Showing posts with label Freedom of Speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom of Speech. Show all posts

Another important set back to the Zionist attempt to suppress discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian issue at American and Canadian universities

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Another important set back to the Zionist attempt to suppress discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian issue at American and Canadian universities and to discuss the campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel due to its apartheid policies toward the Palestinians.

Alice Walker reinvited to speak at U of Michigan, which regrets her dis-invitation

Yesterday we reported Alice Walker's statement that the University of Michigan disinvited her from a speaking gig because of pressure from pro-Israel donors. This morning Gloria Thomas, director of the Center for the Education of Women at the University of Michigan, thanked me and others who had called her to express our concern and directed us to the following statement saying that Walker has been reinvited to speak. 
"Provost Reiterates University's Commitment to Free Speech."
Provost Martha Pollack addressed University faculty regarding CEW's 50th Anniversary speaker invitation through the following letter: 
Dear faculty colleagues,
You may have read questions related to the Center for the Education of Women's invitation to and subsequent dis-invitation of Alice Walker as a speaker for their 50th anniversary celebration.
I am writing to reiterate the university's firm commitment to free speech and to the expression of diverse viewpoints. The University of Michigan has a long history of hosting speakers who bring a wide variety of perspectives, and events that focus on challenging topics. Challenging and difficult conversations are the core of our academic mission and spur both individual and community growth. Indeed, we strongly believe that the best response to challenging discourse is more discourse.
At the same time, we respect the right of individual academic units to make decisions about whom they invite to campus, consistent with university principles and values. The Center for the Education of Women has apologized for the way the interaction with Ms. Walker was handled and has made clear to me that their decision was not driven by the content of speech. Their decision to withdraw the invitation was based solely on the celebratory nature they hoped to achieve at their anniversary event.
Consistent with the university's commitment to free speech, I am pleased to report that the CEW and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies are joining together to extend an invitation to Ms. Walker to speak in a public forum on campus.
I invite you to contact me if you wish to discuss further.
Sincerely,

Martha E. Pollack
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
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A U.S. Jewish Lawyer and Israeli Law Firm Attack the First Amendment

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The Israeli/Jewish strategy seems to be to frighten authors and publishers into not writing or publishing anything critical about Israel for fear of a huge lawsuit.
Bob Johnson
Veterans Today
In an effort to silence objectivity towards the Jewish state of Israel the U.S. Jewish lawyer David I. Schoen, along with the Israeli law firm Nitsana Darshan-Leitner & Co. have filed a $5 million lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his publisher Simon & Schuster over Carter’s ground breaking and thought provoking book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
This seems to be a new tactic Jewish interests are using to smash any speech they see as not flattering to Israel. In 1990 the Israeli government itself took direct action to override the United States Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press when they stopped the sale of the book By Way of Deception for one day through a preliminary injunction. Thankfully the American courts defeated the Israeli preliminary injunction. This was the first time one country attempted to stop the publication and/or sale of a book in another country. One of the reasons Israel wanted to prevent people from reading this important book was because it explained why Israel withheld intelligence information which could have prevented the October 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine’s barracks in Beirut, Lebanon which killed 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 U.S. Army soldiers. The reason they withheld this information from their “ally” the United States was because of their belief that the deaths of this magnitude would push America to wage war against the Palestinians and other enemies of the Jewish state.
The Israeli/Jewish strategy seems to be to frighten authors and publishers into not writing or publishing anything critical about Israel for fear of a huge lawsuit. In fact, Simon & Schuster released a statement saying the lawsuit will have “a chilling effect on free speech.”
On David Schoen’s website he states that he has “a deep personal interest in and commitment to Israel.” Too bad he doesn’t feel the same way about American, the U.S. Constitution and freedom of speech and of the press.
This crazy Jewish superiority can be traced to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament with teachings such as the Hebrews/Jews being “above all people that are upon the face of the Earth.” (Deuteronomy 7:6) This twisted thinking is at the heart of the neoconservative movement and war machine. Leo Strauss, the godfather of the neoconservative movement, believed and taught that society should be based on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. It is this neoconservative thinking which makes American foreign policy in the Middle East so pro-Israel it actually puts America’s interests behind Israel’s. It has brought us the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq and will bring us many more unnecessary wars, death and suffering if people don’t wake up and do something.



The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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The End of Free Speech? Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

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By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.
Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.
It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.
It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.
It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.
In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.
Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?
This is a serious question.
A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.
Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.
It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.
It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.
Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?
Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.
A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?
Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.
To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.
Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.
Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.
Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Elsewhere, I have come across this:

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Are You Legally Anti-Semitic?

Antisemitism as defined by Congress and the US State Dept

On Oct 16, 2004 AD, President Bush signed into law the global anti-Semitism review act; which is quite interesting. The United States state Department list the following sets of beliefs as being anti-Semitic.

1. Any assertion that the Jewish community controls government, the media, international business and the financial world is anti-Semitic.

2. Any strong anti-Israel sentiment is anti-Semitic.

3. Virulent criticism of Israel’s leaders, past or present, is anti-Semitic.

4. Criticism of the Jewish religion or its religious leaders or literature, especially the Talmud and the Kabala is anti-Semitic. [I wonder if that includes the traditions of the elders that Jesus criticized. “And woe unto the Pharisees” that Jesus said.]

5. Criticism of the US government and congress for being under influences of the Jewish/Zionist community, including AIPEC, is anti-Semitic.

6. Criticism of the Jewish/Zionist community for promoting Globalism, [the New World Order] is anti-Semitic.

7. Blaming Jewish leaders and their followers for inciting the Roman crucifixion of Christ is anti-Semitic.

8. Diminishing the 6 million figure of the holocaust victims is anti-Semitic.

9. Calling Israel a racist state is anti-Semitic.

10. Asserting that there exists a Zionist conspiracy is anti-Semitic.

11. Claiming the Jews and their leaders created the Bolshevik revolution is Russia is anti-Semitic. [I guess you have to revise history].

12. Making derogatory statements about Jewish persons is anti-Semitic. Now isn’t this interesting and all inclusive?

source

P.S. If you have functioning brain matter between your ears, you're probably legally anti-semitic. Anti-semitism seems to go hand and hand with truth and knowing truth.
at 5/05/2009
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Egyptian military court ruled of imprisoning a blogger for infiltrating to Gaza

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Posted by Iqbal Tamimi Something wrong is going on in Egypt regarding the way it is dealing with journalists lately. The Egyptian government decided a couple of days ago to try the journalist Majdi Hussein, the secretary-general of the Egyptian Labour party in a military court - even though he is a civilian - because he broke the law when he tried to "illegally enter the Gaza Strip". And today a Military Court in Ismailia city in Egypt issued its ruling to imprison the blogger Ahmed Doma for a year and fined him 2000 pounds for infiltrating to Gaza, which happens to be the maximum penalty.

The Egyptian blogger was arrested last week upon his return from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing, the Egyptian authorities accused him of infiltrating across the eastern border illegally in violation of the presidential decree 298 of 1995. If it was up to the Egyptian people they will all infiltrate to Gaza. The people of Egypt had always a strong connection with the Palestinian nation and were appalled by their government’s stand when Israel bombarded Gaza mercilessly for 22 continuous days, while the Egyptian government stood there watching and blocking the way in the faces of the people who were starved to death and burned beyond recognition.The Federation of The Arab bloggers demanded from the Egyptian authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally, claiming that the blogger Ahmed Domah did not commit a criminal act, on the contrary, he went to Gaza to offer his support to Gaza people.

The Federation of Arab bloggers expressed its member’s dismay in a statement issued in this regard considering a prison sentence of one year and the fine of 2000 pounds is a harsh sentence, besides the fact that Ahmed was tortured psychologically during the investigation.

The Federation has requested of all bloggers and Arab human rights organizations to intervene and to work on his release for he was one of the most active bloggers, and most sensitive poet.



you can sign the petition here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZp_ip2RjM
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Freedom in America takes one more step back as Man imprisoned for airing Hizballah TV

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The Pakistan-born owner of a satellite TV company was forced into pleading guilty to providing material aid to what the United States considers a terrorist organization by letting customers receive broadcasts from Hizbullah's television station.

Javed Iqbal entered the plea in federal court in
Manhattan on Tuesday.

He declined comment afterward. As part of the plea, Iqbal agreed to
serve a prison term of up to six and a half years. Sentencing was set
for March 24.

Prosecutors said Iqbal used satellite dishes on his Staten Island home
to distribute broadcasts of Al Manar, the television station of the
Lebanon-based organization that has been fighting Natzi Israel since the
early 1980s.

Without looking at at themselves first - Israel, United States, and Canada consider Hizbullah a terrorist organization.

Iqbal, 45, was born in Pakistan but has lived in the United States for
more than 20 years. He is a permanent resident with five children. A
former New York Police Department officer was among those who signed
his $250,000 bail package.

Although Americans are granted freedom of speech under the First
Amendment to the Constitution, the government contended in this case
that Iqbal was not entitled to arrange the satellite broadcast of an
organization designated as a terrorist group, regardless of the message.

Lebanon's information minister, Ghazi Aridi, had criticized Iqbal's
arrest, calling it an "attack against freedoms (that) robs a large
section of people from watching a specific channel."
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You Think You Are Free?

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By Linda S. Heard

Watching old movies makes me sad. I'm inevitably
reminded of a kindlier, gentler world without cameras
that spy on populations, where overseas travelling
was pleasurable and privacy was an individual's right.

Nowadays, states are usurping responsibilities that
are rightfully those of their citizens. Western
so-called democracies, in particular, are supposed
to have governments that are servants of the people,
whereas, in fact, the opposite is true. Under the guise
of doing what's best for us or ensuring our security,
governments are exercising more and more control
over our lives. And, tragically, we are facilitating this
erosion of our own freedoms, mostly because we're
not even aware it's happening.

The US and Britain are leading the pack in this
encroaching Orwellian nightmare. "War is peace;
Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength,"
wrote George Orwell in his book 1984. In recent
years, they have waged wars in the name of peace,
put entire populations under their thumb in the name
of freedom while government spin and a compliant
media serve to keep people ignorant about their
leaders' true motives.

If we only knew we are being indoctrinated to offer
up our personal freedoms to save ourselves from a
horrible fate at the hands of nicotine, calories and
Al Qaida. We are being taught to fear asylum seekers,
climate change, crazed terrorists and even each other.
Western governments are perfecting the politics of
fear because fearful populaces will do their bidding
without question and willingly subject
themselves to control.

Britain has become a master of this technique.
It currently holds a database containing the DNA
of 4.5 million people, arrested for both serious
crimes and minor infractions. The police have found
this tool so useful they are pushing to expand it to
cover everyone in the country although the Home
Office has rejected the idea for the moment.

By 2012 Britons over 16 will be required to hold biometric
ID cards checkable by police, immigration and customs
officials, as well as public and private bodies such as
travel agencies, airlines, banks and even retailers.

By 2010, Britain is also expected to incorporate Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in passports
designed to carry a wealth of personal data on travellers.

Embedded

Further, there is a plan to embed RFID chips in vehicle number
plates allowing authorities the capability of identifying any
vehicle anywhere in all weather. RFID chips have been
embedded on every packet of cigarettes manufactured in
the UK since October last year, while others have been
fitted to trash cans officially to boost the rate of garbage
recycling. Pets entering Britain from abroad are also chipped.

Apparently, the government is also considering injecting
prisoners with RFID tags. If that goes ahead it's surely
the slippery slope to babies being chipped at birth.

The US has forced European airlines to hand over
19 pieces of information on travellers prior to their
departure and wants to extend this one-way data
flow to passengers over-flying the US en route to
Central America and the Caribbean. The UK wants
the system to be used throughout Europe and
domestically.

Not only do authorities want to control Britons'
movements, they are also after their thoughts.
Remember the Orwellian Thought Police, who
used surveillance methods and psychological
profiles to interpret the future goals of potential
dissenters and deviants? This is already happening
in the UK where people can expect to be caught on
camera up to 300 times per day and where their
phone calls and Internet browsing is
routinely monitored.

Earlier this month, three British appellate judges had
the good sense to quash the convictions of five young
Muslims prosecuted for simply downloading
"extremist propaganda" from the Internet. There
was no other evidence against them and no proof they
intended to act on any message contained in such material.
In other words, their initial conviction was purely based on
thought crime. The judgment read: "Literature may be
stored in a book or on a bookshelf, or on a computer drive,
without any intention on the part of the possessor to
make any future use of it all."

Big Brother Britain isn't working. Indeed, the prisons
are overflowing and violent crime is on the up-and-up,
much of it fuelled by drugs and alcohol. You've surely
heard the expression "give a dog a bad name . . ."
Could it be that when law-abiding citizens are prejudged
as criminals some of them might conclude, "
What the heck"?

But Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four isn't exactly
where Britain is headed. The reality is a combination
of Orwell's theories and those set-out in Aldous
Huxley's Brave New World.

As the American author Neil Postman wrote in his
book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, whereas "
Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us,
Huxley feared the truth would be droned in a sea of
irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture" consumed by
"an almost infinite appetite for distractions".

In a way they were both right. Unless we tear ourselves
away from our pretty toys and distractions just long
enough to remove our rose-coloured specs, freedom
will be obsolete except as a slogan above the gate of
the Ministry of Truth.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on
Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback
and can be contacted by email
at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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CAIA Statement on Campus Repression at McMaster University: Call to Action

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Defend the Rights of Student Organizers!
Our Movement
Will Not Be Silenced!

McMaster University President
Dr. Peter George preswww@mcmaster.ca
McMaster students
unitedforstudentrights@gmail.com

CAIA Statement on Campus Repression at McMaster
University

The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) calls
on all supporters of Palestinian rights to defend the
right to organize at McMaster University, Hamilton,
Ontario. Last week, the McMaster Provost office,
second in authority to that of the President's office,
announced that student clubs were banned from using
the term "Israeli Apartheid". This is an unprecedented
attack on the right to free speech, academic freedom,
and the right to organize.

This shocking decision came as students were
attempting to organize events as part of Israeli
Apartheid Week (IAW) and was accepted by McMaster
Human Rights & Equity Services (HRES) and, in turn,
the McMaster Student Union. This information was
communicated to Solidarity for Palestinian Human
Rights (SPHR) and McMaster Muslims for Peace & Justice
(MMPJ) by the MSU and HRES. Due to this decision,
these MSU approved clubs have not been able to get
approval for various initiatives related to campaigns
against Israeli Apartheid.

Across the globe, the movement against Israeli
apartheid and in support of a comprehensive campaign
of boycott, divestment and sanctions has been endorsed
by hundreds of universities, unions, religious groups
and social justice organizations. This campaign is
proudly anti-racist, and founded on the principles of
opposition to all forms of racism, anti-Semitism and
Islamophobia. It draws its inspiration from the global
campaign to isolate South African apartheid and is led
by many of the same individuals who were at the
forefront of that earlier struggle.

According to the U.N definition, the crime of
Apartheid is defined as the "institutionalised regime
of systematic oppression and domination by one racial
group over any other racial group or groups" and
includes crimes such as "murder, extermination,
deportation or forcible transfer of population,
imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical
liberty, torture, enforced disappearance of persons,
persecution against any identifiable group or
collectively on political, racial, national, ethnic,
cultural or other grounds."

Prominent South African individuals and organizations
including the Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU), Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and John Duggard,
the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories, have described Israeli practices
as a form of Apartheid. Former US President Jimmy
Carter, certainly no friend of the Palestinians or
people of the Global South, has called Israel an
apartheid state. Even Israelis, such as Haaretz
journalist Danny Rubinstein, have used this term.
Would McMaster University prevent these people and
organizations from speaking on campus?

The movement against Israeli apartheid is rapidly
growing on campuses across the world. Two days ago,
the student union at the London School of Economics
voted in favour of divestment from Israel. This year,
Israeli Apartheid Week occurred globally in 25
locations and was launched by exiled Palestinian
member of the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bishara, in
Soweto, South Africa (see apartheidweek.org). Over
2000 students and community members attended IAW
events in Toronto, which included a conference
launching the new group, High Schools Against Israeli
Apartheid (HAIA).

It is in response to this success that the Zionist
movement and their supporters are launching a campaign
of intimidation, repression and bureaucratic
maneuverings. During IAW, pro-Israeli apartheid
organizations attacked the week in paid full-page
advertisements in national newspapers. The Israeli
ambassador organized a public forum in Ottawa to speak
against IAW. Zionist groups attempted to organize
counter-events on campuses but these were poorly
attended and by their own admission failed miserably.
A pro-apartheid demonstration organized by the
far-right Jewish Defense League on the first night of
Israeli Apartheid week at Ryerson University attracted
a meager 25 individuals, while, at the same time, over
350 people attended the IAW lecture that night.

CAIA firmly believes that this attempt to repress
student organizing will ultimately fail. The McMaster
University administration should understand this
message very clearly: We refuse to be silenced and we
will fight back.

We call on student organizations, social justice
groups and concerned individuals from around the world
to support students at McMaster and the broader rights
of Palestine organizers. Please take the following
actions:

* If you live in the Ontario region, please plan to
attend the FORUM on free speech and Israeli apartheid
planned at McMaster University on Friday 29 February
10am. BUSES will be organized from
downtown Toronto and other
places across the province to attend this important
meeting (stay tuned for details).

* Immediately EMAIL the McMaster University President,
Dr. Peter George at preswww@mcmaster.ca. asking why he
has permitted this infringement of basic democratic
principles and requesting that he immediately restore
the Charter rights of McMaster students.

* Send a message of support to the McMaster students
organizing against this decision at
unitedforstudentrights@gmail.com

* Contact your local media and request that they write
a story on student organizing and repression at
McMaster University.
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