, the Algemeiner reports on “allegations of rampant anti-Semitism” on the Northeastern campus, and also airs an official response from the university that apparently was thought to have been issued in an insufficiently prompt manner:
Boston’s Northeastern University responded on Friday to allegations of rampant anti-Semitism from students by faculty on campus, after The Algemeiner pressed the school on why it hadn’t answered a formal letter from three months ago from the Zionist Organization of America, which helped the students make their case.
Also, it appears that Jewish students at the school have been videotaping classroom lectures—whether openly or clandestinely isn’t specified, but the 12-page letter to Aoun makes reference to “three separate and very disturbing videos,” and accuses faculty members of making “false and demonizing accusations against Jews and Israel.”
Of the three professors, Sullivan seems to have aroused the most ire. The ZOA letter devotes a full two and a half pages to his alleged misdeeds, including the following:
In one course, Professor Sullivan was promoting a so-called “one-state solution” to the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict. In effect, he was calling for the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel, to be replaced by another Arab state. A Jewish student in the class raised her hand an asked a legitimate question—what this “solution” would mean for Jews living in Israel. Instead of answering the question, Professor Sullivan personally attacked the student, as the rest of the class snickered. Understandably, the Jewish student felt unable to defend herself against her professor. She was so traumatized by the attack that she began crying in class and had to leave the room. This Jewish student was an international affairs major with a concentration in the Middle East. But she ended up changing her concentration because of the anti-Israel climate in the department.
Another female student—apparently also suffering from anti-Semitism-induced traumatization—“no longer wears a Star of David on campus, nor does she make it known that she is Jewish.”
The ZOA accuses the SJP of “vandalizing” the university by posting “anti-Israel stickers all over the campus,” and also speaks of the vandalization (for three years straight) of a campus menorah during Chanukah season. The damaging of the menorah is not specifically blamed on the SJP, but the student group is taken to task for disrupting a pro-Israel event as well as for posting “hateful falsehoods about Israel that cross the line into anti-Semitism” on a law school bulletin board.
But from the Zionist perspective, perhaps the gravest sin of all was that committed by Professor Alam—who apparently has counseled his students not to be too intimidated should they happen to be accused of anti-Semitism.
One professor not only has made false and demonizing accusations against Jews and Israel, but has also bragged about how students are now too intimidated to speak up and challenge his views. In a lecture delivered on April 10, 2012, M. Shahid Alam, an economics professor, accused “Zionist partisans” and “partisans of Israel”—code for Jews—of “trying to shut out the daylight, the daylight of truth about Zionism, about Israel and the hostility of these two and their crimes against humanity, the war crimes. Their brutality, their massacre, their ethnic cleansing.” Alam also outrageously told students in his lecture that Israelis’ “whole life depends upon defending lies. They have to defend lies.”
In addition to demonizing Jews and Israelis to students at Northeastern, Alam bragged about the hostile environment in his classes, where pro-Israel students are now afraid to speak up: “If there are one or two people who want to say something, they don’t because they can sense that they will get no support from the class.” Alam also embraced claims that he is anti-Semitic and encouraged students to follow in his footsteps: “You know we should really laugh away accusations of anti-Semitism. It has now become laughable. And there may come a time when you wear that label as a mark of distinction.”
A Jewish student, apparently in class at the time Alam made the remarks, reportedly was so “horrified” by the professor’s comments he wrote a letter to Aoun and other university officials, a portion of which is quoted by the ZOA. “I sat painfully listening to Professor Alam insinuate, that students should be proud to be called anti-semitic,” the student wrote. “I had never in my life, ever, experienced anti-semitism first hand until this past year when I witnessed Professor Alam and Professor Sullivan display an age old hatred against the Jewish people.”
As for the ZOA’s letter to Aoun, it is signed by Morton A. Klein, national president, and Susan B. Tuchman, director of the Center for Law and Justice. Moreover, it contains what could be construed as a not-so-thinly veiled threat against the school (emphasis included):
All these problems raise the question of whether Northeastern University is complying with its legal obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We have enclosed a policy letter issued in October 2010 by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR has made it clear that schools receiving federal funding must remedy a hostile environment for Jewish students and ensure that the hostility does not recur, pursuant to Title VI. If a school fails to comply with Title VI, then it risks losing its federal funding.
In a brief written statement issued last month, the university speaks of its “incredible diversity” and its commitment to “academically rigorous” standards, commenting also on its efforts to ensure a proper learning environment for all students.
If any member of our community feels marginalized for any reason, the university has a range of offices and avenues where grievances can be heard and resolved. This includes a dedicated Office of Diversity and Inclusion, our extensive student affairs operation, and the university ombudsman. We encourage members of the Northeastern community to take advantage of these many resources, which include the opportunity for confidential discussions.
Specific concerns presented by members of the Northeastern community are swiftly and thoroughly investigated. This is vital to maintaining a productive and enlightened learning environment.
However, unsubstantiated allegations made by third parties are not sufficient for Northeastern—or any university—to launch internal investigations. Pursuing unsubstantiated allegations is just as irresponsible as ignoring legitimate concerns.
“Dismissing the reports in our letter as ‘unsubstantiated’ allows the administration to avoid the real issue, about whether Jewish students are being subjected to a hostile learning environment and what must be done to remedy the problem,” Tuchman commented to the Algemeiner by way of response. “Northeastern’s reaction is just another slap in the face for students and their concerns.”
The videos mentioned above were produced by a 501c-3 organization called Americans for Peace and Tolerance. Whether the organization is affiliated with the ZOA, I do not know, but the video below follows closely the subject matter contained in the ZOA letter. “In many academic institutions around the US, Israel has become the subject of relentless criticism and outright demonization,” the narrator comments at the beginning. Could anything the Jewish state have done possibly account for these negative feelings having been aroused in such large numbers of people? The narrator doesn’t seem to think so. His video focuses almost exclusively on what he narrowly views as anti-Semitism, tendering, like a devalued currency, an official definition of “the new anti-Semitism” issued by the US State Department.
“Alam promotes the anti-Semitic conspiracy notion that a mostly Jewish elite group of neoconservatives sought to place American power in the service of Israel”—one almost has to laugh at an attempt to portray what is so obvious to so many people as being nothing more than a conspiracy fantasy. On the surface what we find here is a coordinated attack upon a university, similar to so many we’ve seen in the past, but looked at from a slightly different angle, the video and the ZOA letter can also be viewed as signs of a growing desperation, as an effort to stave off the rapidly accelerating disintegration of Israel’s “legitimacy” as a nation and the increasing recognition and awareness of its criminality. Compare the relatively benign statements made by the Northeastern University professors in the above video with the racist, and in some cases outright genocidal, comments quoted in the video below:
If the people at the ZOA were intellectually honest, instead of harping solely upon comments by Sullivan and his colleagues would they not at least have acknowledged that a number of statements of a deplorable nature have been made by prominent Israelis, including officials of the Israeli government? And would this not have supplied some context, maybe even helped people to understand and make sense of the “relentless criticism and outright demonization” the poor Jewish state has had to suffer? I wonder why they left that out? Perhaps it just slipped their minds.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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Tonight, the Keene city council could have made history as the first ever political designation to reject arms manufacturer LENCO and the federal government’s pushing of the BEARCAT police attack “tank“.
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