The Threat of Quebec’s Good Example
Peter Hallward | The Bullet | June 6, 2012
The extraordinary student mobilization in Quebec has already sustained the longest and largest student strike in the history of North America, and it has already organized the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. It is now rapidly growing into one of the most powerful and inventive anti-austerity campaigns anywhere in the world.
Every situation is different, of course, and Quebec’s students draw on a distinctive history of social and political struggle, one rooted in the 1960s ‘Quiet Revolution’ and several subsequent and eye-opening campaigns for free or low-cost higher education. Support for the provincial government that opposes them, moreover, has been undermined in recent years by allegations of corruption and bribery. Nevertheless, those of us fighting against cuts and fees in other parts of the world have much to learn from the way the campaign has been organized and sustained. It’s high time that education activists in the UK, in particular, started to pay the Quebecois the highest compliment: when in doubt, imitate!
The first reason for the students’ success lies in the clarity of both their immediate aim and its links to a broad range of closely associated aims. Students of all political persuasions support the current ‘minimal programme,’ to block the Liberal government’s plan to increase tuition fees by 82 per cent over several years. Most students and their families also oppose the many similar measures introduced by federal and provincial governments in Canada in recent years, which collectively represent an unprecedented neoliberal attack on social welfare (new user fees for healthcare, elimination of public sector services and jobs, factory closures, wanton exploitation of natural resources, an increase in the retirement age, restrictions on trade unions and so on). And apart from bankers and some employers, most people across Canada already regret the fact that the average debt for university graduates is around $27,000.
The Growth of CLASSE
A growing number of students now also support the fundamental principle of free universal education, long defended by the more militant student groups (loosely co-ordinated in the remarkable new coalition CLASSE), and back their calls for the unconditional abolition of tuition fees, to be phased out over several years and compensated by a modest and perfectly feasible bank tax, at a time of record bank profits. “This hardline stance,” the Guardian’s reporter observed, “has catapulted CLASSE from being a relatively unknown organization with 40,000 members to a sprawling phenomenon that now numbers 100,000 and claims to represent 70 per cent of striking students.” Growing numbers, too, can see how such a demand might help to compensate for the most obvious socioeconomic development in Canada over the last 30 years: the dramatic growth in income inequality, reinforced by a whole series of measures (tax cuts, trade agreements, marketization plans…) that have profited the rich and very rich at the expense of everyone else.
In Quebec, student resistance to these measures hasn’t simply generated a contingent ‘chain of equivalences’ across otherwise disparate demands: it has helped to create a practical, militant community of interest in the face of systematic neoliberal assault. “It’s more than a student strike,” a CLASSE spokesman said in April, “We want it to become a struggle of the people.” At first scornfully dismissed in the corporate media, this general effort to make the student movement into a social movement has borne fruit in recent weeks, and it would be hard to describe the general tone of reports from the nightly protest marches that are now taking over much of Montreal in terms other than collective euphoria.
Nothing similar has yet happened in the UK, of course, even though the British variant of the same neoliberal assault – elimination of the EMA, immediate trebling of fees, systematic marketization of provision – has been far more brutal. But the main reasons for this lie less in some uniquely francophone propensity to defend a particular social heritage than in the three basic (and eminently transposable) elements of any successful popular campaign: strategy, organization and empowerment.
As many students knew well before they launched their anti-fees campaign last summer, the best way to win this kind of fight is to implement a strategy that no amount of state coercion can overcome – a general, inclusive and ‘unlimited’ boycott of classes. One-day actions and symbolic protest marches may help build momentum, but only “an open-ended general strike gives students maximum leverage to make their demands heard,” the CLASSE’s newspaper Ultimatum explains. So far, it has been 108 days and counting, and “on ne lâche pas” (we’re not backing down) has become a familiar slogan across the province. So long as enough students are prepared to sustain it, their strike puts them in an almost invincible bargaining position.
Ensuring such preparation is the key to CLASSE as an organization. It has provided new ways for students previously represented by more cautious and conventional student associations to align themselves with the more militant ASSÉ, with its tradition of direct action and participatory democracy. Activists spent months preparing the ground for the strike, talking to students one at a time, organizing department by department and then faculty by faculty, starting with the more receptive programmes and radiating slowly out to the more sceptical.
At every pertinent level they have created general assemblies, which have invested themselves with the power to deliberate and then make, quickly and collectively, important decisions. Actions are decided by a public show of hands, rather than by an atomising expression of private opinion. The more powerful and effective these assemblies have become, the more active and enthusiastic the level of participation. Delegates from the assemblies then participate in wider congresses and, in the absence of any formal leadership or bureaucracy, the “general will” that has emerged from these congresses is so clear that CLASSE is now the main organizing force in the campaign and able to put firm pressure on the other more compromise-prone student unions.
Assemblies and Collective Empowerment
Week after week, assemblies have decided to continue the strike. In most places, this has also meant a decision to keep taking the steps necessary to ensure its successful continuation, by preventing the minority of dissenting students from breaking it. Drawing on his experience at McGill University, strike veteran Jamie Burnett has some useful advice for the many student activists now considering how best to extend the campaign to other parts of Canada: don’t indulge in ‘soft pickets’ that allow classes to take place in spite of a strike mandate, and that thus allow staff to isolate and fail striking students. “Enforcing strikes is difficult to do, at least at first,” he says, “but it’s a lot less difficult than failing a semester. And people eventually come around, building a culture of solidarity and confrontational politics in the process.”
The main result of this process so far has been one of far-reaching collective empowerment. Resolved from the beginning to win over rather than follow the more sceptical sectors of the media and ‘public opinion,’ the students have made themselves more powerful than their opponents. “[We] have learned collectively,” CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said last week, “that if we mobilize and try to block something, it’s possible to do it.” From rallies and class boycotts, in April the strike expanded to include more confrontational demonstrations and disruptive nightly marches through the centre of town. Soon afterwards, solidarity protests by groups like Mères en colère et solidaires started up in working-class districts of Montreal.
In a desperate effort to regain the initiative by representing the conflict as a criminal rather than political issue, the panicked provincial government rushed through its draconian Bill 78 to restrict the marches, discourage strike enforcement and consolidate its credentials (in advance of imminent elections) as a law-and-order administration. In the resulting escalation, however, it’s the government that has been forced to blink. On 23 May, the day after an historic 300,000 people marched through Montreal in support of the students, police kettled and then arrested more than 700 people – a jaw-dropping number by historical standards. But the mobilization has become too strong to contain, and after near-universal condemnation of the new law it is already unenforceable. Since 22 May, pro-student demonstrations have multiplied in ways and numbers the police can’t control, and drawing on Latin-American (and older charivari) traditions, pot-clanging marches have mushroomed throughout the province of Quebec. On Thursday night tense negotiations with the government again broke off without resolution, and business and tourist sectors are already alarmed by the prospect of a new wave of street protests continuing into Montreal’s popular summer festival season.
There is now a very real chance that similar mobilizations may spread further afield. Recent polls suggest that most students across Canada would support a strike against tuition increases, and momentum for more forceful action may be building in Ottawa and across Ontario; in Quebec itself they also show that an initially hesitant public is beginning to swing behind the student demands and against government repression. On 30 May, at the ritual hour of 8pm, there were scores of solidarity rallies all over Canada and the world. In London around 150 casserolistas clanged their way from Canada House to the Canadian embassy at Grosvenor Square.
If enough of us are willing to learn a few things from our friends in places like Quebec and Chile, then in the coming years such numbers may change beyond all recognition. After much hesitation the NUS recently resolved that education should be “free at all and any level,” and activists are gearing up for a massive TUC demonstration on 20 October. After a couple of memorable springs, it’s time to prepare for a momentous autumn. •
Peter Hallward teaches at the centre for research in modern European philosophy at Kingston University London, and is a member of the Education Activist Network. His book on The Will of the People is forthcoming from Verso in 2012. He is the author of the 2008 Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment [book launch LeftStreamed].
~~~
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UK aids Jewish group with taxpayer money
Hindu group says the cloudy financing of the government-led A Year of Service project is ‘unacceptable’
Press TV – June 4, 2012
The British government has granted a lavish £65,000 of taxpayers’ money to a Jewish group to fund its religious charity work as part of a government-led program while other participants were told they had to dip into their own pockets.
A Hindu group, which has now pulled out of A Year of Service program over the program’s questionable finances, said officials at the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) “stonewalled” its inquiries about the project’s finances.
A Year of Service program was launched in January to encourage all religious and non-religious groups to engage in charity work during 2012.
Different groups including, the Hindu Sewa Day charity, were told they have to fund their own initiatives as individual projects will not be funded by the government.
However, Sewa Day, which represented the Hindu community in the government-led program, said a DCLG letter to the Hindu Forum of Britain back in March shows the government has allocated £65,000 to the Jewish group Mitzvah Day to organize its work around the project.
Chairman of Sewa Day Arup Ganguly said the government claimed the funding has been made to the Jewish group for the management of the government’s project but his requests for the details of the proposed spending were snubbed raising questions about the “transparency” of A Year of Service finances.
“We are committed to the highest levels of accountability and transparency, and it’s unacceptable that the Department for Communities and Local Government isn’t too,” Ganguly said.
“We don’t have a problem if taxpayer monies are being utilized for the benefit of all groups taking part and their underlying communities but despite asking we have been told that we will not receive any detailed answers. This is unacceptable,” he added.
Madeleine Albright and Iraq Genocide Memorial Day
By Felicity Arbuthnot | Palestine Chronicle | May 18, 2012
‘Get some new lawyers.’ — 1999: Then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on his assertion that the bombing of Balkan States was illegal under international law.
In this sixteenth anniversary year of Madeleine Albright stating her endorsement of half a million child sacrifices at the altar of the UN Embargo on Iraq as a “price worth it”, this silent holocaust is to be commemorated annually.
In New Haven, Ct., On 12th May, marking the day of Albright’s infamous broadcast, a banner was unfurled and a minute’s silence held as the Middle East Crisis Committee, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CT), the Tree of Life Education Fund and We Refuse to be Enemies, inaugurated the first Iraq Genocide Memorial Day.
Stanley Heller, Chair of the Middle East Crisis Committee commented: “This horrific loss of life was ignored for six years until the US Ambassador to the UN appeared on ’60 Minutes’ and admitted the deaths of half a million children … We in the Middle East Crisis Committee call for May 12th to be marked as Iraq Genocide Memorial Day.”
Iraq’s children of course, continued to die at an average of six thousand a month until the illegal 2003 invasion wrought further apocalyptic disaster. Currently many hospitals are assessed as even more woeful than under the embargo, thus they continue to die in a near forgotten tragedy of UN-US-UK making. Soaring cancers and birth deformities linked to weapons used in the 1991 bombings, twelve years of subsequent bombings, 2003 and the following years have exacerbated and compounded a tragedy of enormity.
As others accused of crimes against humanity and the peace end up at the International Criminal Court (but so far, only if black or Eastern European, it seems) Albright gathers a bizarre collection of “humanitarian” awards.
One of the strangest is surely the Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee, initiated by Albert Einstein which: “responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people survive and rebuild their lives (offering) lifesaving care and life-changing assistance …” Endorsing infanticide hardly falls within the IRC’s lofty stated aspirations.
Two years after her statement on disposable children, Albright, now having abandoned further tarnishing the United Nations fine founding aspirations, to become US Secretary of State, declared (February 1998) : “Iraq is a long way from (here), but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”
A year later, the 1999 razing of much of the Balkans became known as “Madeleine’s war.” The largely unrecognized nation of Kosova, carved from that decimation is now rated one of the most corrupt and lawless countries in the region and high in world ranking, according to December 2011 findings by Transparency International.
Talking after the virtual destruction of Iraq as a nation state, it’s records, government institutions bombed, looted, stolen, she told Jim Lehrer in September 2003: “ … I think we actually … kept him (Saddam Hussein) in a strategic box. We bombed very much if you remember all the maps, always in terms of North and South — covers a great portion of Iraq. I think we had him in the box.” No mention that both the bombing and the “box” were comprehensively illegal.
As ever, the majority of “bombed” victims were Iraq’s children for whom her contempt was seemingly boundless: small rural shepherds and goat herders tending the family flocks on the vast flat tundra, with no place to hide.
One politician with whom she had sparred did take a stand in vast contrast. Robin Cook, Britain’s Foreign Secretary resigned in protest two days before the invasion. His resignation speech in Parliament on 18th March 2003 was a searing indictment of stark double standards on dealing with Iraq. Deliberate selective perception which could now equally apply to threats to Iran:
“I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but twelve years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted”, he began.
“Yet it is more than thirty years since (UN) Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
“We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply.”
He talked of: “ … the strong sense of injustice throughout the Muslim world at what it sees as one rule for the allies of the US and another rule for the rest.”
Britain’s credibility was not: “helped by the appearance that our partners in Washington are less interested in disarmament than they are in regime change in Iraq.
“That explains why any evidence that inspections may be showing progress is greeted in Washington not with satisfaction but with consternation: it reduces the case for war.
And as Iran now, he pleaded that: “Inspections be given a chance (that the UK was) “being pushed too quickly into conflict by a US Administration with an agenda of its own.
He asked for the halt of: “commitment of troops in a war that has neither international agreement nor domestic support” and ended: “I intend to join those tomorrow night who will vote against military action. It is for that reason alone, and with a heavy heart, that I resign from the government.”
On the first anniversary of the invasion he stated in Parliament: “It seems only too likely that the judgment of history may be that the invasion of Iraq has been the biggest blunder in British foreign and security policy in the half century since Suez. “In truth we would have made more progress in rolling back support for terrorism if we had brought peace to Palestine rather than war to Iraq.”
Robin Cook died of a heart complication whilst hill walking on remote Ben Stack in Scotland, coincidentally within a swathe of land owned by the Duke of Westminster, a Major General and at the time Assistant Chief of Defence Staff, who visited British held Basra a number of times after the invasion.
His death was on the 6th August, 2005, Hiroshima Day and the fifteenth anniversary of the imposition of the all denying embargo on Iraq. A price Robin Cook had clearly not thought “worth it.”
It has to be hoped that Iraq Genocide Memorial Day spreads worldwide both in memory of those abandoned by the inspiring words committed to in the UN Charter, the numerous hidden casualties, dead and alive – and as a reminder that for a great swathe of the world, mortifyingly, it is the West which appears to be increasingly despotic.
– Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger’s Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.)
Study: CEO pay now 200 times more than a worker
Press TV – May 3, 2012
Compensation for chief executives at American companies grew 15 percent in 2011 after a 28 percent rise in 2010, part of a larger trend that has seen CEO pay skyrocket over the last three decades. Workers, on the other hand, have been left behind.
Since 1978, CEO pay at American firms has risen 725 percent, more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the same time period, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute:
From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.
In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, EPI found. The pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses – as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company’s stock price plummets and jobs are cut.
As a result, American income inequality has skyrocketed, growing worse than it is in countries like Pakistan and Ivory Coast. Wealth inequality is worse than it was even in Ancient Rome. And, as pay skyrockets and tax rates fall for the richest Americans, the rising inequality has left the bottom 95 percent of Americans saddled with more debt than ever before. – thinkprogress.org
Workers’ wages aren’t tied to productivity either. Despite substantial gains in productivity since the 1970s, worker pay has remained flat. According to Labor Department data cited by the Huffington Post, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011. – thinkprogress.org
Working and middle-class Americans have seen their debt balloon since the 1980s. Today, Americans owe some $704 billion in credit card debt, and more than that in both auto loans and student borrowing. CNN
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Robert Samuelson Shows that the Post Has no Fact Checkers on Its Opinion Pages
By Dean Baker | Beat the Press | April 8, 2012
Social Security and Medicare are hugely important for the security of the non-rich population of the United States. For this reason, Robert Samuelson and the Washington Post hate them.
As we know, this is a question of basic political philosophy. In the view of Samuelson and the Post, a dollar that it is in the pocket of low or middle class people is a dollar that could be in the pocket of the rich. And Medicare and Social Security are keeping many dollars in the pockets of low and middle class people.
Today’s column by Robert Samuelson tries to tell us that Franklin Roosevelt would be appalled by the current state of the Social Security program. Of course, he produces not a single iota of evidence to support this position, although it is very clear that Samuelson doesn’t like Social Security.
Samuelson begins by telling us that:
“It [Social Security] has become what was then called ‘the dole’ and is now known as ‘welfare.’ This forgotten history clarifies why America’s budget problems are so intractable.”
He later adds:
“Millions of Americans believe (falsely) that their payroll taxes have been segregated to pay for their benefits and that, therefore, they ‘earned’ these benefits. To reduce them would be to take something that is rightfully theirs.”
Of course Samuelson is 100 percent wrong here. Payroll taxes have been segregated. That is the point of the Social Security trust fund and the Social Security trustees report. These institutions would make no sense if the funds were not segregated.
Samuelson is welcome to not like the way in which the funds were segregated, in the same way that I don’t like the Yankees, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Yankees have a very good baseball team. Since its beginnings, the government has maintained a separate Social Security account. Under the law, no money can be paid out in Social Security benefits unless the Trust Fund has the money to pay for them.
In this sense, the funds are absolutely segregated. Samuelson doesn’t like this, but why should any of the rest of us care? The rest of the piece shows the same dishonesty and lack of respect for facts.
Samuelson later tells readers:
“But now, demographics are unfriendly. In 1960, there were five workers per recipient; today, there are three, and by 2025 the ratio will approach two. Roosevelt’s fear has materialized. Paying all benefits requires higher taxes, cuts in other programs or large deficits.”
Okay, let’s think about this for a minute. We went from five workers per retiree in the 1960s to roughly three workers for each retiree in the 90s. This ratio is projected to fall to roughly two workers per retiree by 2030 (not 2025, as readers of the Trustees report know).
On average we were much richer in the 90s than in the sixties, in spite of the fall in the ratio of workers to retirees. The same will be true in 2030, even assuming that we see the projected decline in the ratio of workers to retirees.
A small fact that Samuelson never mentions in this piece is that the Congressional Budget Office projects the program to be fully funded through 2038, with no changes whatsoever (i.e. no new taxes, contra Samuelson). If we want to make the program fully solvent for the rest of the century, a tax increase that is equal to 5 percent of projected wage growth over the next three decades should be roughly sufficient to do the trick. Are you scared yet?
There is an issue that most workers have not shared in the economy’s growth over the last three decades. This is indeed a problem. If recent trends in inequality persist then any increase in Social Security taxes will be a burden, but the problem here are the policies that have brought about this upward redistribution of income, not Social Security.
Then Samuelson gives us his coup de grace:
“Although new recipients have paid payroll taxes higher and longer than their predecessors, their benefits still exceed taxes paid even assuming (again, fictitiously) that they had been invested. A two-earner couple with average wages retiring in 2010 would receive lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits worth $906,000 compared with taxes of $704,000, estimate Steuerle and Rennane.”
Okay, this is a really nice trick. Remember we were talking about Social Security? Note that Samuelson refers to “lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits.” It wasn’t an accident that he brought Medicare into this discussion. That is because Steuerle and Rennane’s calculations show that this average earning couple would get back less in Social Security benefits than what they paid in taxes. That would not fit well with Samuelson’s story, so he brings in Medicare (remember this is the Washington Post).
And, the high cost of Medicare benefits is not due to their great generosity. The high cost is due to the fact that we pay our doctors, our drug companies, and our medical equipment suppliers way more than do people in any other country, and we have no better outcomes. If our per person costs for health care were comparable to costs in Germany, Canada, the UK or any other wealthy country, then workers would be paying far more for their Medicare benefits than the cost of what they are getting in care.
The story here is that Samuelson wants to punish ordinary workers for the fact that we pay doctors and the other big winners in this story too much. That may not make sense, but they don’t call this paper “Fox on 15th Street” for nothing.
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Leading Palestinians boycott UN head Ban Ki-moon in Gaza as rebuffed prisoners’ families greet him with shoes
By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | February 2, 2012
Leading Palestinian figures including prominent human rights advocates Dr. Eyad Sarraj, and Raji Sourani have boycotted a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Gaza today over the latter’s refusal to meet with the families of Palestinian prisoners.
Meanwhile Palestinians greeted Ban with shoes, beating them on his car as he went by.
In an open letter explaining their decision to boycott the scheduled meeting, the civil society figures explained that they had “made intensive efforts to ensure that representatives of families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails would be part of the delegation that would meet with the Secretary-General.”
But after being rebuffed by Ban, the leaders wrote, “we have regrettably decided to boycott the scheduled meeting with the Secretary-General.”
They added, “We express our strong dissatisfaction towards the Secretary-General’s position, especially as he repeatedly met with the family of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.”
Highlighting the dire conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners, Amnesty International today issued an urgent action alert regarding Khader Adnan, who has been on hunger strike for 49 days continuously since he was detained by Israel on 17 December. He has been held since then without any charge or trial.
This is not the first time Ban operates double standards towards Palestinians, in favor of Israel. Ban has previously given legitimacy to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, even though UN bodies have declared it illegal.
A short time ago, Ban, who is delivering a keynote speech at Israel’s notorious Herzliya conference of military and political leaders, thanked Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak – the architect of the 2008-2009 war on Gaza – for his “generosity” towards Gaza:
@HerzliyaConf
Herzliya Conference #UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki Moon at #HerzliyaConf: “I appreciate Ehud Barak’s generosity towards the #Gaza Population. I ask you for more”
Feb 02 via web Favorite Retweet Reply
The full letter and list of signatories is below.
Meeting of United Nations Secretary-General in Gaza Boycotted
At this time, we were supposed to meet with the United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who is visiting Gaza today. We were also supposed to deliver to him an open letter expressing our demands and expectations from him as a Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Over the past two days, we have made intensive efforts to ensure that representatives of families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails would be part of the delegation that would meet with the Secretary-General.
However, during the preparatory meeting we conducted, with the participation of representatives of families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, we received an unjustified negative response indicating that the Secretary-General refused to meet with representatives of families of prisoners.
Therefore, we have regrettably decided to boycott the scheduled meeting with the Secretary-General.
We express our strong dissatisfaction towards the Secretary-General’s position, especially as he repeatedly met with the family of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
The suffering has not limits, and as the Secretary-General recognized the suffering the Shalit’s family, we expect him to demonstrate concern with the suffering of more than five thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
We will present to you the open letter that we were supposed to deliver to the Secretary-General.
Signatories:
Eyad Sarraj
Chairman of Gaza Community Mental Health Program
Raji Sourani
Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Rawis Shawa
Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
Mohsen Abu Ramadan
Chairman of the Board of Palestinian NGOs Network – Gaza
Ali Abu Shahla
Businessman
Faisal Shawa
Member of the Board of Bank of Palestine
Sharhabil Zaim
Lawyer
Hamdi Shaqqura
Deputy Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for Program Affairs
Jamal Khudari
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic University of Gaza
February 02, 2012
Open Letter to United Nations Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
Dear Mr. Ban,
We would like to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank you for returning to the Gaza Strip. It is essential that you see the reality of life in Gaza – and the reality of the longstanding illegal closure – first hand. It is equally essential that you meet the victims of human rights violations, those individuals who look to you for support and protection. In doing so, it is important to note that your previous visits to the Gaza Strip raised high hopes and expectations among the civilian population. To-date, even the most limited of hopes have not been met, generating feelings of frustration and isolation.
As representatives of civil society and a variety of organizations and public figures dedicated to the promotion of human rights and the rule of law, we must take this opportunity to raise a number of issues occurring during your tenure as Secretary-General which have demonstrated a disregard for the fundamental principles of international law.
It is with regret that we express the belief that, in the view of Palestinian civil society, these actions have brought shame upon the United Nations.
The United Nations was founded on the desire to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, to “reaffirm faith in human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person”, and “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.” The UN is an Organization on which millions of individuals throughout the world – including the 1.7 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip – depend, and which countless others trust to uphold international law and to protect human rights: to act in the best interests of individuals. The legitimacy of the UN is dependent on international law. Any action which is contrary to the purpose of the law undermines the legitimacy, the credibility and the effectiveness of the Organization as a whole.
As Secretary-General you are popularly recognized as the ‘guardian of international law’. As such, it is your duty to uphold and promote the rule of law, and to act in the best interests of the individual. Article 100(2) of the UN Charter prohibits Member States from seeking to influence the Secretary-General. This article guarantees to weaker nations and peoples that they will be treated fairly and equally. If this provision is to have any true meaning, it is equally important that, in all circumstances, the Secretary-General treat weaker nations and peoples on the basis of fairness and equality, and not prioritize the interests of the more powerful states. The Secretary-General is required to be neutral and impartial; to act towards the furtherance of the UN Charter and the principles of international law on which it is based.
We firmly believe that it is not the role of the Secretary-General to be ‘politically correct’, but rather to firmly ground all actions in international law – to uphold the principles and purposes of the United Nations, and the principle of universal, fundamental, human rights – no matter what the perceived political difficulties. Unfortunately, with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict you have repeatedly acted, not to uphold international law and the best interests of victims, but in a manner which can only be described as subservient to the will of powerful States.
For example, in response to serious allegations regarding the perpetration of widespread international crimes during Israel’s 27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip (Operation Cast Lead) – as documented by numerous UN mandated bodies – you have failed to steadfastly pursue accountability, despite the fact that many of the attacks potentially amounting to international crimes were directed against UN installations, and resulted in the death or injury of UN staff members. In response to the UN Board of Inquiry’s recommendations, which called for investigation into incidents “involving death or injury to UNRWA personnel … and/or physical damage to UNRWA premises that were not included in the Board’s Terms of Reference” and for an investigation into the wider allegations of international humanitarian law violations throughout the course of Israel’s military offensive, you unambiguously stated that “I do not plan any further inquiry.” Such action is simply inconsistent with both the mandate of your office, and a respect for the clear requirements of international law.
Your decision to accept compensation from the Israeli authorities, taken in conjunction with a refusal to pursue criminal accountability – despite the clear recommendations of numerous UN mandated bodies and international human rights organizations – also sends a dangerous message of indifference, both with respect to the lives and well-being of UN staff and the principles of international law. It sends the message that Israel is beyond the reach of accountability. It is noted that your predecessor, Mr. Kofi Anan, stated on the day after the entry into force of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court that: “[t]here must be no relenting in the fight against impunity.” This surely, must be a guiding principle of the United Nations.
Similarly, the continued involvement of the Secretary-General in the Quartet not only involves a disregard for the requirements of international law, but also raises question regarding potential complicity in such violations. Indeed, it is our belief that the role of the Quartet has contributed to the ‘institutionalization’ of the closure of Gaza – inter alia, through acceptance of the so-called ‘easing’ – in effect legitimizing the collective punishment of 1.7 million civilians.
In its current form this closure has now been in place for over four and a half years, and – as documented by numerous UN agencies – has resulted, inter alia, in the systematic violation of human rights, the de-development of the Gaza Strip, and the creation of a state of dependency. The closure is an unequivocal example of collective punishment – ‘economic warfare’ in the language of Israel’s Military Advocate General – and violates, amongst other provisions, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is noted that, under the terms of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, Israel agreed that the crossings “will operate continuously”. The Quartet’s acceptance of the institutionalization of the closure stands in conflict with the clear requirements of international law. The Secretary-General’s continued involvement in the Quartet under such a situation quite simply defies belief.
The Quartet’s decision to impose economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority in the wake of free and fair elections held in January 2006 amounted to a denial of the fundamental right to self-determination. These sanctions constituted the collective punishment of a population for nothing more than the legitimate expression of democracy. As you can see, the consequences for the human rights situation have been nothing short of disastrous. The UN should have no part in such activity.
Recent developments in the UNRWA operations and presence in the Gaza Strip raise questions about the neutrality and potential political bias of the organization. The former UNRWA Commissioner-General, Karen Abu Zayd, and former UNRWA General Director, John Ging, had their main office in the Gaza Strip and established working contacts with the local government in order to provide the best humanitarian services possible. The current Commissioner-General, Filippo Grandi, however, moved his office to Jerusalem. Additionally, Mr. Grandi and the Acting Director of UNWRWA in Gaza, Christer Nordahl, have cut the existing ties with the government in Gaza. These two factors indicate a politicization of UNRWA’s role, and one which cannot assist in the fulfilment of their vital humanitarian mission.
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight the situation of Gazan prisoners detained in Israel. For over 5 years these prisoners have been denied family visitation rights, as well as being subject to treatment which in many instances amounts to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. It is imperative that you send the clear message that these prisoners are entitled to the equal protection of universal human rights, and that the world will advocate on their behalf. We note that these prisoners have been subject to illegal collective punishment, enacted in response to the detention of Corporal Gilad Shalit. It is essential that you meet with these prisoners’ representatives and family, just as you met with those of Corporal Shalit, underlining the universality of human rights.
We remain committed to the principles of universal human rights, and the rule of law, and express our willingness to assist in any way possible in the pursuit of these goals.
We truly hope that this visit to the Gaza gives you the necessary incentive to stand firm in the quest to uphold the rule of international law. The collective punishment that is Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip is an unambiguous violation of international law, and a stain on the international community, and in particular the Quartet. It is time for change.
Yours sincerely,
The undersigned;
Eyad Sarraj
Chairman of Gaza Community Mental Health Program
Raji Sourani
Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Rawis Shawa
Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
Mohsen Abu Ramadan
Chairman of the Board of Palestinian NGOs Network – Gaza
Ali Abu Shahla
Businessman
Faisal Shawa
Member of the Board of Bank of Palestine
Sharhabil Zaim
Lawyer
Hamdi Shaqqura
Deputy Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for Program Affairs
Jamal Khudari
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic University of Gaza
A Christmas Message From America’s Rich
As if we expected anything else from psychopaths
By A. J. Floyd | The Internet Post | December 24, 2011
It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse. They’ve decided to speak out.
True, they’re doing it from behind the rope line, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.
But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.
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Book Summary
The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
Lies Are Unbekoming | January 20, 2026
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
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