Articles tagged with: Middle East
The Iranian Nuclear Winter
The winter of 2012 is still less than a month old and if you had turned on a television since the New Year, you’d have found two seemingly different stories being covered on the news networks. The first being the Republican Primaries that got underway a couple weeks ago, the other would be Iran. In the past, I would have said that sabre rattling and a looming American election went together like peas and carrots…
Israel: Losing Friends by the Hour
The Israeli Government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be on a one way ticket to oblivion. His right-wing hawkish stances are jeopardizing peace in a region where the Arab Spring is still going strong heading into autumn. To make things worse, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting Israel’s socio-economic problems. The UN recently released its report into Israel’s raid…
Let’s play the CPCCA game, you only have to give up your freedom of speech
Well, the freedom to speak out, protest and criticize injustice just got a whole lot more complicated in Canada. The Canadian Parliamentary Commission to Combat Antisemitism released its report and to the surprise of almost no one, it opted to pretty much redefine criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, instead of proposing ways to deal with real instances of antisemitism…
Breaking bad
Famine is one of those things that seems to be poorly understood by Westerners. We’ve largely equated the word with a mere desire to eat. We have a wretchedly poor comprehension of what it means to not only have nothing at all to eat, but as to how long an individual can exist on infrequent and woefully small quantities of food. The answer is painfully long, that is, a human can survive for a very long time on extremely small quantities of food and water. They who do and there are a great many on our pathetically…
Fighting propaganda with critical discussion: Canadians are awakening to the tragedy of Palestine
Reading Ha’aretz, one of the largest Israeli daily newspapers, is a fascinating experience. Here in Canada those who criticize Israel are dismissed as anti-semites, terrorists even. Rather than defend international law and UN resolutions, our Conservative government calls the participation of Canadians in the Freedom Flotilla 2, such as the five activists we profiled earlier this month, an unnecessary “provocation”. Meanwhile, over in Ha’aretz, Netenyahu is called out for his “bullshit”…
Another Bosnia?
When Ratko Mladic was arrested it was as a weak, pathetic and exhausted creature. At sixty-eight years old, if the accused war criminal is (rightfully) convicted of the atrocities committed at Srebrenica, it will be not as the figure of pure evil who oversaw the murders of some thousand Bosnian Muslims, but rather as a tired old man with far too few years left to begin paying for his crimes…
To Gaza with Little Love
A year after the first freedom flotilla set sail for the Gaza Strip, resulting in the deaths of nine activists at the hands of the Israeli IDF, the world awaits the departure of Freedom Flotilla II. The flotilla of ten boats includes two cargo ships transporting nearly three thousand tons of aid, and eight other passenger boats with citizens of dozens of different countries. It was supposed to set sail at the end of June. Over the last week or so, it has been mired in sabotage…
Unlikely Sailors: An inside look at the people on the Canadian Boat to Gaza
On May 30, 2010, the Mavi Marmara led a flotilla of six ships and nearly 700 people across the Mediterranean Sea on a mission to deliver humanitarian aid to a blockaded Gaza. The flotilla was confronted by the Israeli military, whose soldiers shot and killed nine people on board the Mavi Marmara. One year later a flotilla of 10 ships and over 1,000 delegates from 20 countries, including France, Germany, Italy and the U.S., will sail to Gaza in late June. For the first time a Canadian boat, the Tahrir, will be part of the flotilla, transporting 50 people, including Canadian and international delegates and members of the media…
Netanyahu: Not a Man for Peace
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it abundantly clear last week in his speech to the American Congress that he has no desire to negotiate for peace. Although Bibi’s talk drew several standing ovations in front of American lawmakers, few were smiling back in Palestine or Israel. In his speech Netanyahu quickly dismissed virtually all key Palestinian demands for peace. He first shunned…
On Israel: Obama is Right and Wrong
Last Thursday, US President Barack Obama gave a stirring speech on the “Arab Spring” and America’s policies toward it. Unfortunately the only part of it that made headlines was his comment calling for any peace deal between Israel and Palestine to be based on the 1967 borders. His annotations angered Zionists, Republicans, right wing Jews and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What Obama said however was nothing new; negotiations based on the lines of 1967…
Libya and the Two Faces of the West
Over the last few days western countries have started to enforce a UN mandated no-fly zone over the skies of Libya. French jets fired on Libyan tanks, while over a hundred cruise missiles were launched from British and American warships in the Mediterranean. The offensive was started almost immediately after an emergency summit in France was attended by 22 nations and organizations including: France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain and of course the US…
Al Jazeera: The News How It Was Intended to be Seen
American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently cited Al Jazeera for fine news coverage while at the same time criticizing the American media. She claimed that the United States was losing the information war by not reporting the real news, while Al Jazeera was “changing peoples’ minds and attitudes” by reporting on important issues…
Gaddafi: A two week diary of a madman
Following the revolutions to oust Mubarak and Ben Ali, the world has turned its focus on the country sandwiched right between Egypt and Tunisia. On the 15th of February, only four days after the resignation of Mubarak, an uprising began in the western Libyan city of Benghazi. At the onset of the uprising, Libya’s ruler of 41 years…
The Kids are Alright! Youth in Revolt from Bahrain to Wisconsin
They say that the young shall inherit the earth and it appears they have no desire to follow in their fathers’ economic, social and political footsteps and who can blame them. The youth in revolt , already tired of life without employment prospects, decent food and freedom are taking to the streets in northern Africa, the Middle East and around the world. The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia could never have been successful…
Viva La Muslim Revolution (Part 2 of 2)
Shortly after the uprising in Tunisia, the people of Egypt began to rise up having had enough of the thirty plus years of President Hosni Mubarak’s military rule. The protests are now in their third week with no real end in sight. The protesters have had everything thrown at them from rocks to Molotov cocktails to whip wielding Mubarak thugs on camels and still the demonstrators refuse to budge an inch. Each Friday has climaxed after prayers with hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy advocates crowding Tahrir Square, each one of them holding their breathe for that moment when President Mubarak steps down. Mubarak has promised to step down at the end of his term in September, but most Egyptians aren’t buying his delay tactics. They say he is just buying his time, riding out the present storm in order to cling to power and possibly extract his revenge on the dissidents at a later date. So the time is now as they say.
Viva La Muslim Revolution! (Part 1 of 2)
On December 20, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor tired of having his produce regularly confiscated and with no money to bribe municipal officials decided to burn himself alive in protest. Little did Bouazizi know at the time, his brave act of defiance would spread through Tunisia in a matter of days following his death on January 4th.
