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No matter what happens, SUNY “did not serve us in time, or it did not consider our well-being and the urgency of the matter,” one of two student complainants told JNS.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights will formally examine complaints that two Jewish students were booted from a sexual-assault awareness group at the university, according to materials reviewed by JNS.

The two were then allegedly bullied, harassed and threatened due to their Jewish, Israeli and Zionist identities, according to their complaint, which was filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

Ofek Preis, an Israeli who is one of the student complainants, told JNS that she is very grateful to know that the federal investigation is happening. “I’m so thankful to have found a light in the darkness that is this case,” she said. “It was definitely a heartbreaking and traumatizing incident.”

Preis and Jewish-American student Cassie Blotner allege that a student-run sexual-assault survivors’ support group on the New Paltz campus harassed and kicked them out of the group.

That followed a social-media post of Blotner’s in December 2021, in which she expressed her Jewish identity. Preis reposted the message. Blotner is a co-founder of New Paltz Accountability, the group in question, but both her and Preis’s posts were on personal social-media handles.

The student group stopped contacting Preis about organizational activities and blocked her access to shared organizational documents, according to the complaint. The group then published statements on social media stating that it was open only to those who reject Zionism, the complaint added.

Those posts fueled more antisemitic online comments directed at her, Blotner alleges.

Blotner and Preis allege that the university violated their rights under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin, including discrimination against Jews. That includes marginalizing, demonizing and excluding Jewish students for their identity as Zionists or Jews.

The two students say that SUNY officials failed to protect them, as it is required, so that they could attend classes without fear for their safety.SUNY officials only decided to take action after the Department of Ed complaint was filed, which was “too little, too late,” Preis told JNS.

The university held focus groups, soliciting input from Jewish students and the Jewish community about improving the campus environment. SUNY issued a report with recommendations, including adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

The report made no recommendations about addressing ongoing harassment and discrimination, particularly against Zionists.

In so doing, the university gave a green light to campus antisemitism with its “half-measures and empty rhetoric,” per a letter that the school’s Jewish Student Union wrote to the campus community.

‘Sends a clear and unequivocal signal’

The federal investigation follows a settlement, this April, with the University of Vermont over allegations of antisemitism.

The university was found to have failed to address serious allegations of harassment, including a teaching assistant bragging about penalizing Jewish students, exclusion of Jews from campus organizations and rocks thrown at Jewish housing.

As part of the settlement, the university agreed to revise its policies to ensure its response to discrimination is consistent with federal law. It will also train leaders, staff and students not to harass people based on national ancestry.

Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Louis D. Brandeis Center, filed the complaint against SUNY New Paltz.

That the Education Department opened this investigation first, after U.S. President Joe Biden announced the national strategy to combat antisemitism, “sends a clear and unequivocal signal to SUNY New Paltz, as well as universities across the country, that they take anti-Zionist discrimination and harassment seriously and they expect universities to take it just as seriously,” Katz-Prober stated.

The department is broadcasting that it will address anti-Zionist discrimination “with the same intensity and vigor, as they do all other forms of harassment and discrimination,” she added.

Jewish on Campus was also named as a complainant along with Preis and Blotner.

“No student should ever be excluded from campus because of facets of their Jewish identity, let alone survivors of sexual assault,” wrote Julia Jassey, the nonprofit’s co-founder and CEO.

“By launching an investigation into SUNY New Paltz’s actions, or lack thereof, in the face of this blatant antisemitism, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is taking a necessary step toward accountability,” she added. “As Jewish students on campuses across the country are forced to confront similar discrimination in their classrooms and student organizations, today’s announcement is a beginning, not an end.”

“Regardless of what steps were taken or what the university thinks were adequate reactions, it did not serve us in time, or it did not consider our well-being and the urgency of the matter,” Preis told JNS.

SUNY New Paltz did not reply to a JNS request for comment. A Department of Education spokesman told JNS he could not immediately provide information about the scope of the investigation, timeline or other details.

The post First CUNY now SUNY: US Education Department investigating university over alleged antisemitism appeared first on World Israel News.

“Simboli nazisti sul fronte ucraino evidenziano spinose questioni storiche” scrive il New York Times. Molti dei soldati ucraini – addestrati dalla NATO e dotati di sistemi d’arma sempre più potenti  come il carrarmato tedesco Leopard – portano sulle uniformi emblemi …

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Activists, including the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli filmmaker, who who waved Israeli flags at a Roger Waters concert in London were kicked out of the venue in two separate incidents, while those waving Palestinian flags were allowed to remain for the duration of the performance.

Waving the blue and white flags, they chanted “hey Roger, leave them Jews alone,” the Jewish Chronicle reported.

The former Pink Floyd frontman also donned his SS uniform again, despite briefly dropping the fascism act after coming under heavy criticism after a show in Berlin.

Waters is currently under investigation in Germany, after he performed at a show in Berlin last month brandishing a plastic machine gun while dressed in an outfit modeled after the uniforms wore by Nazi Germany’s Waffen SS units.

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The post PfizerGate: Official Government Reports prove Hundreds of Thousands of People Are Dying Every Single Week Due to COVID-19 Vaccination appeared first on Global Research.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised interest rates again, ostensibly to keep inflation in check. But the reality is that the move will only enrich banks and rich property investors — at the expense of renters and struggling mortgage holders.

Signage at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) building in Sydney, Australia, on February 6, 2023. (Brent Lewin / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised interest rates for the twelfth time in fourteen months. RBA governor Philip Lowe justified the rate rises as an attempt to reduce inflation from the current 6.8 percent to his preferred range of 2 to 3 percent. Lowe, whose term as governor ends in September, heavily implied that this unprecedented run of rate rises will continue throughout 2023.

The rate rise will overwhelmingly hurt ordinary Australians. Mortgage holders — the majority of whose loans are on variable rates — will suffer directly. Renters will also suffer as landlords pass on the increase to them, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis and putting homeownership even further beyond reach.

The latest rate rise comes just days after university loans automatically increased by 7.1 percent. Despite the fact that nominal wage growth is only 3.7 percent — dramatically below inflation — Lowe insisted that “we have to make sure that higher inflation doesn’t translate into higher wages for everybody.”

Perhaps the only positive aspect of the current debate over inflation is that there is a debate at all. Despite the best efforts of big business and the financial press, questions are quietly emerging about exactly who is to blame for rising prices, who should be disciplined to contain them, and how.

“For Some Households”

Lowe admitted that raising interest rates hurts working people. “The use of this tool comes with complications,” he conceded, noting that

Its effects are felt unevenly across the community, with rising interest rates causing significant financial pressure for some households. But this unevenness is not a reason to avoid using the tool that we have.

By Lowe’s phrasing, “financial pressure” sounds almost incidental. In fact this is precisely the point of the tool. The idea is that high costs will scare borrowers, who will limit their spending. Unemployment will increase; by the RBA’s own estimates one hundred thousand people will be thrown out of work. This will reduce employees’ bargaining power and put a downward pressure on wages.

And most crucially — although it’s almost always left unsaid — all of this is then supposed to persuade businesses to stop choosing to raise prices so quickly.

If punishing workers in order to gently make a suggestion to employers seems a harsh way of getting something done, you couldn’t tell from the business response. The financial press used Lowe’s announcement to further attack a recent decision by the Fair Work Commission to raise award rates by 5.75 percent, even though in real terms, this is a wage cut.

A Wage-Price Spiral by Any Other Name . . .

Peak employer bodies have in part blamed supply-chain issues like the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 for rising costs and prices. What they usually fail to mention, however, is that they have already recouped many of the costs associated with these problems from the taxpayer through various federally funded subsidies.

This isn’t the only way that employers have manipulated the narrative to maximize profitability. Business groups also maintain that lifting minimum and award wages forces them “to make decisions around passing these costs on, so in the end it ends up with consumers who will pay the bill.” In other words, they claim that higher wages lead to higher prices, leading to a “wage-price spiral.”

This is deliberately misleading. Most Australian workers have experienced real wage cuts because they haven’t been pushing for — or receiving — wage rises even close to inflation. Business groups just imply that workers could demand wage increases in line with inflation, claiming that this possibility underpins employers’ choice to raise prices. Unable to point to any actual wage-price spiral, they have invented a hypothetical one. They also blame rising unit-labor costs as a culprit driving inflation. This refers to productivity, a loaded term implying that employees must continuously work harder than previously for the same wages. If they don’t, businesses insist that they are forced to raise prices to avoid any squeeze on profit margins.

However, businesses’ “our hands are tied” account has not gone totally unchallenged. While still limited in reach, rival explanations for inflation have appeared that propose different, less austerity-driven cures. Like similar debates elsewhere, the emergence of alternative, more egalitarian narratives has stirred up a hornet’s nest of orthodox economists.

For example, the OECD world economic outlook — published the same day as Lowe’s speech — suggested that the oligopolistic nature of the Australian economy is driving inflation. If a few big companies dominate the market, they can raise prices however much and whenever they like. As the former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) put it, “nothing that they’re doing breaks the law; there’s no law against excessive pricing.”

In other words, inflation is caused by corporate price gouging. This explanation isn’t just more accurate — it also fits with ordinary Australians’ experience of Woolworths and Coles raising grocery prices arbitrarily, or the big four banks refusing to pass on rate rises to deposit products.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work has suggested a complementary explanation that’s even more incendiary, arguing that profits are the major cause of the current inflation. In the Centre for Future Work’s account, we’re not in a wage-price spiral, but a profit-price spiral. It’s the result of Australian companies raising prices across the board as they seek — and post — record profits, far beyond any increase in costs they’ve experienced.

The Narrow Road of Political Feasibility

Confronted with claims that an oligopolistic economy and a profit-price spiral are to blame, orthodox economists have responded tellingly. While acknowledging that oligopolies make inflation more likely, the RBA and business lobby have categorically rejected the notion that profiteering is a cause of inflation. Some at the RBA criticized the Centre for Future Work’s methodology. Other economists simply dismissed the question as silly.

For example, according to Richard Holden, a University of New South Wales economics professor, “it doesn’t really matter where the price increases are coming from. Monetary policy has still got to go on.” “A doctor doesn’t care where you got a disease,” agreed Peter Tulip, a former senior RBA researcher. “The medicine prescription is going to be the same anyway.”

It appears that to the prescription-happy Dr Tulip, it’s irrelevant whether or not we’ve got the disease at all — all that matters is that we take his medicine. Business and governments have been prescribing the same thing regardless of what’s happening in the economy. When inflation hovered below 2 percent for the second half of the 2010s, they admonished Australian workers that wage growth was irresponsible, and urged productivity increases. Now we’re facing high inflation, and the advice is identical. There is no suggestion to business that excessive price hikes are irresponsible, or that these need to be accompanied by some action or other that benefits the wider economy.

In fact there are many possible “prescriptions” that the authorities could consider. Windfall taxes, oligopoly-power reduction, price controls, and direct government investment could all potentially be used to help drive down inflation. None of these suggestions are revolutionary in the slightest.

The common refrain asserts that these measures are not politically tenable. But to whom? When the government imposed price caps and expanded direct public investment in the energy sector to control inflation, businesses’ grumbling acceptance was telling. It demonstrated that business will only tolerate government intervention if it can clearly see the longer-term benefits for itself — and barely even then.

For now, the RBA and the treasury have correctly wagered that it is more politically feasible to hurt workers than employers. In part, this is because workers are largely unorganized. And even if they were, every industrial tool workers have at their disposal to tilt the situation in their favor — like striking — is functionally illegal. Employers, by contrast, face few equivalent political or economic constraints; they have carte blanche to retaliate against governments they are unhappy with. And they will continue to use this freedom to transfer Australian wealth upward.

In an interview with British network Sky News, Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared to scold the anchor after he was grilled on construction in Judea and Samaria,saying, “it’s our ancestral homeland and country.”

“The figures show that 7000 housing units were advanced by your government;” the interviewer stated. “Secretary of State Blinken has stated that it is these physical settlements that are the obstacle to peace, and they contravene international law.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu replied: “I think that’s not true at all, and I also don’t think they contravene international law, because there’s never been an international decision that Jews cannot live in Judea, that’s where we come from.”

“Article 49 of the Geneva convention states that the occupying power cannot build on the land,” said the interviewer.

“The article forbids population transfer. Building is only forbidden in occupied territory; you call it occupied, we call it disputed, but it’s part of our ancestral homeland. We’ve only been there for some 3000 years. King David established our capital in Jerusalem. We are not the Belgians in the Congo or the Dutch in Indonesia. For God’s sake, it’s the land of Israel, it’s our country.”

“The Palestinians are here, and we’re not going to push them out, and we’re here, and the Palestinians are not going to push us out. The problem, though has been that the Palestinians have been hijacked by leadership that does not want a state next to Israel, they want a state without Israel.”

“The idea that if a Jew buys land privately it is a criminal act is absurd. If I were to tell you that Jews cannot buy land anywhere else in the world you would be outraged.”

“A million Arabs live in israel, and I say that they should have all the same civil rights as Jews. We are going to have to find the political arrangement to do so, but we are going to have to live next to each other. The idea that their land must be Judenrein, Jew-free – I think that conception is the obstacle to peace.”

The post WATCH: Netanyahu to Sky News: ‘For God’s sake, it’s our country!’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Adam Devine and his wife, Chloe Bridges, were enjoying a warm night on their balcony in the Hollywood Hills when a familiar sound pierced the silence: the sound of gunfire.

The couple had been watching a large gathering take place at a nearby home in the 7800 block of Fareholm Drive. But as the festivities died down, so did the peace. An argument broke out, and a guest in attendance was shot, leaving one unfortunate victim dead.

Kimberly Block, who lives next to the Fareholm Drive home, suspects that the tenant might have been hosting a poker game and had a large social media following.

Block stated that a valet had notified one of the guests that an individual was waiting outside of the party who wanted to communicate with them. The guest subsequently departed from the gathering and stepped outdoors, where a dispute occurred, and the guest was shot.

Adam Devine shared his experience on the “This Is Important” improv podcast.

The shooter remains at large and drove off in an unknown vehicle after the incident.

Adam Devine is well known American Actor known for his roles in Pitch Perfect and Workaholics, as well as many other films and shows.

As Toronto grapples with skyrocketing housing costs, tenant unions across the city are uniting against major corporate landlords in a massive rent strike. The strike is vitalizing the fight for housing justice in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

Toronto tenants on strike at 33 King Street, June 1, 2023. (Twitter / YSW Tenant Union)

Tenants throughout Toronto are currently leading a rent strike against some of the country’s largest corporate landlords in one of the world’s least affordable cities.

The long overdue rent strike involves tenants across Toronto in multiple buildings — 70 Thorncliffe Park, 33 King Street, 77 Spencer Avenue, and 109 Indian Road. Together, they are fighting back against their corporate landlords’ “above-guideline rent increases” (AGIs).

Although Ontario’s rent control typically limits rent increases to 2 to 3 percent per year, AGIs enable landlords to raise rents significantly beyond these regular limits, ostensibly to account for expenses related to repairs and retrofits. In reality, however, they offer an easy way to evade rent controls and bolster landlord profits.

The latest round of AGIs are the last straw for many tenants. As CBC News notes: “Rent strikes in Canada are on the increase” — especially in Toronto — and they have been for at least half a decade.

Reached for comment, Chiara Padovani, cochair of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, told Jacobin that “Tenants are fed up with paying more for less and seeing their rent increase three times above rent control.”

Protests At 77 Spencer Avenue and 109 Indian Road

In Toronto’s Parkdale neighborhood, Akelius Investments tried to push a 5.5 percent rent increase onto its tenants. This increase is more than double a normal rent increase of 2.5 percent. The increase was justified as necessary for “balcony repairs.”

Tenants responded by descending onto the company’s office and demanding an end to the rent hikes.

As resident Annie Gibson told CBC News: “They’re applying [to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB)] for balcony repairs. A lot of the people who live in the building don’t have balconies and we’re expected to pay for it any ways because it’s considered a capital expense.”

Worse, as Parkdale Community Legal Clinic legal case worker Candace Nguyen notes, “They haven’t been maintaining the apartments and they use capital expenditures on things like lobbies, useless things that don’t help the tenants, while they have real issues like mice and cockroaches and real maintenance requests that have just been ignored time and time again.”

While the company has little to show for its balcony repairs in the unit, its profit margin is massive. According to its 2022 annual report, across Canada, Akelius owns 8,834 units and enjoy a capitalization rate of 4.13 percent and a net operating income of over 48 percent.

Rent Strike at 33 King

Among all buildings in Toronto, 33 King, which is owned by Dream Unlimited, received six applications for AGIs from 2012–22. “I’m afraid I might become homeless,” one tenant told CBC News.

AGI applications require the landlord to inform tenants of the plan to increase the rent beyond the legal limit, pending approval by the provincial LTB. In 2018, the tenants fought a 6 percent increase and successfully negotiated a settlement that resulted in the removal of the AGI, with a promise to reimburse those who had already paid the 6 percent. But, in reality, it hasn’t been that simple.

“The landlord never paid them back,” Padovani says. “The landlord said the reason they didn’t pay anyone back is because they have all these other applications that they are expecting will get approved so they don’t owe anybody any money.”

During the recent AGI process, despite tenants being legally permitted to keep paying the current rate, the union claims that Dream Unlimited sent eviction letters as a form of intimidation to those who exercised this right. Under pressure from the union, the company apologized, but its push to hike rents continues.

“The building is not a new building, the landlord is using the AGI to evade rent control. The owner has a history of doing this, they’ve applied for it at every single opportunity, back-to-back, over the last ten years,” Padovani says. “The current landlord inherited all the past applications and even according to Dream’s own financial statements, 50 percent of its revenue is profit.”

These rent hikes have not gone to improving the conditions of the building, tenants say.

Shelley, a long-term tenant, told Jacobin, “We’ve had floors with a bedbug epidemic, to cockroaches, to ants. What’s frustrating is being told they’re going to take care of it and then they don’t.”

Against the backdrop of landlord neglect, after weeks of making phone calls and knocking on doors, Padovani explains that the union managed to garner support from over half of the building’s tenants, resulting in their current rent strike.

“We have to be adamant. This is where we raise our families. This is our home,” Shelley said.

Rent Strike Across Thorncliffe Park

Since May 1, PSP Investments and Starlight Investments have faced a rent strike from hundreds of tenants at 71, 75, and 79 Thorncliffe Park Drive, who have refused to pay rent in opposition to an application seeking to raise their rents by about 5 percent. Previously, the building’s owner sought a rent increase of 4.2 per cent in 2022. If these increases are approved by the LTB, it will mean a monthly increase of almost 10 percent in two years. Worse, most of the tenants will also owe “back rent,” due to the increases.

“Tenants are working together to fight the massive rent increases and defend their homes from those seeking to profit from displacement,” a website dedicated to PSP displaced tenants said.

Like the other landlords on the list, Starlight has enjoyed massive profits alongside rent hikes and a general deterioration of its housing stock. In fact, in 2012, Starlight changed its name, following a string of negative media reports decrying the horrendous living conditions in its buildings.

In March 2022, the Thorncliffe Park residents delivered a stack of over fifty repair requests they said were ignored — sometimes for years. These included, according to the National Observer, leaking bathroom ceilings, mold, malfunctioning stoves, and garbage chutes that overflowed with waste.

“Everything is leaking and it smells very bad,” one tenant wrote. “We’re very tired of opening many maintenance requests but not getting anything in response.”

In 2019, Starlight’s CEO said, “We think there is a definite housing shortage, or almost a crisis level in Canada . . . and the good news for investors is there is no easy solution in sight.” In a 2021 presentation, Starlight told its investors its value proposition is based on “high growth” in rents as well as “deteriorating home ownership affordability.

“They try to build their money from our weakness,” one tenant told the National Observer. “This community is just looking for the end of the month to cover food and everything and that’s it.”

Paying More for Less

Canada’s landlords, like all landlords, make their profits by increasing their revenue and cutting their costs. In plain language that means cutting services and repair funds and gouging their tenants for every last dollar of rent. Alongside horrendous living conditions — with pests, mold, and the like — this means a drive for regular churns and regular evictions. The results are visible at the national level.

This is why Toronto, like nearly every other major Canadian city, has seen homelessness rise to crisis levels — with tent cities in nearly every park. It’s why food bank use is exploding. And it’s why, increasingly, ordinary workers are poor, hungry, homeless, and living in squalid conditions. This is not despite landlord profits; it is the source of landlord profits.

A recent survey by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation titled The Lived Experience of Evictions in Canada found that a majority of the respondents were evicted by their landlords so that the property could be flipped, sold, or renovated and rented at a higher cost.

In the process, the report found: “Most participants described a range of different negative landlord behaviours, including non-responsiveness and harassment, and a third of participants reported some sort of negative or potentially illegal landlord actions during the eviction process itself.”

After eviction, the study found that most of the tenants were, unsurprisingly, far worse off. Overall, the participants paid higher prices for smaller, lower-quality homes after their eviction.

As the study concludes: “Being evicted once puts you in the position of instability and increases your chance of having more housing instability after that.”

Extend the Fight

These strikes are of enormous importance if they can bring powerful landlords to heel. They show the power of ordinary people to fight back.

Supporting and expanding these rent strikes is crucial to challenging the dominance of property owners in the city. Reclaiming housing from those who prioritize profits over people is essential for securing the necessary homes that ordinary individuals require for their well-being. This approach is the key to transforming the prevailing stress, fear, and instability experienced by countless renters into lasting stability.