Campaigns

NOVANEWS Today at J Street’s annual convention, my friend and one-time debate partner Rebecca Vilkomerson, who is the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, made the case for BDS against liberal Zionist opponents Ken Bob of Ameinu and writer Bernard Avishai. I was not at the conference, in part because I am speaking atRutgers’ Palestine Awareness Week later today. But I have heard that the session was packed; according to Vilkomerson, a sizable portion of the room was with her.   Because it wasn’t videotaped, I have reproduced the full text of Rebecca’s opening remarks below. Note that she identified BDS as a Palestinian-led movement that forms the international backbone of the Palestinian non-violent strategy and is “part and parcel of the Arab Spring sweeping the region.” Buildin...

NOVANEWS Israeli Racism crescentandcross | February 24, 2011 at 7:58 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/p2dGk-1ge watch?v=Ky31nEuwCY4

NOVANEWS   Environment Agency finds Monsanto, BP and Veolia liable for clean up after thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals – including PCBs, dioxins and Agent Orange derivatives – dumped in Welsh quarry   by Tom Levitt 19th February, 2011 Monsanto has agreed to help clean-up a quarry in South Wales it is accused of polluting with a cocktail of toxic substances despite consistently refusing to accept liability, the Ecologist can reveal. But the taxpayer could still end up meeting the estimated £2 million clean-up bill. Waste from a Monsanto-owned plant in Newport was dumped at the Brofiscin quarry, near the village of Groesfaen, in the 1960s and 70s. Investigations since have revealed the site is heavily polluted with dangerous toxins leaking from corroding waste containers bu...

NOVANEWS Week 81 - No freedom of speech for Cardiff University jodymcintyre | February 17, 2011 URL: http://wp.me/pOOsC-5z Several weeks ago, I was emailed an invitation to speak alongside Noam Chomsky in Cardiff, in March. The organisers also asked if I would give a talk at Cardiff University the following day; I happily agreed to both proposals. Yesterday, I got call from Ghaith Jayousi, who had invited me to Cardiff, to inform me that his University had refused to host the event, due to “security concerns coming from higher channels”. “Most room bookings for public events at Cardiff University usually take 24 hours to be confirmed,” Ghaith told me. “We submitted a room booking request for your talk on March 13th, in Cardiff University Main Building, Large Shandon Theatre. The response w...

NOVANEWS   This is a pity. Adidas had been reconsidering its support for a marathon in occupied Jerusalem but it appears they are going ahead with it. Here's an appeal from the Palestinian BDS National Committee: The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations and unions, calls on Adidas to withdraw its sponsorship of the first Jerusalem marathon to take place on March 25, 2011 to avoid becoming complicit in covering up Israel's war crimes and grave human rights abuses. Israel has been consistently, systematically, and quite blatantly working to “Judaize” Jerusalem through policies of ethnic cleansing directed at the indigenous Palestinian population to change the demographic reality of the occupie...

NOVANEWS   by Adam Shah On today's edition of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck tied Islam to the Antichrist described in the New Testament. He even had a side-by-side comparison of the Antichrist and the "12th Imam" or "Mahdi" (terms Beck uses interchangeably to describe the figure many Muslims believe will guide believers in the end times) on his chalkboard. And to help Beck discuss this connection, Beck hosted Joel Richardson, an anti-Muslim activist who says that Satan will use Islam "to fulfill the prophesies of the Bible" and has written a column headlined "What Obama and the Antichrist have in common." Here's Beck's chalkboard:   Although Beck says during the show that only a minority of Muslims have beliefs that should scare you, Richardson makes no such disclaimer. Rather, Richardson ...

NOVANEWS   The history of Britain's biggest clothing retailer Marks and Spencer demonstrates how consumer habits in Britain are tied to the oppression of other peoples. Marks and Spencer has championed the state of Israel and thus connived in the dispossession and suppression of the Palestinians. Our comforts and pleasures, which Marks and Spencer so eagerly service, have been bought at an unacceptable price, as TREVOR RAYNE reveals. Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Pogroms against the Russian Jews followed. Many Jewish people fled to the USA, some came to Britain and a trickle went to Palestine – a land they called Zion. Among those coming to Britain was Michael Marks, who was settled in Leeds by 1884. Read more: Marks and Spencer: ally of Israel The Al Aqsa Intifada be...

NOVANEWS Roger Stockham and Bruce Edwards Ivins need attention By Awais Bilal Ted Turner, an American media tycoon who is known as founder of the cable newsnetwork CNNonce himself admitted, “the media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy.”   Well, it couldn’t have been said any better, as too few families own world’s media, which exists to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values. In today’s world perception is everything,Alan Autry once said perception of resurgence in crime can be enough to paralyze business momentum and destroy the sense of security that a vibrant and progressive city requires. Business tycoons and governments use media, which can ...

NOVANEWS   SAY ‘NO TO RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY’     By Paul Balles  At least seven times today I heard TV newscasters refer to Muslim as Islamic extremists. The amount and level of this kind of fraudulent suggestiveness has been increasing almost daily. I call it fraudulent because people hearing this mix of Muslim with extremist repeated often enough become brainwashed into thinking that all Muslims are extremists. The reference to Islamic extremists is frequently made on Fox News by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. A headline on MMTV asserts that “O’Reilly Supports Rep. King’s Islamic Extremism Hearings: ‘You’ve Got to Get a Handle on It.’” The language of Islamic extremist has infected the US congress. For years, since he was on CNN, Glenn Beck has made wild false claims, like, “Is...

NOVANEWS   On Saturday night Israel’s most-watched news program on Channel 2, aired a 10-minute “Special Report” on the weekly demonstrations in the Palestinian village of Bil’in. Every Friday, Palestinians of the village demonstrate against the separation fence which was built on their lands, and are joined by Israeli and international activists. Haggai Matar, of Anarchists Against the Wall, was a key figure in the news piece. This is his reaction.   By Haggai Matar   You could say I’m nit-picking, that maybe Palestinians just happened not to fit the concept of this particular story. You could say that had this issue not already become so routine. This time again it began with a phone call made by a producer at Channel 2 news to an activist with Anarchists Against the Wall, offering to...