This
and this
Sri Lanka: UN Report on war crimes comes too late for the Tamils
2The Sri Lankan newspaper The Island has released leaked sections of a United Nations report due to be published next week, which speaks to the credibility of allegations that the Sri Lankan government committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its brutal assault on Tamil rebels that brought the decades-long civil war to an end in 2009.
Insofar as this report comes with the imprimatur of the UN, it is indeed a welcome addition to the already vast archive of material documenting the Sri Lankan government’s atrocities. The Report states quite unequivocally that the government’s claims of innocence were lies:
The Government says it pursued a “humanitarian rescue operation” with a policy of “zero civilian casualties”. In stark contrast, the Panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The fire we need in our bellies
TCNJ students join the fight against neo-Nazis in Trenton
If April 13 belonged to the students of Rutgers University who initiated a statewide day of action against budget cuts (see my previous post), three days later, it was students from The College of New Jersey taking to the streets, this time to protest the presence of Nazis in downtown Trenton.
Behind a barricade of concrete blocks and rows of state troopers stood the roughly 30-50 neo-Nazis, members of the Detroit-based National Socialist Movement, which claims to be the largest neo-Nazi organization in the U.S. On the other side were a multiracial crowd of 300 protesters, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Nazi scum have got to go!” and “Don’t give in to racist fear, immigrants are welcome here!”
And it was the spirited, angry, and coordinated chanting by a contingent of TCNJ students Continue reading
Rutgers Students Take the Lead in Fighting Budget Cuts in NJ
The budget cuts in New Jersey are already beginning to impact higher education in various ways (increased enrollment numbers and higher class sizes, etc.). For months now, at my campus, I’ve witnessed my coworkers fret and fume about the cuts, while student activists have, to be honest, been timid and hesitant in their response, at best.
Today was a statewide day of action against the budget cuts. At TCNJ, several students from Student Government and groups like the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) solicited signatures on letters from their peers; letters that they said would be used in their lobbying efforts in Trenton. Fair enough.
But it’s the students at Rutgers, led by a dynamic team of progressive activists, who are leading the way. And it ain’t rocket science….
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