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Friday, 18 July 2025
Al Purdy A-frame Applications Open/Building Updates
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Canadian taxes: poor people pay but billionaires don't
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Monday, 14 July 2025
Listen: new poem from Patrick Connors
Decades of telephone work and cranking RUSH
to the required volume have damaged my hearing.
I have taken this as an opportunity to listen deeply.
I am filled with joy by the laughter of children,
Branford Marsalis playing two saxophones,
and bold proclamations of solidarity.
The crunch of fresh fallen snow under heavy
winter boots, the chirp of the first bird of spring,
the sizzle of a grill on a scorching Saturday afternoon.
I am nourished by the sound of an autumn wind
rattling dry leaves, the bark of a friendly dog,
the greeting of a loved one.
The inflation of my lungs as my heart slows to rest.
The eternal word as it is etched on the universe,
and the portion given to get me through each day.
Tower Poetry
Summer 2025 issue
Why I really appreciate this poem. It’s meaningful and “deep” but in common language - true people’s poetry! Milton Acorn would be proud. Also it references Canuck culture - the rock band Rush. - Chris
How Impunity Works in Gaza (Judy Haiven's blog post)
It used to be I could never understand how such an obvious whacko like Hitler orchestrated the Nazi death camps. Now I understand . . . most of us are too busy with their own petty lives to give a shit.
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SubscribedIt must feel good to have one of the best trained and best equipped armies in the world, and have them run everything in Gaza and the West Bank themselves—without pesky overseers on their case.
No need for supervisors, no need for discipline, no need for accountability. Just do whatever you want to the Palestinians. It must be wonderful to know that whatever you do to them, the chances of ever being disciplined are next to nil — they don’t count. A good example was January 2024when an Israeli tank (remember, there are no Palestinian tanks, no armed drones, nor two-tonne bombs) sitting 20 metres from Hind Rajab’s family car in Gaza City riddled the car and occupants with at least 335 rounds of bullets. Every investigation has shown that the IDF soldiers in the tank saw the family car, noted the children in the car and deliberately killed them plus their relatives – 7 people — in Gaza City, in January 2024. Hind’s personal wait for death lasted three hours as she stayed on the phone with the Palestinian Red Cross ambulance dispatcher saying, “I’m so scared, please come. Come take me. Please, will you come?” The tank waited patiently for the ambulance to arrive; when it did, the IDF shot the two paramedics to death as well. No discipline was meted out to the IDF killers, or their officers.
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A little cheering for the IDF from the Knesset is always welcome. In February, 2025, the Deputy Speaker of Israel’s parliament (Knesset) called for executing all Palestinian men in Gaza, saying they are all “scum and subhumans.” He also called for the annihilation of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Nissim Vaturi, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called for separating the women and children in Gaza and executing the men.
“Who is innocent in Gaza? …We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate,” said Vaturi.
That’s a tad better than some Israelis who refuse to give a break even to women or children. For example in May 2025, a former extreme right-wing Knesset member, Moishe Feiglin noted,
“Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory.”
On 1 April, The IDF ambushed and murdered 15 aid workers including 8 medics, 6 civil defense workers and a UN employee on their way to Tal al-Sultan in Rafah to give emergency medical assistance to scores of injured Palestinians following the IDF shelling of the area. One person managed to escape temporarily. A medic – who was killed–had taken a video of the Israel ambush. Israel’s top military people lied outright – the proof was on the video taken on the medic’ cell phone. Israel buried the 15 men in shallow sandy graves. The aid workers had been ordered to kneel, hands zip tied together, then executed at point blank range. Buried along with them were the ambulances and two fire trucks the IDF set on fire. The IDF is nothing but resourceful – they tried to hide all the evidence of their attack — because setting fire didn’t quite work.
“Why did you shoot” a man asleep
The situation is so bad that sometimes Israeli soldiers berate their own comrades. Recently, the IDF entered a home in the West Bank. One soldier went into a bedroom and shot to death a sleeping man. His fellow soldiers berated him “Why did you shoot? Are you crazy?” Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that this “crazy” soldier will be disciplined in any way. Most Israel soldiers know this, proving that they are not crazy.
But really what’s the point in spending all that money, and education and training for IDF soldiers when clearly anything goes in Gaza and the West Bank? The Most Moral Army in the World surely has basic tenets of humanitarianism bred into them. The Most Moral Army in the World surely has discipline drilled into them. IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. The US and Israel are also keen to train and utilize soldiers from other wars former intelligence officials, and evangelical Christians to deliver food to Gaza . The hitch is that many of the ex-soldiers employed are murderers – sharpshooters, snipers and tank gunners who killed more than 800 unarmed Palestinians in the last six weeks who had arrived for aid.
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Yesterday alone 110 Palestinians were killed, 34 were lining up for food aid. As Mitchell Plitnick, US policy expert and author (who is Jewish) and against the genocide, wrote about the IDF murdering civilians,
“They do it every single day. We’ve allowed it to become so routine it’s not even news anymore.”
Naturally all this wouldn’t be possible without the money (more than $18 billion since 10/7), weapons (more $16 billion in military weapons the last year and a half ) and military support given by the US (and its allies such as Canada). However, all the support for Israel from western countries, and theIslamophobic and anti-Palestinian racist western media pump out on Israel’s behalf, prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy points out, Israel still has “no clue” how to deal with Gaza, aside from continuing the genocide.
Levy contends that it makes no difference if a Republican or Democratic administration were in power in the United States or if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or another politician were in power in Israel. Levy said, “The same war might have taken place, and the same crimes of war would have been committed.”
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Israel’s pogroms
The fact is that Israel and the IDF ignore the evidence and accusations of genocide. Indeed they usually fight back with their “antiterrorist,” and “defeating Hamas” nonsense. One thing Israeli government and the IDF rarely do is to consider how murdering tens of thousands of Palestinians in cold blood (the number surpasses a 110,000 dead when you consider the thousands buried in the ruins of their homes destroyed by Israeli bombs, missiles and drones) affects Israeli Jews. For instance just this Friday, Israeli settlers beat a 20-year-old Palestinian (a visiting relative who was a US citizen) to death and killed a 23-year-old Palestinian by shooting him in the back. He bled to death on the road. According to witness, these murders happened on a Palestinian family farm near Ramallah, in the West Bank. Dozens of Jewish settlers prevented an ambulance from attending for three hours, then assaulted the medics. The Palestinians demanded an inquest by the US state department that could hold the settlers responsible.
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But just as in the case of the murder of Palestinian TV journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, there will be little to no investigation, and zero accountability. These are pogroms, plain and simple. What the Jews in Israel, in its government and its military have learned is there is no accountability and little cost to whatever they do to the Palestinians. The genocide in Gaza now could easily spread to the Occupied West Bank and five million more Palestinians will suffer as the Gazans are.
Image at the top: The bodies of two children lie on the hospital floor of a Project Hope-run medical clinic in Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip, after an Israeli strike on Thursday 10 July [credit: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo]
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Related
Death from afar vs death up closeMay 22, 2025In "Abu Akleh"
By time fireworks went off on Canada Day, the IDF had killed 109 Palestinians on July 1July 2, 2025In "American empire"
US & Israel celebrate in Jerusalem, as the Whole World watches the Bloodbath in GazaMay 15, 2018
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Wednesday, 9 July 2025
2025 War Abolisher Awards: Roger Waters, Ralph Nader, Francesca Albanese
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