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Delegates at the 2009 Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism convention in London. The organization issued a declaration calling on governments to use an Israel-centric definition of antisemitism and to outlaw and prosecute such “antisemitism.”

For two decades, some Israeli officials and Israel partisans have worked to embed a new, Israel-focused definition of antisemitism in institutions around the world, from international bodies and national governments to small college campuses in heartland America. This effort is now snowballing rapidly. As a result, advocacy for Palestinian rights is well on …

Former President Barack Obama’s $400,000 check from a Wall Street investment bank to give a one-hour speech is both a partial reward payment for previous services rendered and a graphic reminder of how our political system works.

I was going to begin this op-ed by listing twenty-five of Barack Obama’s most egregious actions as president. But I realized that an extensive recounting would be misunderstood as just more Obama-bashing, quickly lose many readers and subvert my overriding message.

For some time now I’ve been baffled by the number of people, mostly middle-aged and older liberals, who retain a moral blind spot where …

When we search the internet for ‘Tiananmen Square Massacre’, there are hundreds of thousands of hyperlinks to books, news, articles, and videos that describe the event as a “Massacre”; and even the reputable Encyclopaedia Britannica also cites the Western media as sources to describe the 1989 incident as a “Massacre”.

This is despite the fact that, in 1998, Washington Post journalist Jay Mathews reported in the Columbia Journalism Review that “no one died at Tiananmen Square” and that “it is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression”.

In 2004, the Christian Science Monitor revealed that …

Can cute Canadian Caribbean dreams about enchanted islands come true? Or is reality more complicated and Canada a far less benign actor than we imagine ourselves to be?

In a recent Boston Globe opinion titled “Haiti should relinquish its sovereignty”, Boston College professor Richard Albert writes, “the new Haitian Constitution should do something virtually unprecedented: renounce the power of self-governance and assign it for a term of years, say 50, to a country that can be trusted to act in Haiti’s long-term interests.” According to the Canadian constitutional law professor his native land, which Albert calls “one of Haiti’s most …

In a Connecticut State Superior Court decision on September 7, 2016, Judge Thomas G. Moukawsher ruled that while the state of Connecticut is providing adequate funding for its school districts, the methods by which those funds are being distributed violates the state’s constitution. According to Moukawsher, “Connecticut is defaulting on its constitutional duty to provide adequate public school opportunities because it has no rational, substantial and verifiable plan to distribute money for education aid and school construction.” Moukawsher went on to claim:

…the state spends billions of dollars on schools without any binding principle guaranteeing that education aid goes where it’s …

(Full article …)

All over America, school children are completing another academic year before their summer vacation. This invites the questions, what did they learn and what did they do with what they learned?

I’m not talking about their test scores, nor the latest fads in rebranding education, like the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum that de-emphasizes the first two thirds of the old mantra – reading, writing and arithmetic. Rather, I am questioning what they learned about their real-world surroundings, about preparing themselves for life as citizens, workers, consumers, taxpayers, voters and members of various communities.

Not very much, sad to say. The same is true …

Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pg. 253-4, 1963

Although the entirely illegal attack by the US on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government, showed not a thought towards Congressional debate, United Nations mandate or the rule of law, it seems that some thought might have gone into the …

For the past 20 years Washington has aggressively pursued the age-old imperial strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia and East Africa. Frustrated at its inability to control national policy of various independent nation-states, Washington used direct and indirect military force to destroy the central governments in the targeted nations and create patchworks of tribal-ethno-mini-states amenable to imperial rule. Tens of millions of people have been uprooted and millions have died because of this imperial policy.

Washington’s strategy of fragmentation and secession follows …

Jonathan Kay’s resignation from the Walrus for his role in promoting a prize for a writer who engages in cultural appropriation is a relief for the magazine. But, Canada’s leading liberal magazine can’t say they didn’t know Kay was intolerant when they hired him to be editor-in-chief two years ago. Kay has repeatedly smeared Arabs and Muslims in the service of Israeli expansionism.

After protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech at Concordia in 2002 Kay let loose about “an Arabist rabble … well-steeped in the specious propaganda of the Arab world” that made the Montréal university “the …

I am in Russia for two weeks with a delegation of 30 Americans organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives. We have had informative meetings with numerous people but the following two were especially interesting and relevant to international politics: Vladimir Kozin, member of the Russian Academy of Military Science, and Mikhael Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union.
Meeting with Mikhael Gorbachev
Roots of the New Cold War

Vladimir Kozin is an arms control specialist and member of the Russian Academy of Military Science who has worked on …

Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency was a curse on black America’s political heritage.
— Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report

It is no secret that the folks over at Black Agenda Report have never cottoned much to ex-President Obama.  It was, after all, BAR’s executive editor Glen Ford who, long before Obama’s 2008 election, and in reference to the great bulk of black elected officials throughout this nation-state, including most especially, the Congressional Black Caucus, coined the term “black misleadership class.”  Once Obama actually took the oath of office in ’08, Ford promptly placed him at the head of that class. …

It is unfortunate that policies otherwise deemed middle of the road and social democratic tend to be seen in Britain as offspring of a lunatic mother long held in indefinite detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.  But such is the nature of the current electioneering round, which has seen a source, most likely a disgruntled Labour hack, leak the manifesto of Jeremy Corbyn’s party ahead of its debate by the National Executive Committee.

Even Labour co-chair, Andrew Gywnne, claimed that the policies outlined in the document amounted to something akin to Clement Atlee’s radical programme commenced in 1945.  “We think we’ve …

Now that the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, has officially changed its Charter, one should not immediately assume that the decision is, in itself, an act of political maturity.

Undoubtedly, Hamas’ first Charter, which was released to the public in August 1988, reflected a degree of great intellectual dearth and political naïveté.

“Allah is great, Allah is greater than their army, Allah is greater than their airplanes and their weapons,” the original Charter partly read.

It called on Palestinians to take on the Israeli occupation army, seeking “martyrdom, or victory”, and derided Arab rulers and armies: “Has your national zealousness died and your …

The result of all of this, besides the abuse of law, is that people may be afraid to exert their rights to be critical of Muslims who use religion to justify inexcusable actions.
— The Jakarta Post, October 18, 2016

One need not be a zealot in the human rights field to find the latest turn in Indonesian politics disconcerting.  Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, was always a nicely packaged target, confident and assertive, very much the beaming confident politician.  Being Chinese was one aspect of the problem; being a non-Muslim was the other. From that standpoint, vulnerabilities were …

In bygone years, defenders of the Guardian’s supposed ‘progressive’ credentials would typically cite the presence of Seumas Milne, Owen Jones and George Monbiot. The newspaper’s cupboard is looking decidedly threadbare now. After a year’s leave of absence, Milne left the paper permanently in January to continue leading Jeremy Corbyn’s media team. Jones has been notable for his, at best, conflicted support of Corbyn having, for two years, turned a blind eye to his paper’s relentless opposition to Corbyn’s leadership. Jones has also allowed himself to …