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Saturday May 03,
2008
From my inbox
... all sorts of interesting and important
news items received from fellow activists
I'm trying to write some kind of report on the Supreme Court hearing
that took place on Wednesday into whether or not Sophie and Mohamed
Harkat should be granted permission to move to a new residence. I
took
14 pages of notes, but for the life of me I can't understand why it
took so long to get this dealt with, nor the motives behind strangely
prurient questions put to Mrs. Harkat by the government's lawyer.
If I
can make sense of it, I'll post something on it tomorrow.
But right now, please have a look at the Appeal
for Bashir Makhtal
on Blog 2. That's very important in light of how the Harper
government
seems to pick and choose for whom it will go to bat in foreign
countries.
Below are some news items sent to me by various activists - a bit dated
because lately it seems I'm always backlogged, but they're interesting
nevertheless. The first three are from a Muslim activist, and I'm
not
naming my Muslim friends anymore, unless they ask me to, because of the
climate. It seems they don't have a right to the same curiosity
and
opinions as the rest of us. I mean, look at what happened to Qayyum
Jamal when he said he thought the West was at war with
Muslims. It took the courts a couple of years to get around to dropping
the charges against him!
(It's funny how Canada has so much money for farcical court cases and
wars and so little for the social programs that would make this a
better, healthier, safer country.)
This first article reveals what "Onward
Christian Soldiers" is all about:
NYT:
Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats
“People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going
against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for
America!” Major Welborn said
Apart from the obvious human rights implications, when are Americans
ever going to get it through their heads that their founding fathers
were Freemasons, members of a secret society that is supposed to be anathema
to true Christians!
Speigel:
Germany and US to Share Intimate Data on Terror Suspects
... the new agreement allows for the countries to swap data on
suspects' ethnic origin, religious beliefs and union membership -- and
even sex lives.
Well, that leaves me out on all five counts! I'm a mongrel, I
have no
religious affiliation, I'm not a member of a union, I'm single, and I'm
not a terrorist. Maybe my ex wouldn't agree to that last one.
METimes:
New European law bad for Arab business
[Dubai] suffered the attacks in the United States Congress over its
purchase of Britain's P&0, which would have left it owning some
American ports. The objections were emotional rather than logical.
Ports can hardly be packed up and removed, and the U.S. authorities
retain the right to impose any requisite security measures. Dubai World
was blocked anyway.
Being only a good budgeter and not otherwise having
much
interest in finance, I don't feel qualified to comment on this.
But
fortunately the person who sent it to me had plenty to say:
"More
on
Capitalism and free markets.... And I thought that money was currency
amongst those who have it and that its source did not matter - Guess
what. The shoe doesn't look nice anymore now that someone else is
wearing it. Hypocrisy? Fear of the "Other"? or a mish-mash? Funny.. as
Communist China and most of Asia embrace unfettered capitalism, the
West retreats ... Confidence lost? "Free" capitalism that has been the
US mantra is no more free in certain quarters. Perhaps now these
obscene amounts of $$$ that have been invested in paper and
corporations - producing little or nothing and creating overnight
millionaires - will be directed towards making life better for real
people who do real work to make these millionaires richer but keep
getting poorer themselves. That would be real Enlightenment! "
Okay,
enlightenment is
something about which I have a modicum of intellectual acuity, and I
don't see an age of enlightenment coming any time soon. The west
simply dominates where it thinks it can, and paces up and down thumping
its hairy chest and making weird noises if it can't.
From Brian:
RSF:
Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami Al-Haj, released from Guantanamo after six
years
Reporters Without Borders, with the support of Al-Jazeera,
campaigned for the cameraman’s release, and met with his family in
Sudan in the spring of 2007. The organization also launched a large
number of protests, in Paris and elsewhere, with the cooperation of the
Qatari-based satellite channel and the journalist’s support committee.
The release conditions are purely vindictive in that he
is
banned from practising his profession even though he was never found
guilty of anything!
From Ben:
NPost:
Jonathan Kay asks: Now that CUPW is boycotting Israel, will Canada Post
deliver mail to the Israeli embassy?
Can Canada’s mail carriers be trusted to deliver the mail to Israel’s
embassy in Ottawa, its consulate in Toronto, or any other location
affiliated with the Jewish state?
Apparently Jonathan Kay can't live without his junk
mail, but
that's not what the CUPW boycott is all about (drat! I was hoping get a
break from Rogers ads and flyers sent by Harper
stooges):
The
Canadian Union of Postal Workers "has no plans to block mail to and
from Israel AS OF YET."
Like the dead-pan government lawyer who cross-examined
Sophie
Harkat at length this week about her sense of humour, Kay clearly
doesn't know tongue-in-cheek when he hears it. Or he has run out
of
ideas about how to make social awareness seem like a threat.
From Ron:
Guardian:
We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary
Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the
price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's
genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to
the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
This year Jewish celebrations will be visibly offset
all around the world by commemoration
of the Nakba and demand for justice for the Palestinian people.
From Marjorie:
NYT:
Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School
Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities,
learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the
language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be
ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and
hope.” ... In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on
television
and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a “radical,” a “jihadist”
and a “9/11 denier.” She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic
leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite
Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her
critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.
Makes you wonder what the word peace means to some
people. I
think it must mean a kind of heaven where only people exactly like you
are allowed in. No matter how boring and depressing that would be.
From Lech:
Talk about depressing, Canada Watch is going offline. I don't
like to
tell others what to do, but I think we need all of the Canadian
alternative sites we can get. The owner of the site has written a
couple of articles stating his position and a plan for continued
activism which I think are well worth taking a look at. In My
Dream,
he recommends a grassroots movement that will boycott elections.
Whatever else I might not understand or agree with (I'll need some time
to digest it all), he's certainly on the right track with boycotting
elections.
His second item entitled Are
you Ready? elaborates on his vision from the standpoint of someone
who experienced the Polish revolution. Remember the
media romance with Lech Walesa? Like all romances, there's a
cooling off that takes effort to revive and sustain.
================
Finally, this year's May Day rallies focused on Migrant Workers,
something most of us don't think about very much, but should be aware
of because the immigration laws that Harper government is trying to
sneak by in Bill
C-50 is taking us in a sadly regressive direction.
It's time to dust off the old films "The
Grapes of Wrath" and the "The
Doll Maker" to get an idea of what we will be aiding and abetting if
this Bill goes
through. But first
read: Justice
for Migrant Workers:
Why We Will March (The Bullet).
There's a Naomi Klein article at the newish Public Values
site (which deals with privatization) about the situation in New
Orleans, where the SPP summit was recently held. Read it and find
out
how migrants are created, and how "natural" disasters are a good thing
- for the contractors who
clean up literally and especially figuratively - and the racists who
call exile from one's home "cleaning up the neighbourhood". The Shock
Doctrine in Action in New Orleans - Disaster capitalists continue to
reap side benefits of disastrous flooding.
yayacanada
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