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State Repression

Chris Hedges: Surrendering To Authoritarianism

March 25, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , ,
I was not surprised when Columbia University’s interim president Katrina Armstrong caved to the demands of the Trump administration. She agreed to ban face masks or face coverings, prohibit protests in academic buildings and create an internal security force of 36 New York City Police officers empowered to “remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them when appropriate.” She has also surrendered the autonomy of academic departments, as demanded by the Trump administration, by appointing a new senior vice provost to “review” the university’s department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies.

Suspended For Pro-Palestine Speech

March 14, 2025 Helyeh Doutaghi, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
My name is Helyeh Doutaghi. I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages with Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonial critiques of law, and the global political economy of sanctions. I have specifically examined the mechanisms and consequences of economic warfare on Iran, as well as the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield U.S. military operations from accountability. On October 1, 2023, I was appointed Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project and joined the team.

DHS Agents Descend On Columbia’s Campus Again With Two Warrants

March 14, 2025 Prem Thakker, Zeteo. , , , , ,
Less than a week after immigration authorities detained Columbia student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, Department of Homeland Security agents were back on the university’s campus to serve two search warrants. “I am writing heartbroken to inform you that we had federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in two University residences tonight. No one was arrested or detained,” Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong wrote in an email to the university community late Thursday. “No items were removed, and no further action was taken. Federal agents from the DHS served Columbia University with two judicial search warrants signed by a federal magistrate judge authorizing DHS to enter non-public areas of the University and conduct searches of two student rooms.”

Mahmoud Khalil Will Remain Detained In Louisiana

March 13, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
Mahmoud Khalil will continue to be detained at an ICE facility in Louisiana following a brief hearing in New York City on Wednesday morning. In response to a habeas corpus petition and a request to have him transferred back to New York, where he was arrested, federal judge Jesse Furman called for more briefs from Khalil’s lawyers and the U.S. government. Trump attorneys informed the court that they will submit a motion to transfer or dismiss Khalil’s habeas corpus petition, as they view New York as “an improper venue” for the case and do not believe it has any jurisdiction.

Take Action: The Arrest Of Mahmoud Khalil Is A Warning

March 11, 2025 William Shoki, Africa Is A Country. , , , , , , ,
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent graduate of Columbia University, may seem like an isolated case—just another student detained under the increasingly draconian surveillance of the US security state. Some may wonder why anyone should care about the fate of a single foreign graduate student at an Ivy League university. But Khalil’s story is not an anomaly; rather, it is a warning. His detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in what appears to be an attempt to silence pro-Palestinian activism, is part of a much broader global trend: the rise of authoritarianism in its neofascist form and the increasing weaponization of state power against dissenters.

We Are International Students Organizing For Palestine

March 11, 2025 Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
We are international students who have organized in solidarity with the Palestine liberation struggle over the past 16 months. We write anonymously because the moment demands, strategically, that we do so. However, we will not be silenced. You may censure and suspend us, you may send ICE to knock down our doors, you may deport us back to our home countries, but we are only one drop in a vast ocean, and the tide of support for Palestine is rising everywhere. Israel’s ongoing genocide has shaken the outrage of the free people of the world. While the so-called international community appears largely content to censure the zionist state and continue with business as usual, we cannot unsee images of nineteen year old student Shaban Ahmed Al-Dalou burning to death in his tent attached to an IV drip after Israeli forces bombed families sheltering in Deir al-Balah.

DHS Detains Lead Negotiator Of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment

March 9, 2025 Meghnad Bose, DropSite News. , , , ,
New York City—On Saturday night, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents entered a student residential building at Columbia University in uptown New York and detained Mahmoud Khalil, one of the lead negotiators on behalf of pro-Palestine protesters at 2024’s Gaza solidarity encampment. In a sweeping attack on the First Amendment, the Trump administration said this week it would begin revoking visas of “Hamas sympathizers,” specifically citing Columbia University students. The detention followed a two-day targeted online campaign against Khalil by pro-Israel groups and individuals, including Columbia’s high-profile pro-Israel professor, Shai Davidai.

Elise Stefanik Brags About Purging University Leaders

March 7, 2025 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , ,
In a revealing moment during her recent CPAC speech, Donald Trump’s newly appointed UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, openly took credit for the ousting of multiple Ivy League university presidents on Israel’s behalf. “Do you remember that famous Congressional hearing with the anti-Semitic university presidents from Harvard and Penn?” she asked the crowd. “I should say former presidents after my questions. Five down and so many to go.” Stefanik was referring to her high-profile exchanges with university leaders, which she claims exposed their alleged tolerance for anti-Semitism and failure to combat calls for genocide against Jews.

Ukraine: Stop The Assassination Of The Kononovich Brothers!

March 1, 2025 Steve Gillis, Workers' World. , , ,
Armed police of Ukraine’s Territorial Center of [military] Recruitment (TCC) detained the brothers Mikhail and Alexander Konovovich on Feb. 25, not far from the house where they are under house arrest. The brothers were wearing GPS bracelets. The TCC charged the Kononovich brothers with being on the Ukrainian wanted list as evaders of military service. This charge subjects them to forced conscription into the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and mobilization directly from the place of detention to the front lines of the war.

The Global Spread Of Palestine’s Agony

February 25, 2025 Antony Loewenstein, Consortium News. , , , ,
The recent announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump that he wanted to take over the Gaza Strip, remove its Palestinian citizens and establish a “Riviera for the Middle East” has been rightly condemned as “ethnic cleansing” by sane voices around the world. Standing alongside a smirking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a man with a long history of crushing any hope of Palestinian self-determination, Trump expressed a long-held dream of the Israeli Right, emptying Palestinians from Palestine. It’s a position that’s supported today by a majority of Israel’s Jewish population.

Free Yves Engler

February 25, 2025 Owen Schalk, Canadian Dimension. , , , , , ,
On February 20, long-time Canadian Dimension columnist and contributor Yves Engler was arrested by Montréal police at the behest of pro-Israel media personality Dahlia Kurtz. In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is apparently enough to land you behind bars. Canadians involved in progressive politics, from the left-wing of the NDP and Greens to the Communist Party, read Engler’s work and admire his commitment to social struggle. For decades, he has organized in support of just causes, from helping stop war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Concordia University in 2002, to tirelessly confronting Canadian politicians about their complicity in the genocide in Gaza, to penning a vast catalogue of work that shatters complacent illusions about Canada’s benevolence and reveals the often cynical, profit-driven, anti-democratic heart of Ottawa’s foreign policy.

Know Your Rights If The FBI Comes Knocking

February 21, 2025 Schuyler Mitchell, Truthout. , , , , ,
Mara Sapon-Shevin always wondered if she had an FBI file. For more than 40 years, the Syracuse University professor has been a political activist for Palestinian liberation, first organizing with New Jewish Agenda and later with Jewish Voice for Peace. On October 10, 2023 — in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel and amid the rapid escalation of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza — Sapon-Shevin got her answer: An FBI agent was on her doorstep. He unfolded his badges from his wallet and asked for her by name.

Berlin Police Again Try To Shut Down Meeting On Palestine

February 20, 2025 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , ,
After police and politicians in Germany tried to cancel a meeting Tuesday in Berlin featuring Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, organizers were forced to move the event to a smaller venue in defiance of the pressure to shut it down. Last year the police in Berlin broke up a Palestine meeting and barred speakers from entering the country. This time, the organizers, DiEM25, said in a statement on its website: “In a deeply concerning escalation, the organisers of ‘Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth’ – an event featuring UN Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese – are facing ruthless attacks on their fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and expression.

The Biden Administration Fails To Win Imprisonment Of The Uhuru 3

December 17, 2024 The Black Alliance for Peace. , , , , , ,
Members of the Uhuru Movement, Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel – the “Uhuru 3” – were sentenced to three years probation and community service after being convicted in September 2024 of supposedly conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in U.S. elections. The Black Alliance for Peace recognizes that this sentence is confirmation that the charges against Uhuru members by the Biden Administration Justice Department were baseless. While any sentence handed down from imperialist courts for actions that are supposed to be legally protected are, in themselves, illegitimate, the refusal of the judge to incarcerate the Uhuru 3 is a victory in the fight against a repressive US regime, regardless of which wing of the finance capital bird leads it.

Letter To Refaat Alareer

December 12, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
We are not silent. We are being silenced. The students who, during the last academic year set up encampments, occupied halls, went on hunger strikes and spoke out against the genocide, were met this fall with a series of rules that have turned university campuses into academic gulags. Among the minority of academics who dared to speak out, many have been sanctioned or dismissed. Medical professionals who criticize the wholesale destruction by Israel of hospitals, clinics and targeted assassinations of health workers in Gaza have been suspended or terminated from medical school faculties with some facing threats to revoke their medical licenses.
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