
Socialist, writer, educator, political analyst, climate activist, civil libertarian. #FreePalestine
Coast Salish land (Vancouver)
Joined September 2011
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Kyle Farquharson retweeted
“Stepping up defense of its ally.”
Saudi Arabia just beheaded a Bangladeshi couple for kissing in public
Breaking news: The UK will deploy fighter jets to defend Saudi Arabia from attacks from the Houthis, stepping up defence of its ally after the kingdom has been pummelled by strikes from the militant group in recent weeks. ft.trib.al/WmgxlLO
You know foreign interference is actually effective when it occurs out in the open, yet no one in elected office or legacy media challenges it.
This heuristic also helps us tell that alleged "interference" by Russia, China, and Iran are negligible or non-existent in comparison.
Kyle Farquharson retweeted
Our kitchen operates at 30% capacity due to lack of funds, please help us maximize our efforts by donating now: chuffed.org/project/help-us-…
🚨 BREAKING: Half a million Palestinians in Gaza will lose monthly food assistance as funding shortages force major World Food Programme cuts ahead of winter, ABC News Australia reports.
➤ WFP is reducing its monthly reach from 1.6 million people to 1.1 million. Families receiving two food parcels will now get one, and flour bags will shrink.
➤ Daily hot meals have fallen from 250,000 to 150,000. Some families in hard-to-reach areas will receive meals every other day instead of daily. Cash assistance for 75,000 families is being cut by 40%.
➤ WFP’s Carl Skau said traditional donors, including the U.S. and Europe, have reduced funding. “It’s not because the needs are down … it’s only due to the lack of funding,” Skau told ABC.
➤ Around 1.4 million people face crisis-level hunger or worse, including 200,000 in emergency conditions. WFP says it urgently needs $450 million for six months of operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Kyle Farquharson retweeted
ISRAEL is behind the psyop blaming the FRENCH protests on Muslims. Zionists are on national television spreading lies about synagogues being burned but not mosques. All the large hasbara accounts are parroting this with identical posts and scripts. Stay informed. Recognise what psyops and propaganda look like.
The far more pernicious claim that anti-Zionism is racism is mainstream.
“[Saying] ‘Zionism is racism’ is offensive, it’s antisemitic and it’s dangerous”
Broadcaster Jo Coburn says she “watched in horror” as the Green Party passed its motion on Zionism and criticises leader Zack Polanski's defence in his #BBCLauraK interview
bbc.co.uk/news/live/c64gv8k2…
Astroturfed by Big Oil, like so-called "Western Alienation" in general.
Can't roll my eyes hard enough at bros with six-figure+ salaries whining about the "devastating" effect on the Alberta economy of Ottawa's "anti-oil" policies.
Vancouver voters gave Ken Sim and ABC four years to implement a conservative agenda to deal with street disorder. Conditions post-Sim look about the same as they did pre-Sim.
As someone who works directly with people struggling with addiction, homelessness, and mental health challenges, including in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, I can tell you this:
Ken Sim and ABC didn't make things better, they poured money into policing, launched initiatives like Project Barrage, and failed to meaningfully address the root causes of homelessness, addiction, and public disorder.
Instead of working with others in solving many of these problems, they pushed them into other neighbourhoods.
And that's why I believe ABC got demolished at the ballot box.
People could see the approach wasn't working, and they voted for change.
You cannot police your way out of poverty, homelessness, or addiction.
Moving a problem isn't solving it, it's just making it someone else's problem!
It’s reckless, but I’m reluctant to call it stupid.
The U.S. bloc has long sought to bog Russia down in fights with its neighbours. The geostrategic upshot is a weakened, preoccupied Moscow ill-equipped to counter imperial moves elsewhere, like the ouster of Assad in Syria.
It was a remarkably stupid idea to push Russia into this war. Russia was minding its own business and delivering cheap energy to Europe. Its only real demand was that a hostile military alliance not expand into its former sphere.
The consequences of ignoring that were entirely predictable to anyone with basic intelligence.
This is the simple truth.
The anti-immigration angle also obviously serves reactionary state power on multiple levels. Better double down on Islamophobia and funding for ICE and Israel or this *chaos* will arrive on *our* shores.
Kyle Farquharson retweeted
It's a complete mystery why @BBCNews appears to have blanked this UN report which is utterly damning of the BBC and Western media.
They have all 'facilitated genocide'.
===
Albanese found that Western media “camouflaged” Israeli responsibility in headlines, with the BBC most criticised for this, having been found to do so in 83% of its headlines, according to media analysis.
The “striking example” provided in the report was of Hind Rajab.
Five-year-old Hind Rajab was killed alongside her family while attempting to flee Gaza City two years ago. The car they were in was found riddled with 335 bullet holes from rounds fired by Israeli military personnel.
The BBC headline still reads: “Hind Rajab,5, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help.”
archive.ph/Ezjnh
Report from @ScotNational
Kyle Farquharson retweeted
I wrote a full, detailed account of the October 16 settler and soldier attack on the olive harvest in Abu Falah. I think it may be the most important thing I’ve ever written.
“The Palestinians Who Rescued Heidi Levine”
Link in next tweet.
Kyle Farquharson retweeted
None of our "Western Democracies" are democracies. Our governments do not represent the people but the lobbies. Violence erupts because governments refuse to change course. I support the student protests in France, as I supported the yellow vests. The media is complicit.
This doesn’t clarify anything. The Canadian government has used similar wording consistently since adopting the IHRA definition of “antisemitism” in 2019. The IHRA definition deliberately conflates anti-Zionism with hatred of Jews.
Important clarification regarding Government of Canada’s position
via @nccm
I've rarely, if ever, seen substantive criticism of the Canadian signals intelligence agency in our legacy media. When Edward Snowden was exposing global illegal surveillance by the NSA, Canadian news outlets were like "the tech spy guys at CSE are super smart actually."
As part of Marc Carney’s extreme militarism, he’s putting $2 billion into one of the most secretive, US aligned parts of the Canadian government. But the media focus has been almost entirely about controversy over data centres.
On Friday the Globe and Mail and several other outlets reported that the Communication Security Establishment (CSE) will construct a data centre in Ottawa expected to cost up to $1.85 billion. The new 60 MW facility would be among the largest such projects in the country though smaller than several planned data centres. According to the paper, “the national security source told The Globe the data centre project is possible now because of the Carney government's significant increase in defence spending.”
Under the Department of National Defence, CSE employs over 3,800 mathematicians, engineers, linguists, analysts, computer scientists, etc. Its annual budget is over $1 billion. The secretive agency has a variety of high-tech gadgets, including surveillance planes. In 2011 CSE moved into a new $1.2 billion home. The seven-building, 110,000 square-metre complex is connected to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa.
Unlike CSIS, CSE is largely foreign focused. It seeks to “protect the computer networks and information of greatest importance to Canada” from international attack. CSE also gathers international signals intelligence (SIGINT), which it defines as “intelligence acquired through the collection of electromagnetic signals.” Historically, CSE largely intercepted electronic communications between embassies in Ottawa and other nations’ capitals. Today, CSE monitors phone calls, radio, microwave and satellite, as well as emails, chat rooms and other Internet exchanges. It engages in various forms of data hacking, sifting through millions of videos and online documents daily.
CSE has long had close ties to its US counterpart. NSA has trained CSE cryptanalysts and in the 1960s the US agency paid part of the cost of modernizing Canadian communications interception facilities. CSE has opened interception posts at Canadian diplomatic outposts at NSA’s behest. CSE long spied for the US from an interception post inside Canada’s embassy in Havana and in the 1970s sought to open a communications site in Algeria to help NSA spy on Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. CSE also gathered intelligence on Palestinians for Israel. Former CSE intelligence officer Mike Frost wrote, “[former Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman] Yasser Arafat’s name, for instance, was on every [CSE] key word list. NSA was happy about that.”
An NSA history of the US–Canada SIGINT relationship released by whistleblower Edward Snowden labelled Canada a “highly valued second party partner”, which offers “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis, and has opened covert sites at the request of NSA. CSEC shares with NSA their unique geographic access to areas unavailable to the US.”
As part of the Snowden revelations, it came to light that CSE hacked Mexican computers and spied on Brazil’s Department of Mines and Energy. CSE also planted sophisticated malware on mobile phones and maintained a network of infected computers to attack targets without being detected. To mask their involvement CSE hacked into random computers outside the US/Canada/UK/Australia/New Zealand Five Eyes alliance to use them to launch cyberattacks.
The September 11, 2001, attacks in the US spurred a major expansion of CSE. During this period CSE took an ever more active role in ‘counterterrorism’ and foreign intelligence. The agency’s sophisticated equipment and analytical and linguistic resources contributed significantly to the 2001-14 occupation of Afghanistan. The agency’s website said it played a “vital role” in the central Asian country and CSE head John Adams boasted that they were responsible for more than half the “actionable intelligence” Canadian soldiers used in Afghanistan. That included monitoring Taliban forces and leaders as well as allied Afghan government officials. Information CSE provided protected Canadian troops from attack and helped special forces assassinate Afghans.
CSE contributed intelligence to the March 2006 special forces operation to rescue two Canadians and a British hostage held by insurgents in Iraq. CSE aided the deployment to Iraq-Syria that began in 2014. The agency probably hacked ISIL computers and smartphones, and CSE officials likely staffed a state-of-the-art intelligence centre in Kuwait. (Presumably, CSE supported the 2011 bombing of Libya, 2004 coup in Haiti and other Canadian Forces deployments, but I couldn’t confirm this.)
For more than half a century CSE (and its predecessor) functioned without official mandate. CSE operated under secret orders in council until 2001. That year’s Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-36) gave CSE a statutory mandate, which amended the National Defence Act. Among other things, it called on the agency to acquire foreign intelligence from the “global information infrastructure” and detailed the defence minister’s role in authorizing information collection that might “inadvertently” target Canadians’ private communications.
As the Internet came onto the scene CSE was instructed to conduct Computer Network Exploitation. It went from intercepting communications (“data in motion”) to seeking information on foreign computer systems (“data at rest”). According to Bill Robinson, who runs SIGINT focused blog Lux Ex Umbra, “it became a hunter as well as a gatherer.” CSE could hack into computer systems, implant malware and copy information.
In 2017 CSE was further empowered to carry out offensive operations against foreign actors. The Communications Security Establishment Act authorized CSE “to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities” of international targets. In effect the intelligence agency could seek to take a government offline, shutter a power plant, knock a drone out of the sky or interfere in court proceedings and elections in countries Ottawa doesn’t deem “democratic”. There is no requirement that the target threaten Canadian security.
The legislation forbids offensive cyber activities that could cause injury or death or “obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice or democracy.” But these limitations don’t apply if CSE conducts cyberattacks on behalf of a Canadian Forces operation or receives approval of the foreign minister. Additionally, there is no independent oversight of CSE’s new offensive capabilities and CSE is allowed to do “anything that is reasonably necessary to maintain the covert nature of the activity.”
The Communication Security Establishment is a secretive, US aligned government agency. We need a public discussion about putting $2 billion more into bolstering it.
Kyle Farquharson retweeted
Crucially important video: the legal proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza from this year's Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Navi Pillay on the legal proof for genocide in Gaza | Israel - Palestine... youtu.be/XYpDoWW-nZs?si=MyZg… via @YouTube
Please watch this short video. It is essential viewing
The Conservative-Zionist position is "If a western-allied state is accused of genocide, it's not guilty unless it perfectly replicates the Holocaust. If a designated enemy like China, Iran, or Russia is accused, however, the threshold is dramatically and arbitrarily lower."
Let me put this Zionist talking point to rest once and for all.
“Israelis must be the worst genociders ever. Hasn't the population in the Gaza strip increased”
I’m no genocide scholar, but I’ve read enough international law to know genocide isn’t measured by whether a population graph goes up or down. It’s about the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. Population growth doesn’t erase mass killing, starvation, or the deliberate destruction of the conditions needed to survive.
Holocaust deniers used similar demographic arguments to cast doubt on the genocide of Jews, manipulating population figures to distract from the historical evidence of mass murder and Nazi policy.
Now Zionists are recycling the same logic for Gaza.
Birth rates don’t cancel out mass death. A growing population figure doesn’t mean people are safe, fed, housed, or able to survive. And it certainly doesn’t erase the destruction of homes, hospitals, and the infrastructure sustaining life.
Genocide isn’t a math problem u can debunk w a spreadsheet. Don’t let Zionists use demographics to whitewash their mass atrocities.
The thing is, the same absurdity and contradiction inhere in liberalism generally. Basically, liberalism is the belief that human rights should be universal in theory but constrained to a privileged few in practice.
Never has the concept of Liberal Zionism looked more absurd and contradictory. It almost makes you feel sorry for people who simply can't accept the evidence before their eyes that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was inevitable from the very beginning of Zionism. As Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary on June 2nd 1895: “We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
Ditto. When I see anti-Muslim content on here, I assume the author is a Zionist and possibly on the payroll of Israel.































