Hosted by Justin Podur
These are bad times for this whole business of free speech.
It is easily enough protected in theory. It just takes a lot of people who understand what it is and are willing to use it enough to defend it.
In practice, that is lacking. The results are bad. They are getting worse.
Let’s start with the latest.
So, the US killed some journalists in Iraq.
There was al-Jazeera’s Tariq Ayoub. Some time after he was killed the US effectively banned al-Jazeera from Iraq. In the previous US war, al-Jazeera’s offices in Afghanistan were bombed.
There were some European journalists who were killed early in the war; Fisk and others wrote about it.
In keeping with the Killing Train’s tendency to stay well behind the times, I got around to reading ‘Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them’ by Al Franken, the 2004 paperback version.
It was interesting. Funny at times. He does a good job debunking the various appalling things done by the likes of Anne Coulter and Bill O’Reilly.
More of a picture of what’s going on during this historic opportunity for peace in Israel/Palestine. When they had their sham summit at Aqaba, you heard from ‘both sides’, right? Both of these warring factions that just can’t seem to get along without Condoleeza helping out?
The Palestinian Authority was finally able to get its message out. A message of peace. A message of hope. Right?
Well not *all* the PA’s messages get out. This one, for example, comes via the International Solidarity Movement. It’s about Israel’s blacklist of travelers to the Occupied Territories. You see, this ‘historic opportunity for peace’ doesn’t mean Israel has stopped utterly controlling who Palestinians can see and who gets to visit the areas Israel is occupying and devastating daily. Look for this quote in the mainstream media.
According to the Palestinian Minister of State, Qaddura Faris, “The Israeli government is trying to cover up its crimes against the Palestinian land and people, especially those crimes relating to the settlement project known as the Wall. They are doing this by following, arresting, and deporting members of international solidarity movements. The Israeli government is afraid that these people explain Israeli policies and reveal Israeli crimes to the public in their countries. The Palestinian government appreciates the position of all who stand in solidarity with legitimate Palestinian rights.”
Look for the fact that during the past few weeks of ‘relative calm’ that hold so much promise for peace, Israel has killed a few dozen Palestinians. Three disabled people. Ten children.
You won’t find it. Instead you’ll find out about all kinds of humanitarian programs the US-Israel has in store for the natives. They’ll be easing lives by making checkpoints easier to pass through.
1. The PA condemns Israeli measures to “silence the voices of truth”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 9, 2005
Anna Nillson from Sweden and Anna Lenna Di Govani from Italy are the latest in a growing number of human rights volunteers that Israel has denied entrance to as a way of preventing them from entering the West Bank and Gaza.
The Palestinian Government issued a statement early this week “condemning Israeli occupation measures which aim to silence the voices of truth”.
According to the Palestinian Minister of State, Qaddura Faris, “The Israeli government is trying to cover up its crimes against the Palestinian land and people, especially those crimes relating to the settlement project known as the Wall. They are doing this by following, arresting, and deporting members of international solidarity movements. The Israeli government is afraid that these people explain Israeli policies and reveal Israeli crimes to the public in their countries. The Palestinian government appreciates the position of all who stand in solidarity with legitimate Palestinian rights.”
Anna joined other internationals including Israelis, and Palestinians in a three week march last summer along the route of the Israeli Apartheid wall. The Freedom March was part of a campaign organized by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) a Palestinian led movement supporting nonviolent resistance to the Israeli Occupation. She was not arrested nor was she accused of doing anything illegal during her stay. Yesterday she attempted to reenter the country only to discover that she had been added to Israel’s Kafkaesque blacklist of people considered “security threats” by the state of Israel. Anna was denied entry and sent to Ethiopia. ISM has documented over one hundred such cases since April of 2002.
Pat O’Connor an ISM volunteer who is currently awaiting deportation in Maasiyahu Prison explains: “Israel denies access to the Occupied Territories to any international visitor who they feel takes a position in solidarity with the Palestinian people while internationals coming to support the settlers are welcomed”.
O’Connor was arrested on January 24 by Israeli security agents after planting olive seedlings in the village of Biddu with Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights supporters. During the arrest, the security agents claimed that he was carrying a false Irish passport. However, the Irish embassy has confirmed the validity of O’Connor’s passport. Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority has issued a letter acknowledging Mr. O’Connor’s human rights work and inviting O’Connor to remain in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Still, Israel is deporting him.
Israeli attorney Gaby Lasky states that “Israel conveniently turns humanitarian activists into security threats with the cynical use of `security considerations’.” She is demanding that Israel declassify the blacklist and publish the criteria determining who should be denied entry.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Pat O’Connor: +972.(0)545.539.079
Attorney Gaby Lasky: +972.(0)544.418.988
ISM Media: +972.(0)547.621.529
Tom Wallace (Boston, US): +1.617.323.9273 or +1.617.461.1041
I am happy to report that it seems some Colombian and Venezuelan readers have found this blog. I say it seems for two reasons – one is of course there’s no way of telling whether anyone is who they say they are online, which is why credibility is something that has to be carefully built and carefully guarded, and two is that of course I don’t know how many folks who do read this blog are Colombian or Venezuelan. Most of the friends whose analysis and so on I present in this blog do not read it, because they know what’s going to be in it and because it’s in english. So assuming these folks are who they say, it’s good that they’re reading and commenting. It’s a shame that some comments haven’t reached the level of constructive dialogue yet, but maybe we’ll get there (for those who are wondering what I am talking about, the comments are on relatively old posts, so you’d have to search in the Colombia & Venezuela section to find them).
Anyway on to substantive matters. There are things going on militarily in both Colombia and Venezuela. The US state department is “extremely troubled” by a Venezuelan plan to buy rifles from Russia – 100,000 AK-47s. Maybe they’re upset that Venezuela’s not buying them from the US, the world’s major arms supplier. Maybe they’re upset that after the purchase Venezuela will have a miniscule fraction of the small arms that the US citizenry has (to say nothing of US military and paramiltary forces, wandering the streets of the US and the world, armed to the teeth). Whatever they’re upset about, Venezuela’s not having it – the Vice-President of Venezuela said the US is saying this stuff to provoke Venezuela and that Venezuela won’t be provoked.
Chavez and Uribe are to meet to discuss the whole Granda affair (see the archives of this blog for links) on February 15. Uribe was supposed to meet Chavez earlier but fell sick.
The FARC has been busy on the military front as well. There have been major ambushes and assaults in various parts of the country over the past several weeks, in which the FARC have killed dozens of Colombian military forces. Colombia’s national newspaper, El Tiempo, had an editorial yesterday in which they said that while they don’t prove that Uribe’s vicious policies, called ‘democratic security’, which they endorse, have failed, they should raise some alarm bells. They indicate a continuing capacity for planning and execution at the national level, since they occurred in three different regions (Uraba, Putumayo, and Narino) within a short time span, were very successful militarily, and were outside the area of ‘Plan Patriota’ where the army is focusing its offensive. El Tiempo notes that it remains to be seen whether FARC can keep up the pressure, whether these attacks are designed to try to draw the army out and stretch it thin, whether these attacks will cost Uribe prestige. But it is certain that the FARC have proved again that they cannot be ignored.
And since we’re not ignoring them, it’s worth noting that Raul Reyes, spokesperson for FARC, said that there were no guerrillas operating in Venezuela some 10 days ago on Colombian TV.
A report from the International Crisis Group, quite long, takes the view that ‘not only is the coup bad in itself, but worse, it will help the insurgency’, but has lots of information at any rate.
Just poking around at some sites I don’t look at often enough I came across this article on LiP Magazine about an ideology called ‘activistism’. I thought it made some good points and liked its honest tone. I would have a hard time endorsing all of the authors, but the article is definitely worth reading.
We had to wait a little bit but I think that some people have made some sense of the Iraq elections. Chomsky’s blog, Mahajan’s blog, Tariq Ali’s column, Linda McQuaig’s column, and no doubt others I’ve missed, all made the point that the Iraqi elections were not a victory for Bush, but for Sistani, who forced elections on the US.
Chomsky goes farther and says it was a victory for nonviolent resistance. The US has been able to use the most brutal actions of the Iraqi armed resistance as a pretext for their counterinsurgency, but have had a much more difficult time containing the mass protests that Sistani called. It reminds me of something Eqbal Ahmad said (in a book called ‘Confronting Empire’) about anticolonial movements – the task of an anticolonial movement is to achieve the moral isolation of the colonizer, to out-organize, but ultimately to delegitimate the colonizer (As an aside, I liked Mandisi’s short note about decolonization).
Eqbal Ahmad was talking about Palestine when he made those comments. And it’s worth talking about Palestine today. The sham of ‘hopes for peace’ is kicking into high gear and will soon drown everything else out (maybe it has already). A cease-fire has been declared. And yet if you watch the wire at IMEMC.org, or read StoptheWall.org, you’ll see that the ceasefire offers the Palestinians nothing, not even relief from invasions, arrests, detentions, checkpoints…
In order to push all this through, the whole model for what is happening has to be misrepresented. Instead of colonization, the model is two warring sides, who need to figure out a way to live in peace. So long as that’s what Israelis think and what people think in the West, from where pressure could be brought on Israel to stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing, the Palestinians will never get any real relief, let alone a just peace.
It is colonization. It is ethnic cleansing. It is not two warring factions. It is the world’s only superpower and its client against a defenceless population. There are no ‘painful concessions from both sides’ and no deal brokered by the colonizer’s arms dealer that can stop an organized project of colonization, especially if no one is willing to name it as such. Nor can such deals stop the resistance to colonization, though such resistance can be crushed. Everyone in the world knows by now that Palestinians will not be crushed without a fight. But it gets later and later in the day, and the rest of the world is rapidly losing its chance to tell the Palestinians that they are not alone.
First, a reasonably good source on what is happening is the International Nepal Solidarity Network. They are pulling mainstream coverage (what little there is) and posting it several times a day.
I want to do some more assessment of material coming out of Nepal today. But a few things first.
Yesterday was the end of ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ at the University of Toronto. It was organized by some energetic and brilliant young people who are called the ‘Arab Students Collective’. I didn’t attend the full week’s events, but I did attend last night’s closing event. There were two speakers, both extraordinary and actually complementary of one another in interesting ways.
Continue reading “So much to free speechify about, so little time…”