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Egyptian Minister Asks for Direct Flights between Tehran, Cairo

Fars News Agency | August 27, 2012

TEHRAN – Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Samir Embaby called for the start of direct flights between Tehran and Cairo due to the two nations’ enthusiasm for making reciprocal visits.

“The measure is necessary due to the eagerness of many Egyptian and Iranian people to make reciprocal visits,” Embaby was quoted by the Egyptian weekly, al-Youm al-Sabe’.

He also underlined that starting direct flights between the two countries would play a vital role for trade and economic ties between Iran and Egypt, and said the economic studies carried out in Iran indicate that 60% of Iranians like to visit different Egyptian cities, partly for religious tourism.

In relevant remarks in June, new Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi also underlined his enthusiasm for the further expansion of ties with Iran, and said relations between Tehran and Cairo will create a strategic balance in the region.

“The issue will create a strategic balance in the region,” Mursi told FNA in June, hours before the final results of the presidential election was announced.

Also in July, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mursi, in their first telephone conversation, conferred on the two Muslim countries’ ties and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) now underway in Tehran.

President Ahmadinejad said Tehran welcomes close interactions with the Egyptian government and nation, and attaches no limitations to the expansion of ties and cooperation with Cairo.

Ahmadinejad expressed Iran’s preparedness to transfer capabilities, achievements and experiences in various scientific, technological, industrial and economic fields to the Egyptian people.

Mursi is due to travel to Iran on August 30 to attend the NAM summit.

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August 27, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran FM Salehi: NAM Should Oppose Sanctions, Foreign Intervention Unacceptable

Al-Manar | August 26, 2012

As he urged the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) members to stand against the sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stressed that the foreign interference in the events taking place in our region was unacceptable.

“The NAM… should seriously confront unilateral sanctions of certain nations against some members of the NAM,” Salehi said in a speech opening days of preparatory meetings for the summit on Thursday and Friday.

“So far, the NAM has condemned these measures,” he noted, adding: “we take this opportunity to thank the NAM for its support to the legitimate rights” to nuclear activities.

“Regarding our peaceful nuclear program… we have always said that we are only seeking our legitimate rights” to nuclear energy as permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Salehi said.

The Iranian FM called for the active role of the NAM in annihilation of the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), saying that the Zionist entity should be forced to respect the non-proliferation of WMDs.

“Israel’s refusal to sign Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a hurdle to the globalization of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he added.

FOREIGN INTERVENTION

Talking about the regional events, and especially the Arab revolutions, Salehi said the foreign interference was unacceptable.

“We have learned from the events which our region has witnessed that any forces cannot ignore the legitimate demands of people.”

“The popular uprisings and the regional events that follow it, affect the consecutive developments on the International level,” Salehi added.

“The participation of the real independent political powers in a comprehensive dialogue needs a political operation based on the internal views of a country,” the Iranian FM stressed, noting that this operation should not be away from the foreign interference.

Salehi also said that the Palestinian issue, as the most important problem in the region, should be taken seriously during the ongoing NAM meeting and the “criminal measures of Israeli regime, as the biggest threat to the region” must be taken into consideration.

August 26, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

First Amendment Violations to Watch for at the RNC and DNC

By Jay Stanley, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | August 22, 2012

We know that photographers have been having problems all over the country with police harassment, and that demonstrators’ free speech rights have also been under assault. But with the Democratic and Republican political conventions coming up, we have all too much reason to expect that free speech rights will be swallowed up in the vortex of those events, which have become constitutional black holes in recent years.

Chris Hansen, our senior First Amendment attorney, has been litigating First Amendment cases for many years, including landmark cases such as Reno v. ACLU, and a number involving the free speech rights of protesters. I asked him to give me an overview of the situation, and he said that we’ve been seeing three big problems that come up increasingly at all these kinds of events:

1) “Free Speech Zones.” People wishing to express themselves are being sent to distant locations—euphemistically called “Free Speech Zones”—so they are inaccessible to the audience at the event. (There is one legitimate Free Speech Zone we don’t have a problem with, it’s called the United States of America.)

2) Arrests. People are simply being swept up and arrested, essentially for no reason at all, in order to clear the streets. Cities figure that they can just deal with the ensuing litigation later. They don’t much care that they don’t have grounds to arrest people, they just sweep the streets.

3) Surveillance. Unjustified surveillance is common, both prior to and during the event. Recent stories suggest that there is a lot more infiltration of protest organizers taking place than we had realized at first. But then there’s also the surveillance that takes place at the event, where often everything is filmed. Even worse are the new restrictions on what you can carry into the demonstrations, which give the police the authority to search you as you go in.

These rights violations are happening repeatedly, despite lawsuits that are filed and won after the event is over. Chris tells me, “the cities view it as a cost of doing business.”

Consciously and intentionally violating the law and Constitution is apparently viewed as a legitimate tactic by the same police and officials who are supposed to be enforcing the law. Chris Hansen adds,

It’s an accelerating pattern, and a remarkably consistent pattern. In other words, there don’t seem to be significant city-by-city variations in police behavior; there seems to be a playbook for police departments that they’re all using.

Chris says that when attorneys for protesters try to seek legal protection in advance, the cities respond by using various tricks they have learned to get around legal oversight. For example, with respect to the free speech zones, he says:

We’ve tried. Part of the problem is the city often won’t tell you until the last minute where you’ll be allowed to demonstrate. So if you go into court six months before the event, the city says, “we haven’t made any decisions yet,” and the judge says “well, how can I decide this in the abstract?” But if you wait for the police to announce the location right before the event, the judge often says, “I don’t have time to second-guess the city, I’m just going to let it go.”

So the cities have learned that if they keep the location information secret up until the very last minute, for the most part judges aren’t going to second-guess their decision, so they end up sending you six miles away, under a bridge. That’s the classic example, in Boston, where they were literally under the highway.

It’s sad and ironic that the political conventions, which at some level are supposed to represent democracy and freedom, have become empty, stage-managed, institutionalized, Soviet-style show events, while simultaneously becoming the occasion to sell out real individuals’ actual, ground-level free speech rights as a “cost of doing business.”

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The massacre at El Calabozo

Tim’s El Salvador Blog | August 20, 2012

On Wednesday August 22,  people will gather at the church in Amatitán Abajo, in San Vicente Department, to commemorate, remember and demand justice for a massacre which happened thirty years ago.   It is the anniversary of the El Calabozo massacre, when troops of the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion murdered more than 200 civiliam victims taking refuge along a river’s banks.

The massacre was documented in the UN Truth Commission Report following the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords:

On 22 August 1982, in the place known as El Calabozo situated beside the Amatitán river in the north of the Department of San Vicente, troops of the Atlacatl Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) killed over 200 men, women and children whom they were holding prisoner.

The victims had converged on El Calabozo from various directions, fleeing a vast antiguerrilla military operation which had begun three days earlier in the area of Los Cerros de San Pedro and which involved, in addition to the Atlacatl BIRI, other infantry, artillery and aerial support units.

There was a major guerrilla presence, supported by the local population, in the area of the operation. Government forces had penetrated the area on earlier occasions, but the guerrillas had avoided combat. This time the operation, which bore the name “Teniente Coronel Mario Azenón Palma”, involved some 6,000 troops and was designed to clear the area of guerrillas. As the troops advanced, the civilian population fled, fearing the shelling and the soldiers’ violence. One of the places where a large number of fugitives congregated was El Calabozo.

According to witnesses, the fugitives were surprised by the Atlacatl Battalion unit. Some of them managed to escape; the rest were rounded up and machine-gunned.  The military operation continued for several more days. The Government informed the public that it had been a success: many guerrillas had been killed, camps had been destroyed and weapons and other supplies had been seized.

On 8 September, two weeks after the incident, the massacre was reported in The Washington Post. The Minister of Defence, General José Guillermo García, said that an investigation had been made and that no massacre had occurred. He repeated this assertion in an interview with the Commission….

There is sufficient evidence that on 22 August 1982, troops of the Atlacatl Battalion deliberately killed over 200 civilians – men, women and children – who had been taken prisoner without offering any resistance. The incident occurred at the place known as El Calabozo, near the canton of Amatitán Abajo, Department of San Vicente.

Although the massacre was reported publicly, the Salvadorian authorities denied it. Despite their claim to have made an investigation, there is absolutely no evidence that such an investigation took place.

Families of the victims of the massacre have worked to keep the memory of these events alive and to demand justice.   Laura Hershberger wrote on the SHARE Foundation blog about a youth event in 2009 commemorating the slaughter:

None of the youth had lived through the Calabozo massacre that happened by river of Amititan in a place called the Calabazo in 1982, but they had grown up hearing the story from their family. How the army had advanced from the San Pedro hills and how the inhabitants of the region fled their homes in what was known as the “guindas.” How the people had been walking for seven days without food and took refuge by the river to sleep when they were attacked by the Atlacatl and the Ramon Belloso Batallian, it was then that they were massacred in cold blood, over two hundred men, women and children. When the youth group from the Community of El Rincon acted out a play that had written about the massacre, they made sure to include the part where the mothers plea for the soldiers to take their own lives but to spare the lives of their small children.

Those pleas for mercy fell on the deaf ears of the soldier of the Atlacatl Battalion who 9 months earlier had slaughtered 1000 civilians in El Mozote.   The forensic anthropologists from Argentina who have conducted the investigations at El Mozote have also exhumed bodies of victims of the El Calabozo massacre.   Earlier this year, the online periodical ContraPunto described their recovery of the body of a grandmother and her two granddaughters, ages 5 and 9, from the massacre site.   This investigation had been led by  Asociación Pro Búsqueda, the NGO which continues the search for children missing from the years of the civil war.   As ContraPunto notes, twenty years after the signing of the Peace Accords, many families still face the uncertainty of not knowing where the bodies of their loved ones can be found, or whether they could have survived.

The families of the victims continue to demand justice in the face of the 1993 Amnesty Law which the government interprets to prevent prosecution of such war crimes.   There is still no political will in the National Assembly or the president’s office to repeal the law.  You can watch this video of a 2009 press conference given by human rights lawyer David Morales and families of victims regarding their petition that the case against those responsible for the the El Calabozo massacre be pursued.

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August 21, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Echoes of the Past: Marikana, Cheap Labour and the 1946 Miners Strike

By Chris Webb | The Bullet | August 21, 2012

On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker’s Union (AMWU), a non-European union which was formed five years earlier in order to address the 12 to 1 pay differential between white and black mineworkers. The gathering carried forward just one unanimous resolution: African miners would demand a minimum wage of ten shillings (about 1 Rand) per day. If the Transvaal Chamber of Mines did not meet this demand, all African mine workers would embark on a general strike immediately. Workers mounted the platform one after the other to testify: “When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands.” The progressive Guardian newspaper reported an old miner getting to his feet and addressing his comrades: “We on the mines are dead men already!”[1]

Zumapartheid
Mike Constable union-art.com

The massacre of 45 people, including 34 miners, at Marikana in the North West province is an inevitable outcome of a system of production and exploitation that has historically treated human life as cheap and disposable. If there is a central core – a stem in relation to which so many other events are branches – that runs through South African history, it is the demand for cheap labour for South Africa’s mines. “There is no industry of the size and prosperity of this that has managed its cheap labour policy so successfully,” wrote Ruth First in reference to the Chamber of Mines ability to pressure the government for policies that displaced Africans from their land and put them under the boot of mining bosses.[2]

Masters and Servants

Mechanisms such as poll and hut taxes, pass laws, Masters and Servants Acts and grinding rural poverty were all integral in ensuring a cheap and uninterrupted supply of labour for the mines. Pass laws were created in order to forge a society in which farm work or mining were the only viable employment options for the black population. And yet the low wages and dangerous work conditions kept many within the country away, forcing the Chamber of Mines to recruit labour from as far afield as Malawi and China throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sordid deals between Portuguese East Africa and Apartheid South Africa ensured forced labour to be recruited for the mines and by 1929 there were 115,000 Mozambicans working underground. “It has been said,” wrote First in her study of migrant Mozambican miners, “that the wealth of Reef gold mines lies not in the richness of the strike but in the low costs of production kept down by cheap labour.”[3]

When AMWU was formed in 1941 black miners earned 70 Rand a year while white workers received 848 Rand. White miners had been organized for many years, but there was little solidarity between the two groups as evidenced by the 1922 Rand Rebellion led by the whites-only Mine Workers Union. White miners went on strike against management’s attempt at weakening the colour bar in order to facilitate the entry of cheaper black labour into skilled positions. Supported by the Communist Party of South Africa under the banner of “Unite and Fight for a White South Africa!” the rebellion was viciously crushed by the state leaving over 200 dead. The growth of non-European unions in the 1940s was dramatic and for the very first time the interests of African mineworkers were on the table. Their demands threatened the very foundations of the cheap labour system, and so in 1944 Prime Minister Jan Smuts tabled the War Measure 1425 preventing a gathering of 20 or more on mine property. Despite these difficulties the union pressed on and in 1946 they approached the Chamber of Mines with their demand for wage increases. A letter calling for last minute negotiations with the Chamber of Mines was, as usual, ignored.

By August 12th tens-of-thousands of black miners were on strike from the East to the West Rand. The state showed the utmost brutality, chasing workers down mineshafts with live ammunition and cracking down on potential sympathy strikes in the city of Johannesburg. By August 16th the state had bludgeoned 100,000 miners back to work and nine lay dead. Throughout the four-day strike hundreds of trade union leaders were arrested, with the central committee of the Communist Party and local ANC leaders arrested and tried for treason and sedition. The violence came on the cusp of the 1948 elections, which would see further repression and the beginning of the country’s anti-communist hysteria.


National Union of Mineworkers Poster on Fortieth Anniversary of 1946 Strike

While it did not succeed in its immediate aims, the strike was a watershed moment in South African politics and would forever change the consciousness of the labour movement. Thirty years later Monty Naicker, one of the leading figures in the South African Indian Congress, argued that the strike “transformed African politics overnight. It spelt the end of the compromising, concession-begging tendencies that dominated African politics. The timid opportunism and begging for favours disappeared.”[4] The Native Representative Council, formed by the state in 1937 to address the age old ‘native question,’ disbanded on August 15th and ANC president Dr. A.B. Xuma reiterated the demand for “recognition of African trade unions and adequate wages for African workers including mineworkers.”[5]

The 1946 mineworkers strike was the spark that ignited the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC Youth League’s 1949 Program of Action owes much to the militancy of these workers as does the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s and the emergence of the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) in the 1960s. It is too early to say what sort of impact the current Lonmin strike will have on South African politics, but it seems unlikely that it will be as transformative as those of the past. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), arguably the heirs to the 1946 strike are currently engaged in a series of territorial disputes with the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). Meanwhile COSATU’s muted response has echoed the ANC’s line of equal-culpability and half-mast public mourning. The increasingly incoherent South African Communist Party has called for the arrest of AMCU leaders with some of its so-called cadres defending the police action. Former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s plea for miners to hold the line and form a more militant union reek of political opportunism.

Still Dependent on Cheap and Flexible Labour

What no one has dared to say, aside from the miners themselves, is that the mining industry remains dependent on cheap and flexible labour, much of it continuing to come from neighbouring countries. This has historically been the source of most miner’s grievances. A recent Bench Marks Foundation study of platinum mines in the North West province uncovered a number of factors linked to rising worker discontent in the region. Lonmin was singled out as a mine with high levels of fatalities, very poor living conditions for workers and unfulfilled community demands for employment. Perhaps most significant is the fact that almost a third of Lonmin’s workforce is employed through third party contractors.[6] This form of employment is not new in the mining industry. In fact, since minerals were discovered in the 19th century labour recruiters have scoured the southern half of the continent for workers. The continued presence of these ‘labour brokers’ on the mines and the ANC’s unwillingness to ban them – opting instead for a system of increasing regulation – is the bloody truth of South Africa’s so-called ‘regulated flexibility.’

There are a number other findings from the Bench Marks study that are worth mentioning as they illuminate some of the real grievances that have been lost amid photos of waving pangas. The number of fatalities at Lonmin has doubled since January 2011, and the company has consistently ignored community calls for employment, favouring contractors and migrant workers. A visit by the Bench Marks Foundation research team to Marikana revealed:

“A proliferation of shacks and informal settlements, the rapid deterioration of formal infra-structure and housing in Marikana itself, and the fact that a section of the township constructed by Lonmin did not have electricity for more than a month during the time of our last visit. At the RDP Township we found broken down drainage systems spilling directly into the river at three different points.”[7]

In fact, the study predicted further violent protests at Marikana in the coming year. The mass dismissal of 9,000 workers in May last year inflamed already tense relations between the community and the mine as dismissed workers lost their homes in the company’s housing scheme.

Once again, these facts are hardly new in the world of South African mining. Behind the squalid settlements that surround the mine shafts there are immense profits to be made. In recent years the platinum mining industry has prospered like no other thanks to the increased popularity of platinum jewellery and the use of the metal in vehicle exhaust systems in the United State and European countries. Production increased by 60 per cent between 1980 and 1994, while the price soared almost fivefold. The value of sales, almost all exported, thus increased to almost 12 per cent of total sales by the mining industry. The price rose so dramatically throughout the 1990s that it is on par with gold as the country’s leading mineral export.[8] South Africa’s platinum industry is the largest in the world and in 2011 reported total revenues of $13.3-billion, which is expected to increase by 15.8% over the next five years. Lonmin itself is one of the largest producers of platinum in the world, and the bulk of its tonnage comes from the Marikana mine. The company recorded revenues of $1.9-billion in 2011, an increase of 25.7%, the majority of which would come from the Marikana shafts.[9]

For risking mutilation and death underground workers at Marikana made only 4000 Rand, or $480 a month. As one miner told South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper that, “It’s better to die than to work for that shit … I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won’t move.” These expressions of frustration and anger could be from 1922, 1946 or today. They are scathing indictments of an industry that continues to treat its workers as disposable and a state that upholds apartheid’s cheap labour policies.

Endnotes:

1. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.

2. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.

3. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.

4. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.

5. Dr. A.B. Xuma quoted in Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946.”

6. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.

7. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.

8. Charles Feinstein, “An Economic History of South Africa,” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 211.

9. Marketline Advantage Reports on South Africa’s Platinum Group Metals, 2011.

•

Chris Webb is a postgraduate student at York University, Toronto where he is researching labour restructuring in South African agriculture. He can be reached at christopherswebb_AT_yahoo.ca.

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August 21, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Egyptian president to attend NAM summit in Tehran

Press TV – August 18, 2012

Egypt’s official news agency, MENA, said on Saturday that President Mohamed Morsi plans to attend the upcoming Non Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran.

Morsi’s trip to Tehran will be the first such visit since Iran and Egypt severed ties more than 30 years ago after Cairo signed the 1978 Camp David Accord with the Israeli regime and offered asylum to the deposed Iranian dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The 16th summit of the NAM member states will be held in the Iranian capital on August 26-31.

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei will address the Tehran NAM summit.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is also expected to partake in the event during which the Islamic Republic will assume the rotating presidency of the movement for three years.

NAM, an international organization with 120 member states and 21 observer countries, is considered as not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc.

NAM’s purpose, as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979, is to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries.”

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August 18, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers attack, injure and arrest journalists at Kafr Qaddum

On Friday, August 17, five were injured and eight arrested at Kafr Qaddum. … Full text of ISM article


Media Forum condemns IOF attack on six journalists

Palestine Information Center – 18/08/2012

GAZA– Palestinian Media Forum strongly condemned the Israeli occupation forces’ attack on six Palestinian journalists and detaining them for hours while they were covering a peaceful demonstration in the occupied West Bank on Friday.

The Forum said in a statement Saturday, that IOF soldiers attacked the journalists while dispersing the weekly peaceful march against the separation wall in Kafr Qaddum in Qalqilya in the West Bank, and transferred them to Kedumim settlement established on the village lands.

It affirmed that the detainees were released after the occupation soldiers forced them to sign a pledge not to perform their work as journalists in Kafr Qaddum. … Full PIC article

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August 18, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Khan Al Luban: Settlers invade again

18 August | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Saturday August 11th 2012 the same events as three days earlier took place at Khan Al Luban. A group of four illegal settlers, from Mal´al Levona, armed with guns and wooden sticks came into Khan al Luban at 22:30 p.m. The settlers yet again broke into the house owned by Khalid al-Hamed Daraghani where international activists and the two sons of Khalid were staying.

When the settlers arrived Khalid’s sons and the international activists asked them to leave the property, but they refused and instead sat down near the spring on Daraghani’s land. After about half an hour two Israeli police cars arrived along with two military jeeps after having received a call from the settlers. A few minutes later two more military jeeps arrived at the scene. By then the Daraghani land was full of Israeli police, soldiers and security guards from the illegal settlement. The soldiers entered the house searching for weapons, but as usual they didn’t find anything.

Around midnight the soldiers, police, security personnel and settlers left the area, while Jamal, the oldest son of Khalid, and the international activists remained in the house. Throughout the night settlers stayed on patrol in the street near the Daraghani house, shouting and honking their car horns.

At 7:30 am the following morning, a border police car stopped near the Daraghani house on the road leading up to the illegal settlement of Mal´al Levona. The border policemen then proceeded to break into the house, aggressively asking for passports and other documents. Like the night before the house was searched and no bag, cigarette package or piece of clothing went unturned.

After a short dispute over a cigarette, Jamal was brutally pushed into one of the rooms by the police officers where he received several blows to the face before he was handcuffed and taken away. Jamal was taken to the police station of Binyamin, wrongly accused of having hit a soldier. He was released on bail the day after.

The continued pressure of the Israeli occupation forces and illegal settlers remain a constant threat during both days and nights in Khan al Luban.

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August 18, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

International Solidarity Movement call to action: Olive Harvest 2012

International Solidarity Movement | August 18, 2012

… The olive tree is a national symbol for Palestinians. As thousands of olive trees have been bulldozed, uprooted and burned by Israeli settlers and the military – (over half a million olive and fruit trees have been destroyed since September 2000) – harvesting has become more than a source of livelihood; it has become a form of resistance.

The olive harvest is an annual affirmation of Palestinians’ historical, spiritual, and economic connection to their land, and a rejection of Israeli efforts to seize it. Despite efforts by Israeli settlers and soldiers to prevent them from accessing their land, Palestinian communities have remained steadfast in refusing to give up their olive harvest.

Palestinian and International Solidarity Movement volunteers join Palestinian farming communities each year to harvest olives in areas where Palestinians face settler and military violence when working their land. Your presence can make a big difference. It has been proven in the past to deter the number and severity of attacks and harassment. The presence of activists can reduce the risk of extreme violence from Israeli settlers and the Israeli army and supports Palestinians’ assertion of their right to earn their livelihoods and be present on their lands. International solidarity activists engage in non-violent intervention and documentation and this practical support enables many families to pick their olives. In addition, The Olive Harvest Campaign also provides a wonderful opportunity to spend time with Palestinian families in their olive groves and homes.

The campaign will begin on the 8th of October and run until the 15th of November. … Read full article

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August 18, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

Tunisia: Al-Nahda’s Failures Lead Sidi Bouzid to Rise Again

By Christopher Barrie | Al Akhbar | August 17, 2012

On Tuesday August 14, the central Tunisian governorate of Sidi Bouzid held a general strike to call for the release of several protesters detained during the demonstrations held over the preceding weeks and to demand concrete plans for development in the region.

Tuesday’s events come after a series of city-wide general strikes which, from the month of May, have swept through Tataouine, Monastir, Kasserine and Kairouan. The recent events in Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, should be considered the culmination of an extended standoff, not only between the al-Nahda-led ruling coalition and Tunisia’s main trade union federation, the UGTT, but also between those in power and those who are yet to see the revolutionary demands of “work, freedom, and national dignity” realized.

Tensions in Sidi Bouzid have been mounting over a period of months. However, the origins of this most recent wave of unrest can be linked to July 26 when a large number of day workers in the region attacked the al-Nahda party offices in protest at a two-month delay in their wages being paid. The Interior Ministry estimated the numbers involved at 150 while union officials claimed more than 1,000 took part.

The response of al-Nahda to these events was typical. Refusing to recognise the genuine demands of the chronically unemployed and disenfranchised in the southern regions of Tunisia, party officials claimed that those demonstrating had been manipulated by rival political parties, seeking to sow instability and dissent for their own ends. The police fired warning shots and tear gas canisters to disperse the protest.

Tensions have been further exacerbated in recent months by ongoing water shortages in the region. Over the past six months, drinking water has commonly only been available in the evenings and has occasionally been cut off for the entire day. Mohamed Najib Mansouri, the governor of Sidi Bouzid, claimed that one of the reasons for these shortages was the failure of residents to pay their bills. It is more likely that the local infrastructure has been unable to sustain the increased consumption of water during an especially hot and dry summer.

On Thursday August 9, a protest was organised by the December 17th Progressive Forces Front in conjunction with the December 17th Committee for the Protection of the Revolution, the UGTT and a number of opposition parties.

As well as demands for a guaranteed supply of water to the region, the protesters’ demands included the settlement of the status of workers, the resignation of the regional commander of the National Guard, the resignation of Governor Mohamed Najib Mansouri and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, in view of its failure to respond to the legitimate demands of the residents of Sidi Bouzid.

In response to the protests, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds. One man was hospitalised having been struck in the stomach by a rubber bullet and four others were taken to hospital after inhaling tear gas.

Following these events, al-Nahda once again ignored the grievances of those protesting, this time claiming that rival party Nidaa Tunis was behind the protests. Indeed, a spokesperson from the ruling Islamist movement went so far as to claim that Nidaa Tunis, created in June of this year by former interim prime minister Beji Essebsi, represented the political arm of Ben Ali’s defunct Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party and that they had “proof that some figures within the region known to be close to Nidaa Tunis sided with criminals, thieves and alcohol vendors to spread anarchy in Sidi Bouzid”.

Despite President Moncef Marzouki’s efforts to quell the the growing tension in the region, the general strike went ahead on Tuesday with over 1,000 protesters assembling outside the court house.

The events of recent weeks mark a significant development in the mounting levels of anger at the failures of the majority Islamist party. More than the ruling coalition as a whole, it is now al-Nahda which is perceived to be behind the lack of real progress in Tunisia. What’s more, one should not be surprised at the police’s violent handling of these protests. Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali and Interior Minister Ali Larayedh have previously made it clear that they are willing to use force in order to maintain order in the country. Sadok Chourou, a prominent figure within the al-Nahda ranks claimed in January that strikers were “enemies of God” and that they should suffer the same fate as apostates.

It is the protesters themselves who are blamed for the ongoing instability within Tunisia and not the failures of the ruling coalition and, specifically, al-Nahda. And yet, one need only look at actions of the ruling parties in order to see the falsity of such a claim. Negotiations up until now have been dogged by political outbidding and brinkmanship which has severely hindered the transitional process, as seen in al-Nahda’s attempts to prevent the transition to an independent judiciary, its decision to level a sentence of up to two years for attacks on “sacred values” or its recent rewording of the draft constitution to define the status of women as “complementary to men.”

Furthermore, the economic alternatives being proposed will likely do little to alleviate the situation of many in the southern regions of Tunisia which have traditionally suffered from high levels of unemployment and a lack of investment. Relying principally on foreign and private investment, the government aims to to provide 100,000 more jobs in Tunisia and predicts a level of 3.5 percent GDP growth for 2012. The latter of these two predictions seems increasingly unlikely considering that Tunisia has, to date, experienced four consecutive quarters of negative growth. With levels of unemployment at 18.1 percent, the aim to create 100,000 jobs will also do little to abate social unrest in a country which counts over 709,000 (of an active workforce of 3.9 million) unemployed.

With Minister for Investment Riadh Bettaib announcing last Friday that Tunisia can expect to receive a further $1 billion in World Bank loans alongside his continued insistence on boosting foreign direct investment (FDI) and tourism revenues, it is clear that the proposed model for economic development differs very little from the neoliberal agenda of the former regime.

Of course, alongside the social context of these protests, one must also take into account the political dimension of what is occurring. Tuesday’s general strike was called by the UGTT and the protests of the past week have found support among a broad range of opposition political parties, including the centrist Republican Party, al-Watan (The Nation), and several leftist parties, including the Workers’ Party. While it is important not to discount the role played by opposition political forces in these mobilisations, it remains the case that the principal drivers of this spell of popular contestation have been the young and unemployed in the region whose demands, as has commonly been the case, are channeled through the UGTT. Malek Khadraoui, a writer and activist who has been present throughout the latest wave of strikes and protests in Sidi Bouzid, further comments that, while some opposition parties may be seeking to capitalize on recent events, “the youth in the region harbour a deep distrust towards political parties” and the real cause of these events is the inability of the ruling coalition, and particularly al-Nahda, to respond to their demands.

It is difficult to predict where this latest spell of social upheaval is headed. An International Crisis Group report published this June remarked that it would be an exaggeration to “raise the spectre of a second insurrection,” but that the continued political instability within Tunisia alongside sustained levels of socioeconomic insecurity could “negatively feed on each other and risk snowballing into a legitimacy crisis for the newly elected government.”

In the same report, economist Lotfi Bouzaiane comments that one of the principal demands of the revolution was “the right to work.” Prior to the revolution, he says, it was Ben Ali who insisted that “to find work you just had to wait for the economy to grow!”

Following this latest wave of strikes and demonstrations, it is becoming ever more difficult to distinguish between the rhetoric of the former regime and Tunisia’s new ruling coalition, so committed is it to denouncing any expression of popular dissent in the name of national stability and economic growth. In the absence of any real answers to the demands of those in Sidi Bouzid and elsewhere, the government is increasingly having recourse to violent means of repression. It appears that Tunisia’s uncommonly hot summer may precede an even hotter Autumn.

Christopher Barrie is a student and journalist currently working in Tunisia at Nawaat.

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August 17, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

United Church of Canada Decides To Boycott Settlement Products

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | August 16, 2012

Following around six hours of deliberation, the United Church of Canada (UCC), the largest Protestant denomination in the country, voted for boycotting products made in Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

The Toronto Star reported that a spokesperson of the UCC general council identified as Bruce Gregersen, stated that the decision is considered a significant step.

The UCC will be holding another vote on Friday to decide whether this boycott would be a regarded as a permanent policy of the church.

Israeli Ynet News reported that the Centre for Israel and the Jewish Affairs in Canada said that it was “outraged by this decision”, and considered it “a move that singled out Jewish communities for boycott”.

The Centre claimed that this decision is considered a “reckless path”, and added that the decision just dismisses the concerns of the Jewish community in Canada.

According to the Ynet, Chairman of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, David Koschitzky, stated that mainstream Jewish organization, including the Canadian Friends of Peace Now, “do not approve of this boycott decision”.

He added that this decision ignored around 100.000 families, members of different Jewish federations in Canada, and said that this decision “also ignores written rejection letters of 70 Canadian Rabbis, representing tens of thousands of Jewish families in the country”.

Israel’s settlements are located in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in and around occupied East Jerusalem. There have been several churches and organizations around the world, including educational facilities that have previously voted in favor of boycotting products made in Israel’s settlements.

Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestine are illegal under International Law, and even violate the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory.

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August 16, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lebanon: Michel Aoun affirms that the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah are on the same path

Al-Manar | August 15, 2012

Free Patriotic movement leader, Michel Aoun addressed Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, saying his party was with the resistance on the same path.

In an interview with al-Manar TV, General Aoun said his party would not abandon resistance, saying it has been part of the movement’s being.

“We can’t stand against a part of our people who have been sacrificing and dying for the sake of our country, land and people.”

Asked whether the General rued his position in regard to Hezbollah, Aoun told the al-Manar correspondent: “Never… you should not ask me such a question.”

Asked for his position toward resistance in case of an Israeli attack on Lebanon, Aoun stressed that the FPM would support the resistance.

“We will take the same position and behavior. We will be as eager as we were in July War in 2006 in supporting the resistance because it’s part of our being.

Addressing Sayyed Nasrallah, Aoun affirmed that the FPM and Hezbollah were in the same path.

“To Sayyed Nasrallah I say we are in the same path until securing victory at the end.”

Concerning the equation of people-army-resistance, the FPM leader said there were attempts to dismantle this equation, stressing that any occupied land, however small it was, had dignity.

“The attempt to dismantle the equation of people-army-resistance is an offensive one, which aims at subjecting our country to an International political equation, in a bid to threaten its entity in the future,” Aoun told al-Manar correspondent during the interview.

August 15, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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