Interior Health's Ambiguity Leaves Quesnel Lake Area Residents Unsure About Water Safety

Mount Polley: Interior Health issues new warning against drinking Quesnel Lake water

by Damien Gillis - Common Sense Canadian

An advisory from Interior Health yesterday raises fresh questions about the quality of drinking water from Quensnel Lake following the Mount Polley tailings dam breach.


Debris pouring into Quesnel Lake (Photo: Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions / Desmog.ca)

“Although test results continue to show that water sourced from Quesnel Lake is safe to drink, reports indicate that water quality is changing as lake water and the sediment plume shifts,” the advisory notes, raising doubt about the earlier lifting of a drinking water ban for the town of Likely, on Quensnel Lake.

The reappearance of water quality concerns on Quesnel Lake may be linked to the government’s initial cleanup plan, which has involved pumping contaminated water out of Polley Lake, next to the collapsed dam, and into the larger and deeper Quesnel Lake, via Hazeltine Creek.

“Residents who source their water from Quesnel Lake may notice increased turbidity, sediment, and/or a change in taste or odour,” the latest advisory states.

In these cases, residents may wish to consider using alternate sources for their water. Specifically individuals are reminded they should not be drinking cloudy water…Interior Health is continuously reviewing data provided by Ministry of Environment.

The warning comes on the heels of independent biologist Alexandra Morton’s documentation of a mysterious blue film covering Quesnel Lake and river – and the discovery of elevated levels of toxic selenium in fish found in Polley Lake and Quesnel Lake.

“A Do Not Use order for drinking water, personal, and recreational use remains in effect for the impact zone directly affected by the by the Mount Polley Mine tailings pond breach,” the advisory reminds the public. The ongoing Do Not Use order encompasses Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, and “the area within 100 metres of the visible sediment plume where Hazeltine Creek runs into Quesnel Lake”.

A map of water restriction areas can be found here.

As for what to make of these conflicting statements coming from government officials, local biologist and consultant to Soda Creek First Nation Rick Holmes recently told Desmog.ca, “At this stage the impacts on Quesnel Lake are virtually unknown.”

Damien Gillis is a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker with a focus on environmental and social justice issues - especially relating to water, energy, and saving Canada's wild salmon - working with many environmental organizations in BC and around the world. He is the co-founder, along with Rafe Mair, of The Common Sense Canadian, and a board member of both the BC Environmental Network and the Haig-Brown Institute.

More articles by Damien Gillis

Canada’s Tax-deductible Genocide

Canada’s tax-deductible support for Israel’s crimes

by Yves Engler - The Electronic Intifada

When is a Canadian who leaves this country to join a foreign military force and participate in the killing of innocent civilians, including children, called a “terror tourist” and sent to jail? The answer is: only when that person joins a military force the Conservative government disagrees with.

Numerous ministers in the current federal government have loudly denounced the radicalization of Canadian youth in foreign wars. Last year, the Conservatives passed a law that sets a maximum fifteen year prison sentence for “leaving or attempting to leave Canada” to commit terrorism. Jason Kenney, the minister for multiculturalism, recently said the government is trying “to monitor networks that recruit and radicalize youth.”

Last month, Somali-Canadian Mohamed Hersi was sentenced to ten years in prison for attempting to join the al-Shabab militia in Somalia. Arrested at Toronto’s Pearson airport before leaving, Hersi was not found guilty of committing or plotting a specific act of violence, but according to the presiding judge, was “poised to become a terror tourist.”

Yet our government does nothing to hundreds of other Canadians who join a different foreign military force which daily terrorizes millions of people and often uses explosives to kill thousands — most of whom are civilians.

It’s unknown exactly how many Canadians are participating in Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza but an Israeli military spokesperson has said there were 139 Canadians in the Israeli military in 2013. The Nefesh B’Nefesh Lone Soldiers Program, an organization supporting the Israeli military, has referred to 145 Canadians in the Israeli military. That figure, however, only refers to what the organization calls Canadian “lone soldiers” — soldiers without family in Israel.

 

“Respectable” criminals

Breaking the stereotype of radicalized youth who join terror groups, recent media reports suggest that most of the Canadians joining the Israeli military are children of lawyers, doctors and other professionals. When thirty individuals attended the 2012 launch of a Toronto support group for Parents of Lone Soldiers, it took place at the home of Perla and Ron Riesenbach. The latter is a vice-president at the University of Toronto’s Baycrest Health Sciences Centre.

Earlier this month the French language website La Presse quoted a McGill University law student, Menachem Freedman, who recently completed a stint with the Israeli military and now does legal work for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

A partner in a Toronto law firm, Audrey Shecter has two kids with Israeli military experience. According to the National Post, Shecter’s son completed 27 months with the Israeli military in February and her daughter, Orli Broer, currently serves on a base in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Broer, a 19-year-old Torontonian, who is in a unit that processes visas and other paperwork, helps to deny Palestinians freedom of movement in their own homeland. “It’s my home and I have to protect my home,” the Canadian born and raised Broer told the National Post.

While the Foreign Enlistment Act technically prohibits Canadians from recruiting for a foreign army, there are a number of organizations that help individuals enlist in the Israeli military. At its Toronto office, the Friends of Israeli Scouts’ Garin Tzabar program provides Hebrew lessons and support services, as well as help with transport and accommodation in Israel, for twenty-five to thirty Canadian “lone soldiers” each year.

According to a Garin Tzabar spokesperson who spoke to La Presse, the recent killing and destruction in Gaza has prompted a flood of inquiries about joining the Israeli military.

Part of the tab for lone soldier support services is picked up by Canadian taxpayers through tax credits for “charitable” donations. The Israel-based Lone Soldier Center has Canadian charitable status through the Ne’eman Foundation. So does the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, which has, according to its website, sponsored “fun activities” for “lone soldiers.”

 

Business support

Financial backing for lone soldiers reaches the top echelons of the Canadian business world. Billionaire Toronto couple Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman created the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers. Reisman and Schwartz provide up to $3 million per year for post-military scholarships for these non-Israeli soldiers.

Members of the Israeli high command — Heseg’s board has included a number of generals and a former head of the secret service Mossad — say “lone soldiers” are of value beyond their military capacities. Foreigners volunteering to fight for Israel are a powerful symbol to reassure Israelis weary of their country’s violent behavior. Schwartz and Reisman’s support for Heseg has spurred a campaign to boycott the Indigo, Chapters and Cole bookstore chain they own.

Canadians in the Israeli military benefit from various Canadian-financed support programs and may also find other Canadians stocking their equipment. Approximately 150 Canadians serve as volunteers on Israeli army supply bases each year through the Zionist organization Sar-El. That organization takes out ads in the Canadian Jewish News calling on individuals to “Express your Zionism by serving as a civilian volunteer on an Israeli army supply base.”

There are a number of other registered Canadian “charities” that aid the Israeli army. Money sent to Disabled Veterans of Israel or Beit Halochem (Canada) and Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel support the Israeli military in different ways. Established in 1971, the Association for the Soldiers of Israel - Canada, which gives tax receipts through the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association, provides financial and “moral” support to active duty soldiers.

Various Canadian organizations have long supported the Israeli military and individuals from this country have directly participated in its violence. At least 25 volunteers from the Greater Toronto Area fought in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, the three-week assault in late 2008 and early 2009, which left some 1,400 Palestinians dead.

 

History of complicity

Canada’s military contribution to the conquest of Palestine predates the creation of Israel.

During the First World War, Québec City-born Lieutenant General Sir Charles MacPherson Dobell, fresh from leading the Anglo-French conquest of German West Africa, was given a command position in the 1917 Egyptian expeditionary force sent to seize Gaza from the Ottomans. Additionally, as many as four hundred Canadians (approximately half recruited specifically for the task) fought in British General Edmund Allenby’s Jewish Legion that helped conquer Palestine.

A number of Canadians, with at least tacit support from the Ottawa authorities, played a direct role in “de-Arabizing” Palestine in 1947 and 1948. Representatives from the Haganah, the primary Zionist military force behind the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing leading to Israel’s foundation — recruited three hundred experienced Canadian soldiers.

The heir to the menswear firm Tip Top Tailors, Ben Dunkelman, was Haganah’s main recruiter in Canada. He claimed that “about 1,000” Canadians “fought to establish Israel.” During the Nakba, Israel’s small air force was almost entirely foreign, with at least 53 Canadians, including 15 non-Jews, enlisted.

 

Double standard

Given this country’s past, perhaps today’s double standard about “terror tourism” is not surprising. But those of us who want a just Canadian foreign policy must nonetheless expose our government’s hypocrisy.

While al-Shabab has committed many reprehensible acts and espouses a terribly repressive ideology, the group’s growth and radicalization is largely a response to the 2006 US-sponsored foreign invasion of Somalia that has left tens of thousands of Somalis dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

On the other hand, it’s as if the Canadians fighting with Israel are unsatisfied with their and their ancestors’ dispossession of First Nations in North America and now want to help colonize yet another indigenous people.

The double standard is extreme. It is illegal for Somali Canadians to fight in that country but it is okay for Canadian Jews to kill Palestinians in Gaza. And the government will give you a charitable tax credit if you give money to support the latter.

Fortunately, activists in one country have made strides on this issue. A Palestine solidarity group in South Africa recently launched a case against citizens of that country who have served in the Israeli military.

Some have suggested another solution. Eminent Canadian historian Jack Granatstein recently said: “In my view, no one who is a Canadian should be able to enlist in some other country’s military and keep his Canadian citizenship.”

Canadians of good conscience must at least insist upon fairness and an end to an outrageous double standard.

Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy.

Waiting in Gaza

Waiting in Gaza

by Dr. Mona El-Farra

Gaza City, August 20 - We are always waiting for something in Gaza. Yesterday I waited from the morning for the electricity to come on at my apartment. I've been asked to write an article for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to use in their upcoming lobbying at Parliament and I needed to charge my laptop. The ceasefire was due to expire at midnight but I decided to stay in my apartment and work on my article, hoping there would be another extension.

I felt lucky when the electricity finally came on in the evening and I began writing. But almost immediately, the building started shaking and I was surrounded by the now familiar sounds of bombing and airplanes overhead. I knew this meant the negotiations for a long-term ceasefire were over. I was afraid to stay in my home because it's not a safe area. I live very close to the water and the Israeli naval ships are visible from my window.

I packed a small bag and called a taxi to take me to my friends' house because they need me and I need them.

On my drive, I saw many families walking and driving in the street. Just like me, they were carrying their belongings and searching for a safer place to spend the night. We all moved in different directions, going towards schools or relatives or friends. The bombing continued but I felt secure in my decision seeing how many other people were outside.

When I reached my friend's house, there was no electricity. I sat by the window watching more families go by. And then I saw the bombing of the Dalou family in Sheikh Redwan.

It was a frightening sight. I have heard and seen many Israeli attacks but this was the one was different. There was a barrage of missiles that caused huge flames in the sky. The flames looked like a fountain with many colors including a deep red. I later learned this is a new type of missile, the GBU-28.

The attack was not far from me so we could feel the shaking.

I wonder how a human being can survive this, not just physically but psychologically? I was blocks away and it terrified me.

This is our life again in Gaza. We are going back to live in the moment. I will continue to document and update you about what I see as much as I can.

Border Crisis: Real Story Behind the “Invasion” of the Children

America’s Continuing Border Crisis: The Real Story Behind the “Invasion” of the Children

by Aviva Chomsky  - TomDispatch

Call it irony or call it a nightmare, but the “crisis” of Central American children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, which lasted for months amid fervent and angry debate, is now fading from the news. The media stories have been legion, the words expended many. And yet, as the “crisis” leaves town, as the sound and fury die down and attention shifts elsewhere (even though the children continue to arrive), the real factors that would have made sense of what’s been happening remain essentially untouched and largely unmentioned. It couldn’t be stranger -- or sadder.

Since late June 2014, the “surge” of those thousands of desperate children entering this country has been in the news. Sensational stories were followed by fervent demonstrations and counter-demonstrations with emotions running high. And it’s not a debate that stayed near the southern border either.

In my home state, Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick tearfully offered to detain some of the children -- and that was somehow turned into a humanitarian gesture that liberals applauded and anti-immigrant activists decried. Meanwhile the mayor of Lynn, a city north of Boston, echoed nativists on the border, announcing that her town didn’t want any more immigrants. The months of this sort of emotion, partisanship, and one-upmanship have, however, diverted attention from the real issues. As so often is the case, there is so much more to the story than what we’ve been hearing in the news.

Tomgram: Aviva Chomsky, What's at Stake in the Border Debate

The militarization of the police has been underway since 9/11, but only in the aftermath of the six-shot killing of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, with photos of streets in a St. Louis suburb that looked like occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, has the fact of it, the shock of it, seemed to hit home widely. Congressional representatives are now proposing bills to stop the Pentagon from giving the latest in war equipment to local police forces. The president even interrupted his golfing vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to return to Washington, in part for “briefings” on the ongoing crisis in Ferguson. So militarization is finally a major story.

And that’s no small thing. On the other hand, the news from Ferguson can’t begin to catch the full process of militarization this society has been undergoing or the way America’s distant wars are coming home. We have, at least, a fine book by Radley Balko on how the police have been militarized. Unfortunately, on the subject of the militarization of the country, there is none. And yet from armed soldiers in railway stations to the mass surveillance of Americans, from the endless celebration of our “warriors” to the domestic use of drones, this country has been undergoing a significant process of militarization (and, if there were such a word, national securitization).

Perhaps nowhere has this been truer than on America’s borders and on the subject of immigration. It’s no longer “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The U.S. is in the process of becoming a citadel nation with up-armored, locked-down borders and a Border Patrol operating in a “Constitution-free zone” deep into the country. The news is regularly filled with discussions of the need to “bolster border security” in ways that would have been unimaginable to previous generations. In the meantime, the Border Patrol is producing its own set of Ferguson-style killings as, like SWAT teams around the U.S., it adopts an ever more militarized mindset and the weaponry to go with it. As James Tomsheck, the former head of internal affairs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, put it recently, “It has been suggested by Border Patrol leadership that they are the Marine Corps of the U.S. law enforcement community. The Border Patrol has a self-identity of a paramilitary border security force and not that of a law enforcement organization.”

It’s in this context that the emotional flare-up over undocumented Central American children crossing the southern border by the thousands took place. In fact, without the process of militarization, that “debate” -- with its discussion of “invasions,” “surges,” “terrorists,” and “tip of the spear” solutions -- makes no sense. Its language was far more appropriate to the invasion and occupation of Iraq than the arrival in this country of desperate kids, fleeing hellish conditions, and often looking for their parents.

Aviva Chomsky is the author of a new history of just how the words “immigration” and “illegal" became wedded -- it wasn’t talked about that way not so many decades ago -- and how immigrants became demonized in ways that are familiar in American history. The Los Angeles Times has hailed Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal for adding “smart, new, and provocative scholarship to the immigration debate.” As in her book, so today at TomDispatch, Chomsky puts the most recent version of the immigration “debate” into a larger context, revealing just what we prefer not to see in our increasingly up-armored nation. Tom 

 

America’s Continuing Border Crisis: 

The Real Story Behind the “Invasion” of the Children

by Aviva Chomsky

 
As labor journalist David Bacon has shown, the children-at-the-border story was first brought to the attention of the media by anti-immigrant organizations, beginning with the radical right-wing Breitbart News Network in Texas. Their narrative focused on President Obama’s supposed failure to control the border, his timid gestures aimed at granting temporary legal status to some undocumented youth through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the attempts of Congressional liberals to promote what they called “comprehensive immigration reform,” and of course those children “invading” the U.S.

In fact, there was nothing new about the so-called surge. Rather, the Breitbart Network turned a long-term issue into a “crisis” for political reasons, and the media, politicians, and organizations on both sides of the political spectrum took the bait.

Breitbart’s Texas bureau chief Brandon Darby “ignited a national firestorm,” the network claimed proudly, when he released a set of exclusive photos of overcrowded detention facilities for child detainees. Darby did not explain how he was able to gain access to what he called “internal federal government photos.” He did, however, provide an explanation for what Breitbart called the “invasion”: the children “know they will not be turned away and that they will be provided for.” In other words, it was the fault of Obama, the Democrats, and the liberals. The stage was set for a Republican and populist backlash.

Pro-Obama voices like Deval Patrick and some immigrant rights organizations played right into the sensationalist nativist narrative. “There’s a humanitarian reason to try to find a solution, try to find a way to help,” Patrick stated, insisting that at stake was an issue of “love of country and lessons of faith” -- and that it was explicitly not a political issue.

Massachusetts Republican politicians, like Lynn’s Mayor Judith Kennedy Flanagan, complained instead about the impact on their communities, turning a fiscal problem into an occasion for xenophobia. “It's gotten to the point where the school system is overwhelmed, our health department is overwhelmed, the city's budget is being [un]sustainably altered in order [to] accommodate all of these admissions in the school department,” she stated. State Representative Mark Lombardo concurred: “We just can't afford it. We're not adequately taking care of our own children; our own veterans, our own families who are struggling here in Massachusetts. We gotta put American families first.”

Hundreds of protesters rallied on the Boston Common on July 26th demanding that the country put “Americans before illegals.” It was easy for wealthy liberals, many commentators added, to foist the children on poor communities, but what about the domestic poor, the homeless, the veterans who can’t get access to medical services? Why, under such circumstances, should we direct resources to Central American children? (Such Republican racial identity-based appeals to the white working class date back to the presidency of Richard Nixon.)

Which Central America?

These two seemingly clashing narratives -- the moral, humanitarian imperative to help children in need and the plight of strapped cities and Americans in need -- turn out to neatly complement each other. Both play the game of victimology in the service of party politics. Each asks essentially the same question: Do Republicans or Democrats get more points for defending the neediest victims? Each side claims the humanitarian high ground, while both conveniently avoid looking at the political economy of the problem they lament -- and that they have, over many decades, collaborated in creating.

Unfortunately, many liberals and some immigrant rights organizations have failed to offer their own analysis that reached beyond generalized good will and support for the Democrats. “We stand for justice and we care for all children in need!” the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition declared wholeheartedly, but not very illuminatingly. In addition to “standing up for all kids,” the purpose of its August 7th counter-rally seemed to be simply to support Patrick’s offer to create temporary detention centers in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, by disseminating Breitbart’s dramatic photos and adopting the right’s basic narrative, liberals missed an opportunity to go beyond a sterile debate and take a more meaningful look at the structural issues at stake.

In fact, the so-called “crisis” of these last months is anything but new, while the “debate” over where to temporarily detain the children is beside the point. The number of Central American youths crossing the U.S.-Mexican border has been rising steadily since 2000. Figures for minors apprehended at the border have gone up from a few thousand a year as the twenty-first century began, to 6,000-8,000 annually through 2011, 13,625 in 2012, and 24,668 in 2013. A study released in February 2014 predicted that as many as 60,000 children were likely to be apprehended this year. The overwhelming of U.S. detention facilities was, in this sense, predictable. So Darby’s June news scoop should hardly have been a surprise, if anyone other than specialists had been paying attention.

The situation is not really hard to grasp. There are three main reasons that Central American youth are crossing the border: they are fleeing lack of opportunity; they are fleeing violence; and they are seeking to reunite with parents and other family members already in the United States. Although the media talk about “Central American children,” almost all of the detainees are, in fact, coming from only three of the six countries of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. There are almost none from Belize, Nicaragua, or Costa Rica. Anybody who remembers the 1980s can probably guess why. The enormous quantities of military “aid” that the United States poured into Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras helped create an environment of violently enforced inequality whose bitter fruits are still being reaped.

Under a series of laws and court decisions since the 1990s, minors from Central America are granted special treatment when caught crossing the border. Rather than being deported like Mexican children (who cross in the same numbers and for similar reasons), Central American youth are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which holds them in its own facilities (rather than U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers) and provides them with services while it locates and investigates family members to whom they could be released. At that point, a lengthy hearing process begins to determine whether each minor is eligible for immigration relief. If not, she or he will be deported. These children are termed “unaccompanied” because they cross the border without parents or legal guardians, but the vast majority of them do have family in the U.S. and are coming to join them.

Deval Patrick and Judith Flanagan are talking past each other by focusing on different parts of this process. Patrick offered to find a facility in the state to house the youth during the few weeks when they are in the custody of the ORR and fully funded by the federal government. His “solution” is, in that sense, a cheap kind of “humanitarianism.” Flanagan and the anti-immigrant demonstrators are complaining about the costs to communities like Lynn, where hundreds of undocumented Guatemalan children have indeed been released to family members. They have a point. As many online commentators have indicated, undocumented families tend to live in poor urban areas like Lynn that are already struggling with severe underfunding. In other words, they are the communities least equipped to provide the kinds of locally mandated services like education that the newcomers need.

Why the Children Are Coming?

So what’s the real crisis and can it be solved?

Let’s start with what’s truly at stake here. First, U.S. policies directly led to today’s crises in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Since Washington orchestrated the overthrow of the reformist, democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, it has consistently cultivated repressive military regimes, savagely repressed peasant and popular movements for social change, and imposed economic policies including so-called free trade ones that favor foreign investors and have proven devastating to the rural and urban poor.

Refugees from U.S.-sponsored dirty wars in Guatemala and El Salvador -- mostly peasants whose communities had been subjected to scorched-earth policies and the depredations of right-wing death squads -- began to pour into the United States in the 1980s. The refugee flood from Honduras didn’t begin until the United States supported a military coup against that country’s elected leftist president in 2009. The youths crossing the border today are often the children and grandchildren of those initial refugees, and are fleeing the endemic violence and economic destruction left behind by the wars and the devastation that resulted from them. In other words, the policies that led to the present “crisis” were promoted over the decades with similar degrees of enthusiasm by Republicans and Democrats.

Second, an enormous demand for undocumented labor had already drawn the parents of many of these children to the United States where they clean houses and yards, wash dishes, and grow and process food. Their underpaid labor helps sustain the U.S. economy. For generations, this country’s immigration policy has focused on using Mexicans and Central Americans as “workers” without granting them legal and human rights. But workers are people and people have children. In other words, the present crisis stems in part from the way our economy depends on separating parents from their children in order to exploit their cheap labor -- and then our horror or dismay when they want to be reunited.

Finally, the communities and school systems that the federal government expects to receive the border-crossing youth need more federal support. Many of the locales receiving immigrants are indeed in crisis. If, thanks to federal legislation and federal agencies, these children are being released in large numbers to communities in which schools are already underfunded, then the federal government should guarantee the services that it requires communities to provide them. Instead of spending billions of dollars annually underwriting detention, deportation, and the further militarization of the borderlands, it should direct those funds to fulfilling human needs.

Immigrant rights organizations should be criticizing both parties for their policies in Central America (including President Obama’s free trade agenda), their economic and immigration policies (that criminalize workers), and the ways they are pitting immigrant youth against poor Americans in a struggle for scarce resources.

Of course, that’s not how the story is being told. Instead, our politicians, the media, and various organizations have simply been posturing. Arguments that take the “humanitarian” position and those that use the “crisis” to try to undermine the administration’s flimsy gestures towards relief for undocumented youth, as well as those that protest the potential impact on communities like Lynn, are sadly incomplete. We are in the midst of a series of crises that are perfectly real. They just aren’t the ones that either side is talking about.

Aviva Chomsky’s most recent book is Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Beacon Press, 2014). She is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me.

Copyright 2014 Aviva Chomsky

How Canada Aids Israel's Genocide in Gaza

Gaza Genocide and Canada

by Eva Bartlett - In Gaza

Canada’s military contribution to the conquest of Palestine predates the creation of Israel.

During the First World War, Québec City-born Lieutenant General Sir Charles MacPherson Dobell, fresh from leading the Anglo-French conquest of German West Africa, was given a command position in the 1917 Egyptian expeditionary force sent to seize Gaza from the Ottomans. Additionally, as many as four hundred Canadians (approximately half recruited specifically for the task) fought in British General Edmund Allenby’s Jewish Legion that helped conquer Palestine.

A number of Canadians, with at least tacit support from the Ottawa authorities, played a direct role in “de-Arabizing” Palestine in 1947 and 1948. Representatives from the Haganah, the primary Zionist military force behind the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing leading to Israel’s foundation — recruited three hundred experienced Canadian soldiers.

The heir to the menswear firm Tip Top Tailors, Ben Dunkelman, was Haganah’s main recruiter in Canada. He claimed that “about 1,000” Canadians “fought to establish Israel.” During the Nakba, Israel’s small air force was almost entirely foreign, with at least 53 Canadians, including 15 non-Jews, enlisted.

… it’s as if the Canadians fighting with Israel are unsatisfied with their and their ancestors’ dispossession of First Nations in North America and now want to help colonize yet another indigenous people.

…Canadians of good conscience must at least insist upon fairness and an end to an outrageous double standard.”

some readings…

  Israel intensifies air raids on Gaza, destroying 13-story housing unit

“Israel took its military campaign to a new level over the weekend, flattening a 13-story apartment tower a day after an Egyptian call for an open-ended ceasefire to enable new truce talks.

Local residents said the high-rise housed 44 families. Medical officials said 17 people were wounded in the Israeli strike.

Israel air strikes killed at least seven Palestinians on Sunday, medical officials said.

Sunday’s air raids came after at least 60 Israeli strikes pounded Gaza on Saturday, killing 10 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and bringing down a 12-story apartment block.

…Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his ministers on Sunday that the Zionist state’s brutal military campaign against Gaza would continue “until its aims are achieved.”

…Israel’s stated end goals have changed several times since the beginning of its assault on Gaza.

Netanyahu also called on Gaza residents to leave any site where Palestinian resistance fighters were operating, saying the locations could be attacked.

“I call on the inhabitants of Gaza to vacate immediately every site from which Hamas is carrying out terrorist activity. Every one of these places is a target for us,” he said in broadcast remarks.

Netanyahu did not indicate where he expected Palestinians living in one of the most densely populated territories in the world to flee. Almost 500,000 Gaza residents have already fled their homes and taken refuge in hospitals, UN schools and mosques, which have been targeted by Israeli forces on multiple occasions.”

***

Canada’s tax-deductible support for Israel’s crimes:

“When is a Canadian who leaves this country to join a foreign military force and participate in the killing of innocent civilians, including children, called a “terror tourist” and sent to jail? The answer is: only when that person joins a military force the Conservative government disagrees with.

…It’s unknown exactly how many Canadians are participating in Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza but an Israeli military spokesperson has said there were 139 Canadians in the Israeli military in 2013. The Nefesh B’Nefesh Lone Soldiers Program, an organization supporting the Israeli military, has referred to 145 Canadians in the Israeli military. That figure, however, only refers to what the organization calls Canadian “lone soldiers” — soldiers without family in Israel.

…When thirty individuals attended the 2012 launch of a Toronto support group for Parents of Lone Soldiers, it took place at the home of Perla and Ron Riesenbach. The latter is a vice-president at the University of Toronto’s Baycrest Health Sciences Centre.

…the recent killing and destruction in Gaza has prompted a flood of inquiries about joining the Israeli military.

…Part of the tab for lone soldier support services is picked up by Canadian taxpayers through tax credits for “charitable” donations.

…Billionaire Toronto couple Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman created the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers. Reisman and Schwartz provide up to $3 million per year for post-military scholarships for these non-Israeli soldiers.

…At least 25 volunteers from the Greater Toronto Area fought in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, the three-week assault in late 2008 and early 2009, which left some 1,400 Palestinians dead.

An Unnatural Obsession: The "Inevitability" of War

War in the Hundred Acre Woods

by David Swanson - WorldBeyondWar.org

In the 1920s and 1930s, anybody who was anybody tried to figure out how to rid the world of war. Collectively, I'd say they got three-quarters of the way to an answer. But from 1945 to 2014, they've been ignored when possible (which is most of the time), laughed at when necessary, and on the very rare occasions that require it: attacked.

What a flock of idiots the leading thinkers of a generation all must have been. World War II happened. Therefore, war is eternal. Everyone knows that.

But slavery abolitionists pushed on despite slavery happening another year, and another year. Women sought the right to vote in the next election cycle following each one they were barred from.

Undoubtedly war is trickier to get rid off, because governments claim that all the other governments (and any other war makers) must go first or do it simultaneously. The possibility of someone else launching a war, combined with the false notion that war is the best way to defend against war, creates a seemingly permanent maze from which the world cannot emerge.

But difficult is far too easily distorted into impossible. War will have to be abolished through a careful and gradual practice; it will require cleaning up the corruption of government by war profiteers; it will result in a very different world in just about every way: economically, culturally, morally. But war will not be abolished at all if the meditations of the abolitionists are buried and not read.

Imagine if children, when they'd just gotten a bit too old for Winnie the Pooh and we're becoming old enough to read serious arguments, were told that A.A. Milne also wrote a book in 1933-1934 called Peace With Honour. Who wouldn't want to know what the creator of Winnie the Pooh thought of war and peace? And who wouldn't be thrilled to discover his wit and humor applied in all seriousness to the case for ending the most horrific enterprise to remain perfectly acceptable in polite society?

Now, Milne had served as a war propagandist and soldier in World War I, his 1934 view of Germany as not really wanting war looks (at least at first glance) ludicrous in retrospect, and Milne himself abandoned his opposition to war in order to cheer for World War II. So we can reject his wisdom as hypocrisy, naiveté, and as having been rejected by the author. But we'd be depriving ourselves of insight because the author was imperfect, and we'd be prioritizing the ravings of a drunk over statements made during a period of sobriety. Even the ideal diagnostician of war fever can sound like a different man once he's contracted the disease himself.

In Peace With Honour, Milne shows that he has listened to the rhetoric of the war promoters and found that the "honor" they fight for is essentially prestige (or what is more recently called in the United States, "credibility"). As Milne puts it:

"When a nation talks of its honour, it means its prestige. National prestige is a reputation for the will to war. A nation's honour, then, is measured by a nation's willingness to use force to maintain its reputation as a user of force. If one could imagine the game of tiddleywinks assuming a supreme importance in the eyes of statesmen, and if some innocent savage were to ask why tiddleywinks was so important to Europeans, the answer would be that only by skill at tiddleywinks could a country preserve its reputation as a country skilful at tiddleywinks. Which answer might cause the savage some amusement."

Milne debates popular arguments for war and comes back again and again to ridiculing it as a foolish cultural choice dressed up as necessary or inevitable. Why, he asks, do Christian churches sanction mass murder by bombing of men, women, and children? Would they sanction mass conversion to Islam if it were required to protect their country? No. Would they sanction widespread adultery if population growth were the only path to defense of their country? No. So why do they sanction mass murder?

Milne tries a thought experiment to demonstrate that wars are optional and chosen by individuals who could choose otherwise. Let us suppose, he says, that an outbreak of war would mean the certain and immediate death of Mussolini, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Sir John Simon, one unnamed cabinet minister chosen by lot on the day war is declared, the ministers responsible for the military, Winston Churchill, two unnamed Generals, two unnamed Admirals, two unnamed directors of armaments firms chosen by lot, Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere, the editors of The Times and The Morning Post, and corresponding representatives of France. Would there, in this situation, ever be a war? Milne says definitely not. And therefore was is not "natural" or "inevitable" at all.

Milne makes a similar case around wartime conventions and rules:

"As soon as we begin making rules for war, as soon as we say that this is legitimate warfare and that the other is not, we are admitting that war is merely an agreed way of settling an argument."

But, Milne writes -- accurately depicting the 1945 to 2014 history of a U.N. and NATO-run world -- you cannot make a rule against aggressive war and keep defensive war. It won't work. It's self-defeating. War will roll on under such circumstances, Milne predicts -- and we know he was right.

"To renounce aggression is not enough," writes Milne. "We must also renounce defence."

What do we replace it with? Milne depicts a world of nonviolent dispute resolution, arbitration, and a changed conception of honor or prestige that finds war shameful rather than honorable. And not just shameful, but mad. He quotes a war supporter remarking, "At the present moment, which may prove to be the eve of another Armageddon, we are not ready."

Asks Milne:

"Which of these two facts [Armageddon or unpreparedness] is of the more importance to civilization?"

7 Step Primer for Understanding Ukraine

Understanding Ukraine in 15 Minutes

by MIKE WHITNEY  - CounterPunch

If you want to understand what is going on in Ukraine, then you need to watch this 15 minute video with Putin advisor and friend, Sergei Glaziev. Glaziev explains how structural changes in the global economy and a shift to Asia have precipitated a desperate attempt by US policymakers to maintain their grip on power by instigating a war in Europe.

Sergei Glaziev, advisor to Vladimir Putin

Whether readers agree with this analysis or not, they will find Glaziev is brilliant, erudite and passionate in his beliefs. For that alone, the video is well worth the time.

I transcribed the video myself, and apologize for any unintentional mistakes in the text. Also, the “bold headings” are mine.

1. Structural Changes in the Global Economy are often preceded by Great Crises and War

The world today is going through an overlap of a whole series of cyclical crises. The most serious of them is a technological crisis which is associated with changes in the wavelengths of economic development. We’re living in a period when the economy is changing its structure. The economic structure that has been driving economic growth for the last 30 years has exhausted itself. We need to make a transition to a new system of technologies. This kind of transition, unfortunately, has always come about through war. That’s how it was in the ’30s when the Great Depression gave way to an arms race and then the Second War World War. That’s how it was during the Cold War when an arms race in space gave rise to complex information and communication technologies which became the basis of a technological structure that has been driving the world’s economy for the last 30 years. Today we are faced with a similar crisis. The world is shifting to a new technological system.

2. Putin pushes Free Trade Zone to ease transition to New Global Economy

The new system is humanitarian in nature and thus could avoid a war because the main carriers of growth on this wavelength are humanitarian technologies. These include health care and pharmaceutical industries which are based in biotechnology. They also include communication technologies based on nanotechnology which is making a breakthrough today. And they involve cognitive technologies that define a new sum of human knowledge. If, as President Putin has been consistently putting forward, we were able to agree to a mutual program for development, a general development zone with a preferential trade regime from Lisbon to Vladivostok, if we were to agree with Brussels to create a common economic space, a common area of development, we could find a sufficient number of breakthrough projects, from health to repelling space threats, to fulfill our scientific and technical potential and creating a steady demand from the state. which would give a boost to the new technological system.

3 Washington sees War in Europe as best way to Preserve its Hegemony

However, America has taken its usual path. To maintain their world dominance they are provoking another war in Europe. A war is always good for America. They even call the Second World War which killed 50 million people in Europe and Russia, a good war. It was good for America because the US emerged from this war as the world’s leading power. The Cold War which ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union was also good for them. Now the US again wants to maintain its leadership at the expense of Europe. US leadership is being threatened by a rapidly rising China. The world today is shifting to yet another cycle, this time political. This cycle lasts centuries and is associated with the global institutions of regulatory economics

We are now moving from the American cycle of capital accumulation to an Asian cycle. This is another crisis that is challenging US hegemony. To maintain their leading position in the face of competition with a rising China and other Asian countries Americans are starting a war in Europe. They want to weaken Europe, break up Russia, and subjugate the entire Eurasian continent. That is, instead of a development zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which is proposed by President Putin, the US wants to start a chaotic war on this territory, embroil all Europe in a war, devalue to European capital, write off its public debt, under the burden of which the US is already falling apart, write off what they owe to Europe and Russia, subjugate our economic space and establish control over resources of the giant Eurasian continent. They believe that this is the only way they can maintain their hegemony and beat China.

Unfortunately the American geopolitics that we see playing out is exactly like the 19th century. They think in terms of the geopolitical struggles of the British Empire: divide and conquer. Pit nations against others, embroil them in conflict, and start a world war. Americans, unfortunately, continue this old British policy to solve their problems. Russia has been chosen as a victim of this policy while the Ukrainian people are the weapon of choice, and cannon fodder in a new world war.

First the Americans decided to target Ukraine to separate it from Russia. This tactic came from Bismarck. This anti-Russian tradition aimed to embroil Russia in conflict in order to take over the whole Eurasian space. The strategy was first put forth by Bismark, then picked up by the British,, and then finally by the leading american political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, who said on many occasions that Russia cannot be a superpower without Ukraine and that embroiling Russia with Ukraine will benefit America and the West.

For the past 20 years americans have been grooming Ukraine Nazism aimed at Russia. As you know they hosted remnants of Bandera the Second World War. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian Nazis were brought to America and have been carefully cultivated and nurtured during the whole post war period. This wave of immigrants descended on Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea of an eastern partnership was used as bait. It was first expressed by the Poles, and then picked up by the Americans. The essence of the eastern partnership, of which Georgia became the first victim. Now Ukraine has become one and soon Moldova will be one, to sever ties with Russia. As you know we are building the Customs Union, and a common economic space with Belarus and Kazakhstan which will soon be joined by Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Ukraine has been our long term partner. Ukraine is still in the ratification stage of the agreement with Russia which no one in Ukraine has cancelled yet. Ukraine is important to us as part of our economic space and for our centuries long ties and cooperation. Our scientific and industrial complex was created as a whole, therefore, Ukraine’s participation in European integration is quite natural and vital. The eastern partnership was created to prevent Ukraine’s participation in the Eurasian integration project. The meaning of the eastern partnership is to create an association with the European union. What is the association that was signed by Poroshenko with the European leaders? It is the transformation of Ukraine into a colony. By signing the agreement with the association, Ukraine loses its sovereignty. It transfers control of its trade, customs, technical and financial regulation, and public procurement to Brussels.

4 The Ukrainian Nazi junta is an instrument of U.S. policy

Ukraine ceases to be a sovereign state in its economy and politics. It is clearly stated in the agreement that Ukraine is a junior partner in the European union. Ukraine must follow a common defense and foreign policy of the EU. Ukraine is obliged to participate in the resolution of regional conflicts under the leadership of the EU. Thus Poroshenko is making Ukraine a colony of the EU and pulling Ukraine into war with Russia as cannon fodder with the intention of igniting a war in Europe. The purpose of the association agreement is to allow the European countries to govern Ukraine in the settlement of regional conflicts. What is happening in Donbass is a regional armed conflict. The goal of American politics is to create as many victims as possible. The Ukrainian Nazi junta is an instrument of this policy. They are carrying out mindless atrocities and crimes bombing cities killing civilians, women and children, and forcing them to leave their homes, only to provoke Russia and then draw the whole of Europe into a war. This is Poroshenk’s mission. This is why Poroshenko is rejecting any peace negotiations and blocking all peace treaties. He interprets any statement by Washington about de-escalation of the conflict as an order to escalate it. All peace talks which have taken place on the international level have brought a new round of violence.

We must understand that we are dealing with a Nazi state which is dead set on a war with Russia and has declared general conscription. The entire male population between 18 and 55 has been put under arms. Those who refuse will get 15 years in jail. This Nazi criminal power makes criminals of the entire Ukrainian population.

5 Washington is plunging Europe into War for its own Interests

We have calculated the the European economy will lose about 1 trillion euros for sanctions which are imposed on them by the Americans. This is a huge sum. The Europeans are already bearing the losses. There’s already a drop in sales to Russia. Germany is losing about 200 billion euros. Our most rabid friends from the Baltic states will suffer the worst losses. The loss to Estonia will be more than its GDP. The loss to Latvia will be about half its GDP. But that isn’t stopping them. European politicians are going along with the Americans without questioning what they are doing. They are harming themselves by provoking Nazism and war. I have already said that Russia and Ukraine are the victims of this war which is being fomented by the Americans. But Europe is also a victim because the war aims to target European welfare and to destabilize Europe. Americans expect the European capital and brain drain to America will continue. That’s why they are setting all of Europe on fire. It’s very strange that European leaders are going along with them.

6 Germany is still Occupied Territory

We should not just hope that European leaders (will develop an independent policy) we must work with European leaders from a new generation who are free from the American diktat. The fact that anti Soviet political elite had been formed during the post Cold War years in Europe. Then they very quickly became anti Russian. Despite the dramatically expanded economic ties and huge mutual economic interests between Europe and Russia, the Russophobia is based on anti Sovietism and still remains in the minds of many European politicians. It will take a new generation of pragmatic European politicians to understand their own national interests. What we see today is politicians who are acting against their national interests. This is largely due to the fact that Germany, which is the engine of European growth, is still an occupied country. American troops are still in Germany, and every German chancellor still gives an oath of allegiance to the Americans to follow in the footsteps of their policy. This generation of European politicians has failed to throw off the yoke of American occupation.

7 Nazism is on the Rise

Although the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore, they maniacally continue to follow Washington, in NATO expansion and capture new territories under their control. Despite the fact that they are already “allergic” to the new eastern European members of the EU. The European Union is already bursting at the seams, but this does not stop them from continuing their aggressive expansion into post Soviet territory. The new generation, I hope, will be more pragmatic. The last elections in the European parliament show that not everyone is fooled by this pro American anti Russia propaganda and by the constant stream of lies that are coming down on the European people. Traditional European parties lost in recent elections in the euro parliament. The more we speak the truth, the greater the reaction will be, because what’s happening in Ukraine is the revival of Nazism. Europe remembers the signs of the revival of fascism from the lessons of the Second World War. We need to awaken this historical memory so that they see in the Ukrainian Nazis, who are now in power in Kiev, the followers of Bandera, Shukhevych, and other Nazi collaborators. The ideology of the current Ukrainian authorities, has its roots in the ideology of Hitlers accomplices who shot Jews at Babi Yar, burned Ukrainians and Belarusians and annihilated everyone without ethnic distinction. This Nazism is rising today. Europeans must recognize their own death in this terrible confrontation.

I hope if we continue to spread the truth, we will be able to save Europe from the threat of war.


Note: Special thanks to Vineyard of the Saker for posting this incredible interview.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Ki

Mt. Polley - You Can Help

Mt. Polley - How You Can Help

by Alexandra Morton

Hello; I have been posting blogs on my onsite investigation into the situation around the largest mining disaster in history that tragically entered Quesnel Lake, where 1/4 of the Fraser sockeye rear.

Alexandramorton.typepad.com

The BC government's first response was that all the grey slurry pouring out of the mine was just sand, no different than an avalanche and that we got "lucky" - the water is safe to drink. That is not at all what the situation looks like and the people in the area and downstream have virtually no confidence in the BC government's assessment. The federal government is completely missing in action - a stunning silence.

My sense is that this is very similar to the situation with European salmon viruses in BC waters. Government appears to be doing what they can to support the companies, not the public. However, this disaster is bad for the mining employees, as well as, the rest of the public. Everyone knew this was going to happen and government and Imperial Metals apparently just let it happen. The BC government likes to promote itself as pro-industry, but have catastrophically failed once again in that capacity. Salmon farms have lost social licence and this mining disaster confirms they have transformed Canada into a third world country. 

I am writing to ask that you sign and share a petition below to inspire government to clean up this mess. Imperial Metals knows how to move massive amounts of material, they need to apply this expertise to their tailing waste on land and underwater. If this is not cleaned up it is going to leech into the Fraser watershed for 100s of years impacting the ability for juvenile salmon to rear in Quesnel Lake (all sockeye spend a year in fresh water) and the entire watershed.

Clean up is not going to happen unless government knows the people demand action.

So, once again if we want wild salmon it is up to us. Here is the petition to save you the effort of going to my blog https://www.change.org/p/premier-christy-clark-clean-up-the-mt-polley-mine-disaster-put-the-sludge-back-in-the-tailings-pond-or-step-aside-and-make-room-for-a-leader-who-puts-the-health-of-the-land-and-the-people-first

Please check my blog as I will update it as this continues to unfold.

Thank you for your efforts on this.

Hope in Bad Times: Missives from Palestine's Museum of Natural History

Some of the volunteers for the Palestine Museum of Natural History, Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine

by Mazin Qumsiyeh - Popular Resistance

I have not written much lately and this email may be personal and hard.

Our days start early and end very late. Our nights are also occasionally interrupted by calls from friends in Gaza or others who need some support.

In the past 48 hours, over 100 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli occupation forces. Many of those are in Rafah. Sometimes I feel guilty that I am affected more by those I know than those who die that I did not know. For example, I cried after I hung-up the phone with Islam, a friend in Rafah who has four children and they can't sleep and their house shook and windows shattered as missiles rained on homes nearby. I cried because I know him and his handicapped son and his dilemma at whether to try to carry his son and run to the street or not.

But then I cried some more thinking of the many innocents who got killed and injured and who I dd not personally know and did not cry for them earlier. Islam and his family will be traumatized for life. Hundreds of thousands will be even more traumatized. I can't even imagine a life of a girl who lost all her family members and carries emotional and physical scars for life.

Sometimes I think I carry scars too. Perhaps I cope because I am so lucky to have positive things to do daily to keep me from thinking too much. I am lucky because I can help others. I am lucky that I am surrounded by dozens of young volunteers that show us what life could be like in the future. Volunteers passing out fliers about boycotts, volunteers reclaiming agricultural lands, volunteers helping us build a natural history museum in Palestine, volunteers helping other volunteers cope with a difficult life, volunteers giving time and money to needy children, and volunteers doing media work (that should have been done by paid professionals).

Aida refugee camp where some of those volunteers live is really unlivable because of daily dumping of toxic gas and toxic stink water by the Israeli occupation forces. Its health impact is dramatic and far worse than respiratory illnesses.

People ask me about politics and claim it is too complex. I say it is simple and predictable. For thousands of years we had a struggle between wealthy greedy people who employ others to shoot and injure poor people so that they the wealthy people get richer. It was like that at the time of Jesus and it is like that today. Some (minority) who get offered a chance will join forces of repression and go with the flow of power. Others (also a minority) lead an active life that helps change things for the better for a lot of people. The majority in the middle remain apathetic.

More people need to see the truth and act on it. It is not too difficult even for those who were on the side of repression to change. Yonatan Shapira former Israeli Air Force captain became a refusnik and BDS activist and once wrote:

 "Most of my family came from Poland and many of my relatives were killed in the death camps during the Holocaust. When I walk in what was left from the Warsaw Ghetto I can’t stop thinking about the people of Gaza who are not only locked in an open air prison but are also being bombarded by fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones, flown by people whom I used to serve with. I am also thinking about the delegations of young Israelis that are coming to see the history of our people but also are subjected to militaristic and nationalistic brainwashing on a daily basis. Maybe if they see what we wrote here today they will remember that oppression is oppression, occupation is occupation, and crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity, whether they have been committed here in Warsaw or in Gaza". 

I only add, 'resistance is resistance.' Warsaw ghetto residents also dug tunnels and were also called terrorists by their tormentors.

In my 2004 book “Sharing the land of Canaan” I wrote:

“Palestinians were subjected to cruel and unreasonable treatment over so many years that many begin to doubt that justice is possible and many certainly believe coexistence impossible. Similarly, since many Israelis have been feeling embattled and attacked that many also feel that coexistence is impossible. A defeatist attitude develops and envelops not only Palestinians and Israelis but also may of their supporters. But either the societies coexist as peaceful human beings or they will perish as rival primate societies.…..A sense of hopelessness and desperation leaves many looking for “crumbs” of both material and psychological “food”. This is especially stressful when combined with the deep commitment by many to historical myths of grandeur or glory. I am not going to spend much time on the history of the Jewish, Arabic and Islamic civilizations (volumes have been written on these). Suffice it to say that our psychological profile is one that contrasts our existing condition with the perceived greatness of our ancestors and our prophets. We thus assume ourselves as a privileged group but this immediately contrasts with what we observe to be the destitute present situation as described throughout this book. This is especially true for the Palestinian people who are dispossessed. We can address the bigger issues of why 1.3 billion Muslims or 300 million Arabs (Muslims and Christians) have so little to say in the direction of world economies and social and cultural developments so dominated now by the US as a sole remaining power. But perhaps this too can be resolved slowly once the knot of friction in Israel/Palestine is resolved. Imagine the example set if this one place in the world, previously an example of violence, endemic hatred and tribalism, can transcend all this to build a truly shining example of coexistence and non-violence. Imagine the billions of dollars spent on armaments going to desalinate seawater, to build high tech industries, and truly harness the great minds of the inhabitants (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) for positive developments.…....Perhaps we need to teach children to value themselves, value teamwork, respect others and defend the rights of minorities. This is not as simple as it seems. Adults perhaps need to learn to accept, in a very positive fashion, views that are foreign to them. In other words, someone who speaks his views regarding issues should be listened to and respected regardless of how sacred the holy “cows” may be.”

I end with a quote from Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208):

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Sincerely,

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Bethlehem University
Director, Palestine Museum of Natural History

New Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Palestine-Museum-of-Natural-History/1454309858180882

Learning to Embrace Decay - Again

Learning to Embrace Decay

by C. L. Cook

“In the Spring there will be growth in the garden.” - Chauncey Gardener

Odd, at the height of summer, to consider the inevitable decay of autumn, but watching the blooms and dry arbutus leaves fall in the garden today I felt a moment of seasonal depression. Maybe it’s just the signs of the times catching up to me.

I’ve always held a morbid fascination for the 1930’s; its economic crash, dust bowls, and the rise of fascism. I suppose it was naïve to believe I would never get the chance to see its revival.

Reading the history, that ultimate exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking, any fool could see, the disastrous policy straws the politicians and pundits of that dirty decade grasped at to find their way out of the morass guaranteed the birth of monsters beyond imagining.

But, to be charitable to those long gone wonks, they hadn’t the benefit of historical precedent when they made their awful decisions. We can’t make the same claim.

What had seemed an endless summer of economic and social progress following the Second World War is now crashing to earth faster than a stockbroker from a skyscraper. And, the powers that be, those “others”, a-flounder in the deep end of capitalism’s cyclical tsunami, are again reaching for the straw man salvation of crypto-fascism. From the Terror War, a concept pioneered by Hitler, and the fiscal barbarity practiced by Gordon Campbell, (doomed policies, it turns out, plagiarized directly from that same benighted era), to farm failures and the revocation of fiscal controls on capital flows and industry, the sense of mechanical repetition transcends déjà vu. And all this without the excuse of ignorance.

It makes one wonder: “Does history matter in the face of a systemic death wish?”

We’ve all seen the fruits of the totalitarian state. Who, of sound mind and conscience, would want to repeat the horrors of the Gulags and Final Solutions of the past? But recent revelations of plans for vast concentration camps for American Muslims, and presumably others ‘out of tune’ with the current realities, and savaging of constitutional rights is pointing us down a road travelled before.

Which begs the question: “Is this a moment of collective amnesia, or simply the inevitable terminal stage of western civilization?”

A quick study of the history of what we call ‘human civilization’ reveals patterns of rise and fall, ebb and flow: The great flowering of culture, ideas, and ideals inexorably followed by the cruel usurpation of egalitarian principles by elites controlling political, economic, and military power; and then, the Fall. You don’t have to be a Gibbons’ scholar to see the similarities between imperial Rome and the current American Nepotocracy, or surmise where it’s leading.

There’s a promise of war in the autumn. The legions of America and her faithful allies will, if punditry be true, crusade to the next most brutalized country, after battered Afghanistan, and eject the infidels of Iraq. George W. Bush, like Caesar before him, is busy replacing the republic and no doubt dreams nightly of his laurelled visage beaming at the head of a tickertape parade. The great Pretender will preside clueless over the end of the democratic experiment, and his fascist winter interlude will unknowingly play harbinger to the next world order.

And the thought of that Spring’s possibilities is worth planting for.



Chris Cook hosts CFUV’s Gorilla Radio,
broad/webcast from the University of Victoria
August/2002

Guantánamo Hunger Strikers and the "Torture Chairs"

“Most of the Hunger Strikers Are Vomiting on the Torture Chairs”: Emad Hassan’s Latest Harrowing Letter from Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington

In the long-running struggle by prisoners at Guantánamo to get US judges to order the prison authorities to stop force-feeding them when they are on a hunger strike to protest about their indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, the focus in the last few months has been on Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian prisoner, cleared for release in 2009 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama appointed shortly after taking office, but still held, like 78 other prisoners cleared for release.

Guantánamo detainee, Emad Hassan

In May, in Washington D.C., District Judge Gladys Kessler delivered a powerful and unprecedented ruling in Mr. Dhiab’s case, ordering the government to stop force-feeding him, and also ordering the release, to his lawyers, of videotapes showing his force-feeding and “forcible cell extractions” (FCEs), where prisoners are violently extracted from their cells by a group of armored guards and taken for force-feeding after refusing to voluntarily drink the liquid nutritional supplements given to hunger strikers.

The order regarding Mr. Dhiab’s force-feeding was withdrawn by Judge Kessler shortly after it was issued, as she feared that otherwise Mr. Dhiab would die, but the videotapes have been seen by his lawyers, who described them as profoundly shocking — and 16 US media organizations are currently engaged in trying to get the videotapes released to the public.

Last week, Mr. Dhiab secured another victory, when Judge Kessler ordered the government to allow two independent doctors to visit him to assess the state of his health.

It may well be that the Obama administration will soon prevent Mr. Dhiab from causing them further irritation by releasing him to Uruguay, which has offered a new home to him and to five other men long cleared for release who, like Mr. Dhiab, cannot be safely repatriated.

However, two other hunger striking prisoners — Emad Hassan, a Yemeni, and Ahmad Rabbani, a Pakistani — have already submitted motions following up on the precedent established in Mr. Dhiab’s case, as I reported here. Rulings have not yet been delivered in these cases, but three weeks ago, Mr. Hassan, a prolific letter-writer, who, as Reprieve described it, has been “abusively force-fed more than 5,000 times since 2007 as part of the military’s efforts to break his hunger strike,” wrote a letter to Judge Kessler that was submitted by his lawyers, at the legal action charity Reprieve, in Abu Wa’el Dhaib’s case, even though Judge Kessler is not presiding over his own case.

In his letter, Hassan wrote about the latest developments in the force-feeding program, describing how “[m]ost of the hunger strikers are vomiting on the torture chairs,” and noting how what is happening now is reminiscent of the events of June 2006, when three long-term hunger strikers died, reportedly by committing suicide — although the official story has long been challenged by personnel working at Guantánamo at the time, and by serious discrepancies and omissions in the internal investigation that followed the deaths.

In his letter, which includes references to a specific prisoner who is believed to be Abu Wa’el Dhiab, Emad Hassan wrote:

Many times I write a letter to describe the events here, in detail. Specific[a]lly, the hunger strikes. I stop! I can’t keep up with it. I have to go with what is going now. As right now: the F.C.E. team took him to be fed. The SMO [Senior Medical Officer] boosted his feed to two can[s] of [E]nsure plus 1 can of TwoCal. It took ten minutes for his stomach to hold the formula [and he] then began vomiting horribly.

I stopped my writting [sic]. I could not continue untill [sic] my brother stopped. I took a pen to resume my writing. Six lines, again, my brother start vomiting. The tube came from my mouth as the liquid gush from his stomach through his mouth.

What’s happening now remined [sic] me of 2006 events! Most of the hunger strikers are vomiting on the torture chairs. Under the ventilation hole in the roof the air beat him on the head. Very, very cold. 74 degree. The nurse or corpsman come to one. Will you drink or the F.C.E. team? The threatening tone is unmistakable.

Mr. Hassan went on to describe Judge Kessler as “the one who shows kind of empathy, understandable and HOPE,” and stated:

You are not alone in the road of justice, listen with me to the first bishop woman, Barbara Clementine Harris [the first woman to be ordained as a bishop in the Anglican Communion, in 1980]: “No one expect[s] us to eliminate all the evils of the world, nor to liberate all those who are oppressed, nor to feed all who are hungry, or to house the millions who are homeless. But when the oppressed see one who fight[s] for liberation, their burden become[s] lightened because they know that somebody stand[s] with them.”

Mr. Hassan also asked:

Your honor: how one person, detainee his health condison [sic] [is] in danger and [he] could die! At the same time, send the F.C.E. team to pick him up to be fed. Isn’t [it] a contrad[iction ?] Is it?!

Your honor: It is a great responsible [sic] on your shoulder. Every ward [sic], action or hint from you will be taken sirious [sic]. There are many people watching you, a right and wrong pleas. Follow your faith. [...]

Your honor: I would like to remind you [of] some thing: Medical ethics in time of conflict is identical to medical ethics in time of peace,” the World Medical Association explaining that.

You honor: You are an human [sic]. Would you let anyone humiliate you, spit on your face, or let him abolish your existence! [T]hink about it.

Speaking to Jason Leopold of VICE News, Alka Pradhan, one of Mr. Hassan’s lawyers at Reprieve, said that it was “unprecedented” for a Guantánamo prisoner to be able to “speak directly to a judge.” As Leopold described it, Pradhan had “tried in the past to get Guantánamo’s strict security censors to clear letters written by other detainees to federal judges, but she was always rebuffed.”

Pradhan told Leopold:

“We were surprised the whole thing was unclassified. It’s amazing to see because it gives Judge Kessler an idea of what men are going through in their own words. Usually in a Guantánamo case the judge is dealing with a person she has never seen. There’s no way to make that human connection without this sort of evidence. This letter is the closest we can get to having the person’s face and voice in the courtroom.”

Pradhan also confirmed that her client continues to be force-fed twice a day, seven years after he first began his hunger strike. “They still take out tubes and reinsert them everyday,” she told Leopold. “He will occasionally drink the liquid nutrient. One of his nostrils is completely closed up. He only has one working nostril. But it gets infected and sore. That’s why he tries to drink the liquid nutrient.”

She also explained that she thought Mr. Hassan was “describing policy changes that have been implemented since the arrival of a new Guantánamo warden and commander of the detention facility last month,” as Jason Leopold put it.” She said, “Every time you get a new commander, they will tighten up the rules if they had loosened before, and that’s what I think we’re seeing.”

Leopold also spoke to Guantánamo spokesman Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, who claimed that “there have been no major changes to the force-feeding policies,” as Leopold described it, reading from the carefully-prepared script that describes hunger strikes as “non-religious fasting,” and force-feeding as “enteral feeding.”

“Enteral feeding provided by the medical staff at Joint Task Force-Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) to the detainees who choose to participate in non-religious fasting is prescribed following strict Standard Operating Procedures which are based on established medical protocols,” Capt. Gresback said. “With the exception of modifying the SOP to now use a water-based lubricant, the SOP for enteral feeding at JTF-GTMO has not changed.”

He added, as Leopold described it, that “any procedures that have been characterized as violent at Guantánamo ‘are in compliance with US law’” — a claim that contradicts the assertions, made by medical professionals worldwide, that force-feeding is akin to torture.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

- See more at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2014/08/21/most-of-the-hunger-strikers-are-vomiting-on-the-torture-chairs-emad-hassans-latest-harrowing-letter-from-guantanamo/#sthash.6DbSYkGf.dpuf