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State Repression

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.

Failing In Its Case Against The Uhuru Three, The US Manufactures ‘Thought Crimes’

December 10, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , ,
The Uhuru 3 - Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel - will have a sentencing hearing on December 16 in Florida. Failing to find evidence to convict them of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the US Government manufactured a charge of conspiring to violate the law by thinking about it. There is no evidence to support this. This conviction creates a new level of state repression. Clearing the FOG speaks with Chairman Yeshitela about the case, the current political environment in the United States, including his opinions on the recent presidential election, and the recent events in the Sahel Region of Africa to decolonize the area.

Cleveland Police Commission Pushes Through Drone Policy

November 30, 2024 Catherine Henchek, Liberation News. , , , , ,
Community members packed Cleveland’s Community Police Commission meeting on Nov. 20 to oppose a new police drone policy. The policy, spearheaded by Commissioner Piet van Lier, included sections which provide Cleveland police arguments to use drones over protests under the guise of other police operations. After public outrage and a contentious meeting, two authorized drone uses in the policy which could target protesters were removed. However, the policy that was approved by the Commission still included concerning language, such as the following in the Operational Procedures...

Students Who Protested Gaza Genocide Face Felony Mob Charges

November 26, 2024 Tara Goodarzi, Truthout. , , , , , ,
Pre-trial hearings for students who participated in a Gaza solidarity encampment in central Illinois last spring are being held on November 20 and December 4, 2024. The outcome of the four students’ trials will determine whether they will risk up to three years of incarceration on felony “mob action” charges for having exercised their free speech rights on campus. The students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) — one of the largest public universities in the country — constructed an encampment known as the Popular University for Gaza in April 2024, after months of Israel’s relentless slaughter of Palestinians, mirroring dozens of other student-led sites across the United States.

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Targeting Pro-Palestine Activists

November 25, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , ,
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken severe measures to suppress the voices of two prominent pro-Palestine activists on campus: PhD student Prahlad Iyengar and Dr. Michel DeGraff, a professor who has taught linguistics at the university for over 28 years. Iyengar has been banned from campus, which is also his place of work, without due process. He has also been denied union representation by MIT’s administration, despite himself being a union steward. He faces imminent threat of suspension as well as expulsion. MIT prohibited Dr. Degraff from teaching a course on Palestine, suspended his annual pay raise, and had his official status at the university changed from “Professor of Linguistics” to “Faculty-at-Large,” also without due process.

Why Did The FBI Show Up At Alison Weir’s Door?

November 22, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , , ,
Journalist and author Alison Weir has raised concerns over what she describes as an unsettling visit from the FBI, alleging that agents showed up at her home unannounced to question her. In a public statement on November 18, Weir revealed that she was approached by agents who informed her the visit was connected to a matter involving Press TV, the Iranian state-owned news outlet. She said she asked agents to allow a family member to be present before continuing the discussion, during which she learned the agents had been directed by one of their offices to “check in with certain people.”

Cities Say They Store Property Taken From Homeless Encampments

November 21, 2024 Nicole Santa Cruz, Asia Fields and Ruth Talbot, Pro Publica. , , ,
When Stephenie came upon workers in Portland, Oregon, who had bagged up all of her belongings in a homeless encampment sweep, she desperately pleaded to get one item back: her purse. It contained her cash and food stamp card — what she needed to survive. The crew refused to look for it, she said. The items workers had put in clear bags were headed to a city warehouse. Those in black bags were headed to a landfill. They handed her a card with a phone number to call if she wanted to pick up her things.
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