An IN-SIGHTS reader who chooses to be known as “PB in Surrey BC” provided the following article. PB was involved in UBC’s student government during the 1960s when young people demonstrated against the Vietnam War. He knew that non-students worked to radicalize campus protests. Outsiders wanted turmoil, not peace.
Decades later, PB asks, “Who gains from chaos on American university campuses?”
Russia and China each aim to be the world’s most influential country. They expect to benefit from social disorder in the USA. Ongoing disruption may ensure Donald Trump is re-elected as President and that would continue to degrade the reputation of a nation once known as leader of the free world.
Vladimir Putin knows that America’s “Dear Leader” would end support for Ukraine and undermine the NATO alliance.
Xi Jinping aims to weaken the US military position in East Asia. Donald Trump will help him do that.
However, American plutocrats who loved Republican tax cuts worth hundreds of billions of dollars play a powerful role in the USA. Internal disruption fostered by Israeli genocide serves their objectives if Trump is returned to the White House.
Benjamin Netanyahu opposes the two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The extremist politician would be a main character if the 1997 “Wag the Dog” movie were rewritten today. Netanyahu, his wife, and associates are facing criminal charges for corruption. Warfare changed the country’s focus.
Having much in common with his American ally, Netanyahu wants Trump re-elected.
Israel’s “War in Gaza against Hamas” is driving yet another wedge into the body politic of the USA. It aids the party dominated by Trumpism and hurts the Democratic Party, which needs the support of people who prefer a humanitarian resolution of Middle East conflicts.
Media like Fox News — and those wishing to emulate Murdoch properties — have not told the full story of the “invasion” of Israel by Hamas. A phrase attributed to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) says, “In war, truth is the first casualty.”
Over the weekend, Hamas accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal to halt the war in Gaza. The Israeli response was to order 100,000 civilians to leave Rafah because the IDF was about to start military attacks on a region that holds more than a million displaced people.
This war is not about returning 130 hostages It is about enlarging the state of Israel and wiping out tens or hundreds of thousands of people now living in Gaza.
The situation in the Middle East provides a platform for political manipulators in the USA. They use student protests to create the illusion that law and order is under threat in America. According to pundits sympathetic to the MAGA movement, it is the Democrats and Joe Biden who are responsible.
Police provided the following “information” this week:
- New York: 134 of the 282 “protestors” arrested at Columbia and New York Universities on May 1 were NOT affiliated with either university.
- Los Angeles: A “significant number” of the 210 people arrested at the UCLA campus were not affiliated with the university,
We know there was a massive amount of interference from foreign governments in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections. No doubt sowing seeds of discontent and fanning the flames of bigotry and racism play into the hands of right-wing autocrats who want to call in troops to quell the “lawlessness and rioting.” In the process, democracy and free speech are victimized.
This is reminiscent of 1970 when National Guard troops killed four and wounded nine unarmed Kent State University students for being near a protest that followed Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
Trump’s followers must salivate over a repeat of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Plutocrats will encourage “student protests” throughout the summer. Israel’s war must continue. It is not about hostages; it is about genocide, colonialism, and dirty politics aimed at enriching the already privileged.
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” — James Whitcomb Riley
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” — Bob Dylan
A challenging video:
Categories: Justice
in-sights.ca 
If you’re at the top of the heap in places like the former USSR, everything is fine, but for the rest, not so much. when you wrote “
“I’m all for a totalutarian state:”, wondered why you thought that would be good and suggested some countries which are totalitarian states.
You write you live in a totalitarian state. O.K. sorry for that. Living in Canada is still fairly free and open.
The countries I mentioned have nasty dictators ruling them and there is little personal freedom. You wear your head scarf in a way some old guys don’t like and you’re in prison and then dead. You object to the government out loud, you’re in prison and you’re dead, etc.
I’ve lived in Canada since 1951 and we’re free. Now the parental units lived in a country dominated by Nazis. It was toitalitarian and not pleasant. Chile, parents and grandparents are still looking for their children and grandchildren who were born to their children while incarcerated prior to being. The military adopted those children out. Argentine, ditto. We are seeing totalitarian government in the U.S.A.–women can no longer decide what to do with their own bodies and it results in injury and or death. There is an old line about, if you give up freedom to feel safe, you will have neither.
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e.a.f. If this latest post was aimed at me? Please stick to the truth, I have never claimed to live “in a totalitarian state”, what I said was where I live “is getting closer every day”.
I also suggested personnel freedoms are being constantly eroded and they are.
If as you claim, you live in Canada, I suggest you ask some native Canadians how FREE they feel in the own country.
Regarding your condemning views of the laws of other countries (Iran), how they wear the headscarves, is really none of your business.
I’ll close by repeating personal freedoms are being eroded in the West every day.
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I agree that freedoms in Canada have been eroded.
Woke people keep saying it is appropriate to balance the rights of individuals and the interests of society by permitting limits on our freedom to behave in whatever ways we choose.
Maybe that’s a price we pay to live in civilized societies.
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Norm, every society has rules and conditions, many of which are in the interest of the people and society itself. But there is no doubt, at least in my mind, that the freedoms of the individual are being eroded.
Freedom of speech, association abortion, euthanasia, it’s even illegal to end your own life!!
Government at all levels are continually tightening the screws on the individual and rather than improving our lives, it is creating division and unrest.
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do when they invaded Israel and killed their citizens in a rather disgusting manner. So why do it?
For the same reason the world trade centre was brought down; because you can only kick a dog so many times before it bites!
Israel has opened itself to a future of constant war.
Like Al qaeda and other such organisations , that are not organised!, the idea of fighting oppression will not be obliterated as Beni hopes but will remain in the minds of those tens of thousands that have been displaced and their loved ones massacred.
Yes Hamas are murderers but playing the who started what and when will not make peace.
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Agree with your article and atoma4u’s opinions. Hamas ought to have known what Israel would do when they invaded Israel and killed their citizens in a rather disgusting manner. So why do it?
Beni got his opportunity to do what he wanted. It has gone on far too long just seek revenge for the murders of the Isaelis. As it started to go further than a couple of weeks I thought something else was happening because other wars were short. A 6 Day war and right now we have a war which has gone on much too long. The 1973 war last a couple of weeks. When you look at events such as going into South America and kidnapping Eichman and taking him back to Israel to stand trial and the raid on Entebee, Israeli forces tend to do things quickly and get out.
Anything which goes on this long, has another agenda. Trying to eliminate the Jewish state springs to mind and that isn’t just Arabs in surrounding countries. Beni, going as far as he has, that is not sending a message to not do this again, but as you write genocide. Denying children of food, water, medical care, you want way more than revenge or sending a message. There”s nothing left of Gaza and to what end?
Of course Beni wants to stay out of jail, so having a war works for him. My concern about the war after a while was that there would be a back lash and those who supported Hamas and the others Israel would spill over into North America and it has. It may be more dangerous and long lasting than a regular war. This has countries fighting within their own countries about something some where else. Its outside players. If you go back in our history when the FLQ was busy in Quebec, the RCMP was having a field day. They had their own agenda.
Gaza looks like Berlin did after the war or London, Rotterdam, etc. What is the point? Sometimes I wonder who is sitting on what which they want to extract.
Beni’s actions have certainly done damage to the Israeli image and is now wasting a lot of American money. Wonder if Hamas knew what they were doing when they invaded. This war could install Trump as dictator for life and create as much anti Semitism as we saw when the Nazi’s got on a roll. Its not a good position to be in given we are on the U.S.A’s Northern Border. If PP were elected here, it might be time to liquadate and move along to Australia, N.Z, etc.
Canadian university students protesting on campuses, fine. Lots of us did it, but outsiders coming onto campus, NOT SO MUCH, they can go get their own parade somewhere else.
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It is a mistake to assume that opponents of brutal military acts directed at civilians in Gaza are automatically pro-Hamas. One can oppose actions of Hamas and Israel. These problems can be solved without wiping out one side or the other. The two parties are unwilling to make a just peace, so the international community must act. Peacekeeping is essential.
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Of course one can oppose actions by Hamas and Israel. There is no need for the extent of the war as it is currently being played out. In the end it will be the children who suffer the most, because that war will haunt them for the rest of their lives. They didn’t do anything wrong.
Hamas leadership isn’t interested in peace, they’re making a lot of money for themselves and they have power. Beni, he doesn’t want to go to jail, he wants more power, and its an act of revenge for him. His brother, a colonel, was killed at the Raid on Entebee. He was the only military person to die”. Beni won’t stop until every Arab is dead. He will tear his country apart, but still stick with his “goals”. As to other countries withdrawing assistance, it would be interesting because much of what has gone on is more than likely simply trying to deal with the collective guilt many countries have for what happened prior to WW II and during. It wasn’t just German Nazis who wanted rid of Jews and others. Racism runs deep in almost all societies.
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What we see is asymmetrical warfare being successfully practiced by Russia, China, Iran and several other authoritarian governments.
It is comment knowledge that seething antisemitism lurks in the Western democracies and all was needed was one lurid event to set the dominoes falling.
HAMAS, largely funded by Iran, who has close ties to Putin’s Russia, in one horrific event slaughtered over 1,000 Israeli’s in the most vicious and vile way.
Israel responded and as the dominoes fell, we see the results today.
The University campus protesters are mere pawns and useful idiots, out of their league, on an international chess game, all about Russian expansionism.
The goal, to elect Trump, liquidate the Jews, absorb Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, back into the old USSR, so Putin can reestablish the Bolsheviki dictatorship.
The dominoes are falling and if Trump is elected, the “free world” will no longer be free.
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Has the “Free world” ever been free? I’d suggest the so called “Free World” becomes more authoritarian ever day.
If the actions of Israel are the actions of a free and democratic society, I am all for a totalitarian state.
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I find it odd to suggest that people are idiots if they object to military actions that have resulted in more than 110,000 civilian casualties in Gaza. Most of the dead and injured were children and non-combatant adults.
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obviously jonangel has not lived in a totalitarian state.
this war’s goals are not worth the lives of 110K people, especially children. Beni is so hateful he will deny children food, water, health care, and life. Now if you think totalitarian states are o.k. then try living in Iran, Iraq, Saudi, N. Korea, Turkey, Russia, most South and Central American countries, the list goes on.
What many of us write on the various blogs, in other countries we would be dead. they’re totalitarian states. For all the things I’ve written and done over the past 55 years, I’ve never had the police question me or arrested me, etc.
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No, you are correct, I have never lived in a Totalitarian state, but the state I am in is getting closer every day.
I don’t know where in my previous post you found my mention of lives lost or their value!! so why you mentioned it is beyond me?
As for all the states you mentioned, have you ever lived there?
Having said that, I don’t see the populations of these states in revolt, in fact a number of older Russians I have as fiends tell me life was betters under the USSR,
I welcome your response.
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Why did I mention it? Because I wanted to and could.
Of course not. The parental units were very careful when they decided to leave Europe, never wanting to have to live through something like WW II again.
If you haven’t seen those states in revolt, you haven’t been looking. The news has shown enough film about the mass demonstrations in those countries. Now it is true, some don’t demonstrate because if they do, they die and usually not in a pleasant way. Most people have an aversion to being tortured.
They thought things were better with the U.S.S.R., perhaps for pensioners because under Putin and his thugs, pensions did not keep up with the cost of living.
Haven’t lived in the countries I mentioned, but have had friends and acquaintances who did. How they got out took work and courage. They could have died. One Russian, swam out of Russian–He’d been an Olymic athlete at one time. One and their family walked out of Hungary right before the Russians rolled in, through mountains, etc. Iran is not a pleasant country to live in, especially for women. don’t want to wear your head scarf in a manner which “pleases” the morality police can get you murdered or tortured or both. Some of the regimes I mention are not pleasant places for women to live and getting out can be difficult You may not consider it our business, but it is. I’ve always gone with the idea we owe other humans help when we can provide it either here or another country. B.C. has a number of people who came from countries which were totalitarian. Its not hard to become aware of what they fled.
We talk a lot about the 1%ers, but when you take into consideration all the people in the world, Canadians are 1%ers. Not everything is perfect but we are sure ahead of any number of other countries. As to the Indigenous People of Canada, I’m very aware of what went on and what still goes on. Yes, I have a brother in law who was in a residential school. Yes, the government “paid” them for their suffering as children, but no amount of money is going to ever fix the effects of what he went through.
There is a line I used to see, I think it was by an American Judge, “both the rich and the poor are free to live under a bridge”. The way it looks like in a lot of places the number of poor are increasing and they are living under bridges and many people think that is O.K.
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