Today in Montreal, the courts ruled in favour of the students camped out in support of the Palestinian people against the overblown Israeli government's genocidal response to the Hamas attack of last October.
McGill University had sought an injunction to forcibly remove them, but ultimately was thwarted by the Quebec Superior Court and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (ahem, Mr. Anthony Housefather).
When I was in school (alas, decades ago), I was introduced to the Clash and like them, I studied how the CIA destroyed the Chilean socialist govt of Allende (the Chilean 9/11) and what Nixon and his Sec. of State Kissinger did to Southeast Asia, Nicaragua (the Sandinistas), El Salvador and on and on, so I have no illusions of the USA being the good guys (but as Canadians, we are kinda' geographically stuck being their international lackeys).
In this case, with how events are spiraling out of control in the Middle East, it seems bigger. It seems like a real point of no return is happening here.
Anyway, I am currently reading a book called They Knew by Sarah Kendzior. She is a 40-something US investigative journalist and she has all the receipts about the corruption between Bibi, the Saudis, Modi, Putin, Trump, the UAE (and many other powerful US pols, Republican and Democratic), and yes, Stephen Harper and his patently anti-democratic, Orwellian-named group, the International Democratic Union, that is working hard behind the scenes to put autocratic dictators in power everywhere they can.
Meanwhile, I see Egypt joining with South Africa in calling on the ICJ to prosecute Israel for genocide, breaking with a truce they've had with Israel since I was a little boy (also surely breaking former US President Jimmy Carter's 99 year-old heart - although I can almost picture him silently nodding in resigned accord).
But at the same time, we must be encouraged by these student protests.
When I was a young college student, I watched the Berlin Wall fall - the Iron Curtain as well - and the pressure people all over the world put on the Afrikaaners, Botha and later deKlerk, to free Nelson Mandela and eventually end Apartheid in South Africa.
Yeah, no way would you catch us playing Sun City.
Mandela's ANC was a "terrorist" and "communist" organization, as our news outlets pointedly reminded us at every opportunity. It isn't without irony that Hamas and Hezbollah are listed as such today.
Now, they are both surely ruthlessly brutal in their methods (Hamas especially, as we saw on October 7, 2023), but when a people have been put in a position where they see no other way to survive, what else should one expect?
As even the untrustworthy Israeli government attests, the Palestinians in the West Bank (including their leaders) had nothing to do with the October attack, despite the fact that for decades, their physical environment has been forcibly shrunk. Lately, their homes have even being torched or stolen by Jewish "settlers" (at the pleasure of the Israeli justice system) with no recourse.
Meanwhile, this current starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza is a Bibi-made horror.
Essentially, Joe Biden is making this horror story possible with his almost maudlin, unwavering support of this Israeli government, sealed with the kiss of UN Security Council vetoes and endless shipments of bombs and arms. Clearly, Biden must stop Bibi and the Likud and the cabal of Kahanists and their other dehumanizing rightwing allies currently in charge of Israel, and he should have done so months ago.
So I made a small donation today to UNRWA to help alleviate the Gazans' suffering. And I put my moral support behind the protesting students, and I wish to remind you all that at least one time in my life, we witnessed a change that came about from the steadfast pressure common people put on South Africa to end Apartheid, and it actually worked.
And maybe, just maybe, we can do it again.
If we all push.
- 30 -
PS: please go to wikipedia.org or juancole.com or aljazeera.com or cbc.ca for supporting links not provided. Or better yet, get yourself some hard copies of what's going on now. The links might not last forever.
PS 2: shameless addition of self-aggrandizing video but hey, it's also a gol-dang catchy song:
Keep your feet planted, folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJoX95fK_N8
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