Checkbooks?

I’m sorry about the missing days. I am not yet ready to stop making excuses and accept that I am an irregular blogger, even if you (readers) have done so.

Enough with the excuses. My friend Stefan Christoff, from Montreal, is planning a trip to Lebanon. The idea behind the trip is twofold. First, Stefan, who has been doing great work in alternative media, immigration and antipoverty activism, and anti-corporate globalization activism, intends to help facilitate ongoing exchanges between activists in Lebanon and in Montreal. Second, he wants to report on ongoing events in Lebanon for alternative media here. Both are worthy projects, and like many worthy projects, they take resources, some of which Stefan certainly has, others (mostly money) of which he does not.

Take a look at his ‘pitch’ below, and send him some money if you can!

LIVING WAR: Reporting on Struggles for Social Justice in LEBANON A Fundraising Appeal for an Independent MEDIA Initiative….!

This is a call for financial support and solidarity for an independent media initiative of CKUT Radio’s Community News Collective in Montreal, with the collaboration of the Electronic Intifada, Free Speech Radio News and members of the Independent Media Center in Beirut.

Between June & September 2005, Stefan Christoff, an independent journalist and community organizer in Montreal, will travel to Lebanon to produce written, audio, and visual reports on present-day struggles for social justice in Lebanon. He will be the Electronic Intifada’s “Special Correspondent” in Lebanon. Christoff will also be producing regular radio reports for Free Speech Radio News and recording material for a radio documentary series to be produced at CKUT Radio in Montreal and distributed to community radio stations throughout the world in the fall of 2005.

This independent media initiative coincides with a period of significant political change in Lebanon, following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime-Minister Rafik Hariri in downtown Beirut in February 2005. Hariri’s death sparked a political shift in Lebanon, which saw the longstanding presence of approximately 15 000 Syrian troops in Lebanon come to an end. Also in recent months a series of sectarian bombings have taken place throughout the country, igniting a growing fear that Lebanon will relapse into the religious and political sectarianism which defined the 15 year civil-war from 1975 to 1990.

In this political context, the media initiative aims to explore grassroots political organizing and campaigns in Lebanon that oppose sectarian violence as well as Western military intervention in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East. Additionally, reporting for this project will focus on political movements that are struggling for broad principles of social and economic justice, in relation to other movements throughout the global south that are fighting for self-determination and against capitalist globalization.

Importantly, this project aims to focus on the politically diverse voices within Lebanese society that are not often broadcast or projected by major media outlets on a local and international level. In so doing, it will confront the international corporate media distortions of the current political situation in Lebanon. This project aims to give voice to the struggles of oppressed communities in Lebanon, from the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, to the working poor, to the foreign workers, and to progressive political movements in a social context in which upwards of 40% the population lives in poverty.

The existing budget for this independent media initative is approximately $3,000 Canadian, which takes into account travel expenses, equipment needs, including recording devices and basic living expenses.

It is only with YOUR financial assistance, solidarity, and support for this important initiative that the radio documentary project will take place. Please consider donating today. ALL financial donation information is included BELOW.

Thank you in advance for your support and solidarity, Stefan Christoff CKUT Radio Montreal — www.ckut.ca Tel: 514 398 6788 Email: christoff@resist.ca

“I have learned a great deal from Stefan Christoff’s breakthrough reporting on and from Beirut. In the midst of the Bush Administration’s propaganda campaign about spreading “democracy” through the Middle East, it is absolutely crucial that probing and engaged independent journalists like Christoff have the resources they need to bring us unfiltered and unembedded voices from the front lines of Lebanon’s genuine grassroots struggles for self-determination. I urge you to support this project.”

Naomi Klein, syndicated columnist and author, “No Logo.”

—-> If you are interested in supporting this project financially, you can make checks payable to “Stefan Christoff” and mail them to the following address:

Stefan Christoff C/O CKUT Radio Montreal 3647 University Street Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B3, Canada

NOTE – Those wishing to make a contribution to this project that is tax-deductible under U.S. law for U.S taxpayers can make their donation through the Electronic Intifada. To donate, please visit the Electronic Intifada’s donation page at:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml

—-> Details on Accessing Christoff’s Reporting on Struggles for Social Justice in Lebanon:

Between June & September, Christoff will be filing regular bi-weekly reports for the ELECTRONIC INTIFADA, while also producing radio reports for CKUT RADIO & various community radio stations throughout the world.

You will find Christoff reports as the ELECTRONIC INTIFADA’s “Special Correspondent” in LEBANON online at: http://www.electronicintifada.net…. You will hear Christoff’s audio reports on CKUT Radio (http://www.ckut.ca) in MONTREAL at 90.3 FM. The radio reports will also be available for re-broadcast & download on-line at: http://www.radio4all.net….

ALSO, Christoff will be collaborating with Palestinian independent journalist Mohammed Shublaq of the Independent Media Center in Beirut for Free Speech Radio News (FSRN). These reports will broadcast on over 93 community radio stations throughout the world and will also be accessible online. All details concerning FSRN and the program’s broadcast schedule can be found at: http://www.fsrn.org

AND Christoff will be recording and producing audio material for a larger radio documentary series entitled LIVING WAR, which will be edited and ready for broadcast in October 2005 and will be aired on CKUT Radio in Montreal and throughout community radio stations in Canada, North America and the world.

The distribution of this documentary will take place by Internet. CD mail-outs will be made available upon request to community radio stations…. If you are interested in broadcasting or distributing the LIVING WAR radio documentary project please do not hesitate to get in touch!

—-> Information on Independent Media Activist & Community Organizer Stefan Christoff:

Stefan Christoff is a social justice organizer and media activist based in Montreal. Christoff has been active with various Palestinian solidarity organizing including the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and heavily involved with the struggle of Palestinian refugees in Canada through the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees. Christoff has also been active with various networks and organizations actively confronting capitalist globalization including the Peoples Global Action Network and locally with CLAC, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence in Montreal.

As a media activist Christoff is a long-time member of CKUT’s Community News Collective. He has focused on forging connections between social justice movements and community based media initiatives. Stefan is also a regular contributor to Free Speech Radio News (FRSN.org) based in the U.S. Christoff’s radio work has been broadcast on countless community radio stations throughout the world, including Canada, the United States, the UK, the Middle East & Africa. Christoff’s written work has also been published in various media sources throughout the world, from the Middle East, to Canada, to the U.S. and the UK, including the Montreal Mirror, Lebanon’s Daily Star, the Jordan Times, Z Magazine, Canadian Dimension, and the Electronic Intifada.

Colombian Government’s Counteroffensive

Vicente Otero was once the elected mayor of the small Colombian town of Caldono in the department of Cauca. He was instrumental in the Nasa indigenous movement’s recent referendum against the Free Trade Agreement, in which record numbers participated and in which the FTA was unanimously rejected. He has long been an important leader in the indigenous movement for autonomy and peace. On the morning of May 19 at 6am, Colombian police and secret agents raided his house. He was not home. The only people home during the read were Otero’s 11-year old son and his mentally ill younger brother. They entered, took his literature on the FTA and his computer and planted a radio, a rocket, and a grenade. They are now claiming that he had an ‘arsenal’ in his home. The idea that Otero had an arsenal in his house is preposterous on every level. A lifelong pacifist, well-known political organizer and leader in the indigenous movement, Otero is well-versed in indigenous methods of solving problems and works intimately with the ‘guardia indigena’, the unarmed ‘indigenous guards’ who ensure security throughout the region with only the prestige symbolized in the batons they carry. Today Otero is in hiding, awaiting guarantees of his security, an apology, and the clearing of his name by those agencies who have planted false evidence in order to implicate him.

Otero would not be the first person from the indigenous communities of Northern Cauca to be framed in this way. Twenty-one others have been detained and taken off to Cali (Colombia’s second largest city), all community members from the town of Jambalo, over the past several days (12 on May 9 and 9 more on May 10). Four days later the Army’s Third Brigade announced that they had already ‘judged’ the community members for their ‘links’ to FARC.

This is an established pattern of government repression in indigenous territory. In January 2004, 8 people from Toribio – mine workers, farmers, craftspeople – were pointed out by someone wearing a ski mask and taken to Popayan (the site of Cauca’s biggest prison) by a group of heavily armed police and military personnel. They were later shown on television with weapons none of them had ever seen before. They army claimed they had captured high-level guerrilla commanders. The community knew better, but the prisoners rotted in jail with no rights to face their accusers, no rights to see the evidence against them, and no rights to a jury trial.

The pattern is escalating. DAS (Colombia’s secret police) officers announced to the press on May 19 that 200 other indigenous people from northern Cauca will be arrested this weekend (May 21-22) for ‘supposed links to FARC’. The idea that the secret police could announce an exact number – one could call it a quota – of Indians it is planning on arresting in advance of the arrest, and have the figure published in the papers, makes an utter mockery of any notion of a justice system in which evidence, charges, or law matters. The language of the article describing the announcement, published in ‘El Tiempo’ on May 19, betrays the racism: ‘Agents from DAS, the Army, and the Attorney-General’s office raided various houses in Caldono looking for Indians and war materials,’ the leading paragraph proclaimed, placing the region’s people and various inanimate objects in the same category.

Added to frame-ups by the government are death threats from paramilitaries. On May 16, Hollman Morris, a television journalist who is well-known in Colombia for his documentaries, received a bouquet of funeral flowers at his office, accompanied by a note announcing his death. Another journalist, Carlos Lozano, received the same death threat that day. Hollman Morris’s most recent work has been on – the indigenous movement in Northern Cauca, the march against the FTA, and the recent military attacks and campaigns taking place there. Prior to his stories on Cauca, Hollman did a special on the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.

The ‘Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyer’s Collective’ is based in the department of Antioquia, the same department as the community of San Jose de Apartado. Its lawyers document and organize around human rights abuses. About a week ago the president of the collective, Soraya Gutierrez, received a dismembered doll in the mail with a death threat against her family. The lawyer’s collective has been one of the loudest voices bringing to light information about the most recent army/paramilitary massacre against San Jose de Apartado, in which 8 people were brutally murdered on February 21, bringing the total of murders against the people of Apartado to 150 over the past 8 years. Apartado’s members have decided that they want no part of the armed conflict and have a declared stance of ‘active neutrality’ in it. For that, they have been savagely attacked over years. As in Northern Cauca, the military attacks against civilians were accompanied by vicious and slanderous accusations against the very community that had suffered the massacres: President Uribe himself accused the Peace Community of collaborating with guerrillas. As in Northern Cauca, the slanders were followed up with paramilitary action against outside supporters of the community (Hollman Morris in Cauca, and Soraya Gutierrez in Antioquia).

Hollman Morris was threatened for his coverage of the quickly evolving military and political situation in Apartado and also in Northern Cauca. On April 14, 2005, Colombia’s main guerrilla group, the FARC, attacked various towns in Northern Cauca, a department in the South west of the country. The government counterattacked immediately, but the FARC were not dislodged. Militarily, the attack was a demonstration of power. The Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe Velez, had assumed power in 2002 on a platform of eradicating the guerrillas and abandoning peace dialogues or agreements. His principal military policy was called ‘Plan Patriota’, and consisted of a major military offensive in the south of the country. The offensive was barely contested by FARC, and both Uribe and the Colombian military became smug. Then FARC launched a number of spectacular attacks last month, announcing that they had not, in fact, been eliminated, and they could take, and even hold, parts of the national territory, against the Colombian army.

But parallel to the military campaigns and deeper than them is the real Colombian war: the war against the civilian population of the country, its organizations and its leaders. FARC’s offensive in Northern Cauca attacked the very heart of Colombia’s indigenous movement, where indigenous leaders have patiently and courageously built autonomous institutions for their own development and governance over decades, as well as their own mechanisms for peace, conflict resolution, and demilitarization of the zone. One of the leaders of this indigenous project is Vicente Otero. One of the principal effects of the combats in Northern Cauca has been to militarize the region and undermine the indigenous political project. Colombian analysts like Daniel Garcia-Pena, who was active in the peace process in the 1990s, argued that the FARC’s offensive was a military success but, since it showed disregard for the indigenous movement and for the civilian population, it was a political failure. Now the government, having failed in its military counterattack against FARC, is engaging in dirty political war against the country’s social movements.

As his secret police were raiding the houses of political activists and announcing plans to arrest hundreds more, as his army was bundling innocent civilians off to jail without charges, as journalists who covered these abuses were receiving death threats in the mail from paramilitaries, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe Velez was angrily making a public statement denying that he has any paramilitary links. He was responding to accusations by other politicians (Horacio Serpa and Enrique Penalosa) that he is close to the paramilitaries. He told them they should produce proof if they want to make such accusations. In fact, producing such proof is no real challenge (see, for example, this interview with human rights activist Javier Giraldo from 2004: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5156). But if Uribe is arguing that public accusations ought not to be made without proof, lest they cause harm and damage to individuals and communities, he should put this principle into practice. Northern Cauca and San Jose de Apartado would be a good place to start.

Some of the leaders of Northern Cauca’s indigenous movement were on the Pacifica Radio Program Democracy Now! On May 20: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/20/1425246

Palestinians in Israel’s Prisons: Interviewing Sahar Francis

http://www.zcommunications.org/palestinians-in-israels-prisons-by-sahar-francis

Sahar Francis is a lawyer and human rights advocate in the Occupied Territories. She works with Addameer (www.addameer.org) in Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank on political prisoner’s rights campaigns. In April 2005, she was part of a North American tour organized by Sumoud (http://sumoud.tao.ca) to raise issues of Palestinian prisoners internationally. I interviewed her in Toronto.

Justin Podur (JP): Can you introduce us to your organization, Addameer?

Continue reading “Palestinians in Israel’s Prisons: Interviewing Sahar Francis”

Colombian government acts quickly to stop a crime spree!

A crime epidemic has affected Colombia! But not to worry. Despite accusations that it is selective in its application of justice, Uribe’s administration and its military and paramilitary apparatus have come to the rescue.

Continue reading “Colombian government acts quickly to stop a crime spree!”

My weekend in London (Ontario)

I attended the London (Ontario) Palestine Film Festival over the weekend. There were some great films shown. I was there to visit friends and to be on a panel on media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The panel was shown after the film ‘Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land’ (I follow Bollywood convention and abbreviate this film to P3L). All of the films were, in my opinion, excellent. In the order that I preferred them, from excellent to superb, here are some brief descriptions.

Continue reading “My weekend in London (Ontario)”

Reporters without borders is a sham

There is something peculiar about the way colonialism works today. The most sophisticated colonial projects use the rhetoric of human rights, democracy, and even anti-racism in their favour. This has a profoundly immobilizing effect on those who are actually trying to support struggles for self-determination. All the ‘democracy promotion’ that’s been going on at the hands of the US in recent years is a case in point. A very important example is ‘Reporters Without Borders’. Take a look at Salim Lamrani’s article on that institution, and you will see what I mean. Serious anti-imperialists are going to have to do some serious thinking about how to deal with all this stuff. It is very important in demobilizing our potential constituency.

Thanks Kole for holding it down over the past few days.

Status For All – By the Numbers

I was suprised to read in the French daily Liberation this morning that the Spanish government is set to regularize some 600,000 non-status people in that country. The number falls short of the 800,000 initially promised by the Zapatero government – or the demand by immigrant/refugee rights movements to grant ‘Status for All’ – but it is still something to consider in the Canadian context. The numbers themselves tell a pretty convincing story as to the feasibility of such an initiative in Canada. Let’s hope Immigration Minister Joe Volpe is taking notes on the Spanish experience!

Consider the following: Spain’s population currently stands at an estimated 40,341,462 (July 2005 est.). The country has a GDP of $937.6 billion (2004 est.) or $23,300 (2004 est.) per capita and an unemployment rate of 10.4% (2004 est.). Spain’s total land area stands at 499,542 sq km, accounting for a population density of some 80.8 persons per sq km (2005 est.).

Canada, on the other hand, has a smaller population, standing at 32,805,041 (July 2005 est.). However, it has a GDP of $1.023 trillion (2004 est.) or $31,500 (2004 est.) per capita and an unemployment rate of 7% (2004). Canada’s total land mass is 9,093,507 sq km, accounting for a population density of 3.6 persons per sq km (2005 est.).

Given that Canada’s overall GDP is 9% bigger than Spain’s (or 26% times bigger in terms of GDP share per person), that the geographic area of this country is roughly 18 times the size of Spain (with a population density that is 22 times smaller), and that the entire estimated population of non-status people in Canada is only a third of those affected under the Spanish amnesty law (i.e. 200,000 in Canada vs. 600,000 being regularized in Spain), it is hard to believe that the Canadian government is hard pressed to grant the demand of ‘Status for All’ to immigrants and refugees in this country.

The government’s math just doesn’t add up. Even if we accept the erroneous logic of right-wing critics – i.e. that immigration somehow affects jobs (thus flying in the face of the fact that immigrants largely fill jobs that are left empty by resident labour forces) – we still find that Canada is in a much better position than Spain to afford lee-way for non-status people.

A number of groups in Canada are mobilizing with the demand for the regularization of all non-status persons, an end to deportations, an end to the detention of migrants, immigrants and refugees, and the abolition of security certificates. Solidarity Across Borders and No One is Illegal in Montreal are planning a 200 km march from Montreal to Ottawa this June 18-25 to press for these demands. To find out more about this and other campaigns for immigrant and refugee right currently active in Canada click here, here, and here.

Report from (just outside) the shareholder’s meeting of a Canadian war profiteer

I have had the honour of participating in a so-far small but I believe politically important campaign against Canadian war profiteering, focusing on a corporation called SNC-Lavalin. I gave a long talk to a group about the topic, with some information on the corporation and some thoughts on related issues, a few months ago. Today, the shareholder’s meeting of SNC-Lavalin in Toronto, was, in a sense, our first test.

The action started at 10am, since the meeting started an hour later. Turnout was small, and there are several reasons for this. The first and most obvious is that Canadian war profiteering, despite being a long tradition, is not well known and indeed, while most Canadians are against the war and occupation in Iraq, most Canadians also think Canada isn’t participating in the war and occupation in Iraq. So there’s the chicken-and-egg problem of needing to do actions like this to raise the issue, and that such actions will be limited in size so long as the issue is not well-known…

There are also serious organizational and resource limitations. I know personally many of the organizers of today’s event, and I can tell you that they are a bunch of fanatically devoted hard-working people who are stretched to the gills with the amount of work they are doing, with essentially no resources. Along with organization there’s also logistics – the shareholders might be able to go to the meeting during business hours. The only demonstrators who could go were folks who work in the afternoon or evening, or students, who were most of the demonstrators.

Adding to these difficulties was the appalling behaviour of the police. This is to be expected, and is taken for granted, unfortunately, but there were a few dozen people mobilized to raise issues that are of life-and-death for millions of people (and death for tens of thousands already), and the police responded with horses, paddy wagons, special surveillance equipment, and plenty of plain nastiness. They made several arrests that seemed to me to have been motivated by pure vindictiveness (and possibly training, wanting to try out violent techniques on more or less helpless people in a street setting). One of the arrests was far closer to a kidnapping, with several huge armed men nabbing a kid after the demonstration had already ended and speeding off in an unmarked vehicle. It was shameful for the macho posturing and for the political message conveyed – no the two are doubt related. The organizational and personal costs of these arrests are high, especially since those singled out for arrest were some of the most energetic and inspiring people who will now have to deal with whatever trumped-up charges the state will come up with.

For something to set against all these costs, I believe the demonstration was a political victory. Indeed, the costs might have ‘overshadowed’ the victory for us, but according to the Canadian Press article about the meeting, SNC’s first-quarter profit was ‘overshadowed’ by our protest.

The CEO of SNC-Lavalin, Jacques Lamarre, also provided (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps perfectly wittingly) proof, as if it was necessary, that Canada’s participation in the Iraq occupation should not be considered to be merely a matter of corporate participation, but was in fact official government policy. “As long as the Canadian government tells us you can sell to the U.S. government, we will do it,” he was quoted on the newswires saying. “We never make any sale . . . which is not 100 per cent approved and reviewed by the Canadian government.”

Tells something about the relationship between a corporation like SNC and the state, if the violently disproportionate behaviour of the police was insufficient to do so.

(On a more personal note, I had an odd verbal exchange with a police officer who I at first thought was merely trying to run me over with his bicycle, but turned out had come over to call me an ‘anti-semite’ for mentioning Israel/Palestine during my brief turn at the megaphone. You see, from what we’re able to tell, SNC-Lavalin is involved in building highways and settler-only roads in Israel and the occupied territories, and is thus helping apartheid and occupation there as well. I mentioned this role, and mentioned as well the well-documented and widespread use of torture by Israel against the Palestinians, showing how occupation and torture go together in Israel/Palestine as in Iraq. The officer said something like: ‘You know, I am just here to do a job, I didn’t have any problem with you people, but then you bring this anti-Jewish stuff into it. You’re a bunch of anti-semites’. I replied that it wasn’t about Jews. He said, approximately, that I didn’t know anything about it, because I hadn’t been there. I said I probably knew more than he thought, and that I’d been to Jenin. He said he’d been to Israel and that they were fighting a war there (suggesting, perhaps, that he was a volunteer in the Israeli army?) I knew nothing about. (He was quite wrong. I’ve seen his war. ) This went on for a while – I suppose I am sensitive to being called a racist, even when the person making the accusation is a violent racist himself. My friends thought I was putting myself in unnecessary danger talking to him. I suppose the image that came to my mind when he was talking to me wasn’t so much the wreckage that he and the people he identifies so strongly with have wrought on the people he has such contempt for that he can’t even acknowledge they exist – see Junaid Alam’s article, linked just above, for an interesting discussion of this – but Neta Golan, at the Qalandiya checkpoint, trying to reason with a similar fellow saying and doing similar things. That was a long time ago now, and I’m not Neta. But enough about that all.)