Paul S. Graham

http://www.youtube.com/p/C69158F7232E0D51&hl=en_GB&fs=1

I don’t normally recommend a book before I have finished reading it, but I will this time. Sandy Tolan’s award winning book, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East, is a delight. It is the true story of the intimate relationship that developed between two families — one Palestinian and one Israeli — and the house that both lived in, one before and the other after the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians and founding of the state of Israel.

The Lemon Tree, which grew out of a radio documentary Tolan produced in 1998, succeeds on many levels in illuminating our understanding of the political and human dimensions of the decades-long conflict between Palestinians and Jews.

Part of the reason I’m willing to endorse this book before finishing it is that I had the pleasure of hearing and videographing the author when he spoke in Winnipeg last week. He came to Winnipeg to participate in Restorative Justice Week by telling the story of The Lemon Tree in the context of restorative justice.

Rather than report on what I learned about the stony path to peace and justice in the Middle East, I invite you to watch the video and form your own conclusions, one of which, I hope, will be to buy, beg or borrow the book.

http://www.youtube.com/p/1327FA937832145C&hl=en_GB&fs=1

Malalai Joya visited Winnipeg on November 16 and 17 as part of her 2009 cross-country tour to convince Canadians to press for the withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan.

This feisty woman packed the house at the University of Winnipeg and spoke with passion about the oppression of her people under the combined weight of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai’s warlord drugocracy, and the NATO occupation.

Her message was one not heard in this country. Loosely paraphrased, it is: “Go home! You are making our lives harder!” It is a lesson we must all take to heart.

Malalai Joya was hosted locally by Peace Alliance Winnipeg, with support from the following organizations:

• The Uniter (Mouseland Press Speaker Series)
• Public Service Alliance of Canada (Prairie Region)
• University of Manitoba Students Union
• Project Peacemakers
• Global College Student Advisory Council
• Institute for Womens and Gender Studies, University of Winnipeg
• Winnipeg Labour Council
• Global Justice Committee CUPE Manitoba
• Grassroots Women Manitoba

I shot some video for those who couldn’t make it. It features her speech at Convocation Hall at the University of Winnipeg. The total running time is just under 1 hour 16 minutes.

Useful links

• Malalai Joya’s web site
• Peace Alliance Winnipeg
• Canadian Peace Alliance

November 17, 2009: Afghan MP Malalai Joya is in Winnipeg as a part of her Canadian tour to convince Canadians they must withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

Afghans, says Joya, must decide what happens in Afghanistan. Foreign intervention must end.

She has a message for the families of Canadian soldiers. She understands their suffering and extends her condolences. Like them, she knows what it is like to lose loved ones in war. But condolences are not enough. She calls upon Canadians to force the Canadian government to end it’s military intervention.

For more information about Malalai Joya’s tour, visit the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Please take some time to remind your member of Parliament that most Canadians want our troops home. If you don’t know who your MP is or how do get in contact, visit the House of Commons MP page.

Malalai Joya has been called the bravest woman in Afghanistan. (I suspect that may be an understatement.) She has repeatedly risked her life to speak out about the violence and poverty brought on by years of occupation and corruption.

In November, she will speak to audiences across Canada about why we must end the war and let the Afghan people decide their own future. This is a message that all Canadians need to hear, especially those who have bought the lie that we’re there for humanitarian purposes.

The Canadian Peace Alliance is co-ordinating the national tour, with local peace groups pitching in across the land. For details, go here.

Peace Alliance Winnipeg is hosting Ms. Joya’s visit to Winnipeg:

Date: Monday, November 16, 2009
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Convocation Hall (located in Wesley Hall, see map), University of Winnipeg

Malalai Joya, 31, is Afghanistan’s youngest member of parliament. She is internationally respected for openly challenging the US/NATO occupation, warlords, and the Taliban.

She spent her childhood in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan, and returned to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where she worked for underground organizations helping women. At a constitutional assembly in Kabul in 2003, she stood up and denounced her country’s powerful NATO-backed warlords. She was twenty-five years old.

She was elected to parliament in 2005 but was suspended in 2007 for criticizing government corruption.

Despite numerous threats and four assassination attempts, Joya actively campaigns at home and abroad for human rights and an end to the war. Her new book,  A Woman Among Warlords: The extraordinary story of an Afghan who dared to raise her voice, is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Afghanistan.

Why Malalai Joya’s visit is important

A majority of Canadians oppose Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan, but a large number of folks who aren’t normally blood-thirsty militarists and who really ought to know better have bought into the lie that Canadians are there to save Afghan women and children from the bloodthirsty Taliban. For that reason, they support “the mission” and ignore General Hillier’s description of the Canadian Armed Forces, namely: “We’re not the public service of Canada. We’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people. ”

Malalai Joya’s visit will provide our well meaning crusaders with an important perspective — that of a young Afghan leader who has stood up to the Taliban and Karzai’s warlord regime and concluded that there is nothing important that differentiates one from the other. Moreover, she’s concluded that the US/NATO war is making matters worse.

She wants our troops out — and she is far from alone in that sentiment. This is a message that Canadians need to hear.

I have no doubt that the meetings will be well attended, but we need to do our part to make sure that Joya’s message isn’t only heard by her supporters.

So, please spread the word, far and wide.

Because we vote every few years in elections we say we live in a democratic country. Yet every day, the economically active among us walk into work and check their democratic rights at the door.

To some extent, the lack of decision-making power in the workplace is ameliorated by union membership and labour legislation. But the fundamental decisions remain with managers, shareholders and owners. HR department-led “respectful workplace” training programs may foster more harmonious human relationships and raise productivity but they do not alter the fundamentally unequal distribution of power.

Undemocratic workplaces are so ubiquitous we rarely stop to question the concept, but we should. The decisions made by unelected, unaccountable employers about investment, production and employment, to name only three important areas, impact directly and often negatively on workers, their families and their communities. While all eyes are on governments and the machinations of politicians, the bosses quietly go about their business, making decisions that shape our lives.

An antidote to the authoritarian workplace is the worker-owned and directed co-operative, but such enterprises are relatively rare. According to the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation, there are only 250 to 300 in the country, most of which are located in Quebec. According to the federal government’s Co-operatives Secretariat, there are 358 worker co-ops with revenues of $474 billion, assets of $325 million and 10,792 employees

Canada should be fertile ground for worker co-ops because our co-op tradition is well established. According to the Co-operatives Secretariat, 8,400 Canadian co-ops employ 152,000 people; four of every ten Canadians (5.9 million) are members of co-operatives that provide financial, retail, or marketing services.

The worker co-op part of the movement got a major boost with the recent announcement that the United Steelworkers and Mondragon will work together to establish manufacturing co-ops in Canada and the US. (see below).

Democracy is too precious to be surrendered to our bosses.  The USW-Mondragon accord is an encouraging development.

Steelworkers Form Collaboration with MONDRAGON, the World’s Largest Worker-Owned Cooperative

PITTSBURGH, October 27, 2009 – The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada.  The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.”

“We see today’s agreement as a historic first step towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard.  “Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants.  We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Josu Ugarte, President of MONDGRAGON Internacional added: “What we are announcing today represents a historic first – combining the world’s largest industrial worker cooperative with one of the world’s most progressive and forward-thinking manufacturing unions to work together so that our combined know-how and complimentary visions can transform manufacturing practices in North America.”

Article continues . . .

Families of Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan can now take comfort in knowing that even if their sons or daughters commit suicide they will receive the very same medal awarded to those killed by enemy fire.

If nothing else, the federal government is proactive. For months now, they have been laying the foundation for Canadian troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2011. The decision to give the “sacrifice medal” to victims of suicide may be a recognition that fighting  a war to prop up corrupt war lords and drug runners is bound to increase suicidal thinking among the troops.

The sacrifice medal is the latest manifestation of Ottawa’s campaign to foster a militaristic cult of human sacrifice and to build support for its failed war in Afghanistan. The proliferation of “yellow ribbon” campaigns and the designation of a part of Highway 401 as a “Highway of Heroes” are other elements.

We can expect more such announcements in the run-up to this year’s Rememberance Day ceremonies.

My heart goes out to our soldiers and their families. No one who goes to war returns whole and healthy. The stresses of combat and the fears of those waiting for the return of loved ones create disease for everyone involved, even if it is not readily apparent.

Whether they “believe in the mission” or not is irrelevant. They are being used as pawns in an imperialist power grab and whether they return physically intact or in a box, they are all human sacrifices to the gods of war and commerce.

I look forward to the day when we honour those who refuse to fight in imperialist wars. While most Canadians agree that we should, for example, shelter American war resisters, our government continues to deport them to the US, where they face harsh punishments for their courageous acts.

The most recent victim of Ottawa’s perverse policy, Rodney Watson, has sought refuge at First United Church on East Hastings Street, in Vancouver. Bravo to the congregation for their courage and willingness to do what our government refuses to do, even after two Parliamentary resolutions in support of war resisters received majority support.

There is currently a private members bill, Bill C-440, in the legislative queue. All of us ought to contact our MPs and urge them to support this bill. But we shouldn’t count on this bill ever becoming law.

Rodney Watson and war resisters everywhere deserve our support. By helping them we are making real contributions to peace and we are sending a clear message to the Harpers of this world that we reject the cult of human sacrifice that they are trying to create.

Barack Obama joins a short list of Nobel Peace Prize recipients whose awards for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict were, to put it in the kindest way, premature. These include:

• 1994: Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority; Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister of Israel; Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel.
• 1950: Ralph Bunche, Professor Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Director of the UN Division of Trusteeship, Acting Mediator in Palestine 1948.

He also keeps company with mass murderer Henry Kissinger, who in 1973, was awarded the prize for negotiating the Vietnam War Peace Accord following America’s sustained attempt to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the stone age.

His Vietnamese co-recipient of the award, Le Duc Tho, declined to accept the prize because his country was not yet at peace. (The war still has not ended for an estimated 3 million Vietnamese who continue to suffer from the effects of Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used by the U.S. in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 that continues to contaminate the soil, water and people of the country.)

It is difficult to take the Peace Prize seriously. Obama’s award, the Nobel committee declares, is “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Tell that to Pakistanis who have to keep an eye on the sky to avoid being murdered in Predator drone attacks. Tell the Afghans; I’m sure they need a chuckle or two as they celebrate the eighth anniversary of the American invasion, also known to Obamaphiles as America’s “war of necessity.”

Obama’s Peace Prize truly is Orwellian:

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

– George Orwell: “1984”

Dale Cummings’ cartoon (above) in today’s Winnipeg Free Press illustrates the fear-mongering hypocrisy surrounding Iran’s nuclear enrichment program that is being propagated by news media and governments world-wide. If all you saw was this cartoon, you would conclude that Iran has nuclear weapons and we should all be very afraid of them.

Well, folks, Iran is not a nuclear power and the world leaders yelling loudest about Iran’s attempts to enrich uranium are more interested in taking down a country that refuses to bow to western imperialism. (And, oh, Iran has oil, lots of oil.)

While there are rogue states with nukes, Iran isn’t one of them. Those who do constitute a rogues gallery of international thugs, many of whose crimes dwarf anything Iran might be capable of.

Nuclear Rogues Gallery

According to Wikipedia, “there are now about 8,200 active nuclear warheads and about 23,300 total nuclear warheads in the world in 2009. Many of the “decommissioned” weapons were simply stored or partially dismantled, not destroyed.”

The above table is adapted from Wikipedia: List of States with Nuclear Weapons. The third column contains my shorthand rationale for why these countries are dangerous rogue states who shouldn’t be trusted with nukes.

Of course, no one should be trusted with nuclear weapons. They should be banned and destroyed. Anyone who contributes to their maintainance and/or development is a dangerous pyschopath who should be locked up.

And anyone in a position of political authority who contributes to the rising tide of hysteria, the only purpose of which is to build a case for war against Iran should be removed from office. This would lead to lots of vacancies, including in the office of our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who recently promised that Canada would back “whatever actions are necessary to deal with what is a tremendous threat to international peace and security.”

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked thousands of pages of classified U.S. government documents to reveal the true nature of the U.S. war in Vietnam has begun a personal memoir of the nuclear era, entitled “The American Doomsday Machine.” It promises to be a goldmine of information and analysis. The first installment, U.S. Nuclear Planning for a Hundred Holocausts, is chilling. You want rogues? Ellsberg gives you rogues.

None of this should be considered an endorsement of the government of Iran or its policies. Iran is a theocratic police state where judicial torture and murder are commonplace, women are oppressed and unions are suppressed violently and regularly.

That said, Iran is not anywhere near being in a position to threaten anyone with nuclear weapons.

Let’s recognize Obama’s (and Brown’s and Harper’s and Sarkozy’s, etc., ad nauseam) posturing for what it is. Obama and the others need to set the stage for their ongoing attempts to secure increasingly scarce energy supplies. Obama and others need to divert attention from their failed war in Afghanistan. Obama, in particular, needs to shore up his plummeting approval ratings.

Be very afraid. But don’t fear Iran.

http://www.youtube.com/p/876F75A47CC82484&hl=en&fs=1

Joshua Key is an American war resister who fought in Iraq and who sought refuge in Canada because of his war experiences. Author of “The Deserter’s Tale,” Joshua told the story of his recruitment into the U.S. Army, the carnage he witnessed in Iraq and his subsequent flight to Canada to an audience in Winnipeg, the first stop on a 13-city tour of western Canada.

Like so many young people, Joshua joined the army to escape a life of poverty and support his family. The Army promised he would remain in the US and learn to build bridges, but the ink on his contract was barely dry when he learned he would be deployed  to Iraq. Basic training turned him into a killing machine, but the brutalities of war transformed him into a deserter, a refugee and a peace activist.

As you’ll see from the video I recorded Wednesday evening, Joshua speaks with authority, simplicity, warmth and honesty. He is a man traumatized by what he has seen and done who has bravely stepped forward to resist the monsters who prosecute this war.  He deserves and needs our support. If you can, get out to one of the meetings on his tour.

But don’t stop there. Contact the War Resisters Support Campaign and see what else you can do to support the courageous young men and women who have said no to America’s criminal wars.

American war resister Joshua Key begins a 13-city tour on September 16, 2009 to seek support for the cause of U.S. war resisters in western Canada.

Joshua is co-author of “The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.”.

Itinerary (updated Sept. 20, 2009):

Winnipeg Sept 14-17
Mon, Sept 14, 7:00 pm, Canadian Mennonite University,
Laudamus Auditorium, North campus, 500 Shaftsbury

Wed, Sept 16, 12:30 pm, University of Manitoba,
Room 224 University Centre

Wed, Sept 16, 7:00 pm – Millennium Library
(Graham & Donald), 2nd floor

Thur, Sept 17, 12:30 pm, University of Winnipeg,
Eckhardte-Grammate Hall foyer, third fl.

Brandon Fri Sept 18
1:00, Brandon University, Clarke Hall room 104 – Info Brandon ad hoc Tour Committee 717-0228

7:00, City Hall, 410  9th St. – Info Brandon ad hoc Tour Committee 717-0228

Regina Sat Sept 19
7:00 pm, Unitarian Centre, corner of College & Angus.
Sponsor: Making Peace Vigil. Information 526-8993.

Saskatoon Sun, Sept 20
10:30 am service, 11:00 Joshua speaks, St. Thomas-Wesley
United Church, 808 20th St.W. (at corner of 20th and Ave. H South)

Edmonton Tues Sept 22
7:00 pm, HI (Hostelling International), Meeting Room,
10647 81st Ave. (One block off of Whyte Ave.)

Red Deer, Wed, Sept 23
4:00 pm, Red Deer College, North Nook in the Library, sponsor:
Student’s Association 403-356-4975

Calgary Thur, Sept 24
12:00-1:00 pm, University of Calgary, Science Theaters 131,
Consortium for Peace Studies, 220-2136

7:00 p.m., Carpenters Union Hall, 301 – 10 Street NW,
Sponsor – Ad hoc Committee

Kamloops Fri, Sept 25
7:00 pm, Clocktower Theatre, Thompson Rivers University

Kelowna Sun Sept 26
7:00 pm, Okanogan College Kelowna campus, Theatre. Presented
by Kelowna Peace Group kelownapeacegroup@shaw.ca

Vernon Mon Sept 27
7:00 pm, Okanagan College, Vernon Campus, Room D310. Information: David 250-832-6678

Grand Forks Tues, Sept 29
7:00 pm, USCC Community Centre. Sponsored by the USCC
Working Group on Peace and Justice and the Boundary Peace
Initiative. For more information call 250 442 8252

Castlegar Wednesday September 30
7:00 pm, Brilliant Cultural Centre. Sponsored by the USCC Working
Group on Peace and Justice and the Kootenay Region Branch
of the United Nations Association in Canada. Info: 250 365 3613 ext 21.

Lethbridge Thur, October 1
4:00 pm, University of Lethbridge, Students Union Ballroom B, SU Building 3rd fl. (room SU300B). Sponsored by the University of Lethbridge, Students’ Union 403-329-2770

7:00 pm, Lethbridge Public Library, Theatre Gallery, 810 5th Avenue South. Sponsored by the Lethbridge Network for Peace

Medicine Hat Fri, October 2
Tentative: Noon, Medicine Hat College
7:00 pm, Unisphere Global Resouce Centre Basmt. 102 – 6th St. S.E.

While most Canadians support war resisters and oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Canadian government hasn’t gotten the message. Josh Key needs and deserves our support. Get out to one of the meetings and tell/bring everyone you can.

More information: Contact the Joshua Key Ad Hoc Tour Committee at (204) 792-3371. Or send an email to manitobapeacecouncil@gmail.com.

Help promote this meeting: Download and distribute this poster.

For video of one of Joshua’s Winnipeg appearances, go here.