israelis apartheid
![James Laxer](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/picture-62_0.jpg "James Laxer is regularly asked to comment on current national and global issues by the Canadian media and frequently writes columns in major newspapers and periodicals.
In 1969, he was one of the founders of the Waffle Group, Canada’s largest New Left political movement. In 1971, at the age of 29, he ran second for the national leadership of the New Democratic Party. In the mid 1970s, James Laxer was a leading crusader against the power of multi national petroleum companies. His books, speeches and television appearances helped lead to the creation of a nationally owned oil company, Petro Canada, established to counter the power of companies like Exxon in Canada.
In 1981, Laxer was appointed research director of the federal New Democratic Party. At the end of his two year term, he wrote a controversial, book length critique of the party’s economic policies, charging that they were seriously dated. The report was front page news in Canada and was debated for months in the national media.
In 1984, the National Film Board of Canada hired Laxer to be host narrator, for a series of documentaries on the changing global economy and Canada’s place in it. In preparing the series, Laxer travelled extensively in Japan, Europe and the United States. The series, entitled Reckoning, was denied broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation because it was seen as too controversial.
Instead it was broadcast by a hook up of all the English language educational networks in the country. The series was also broadcast in the United States, as well, by a large number of PBS stations. The Reckoning series has won awards in both the United States and Canada. One of its films won the blue ribbon, first prize, at the prestigious American Film and Video Festival, for best political documentary. The same film won the Atlantic
Film Festival and national Gemini Awards in Canada for best writing in an information series, awards which went to Laxer and the film’s director as co-authors.
In 1986-87, Laxer spent a year in Europe writing Decline of the Superpowers. From 1978 to 1981, he hosted a public affairs television program on TV Ontario. He regularly went to Europe to conduct interviews with leading European political and intellectual figures. In 1993 his book False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada, was published by Lester Publishing. In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics
After the Neo-Conservative Assault was published by Viking in 1996. The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism, was published by Viking in 1998, and by Penguin Canada in 1999, in a paperback edition. Dalton Camp wrote that the Undeclared War "is an informed and cogent book on the great and growing dilemma of our time: how to preserve a free society in the face of increasing disparity and the creation of a new class society---‘a dominant class and a dominated class.’ This is stuff we need to know." Laxer’s book, Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America was on national best seller lists for seven weeks in the autumn of 2000. In his review of the book for the Globe and Mail, David Shribman, Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Boston Globe, commented: "This is a book by a Canadian that can change the United States." Stalking the Elephant is to be published by The New Press in New York in September 2001. In 2003, his book, The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel, was published by Doubleday Canada. In 2004, Douglas and McIntyre published his book Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism. This memoir of James Laxer’s childhood was the winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for best biography/memoir in 2005.
James Laxer is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto")
Mr. Cohen doesn't do Ramallah
Leonard Cohen's Ramallah concert in Palestine got cancelled last week. He had added it to a September concert in Israel. But a Palestinian group heading a broad campaign against Israel -- BDS, for boycott, divestment and sanctions -- demanded he not get away with "whitewashing Israel's colonial apartheid regime" by a "token" show of "balance." A Palestinian prisoners' club had sponsored the concert. It was unhappy but agreed to the decision.
The BDS campaign has gained backing in the West among academics, artists etc. As a supporter of Palestinian rights and a critic of much Israeli policy, I'd like to say why I find it problematic and even disturbing.
A debate on the academic boycott of Israel
May 11 2009 - 2:30pm
May 11 2009 - 4:30pm
Location
York Univeristy Osgoode Hall Moot Court
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON Canada
43° 46' 26.4396" N, 79° 29' 37.626" W
See map: Google Maps
Boycotts have emerged in recent decades as a favoured means of grassroots opposition to certain politics and practices. Often these boycotts are directed at firms or industries in the name of environmental or humanitarian goals. In the past few months, framed as an attempt to build on the successes of a similarly structured campaign against historic South African apartheid, calls for boycotts have been raised in response to Israeli action in Gaza. These calls have included a request for the boycotting of Israeli academic institutions. Boycotts raise fundamental issues for universities and other academic institutions: how do boycotts affect the university's commitments to free speech and inquiry, which are central to our functions?
Launch: Freedom of Expression Campaign
Apr 15 2009 - 7:00pm
Apr 15 2009 - 9:00pm
Location
The Bahen Centre room # 1160 - University of Toronto
40 St. George St. North of College Street
Toronto, ON Canada
43° 39' 36.054" N, 79° 23' 48.3684" W
See map: Google Maps
What's going on?
Banned from Canada
George Galloway's Canadian speaking tour on "Resisting war from Gaza to Kandahar"
Cut
Funding for settlement programs and language services at Canadian Arab Federation
Removed
Israeli Apartheid Week posters at Ontario universities
Attacked
Union leaders and members for supporting research and education on boycott of academic institutions!
Targeted
Students and faculty doing public education on campuses
Threatened
Discussions of Israel/Palestine at the Toronto District School Board