On 29 March 2011, students at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, shut down the scheduled Board of Governors (BoG) meeting after the body refused to consider a motion calling for divestment of pension stock from four companies implicated in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The direct action was led by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), and received the support and participation of 25 allied campus student groups, as well as faculty, staff and community members.
During Operation Cast Lead Israel committed massive war crimes for all the world to see. Among these crimes the use of White Phosphorus in densely populated areas, use of Depleted Uranium, bombing civilian targets of all sorts without military necessity, destroying civilian infrastructure with no military justification and the infamous massacre of the Samouni family… among many other crimes.
In the aftermath of Cast Lead, Justice Richard Goldstone, a Zionist Jew, was commissioned by the United Nations to write a report on the alleged war crimes. Although the report did not go nearly far enough in exposing the brutality of all the crimes committed, crimes committed by the fourth largest military in the world against a essentially defenceless and captive population, it did allege that Israel (and Hamas) was almost undoubtedly guilty of war crimes and possibly, crimes against humanity.
But on April 1st, 2011 Justice Goldstone had an apparent change of heart and effectively said that he was wrong. With regard to the Samouni family he said, Israel simply made a mistake. It seems that the world in which we live in, a world of impunity for the favoured Israeli state, is set to continue. Unless of course we the people decide enough is enough. — Ken O’Keefe
Yesterday’s unprovoked attack on Israeli peace activists falls in line with the army’s strategy of repression of nonviolent resistance by Israelis or Palestinians against Israel’s increasingly violent occupation in the West Bank.
Beit Ummar has been holding weekly demonstrations against the occupation and the confiscation of its lands by neighboring Jewish-only settlements for the past several years. The demonstrations have ranged from calm to deadly with hundreds injured and jailed. Some have even been killed in settler rampages through the village.
Yesterday, a group of Ta’ayush activists were returning to Jerusalem after spending the morning with Palestinian farmers in the South Hebron Hills. They made the quick decision to check on the closure of Beit Ummar on the drive home.
“Within five minutes of arriving at a series of concrete barriers in front of the village, we were surrounded by soldiers. We walked to a large gate [which the army had installed two months prior in order to seal the village] at another entrance to the village only to find that it was locked shut” Kurz recalled, “At this point there were a lot of soldiers, many of whom were officers. So we decided to have an impromptu nonviolent protest against the closure of the village.” Speaking to one Israeli activist present at the demonstration, the commander in charge threatened that “every time you do this (demonstrate), I will close the village.”
The commander in charge pronounced the area a ‘closed military zone’, after which one member of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity group asked the commander to see the closed military zone warrant. Being a stout guy, soldiers felt threated by his presence and attacked him. This set off a chain of violent events as soldiers attacked anyone bold enough to look them in the eye. Virtually everyone was arrested. According to activists, the commander never showed them the closed military zone warrant, a legal right afforded by Israeli law.
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Ynet News uses the term “clashes” in describing the event.
The day of rage, the day of departure and the day of salvation: these are the names that protestors across the Arab world have been giving to Friday. From Yemen, to Bahrain, to Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, demonstrators have been massing after Friday prayers to demand change and to safeguard the ideals of their revolutions.
This program will be asking whether the revolutionary movement in Egypt is moving in a new direction, why President Saleh in Yemen is refusing to step down and how the western stance on Bahrain and Libya has raised questions of double standards.
To answer the questions, Homa Lezgee is joined by Chris Bambery, Dr. Saeb Shaath and Ramzy Baroud.
Egyptian authorities are preventing a big supply of cement from entering the Gaza strip. The coalition for the Lifting of Gaza Siege says the move indicates that the Egyptian Revolution has done nothing to change Cairo’s policies toward Palestine.
Ali Abunimah & David Cronin at King’s College London on 24 March 2011, sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and King’s College Action for Palestine.
Depleted uranium is considered a weapon of mass destruction and is banned for use in warfare by international law, yet the US and Israel use it routinely.
The US military has used thousands of tons of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq sickening civilians and its own soldiers by the tens of thousands.
Depleted uranium contaminates food, water, air and land forever. It’s the ultimate “dirty bomb.”
An Israeli campaign to target Palestinian community leaders and organizations in Jerusalem seems to be underway.
From the unjustified closure of over 25 community centres to the interrogation and arrests of numerous political and community leaders, Palestinians in East Jerusalem say that the Israeli authorities are trying to limit the impact of Palestinian civil society groups in the city.
How does a government lead its people to war? How does it communicate to its citizens — and to the wider world — the reasons and rationale for initiating military conflict? What rhetorical devices and techniques are employed? And how is a nation brought to support the profound decision to wage war against another nation? These are the questions that LEADING TO WAR seeks to explore.
This 72-minute film shows the evolution of the United States government’s case for military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime, leading to the Iraq War which began in 2003.
LEADING TO WAR is comprised entirely of archival news footage — without commentary, without voiceover — presented chronologically from President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, 2002 (the “axis of evil” speech), and continuing up to the announcement of formal U.S. military action in Iraq on March 19, 2003.
Covering these 14 months, the film presents selected interviews, speeches, and press conferences given by President Bush and his administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, as well as by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others.
This compressed, chronological view offers a unique opportunity to examine the media record from a historical perspective, allowing the material to speak for itself. Footage was licensed from major news sources, including ABC, AP, BBC, CNN, ITN, and NBC.
LEADING TO WAR is also intended as a historical record for future generations, who will not have had firsthand experience of the precise, incremental steps taken by the government in presenting its case for war.
Gerry Pollet, Executive Director of Heart of America Northwest, spoke in Eugene, Oregon on March 7, 2011. In this excerpt, he talks about the perils of transporting nuclear waste over Oregon’s highways to Hanford.
Suddenly America loves democracy in the Middle East – unless it’s Palestinian democracy
America, which supported tyrannies in the Middle East for decades, has overnight switched to endorsing the uprisings across the region demanding democracy to replace former US clients like Mubarak.
But some Middle East democracies find more favour than others, as Palestinians found out six years ago.
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
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