14 students at UofT, including Fightback supporters, have been arrested on false charges for fighting for free education. The charges include assaulting a police officer and forcible confinement, which could lead to serious jail time. The students have been released on strict bail conditions, which include not associating with each other outside of court and classes and not protesting anywhere on the University of Toronto Campus. These conditions clearly violate the Charter rights of the accused. The University is trying to crush this movement under repression before it takes off. Solidarity action is needed now!

–Below added by Graham: –

It is too bad that the article unfairly paints the CFS as some yellow union. The writer misunderstands the Federation’s tuition fees position. The CFS has a position of complete elimination of tuition fees as they are considered a barrier to access. This position is widely known as the CFS continues to be attacked by the right-wing for having the position. Also, the “Day of Action” is not an annual event, it is something that is decided by the membership to hold or not and it was decided at the general meeting of members that this year’s organising would focus on local organising and campus campaigns (of which there are many). Also, CFS-Ontario did vote to hold a “Day of Action” this coming fall.

As a side issue, the CFS does not have dozens of full-time organisers, it has 5 for the whole country. This includes organising its dozens of campaigns that range from countering date rape, discrimination (as in their anti-Islamophobia campaign and challenge the ban on MSM blood donations), the campaign for campus sustainability, etc.. The national days of action are organised by volunteers and student activists on campuses and requires resources that the CFS membership mobilises, not as some top-down initiative.

The Canadian Federation of Students continues to call for the bogus charges against the student activists to be dropped and condemns the criminalization of dissent on campuses.

UofT presses criminal charges against 14 students and organizers mobilizing to fight fee hikes | FightFees.ca

Ontario students call on university to drop charges against protesters | Canadian Federation of Students

“Real changes in Cuba occurred in 1959 and the island finds itself in constant evolution since that date … Contrary to what the information multinationals, Washington and the European Union [say], Cubans will not return to a market economy, but will continue making an effort in the construction of a modern, more just, and more rational socialism.”

“A Palestinian official has said that 11 small groups agreed in Cairo on Wednesday to proposals that include a six-month truce, a prisoner exchange and reopening of the border between Gaza and Israel … Israel will now be asked if it accepts the proposal.”

Also see: New plan for West Bank checkpoints | BBC

“There are about 500 Israeli roadblocks or checkpoints in the West Bank.”

The West Bank is slightly larger than P.E.I..

–Anyone see the problem?

“More than 400 people have died and almost 2,500 others have been injured since the end of March”

The Parliament of the Southern Common Market (PARLASUR) unanimously approved a declaration of solidarity with the five Cuban antiterrorists, who have been unfairly imprisoned in the United States for almost ten years.

US senators are hearing complaints about the Pentagon’s biggest contractor in Iraq for fraud and waste. Ex-employees have accused Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) of defrauding the government and allowing the destruction of millions of dollars of equipment. KBR was given $16bn worth of contracts to provide services and supplies to the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company reported record profits in 2007, and despite the complaints, just won a new army supply contract for the Middle East. Byron Dorgan, a Democratic senator, said it was “shameful” that contractors who had performed poorly were being awarded fresh contracts. “Does anybody care? They’re still getting contracts,” he said.

“U.S. and Iraqi troops have been locked in battle with Shiite extremists in Sadr City for weeks, but the violence and its civilian toll appear to be intensifying … The fighting has besieged the densely populated slum, home to some 2.5 million people, where Iraqi news reports estimate that some 300 people have been killed in the past week.”

Taken from Informed Comment.

–Peaceful protesters against tuition fees were arrested after protest and sit-in. Sign the petition calling for reduced fees and send a message to the University of Toronto that this kind of attack on the right to protest will not be tolerated.

From the press release:

More than one month after a peaceful sit-in against planned fee increases
staged in the main administrative building of the University of Toronto, 14
students and campus community members were forced to turn themselves in to the
Toronto Police to face serious criminal code charges. Twelve of those charged
have also been informed that they are facing further penalties under the
University of Toronto Student Code of Conduct.

Here is the Canadian Federation of Students’ press release:
Ontario students call on university to drop charges against protesters

“A former street-fighting neo-fascist won a crushing victory in Rome’s mayoral election last night, crowning the victory two weeks ago of Silvio Berlusconi and the centre-right in the general election”

A distressing development in Western Europe.

–We continue to lose our ability to be heard if we cannot fight against those minority that have the money to yell louder than we can.

–Bill C-484 is the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act”. Total nonsense and it should be rejected in full.

–Peoples’ agenda. I like the sound of that.

–Chavez said it, Ian Angus explains what he meant.

“An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home Monday killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast”

“Between 3,000 to 7,000 pieces are still believed missing, including about 40 to 50 that are considered to be of great historic importance, Laurent Levi-Strauss of the U.N. cultural body UNESCO said last month.”

The illegal invasion of Iraq by the U.S. has resulted in the most comprehensive destruction of Baghdad since the Mongolian invasion in 1258.

–An independent (rather “liberal”) analysis of the current reforms in Cuba.

–No link between the Chavez government and the FARC laptops recovered from an illegal raid on a FARC base outside of Colombia.

–More from Venezuela on food production.

“Exceeding all expectations, over 2000 people attended Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) events in Toronto (events also happened in Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria, Peterborough, and New Brunswick) … Following the success of IAW, the Zionist movement has moved to openly embrace a strategy of repression against student activists. This strategy of repression is combined with bureaucratic attempts to prevent students from organizing politically, restricting the use of university space, or shutting-down speeches about Palestine. It is absolutely critical for left and progressive movements across Canada to recognize this trend and to organize openly against it.”

–Lebowitz writes on the significance of May Day and the reason to fight for a shorter work-day. The struggle is as significant today as it was back then.

For those of our readers who are interested in understanding race-relations in the U.S.

Turns out there are some rather nasty sentiments being expressed by well educated middle-class pilots inside the relative comfort and safety of their B.A. cockpits.

Also see: Robert Fisk: BA should be broken up and left with a core institution. Deportation or Rendition Airlines | The Independent

“I’ve always thought the airline should be broken up and left with a core institution. Deportation Airlines, for example, or – if that sounds a trifle downmarket – Guantanamo Airlines, or even Rendition Airlines.”

“Israeli forces have [conducted] a raid on northern Gaza, hours after rejecting a truce offered by Hamas.”

It is clear that Israel is not interested in peace.

Also see: Israel rejects Hamas cease-fire offer | Christian Science Monitor

–Opportunist reactionaries abound in the Venezuelan student movement. This is not exactly what most people think a student activist should be. The right-wing continue to fund reactionaries in the student movement that do not represent anyone but greed and international capital. Given that the Cato Institute gets it money from reputable sources like Exxon Mobile, WalMart, and Microsoft, it is not exactly “clean” money. In-fact, it is blood money. There should be no question to anyone where the counter-revolution in Venezuela is getting its funding from.

–Great video from Aljazeera about the strike in France. They even interview a shop owner that supports the strike even though he is losing 1200 a day because all his staff turned out to be “illegal” immigrants and have walked off the job.

“A 23-year-old black man was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a club in Queens on his wedding day — as he was leaving his bachelor party … Officers Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper was charged only with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren’t charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times … The officers opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.”

Police-brutality has once again been approved by the state in the U.S.

–Pilger’s latest article on the War on Democracy with a special focus on history and recent developments in Latin America.

–The racist rich in Bolivia are trying to leave and take the Bolivians’ wealth with them.

–Domestic violence continues to be a major problem in Canada and around the world. We haven’t even started along the road to reach equality until the killing and abuse stop.

–More people denouncing their own party for funding tricks.

–

“The food crisis is the greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model,” President Chávez declared.

“Libya’s deputy UN ambassador, ended a long speech about the plight of the Palestinians by comparing the situation in Gaza to the concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews.”

Amnesty International has released a film depicting the U.S. torture-technique of waterboarding.

–This from the linked Associated Press article:

But the Maoists, who are considered terrorists by the United States, have made it clear they are committed capitalists, albeit left-leaning ones, and have no plans to transform Nepal into a communist state.

How is it that the corporate media gets it this wrong? What is a “left-leaning” capitalist? Are they trying to say that the Maoists (a group that is labeled a terrorist organization by imperialist nations) is a fuzzy-bunny liberal organization? You have got to be kidding me!

And as if the only options are to be “communist [statists]” or “committed capitalists”. How is it that this reporter can think that a party that is the left-wing militant split from the Communist Party of Nepal, a party that has been engaged in an armed people’s-war with an oligarchy (an oligarchy backed by land-owners and international capital) with expressed goals to establish socialism and egalitarian distribution of wealth, can be labeled as “committed capitalists” is beyond me. Just because they are not going to be authoritarian and establish a top-down Stalinist-like “Communist state” in no way means they are committed to capitalism. It is an insult to their struggle, that’s what it is. It is an insult from a ridiculous agency who reporters clearly do not know anything about what is going on in that country.

Didn’t the reporter read any of the other reports coming out of the country? What about visiting or reading the Maoist’s website that has a picture of Marx, Lenin, and Mao prominently displayed with the words “Workers of the world unite” proudly written across the top?

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. They cannot even get the simplest analysis correct.

The Maoists are not establishing capitalism, “state capitalism” (aka: a Stalinist communist state), or some sort of strange revisionist conception of a socialist state. They are establishing assemblies of elected representatives to write a constitution; a people’s constitution written for and by a people that are mostly rural farmers. If they really believe that the people of Nepal, that just overwhelmingly elected communists/socialists (CPC-UML and CPC-Maoist) to power, are going to write a “committed capitalist” oriented constitution then they are living in la-la land.