Witness – Soy Palestino – Part 2

Kamran Asdar Ali
29 April 2009

(Kamran Asdar Ali is acting director of the South Asia Institute and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas-Austin.)

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as the army has launched ground operations and air raids to “eliminate and expel” the Islamist militant groups commonly known as the Tehreek-e Taliban or the Taliban in Pakistan (TIP). The targeted districts border Swat, a well-watered mountain vale described as “paradise on earth” in Pakistani tourist brochures, where the provincial government tried to placate the Taliban by agreeing to implement Islamic law (sharia). The February agreement, the Nizam-e Adal regulation, was approved by the lower house of the Pakistani parliament on April 12 and signed into law soon afterward by the president, Asif Zardari. But since then, fighting has continued, with both sides accusing the other of breaching the peace. As of April 27, according to a cleric close to the TIP, talks with the provincial government about Swat are suspended.

[Read the article]

Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 211
28 April 2009

For Free Expression on Palestine
Justin Podur

On April 15, 2009, a number of organizations launched a campaign in Toronto to demand the right to free expression on the Israel/Palestine conflict with an event on the University of Toronto (U of T) campus. Some 100-150 people attended. Speakers addressed several recent cases of suppression of free expression on the issue of Israel/Palestine. They argued that there is a concerted attack on free expression on this question underway, and that to protect this right requires all individuals and organizations with an interest in free expression, regardless of their stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict, to speak out now. This article is a report on the April 15 event and a dossier of key incidents and articles on the issue.

A 2002 precedent: Sherene Razack’s case

The moderator of the evening was Sherene Razack, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and author of several books, including Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism and Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics. She presented the story of her own experience with free expression on Israel/Palestine. In May 2002, Razack helped launch the Canadian Critical Race Studies Conference as part of the group Canadian Academics of Colour. The conference took place just after Israel’s invasion of Jenin. (Then as now, people speaking out were scrutinized for their choice of words. Just as today referring to Israeli policy as ‘apartheid’ is viewed as outside the bounds of acceptable criticism, in 2002 referring to Israel’s invasion of Jenin as a ‘massacre’ provoked similar reactions. (See my “What Happened in Jenin?” for a review of some of this now largely forgotten debate.)

Given the importance of Israel’s re-invasion of the West Bank in 2002 and the particular importance of the invasion of Jenin, conference organizers were criticized for not scheduling any event on the issue at the Critical Race Studies conference. In response organizers, including Razack, organized a meeting at the conference, where a resolution was drafted condemning Israel’s actions in Jenin. Razack distributed the resolution over email (to do so on this issue continues to be risky business for academics, as the recent case of William Robinson at the University of California Santa Barbara shows).

The reaction to Razack’s email distribution of the resolution was not immediate. Four months later, in August 2002, the campaign began, and Razack started to receive the hate emails. Razack was not the only one targeted. Several others, including a staff member at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore (TWB), received emails. The TWB staffer’s crime was allowing the store to sell pro-Palestine buttons. The CanWest-owned National Post published a series of articles about Razack, always claiming that she “refused to respond,” when in fact they refused to acknowledge or publish her letters of reply. Razack and her Dean received obscene phone messages and threats, with emails from all over containing similar formulations and lines of text, suggesting an organized campaign. The emails were consistent in their sexist and racist tone. A frequent message was “go back where you came from.” Assuming she was an Arab or Muslim, hate-mailers would remind her that she was from a barbaric and patriarchal culture and had no right to criticize a democratic state: to criticize Israel, they said, was to abandon feminism.

[Read the article]

Co-op Radio (CFRO) 102.7 FM
Source:

Voice of Palestine, Canada has been on the air for over twenty-one years; since it started it always counted on the generous support of our listeners to keep it on the air. This week will be part of Coop Radio’s spring marathon where listeners are asked to pledge their support by becoming members or making a donation. Please go to www.coopradio.org and click on donate, and be sure to mention Voice of Palestine, or phone in your pledge at 604-684-8494 during this week’s show.

This week’s interview (April 28, 2009) will be with Dr. Haidar Eid from Gaza, who will update us on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the Bil’in conference, the situation in the West Bank and the importance of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement. Dr. Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group http://odsg.org/co/ and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869 .

*Voice of Palestine www.voiceofpalestine.ca broadcasts weekly on Vancouver Cooperative Radio (CFRO) 102.7 FM, Vancouver, Canada. The show broadcasts for one hour every Tuesday night from 8 to 9 pm PDT (Wed. morning from 6:00-7:00am Palestine time). People outside of Vancouver can listen to the
show live on the Internet http://www.coopradio.org/listen/.

Tom Philpott, GRIST, 25 April 2009

One flu east, one flu west

The outbreak of a new flu strain—a nasty mash-up of swine, avian, and human viruses—has infected 1,000 people in Mexico and the U.S., killing 68. The World Health Organization warned Saturday that the outbreak could reach global pandemic levels.

Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site.

On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the Comfood listserv and has written about it on her blog, Peak Oil Entrepreneur):

[Read the article]

Related:
Mike Davis: The swine flu crisis lays bare the meat industry’s monstrous power

Iraq arrests Saudi terrorist bomber in Diyala Province
Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN — A Saudi Arabian terrorist who had been attempting to plant a bomb in Diyala Province has been arrested and his three accomplices killed in a shootout with security forces, a senior Iraqi police official announced on Sunday.

Diyala Province Police Chief Abdul-Hussein al-Shemri said the Saudi national is being interrogated, the Voice of Iraq website reported.

The deadliest of three suicide attacks in the area on Thursday struck a restaurant filled with Iranian pilgrims. The toll in that attack rose to 57, with Iranians making up the majority of the dead

Iraqi Govt Outraged After Deadly US Raid
Two Dead Civilians and Public Protests Make US Raid Costly Indeed
by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, 26 April 2009

A pre-dawn US raid this morning in the Iraqi city of Kut left two civilians dead and several others captured. Hundreds of local residents took to the streets to condemn the raid, while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared the attack a violation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq. He ordered two Iraqi security officials arrested over it, demanded the release of the captives, and for the US to turn over those responsible for the raid to the courts.

As is so often the case the official press release from US forces remained far disconnected from reality. It alleged that those captured included a “financier” for a Shi’ite militant group and six other “associates.” It also perplexedly claimed they were captured without incident even while describing the killing of two people, one they determined was “hostile” while the other was a woman.

Clinton: US to Keep Troops in Iraq if Violence Escalates

25 April 2009: Multiple simultaneous marches bring attention to the affairs of the World Bank & International Monetary Fund. It was all fun and games until somebody put an eye out. Includes critical visual analysis of why it turned so ugly so fast.

more info @
http://www.globaljusticeaction.org

Today, after months when we heard nothing further about the investigation, 6 people (one not a member of New Profile) had their privacy invaded, their computers taken, and were called in for investigation.

Dorothy Naor, New Profile, 26 April 2009

As some of you perhaps have heard, about ½ a year ago New Profile learned that it was under investigation. The charge, if I remember correctly, is that we incite youngsters not to enlist.

The charge is not true. We do provide space for youngsters to ask questions and to discuss and delve into matters that their contemporaries or family might be unwilling to discuss or that family and friends would have preconceptions about making it uncomfortable or inconvenient to discuss these matters. One such topic is refusal to enlist, but this is far from being the only topic. We hope to encourage youngsters to think—an undesirable quality in militaristic countries, where obedience is a foremost criterion.

Continue reading →

Tens of thousands of Gazans are still homeless and without basic services three months after the 18 January ceasefire.

17 April 2008

Jerusalem – A coalition of international aid agencies today warned that tens of thousands of Gazans are still homeless and without basic services such as piped drinking water three months after the 18 January ceasefire.

The agencies, including Oxfam International, CARE West Bank and Gaza, War Child Holland and Medical Aid for Palestinians, also called on the international community – and the European Union in particular which in the coming weeks will consider strengthening ties with Israel – to do more than pay lip service to the needs of the people of Gaza whose lives were torn apart during the three-week military operation.

[Read the report]

Watch Caryl Churchill’s play, Seven Jewish Children, which was written in response to the situation in Gaza in January this year

The United States continues to supply Israel with approximately $3 billion in military aid annually, which allows Israel to continue abusing Palestinians and preventing any meaningful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, writes guest columnist Huwaida Arraf.

By Huwaida Arraf
Special to The Times

WE Palestinians are often asked where the Palestinian Gandhi is and urged to adopt nonviolent methods in our struggle for freedom from Israeli military rule. On April 17, an Israeli soldier killed my good friend Bassem Abu Rahme at a nonviolent demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land. Bassem was one of many Palestinian Gandhis.

One month prior, at another demonstration against land confiscation, Israeli soldiers fired a tear-gas canister at the head of nonviolent American peace activist Tristan Anderson from California. Tristan underwent surgery to remove part of his frontal lobe and is still lying unconscious in an Israeli hospital. In 2003, the Israeli military plowed down American peace activist Rachel Corrie with a Caterpillar bulldozer as she tried to protect a civilian home from demolition in Gaza. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli sniper shot British peace activist Tom Hurndall as he rescued Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire. He lay in a coma for nine months before he died.

Despite the killing of these unarmed civilians and documented evidence of systematic human-rights abuses, the U.S. continues to supply Israel with approximately $3 billion in military aid annually, allowing Israel to continue abusing Palestinians and preventing any meaningful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

[Read the article]

Frustrated by a version of this clip that I stumbled upon and posted yesterday, I used these tips to create one that I hoped would match fingers to notes. The result an improvement but the good news is that concert and interviews can be viewed on DVD.

Mack playing Carnegie Hall on 5 December 1985. The historic concert also featured Albert Collins and Roy Buchanan. Stan Szelest:keys, Tim Drummond:bs, Dennis O’Neal:dms. Purchase the DVD: “Further On Down The Road” Live at Carnegie Hall at http://www.lonniemack.com/.