Let Alvaro Stay in Canada

The following comment was inspired by a petition posted at the Change.org site. A young man, Alvaro Orozco, fled his home in Nicaragua when he was 12 years old to escape the beatings from his father. His father was beating Alvaro for a simple reason: the boy was gay. He came to Canada where he has become a very accomplished artist, as well as a gay activist. In 2007 his refugee claim was denied when it was declared that Orozco did not look "gay enough" (the adjudicator was in Calgary, conducting the interview via video conference).

You can read the details about the case and sign the petition here, but please read my comment below.

I would like to call on Minister Kenney to immediately rule in favour of the Humanitarian and Compassionate application made by Alvaro Orozco. The fact that he potentially faces death by the hands of his own father in Nicaragua is only compounded by the grossly insensitive treatment that he received by a government official who, interviewing him via a television screen, rejected his application on the bases that Orozco did not, according to the adjudicator, look "gay enough" to fulfill the requirements for a Calgarian's assessment. The fact that Alvaro Orozco had been working extensively in the gay community and had left his native Nicaragua to escape severe physical abhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifuse from his father who had threatened to kill "any child of his that was homosexual" was apparently not proof enough.

It is illegal, in Canada, to discriminate against someone on the basis of sexuality, and that is precisely what has been done here, but in such a perverted manner, it is mind boggling. Someone has come to this country seeking our help, seeking safety from persecution, and a Canadian official has cavalierly judged them based on their looks, declaring their sexuality to be not what they declare it to be simply because of the adjudicator's prejudices and preconceptions. This is something that must be redressed as quickly as possible, before Orozco is deported to Nicaragua where he faces the very real possibility of losing his life.

Minister Kenney: it's time to right this wrong before it's too late.

Orozco Arrested, May 13
Story from Gays without Borders

100 Years of International Women's Day – What's the Big Deal?

For 100 years women have been celebrating International Women's Day, a day that started before women had the right to vote in most countries, or the right of personhood.

A line from the song “Bread & Roses”, with words by James Oppenheim, which was sung at the now famous 1912 strike against the American Woolen Company in Lawrence Massachusetts sums up the struggle of the entire “woman's movement” and all that it stands for: “The rising of the women means the rising of the race”. The line speaks an ultimate truth about humanity that is impossible to deny: when a portion of society has their rights oppressed all of society suffers, making it impossible for it to blossom into its full potential. We cannot claim to be free unless each and every one of us enjoys the same freedoms enjoyed by all, which is why the pursuit of women's rights seems so inexorably tied to the battle for all civil rights.

The rights of women are fundamental and must be guaranteed for a very simple reason: if we live in a society that is unwilling to recognize the absolute unquestionable equality of women how can we expect that same society to extend those rights and freedoms to the rest of society, to those members who have been traditionally excluded as a result of their sexuality, or even because of what they believe? A simple example of how this is glaringly true can be found in present day Uganda, where their parliament is considering a “kill the gays bill” which would make homosexuality an act punishable by death. They contend that gays are gay by choice – that someone who is living a “gay lifestyle” can simply choose to live a “straight lifestyle”. Of course, that assertion has been debunked on numerous occasions, one of which can be found in a compelling interview that Rachel Maddow conducted on her show last year. The debate over the bill has been getting coverage around the world, which has helped reveal some of the thinly repressed feelings that some people harbour about homosexuality in their community.

If homosexuality is treated as something that will send people to their deaths in Uganda, how are women treated? Is this a nation that values their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, and their grandmothers, or is it a paternalistic society that wants to have absolute control over every aspect of production, including procreation? Well, the facts speak for themselves: while there are women in positions of authority, and working in professions, just as in the West, in Uganda the “tradition” is for women to be subordinate to men. A tradition of subordination prevents the existence of equality for the simple reason that it is diametrically opposed to it by its very nature.

In the 1990's many Ugandans recognized and followed several female religious leaders who led revolts, overthrowing the paternalistic political system, and in some areas women were able to own land and fully participate in the political process, but on the whole, there was still a well defined role that women in Uganda were expected to live by, including being subordinate to their husbands. If you consider the state of women's rights in a nation like Uganda it is not difficult to imagine how or why their lawmakers could be so moved to craft legislation with the ultimate end being the execution of homosexuals. The legislation of hatred, the attempted codification of morality through the abuse of the legislative process, is merely a reflection of how that society feels about the issue of rights for anyone other than the dominant class in that society: that being the heterosexual (married) male in Uganda.

Oddly enough we seem to encounter a similar phenomenon here in North America, minus the “kill the gays bill”, yet replete with all of the institutionally entrenched denials of rights – all of the things that serve to, in one way or another, prevent the largest portion of the population from having the same opportunities as the rest of the population. It is repression, be it passive or active, it is a form of repression, and it must be ended: when women battle inequality they are fighting for all of us, be they, women, children, gays or men – or rights as individuals and our status as humans can only be fully realized when each and every one of us is treated with the equality and dignity that they deserve, regardless of their sex, age, colour. The use of contrived excuses to demarcate where one person has every right under the law while others are denied only serves to prove the desperate state that these individuals are in as they attempt to rationalize the oppression of any selected group.

The celebration of International Women's Day is an opportunity to remind the world that the struggle for equality has not yet been realized. In 1995 the International Labour Organization, an agency administered by the United Nations, estimated that women would make up at least half of the global workforce by the turn of the century. In 2008 the number of women in the workforce was estimated at 40.5%, but that does not include the number of women who work long, unpaid hours, in their homes. With around 1.2 billion women in the workforce women are responsible for upwards of 80% of the food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as more than half of the world's total food production.

At the same time, the issue of pay equity continues to be a topic that serves to actively repress women: by forcing women to work for less than the men who work beside them, or at equivalent jobs, women are forced into poverty. Poverty causes women to do desperate things in order to survive, including remaining in abusive relationships in order to maintain their means of support. Poverty also leads women into degrading situations where they are forced to sell the one commodity that they should have complete power over: their own bodies, though this is another thing that is often taken from them through the acts of violent men, seeking to subjugate women both sexually and emotionally. When someone is unable to control what happens to their own body how can they claim to be free?

On this International Women's Day let us not forget that there are still places in the world where the sexual mutilation of young girls is accepted as a routine part of daily life. Female genital mutilation, or FGM as it is referred to by the World Health Organization, is practised in many western, eastern, and north-eastern regions of Africa, as well as in some countries in Asia and the Middle East. Female genital mutilation is also practised among various immigrant communities in North America and Europe, making it something that potentially threatens a young girl that you or one of your children know. Between 100 and 140 million girls and women are estimated to have endured these barbaric procedures that have absolutely no health benefits: their only purpose is to prevent a woman from feeling pleasure during the sexual act in the warped belief that this will keep a young woman from seeking out a sexual partner before she is married. The fact that the spread of HIV/Aids amongst heterosexual couples in Africa demonstrates that it is spreading as a result of the promiscuity of married men. The “purity” of the young girls isn't the problem, the fact that there are so many men who seem incapable of thinking about anything beyond their gonads – that's a problem.

Another form of mutilation that women are enduring is called “breast ironing”, and is meant do serve a similar purpose as FGM, though not quite in the same manner. Rather than having the women mutilated to the point where she is unable to feel pleasure from having sex, breast ironing destroys the breast tissue as it is developing, scaring and disfiguring the child. The desired outcome being that the girl will not want to pursue men and, as a result, stay “pure” until marriage. The practise of this form of mutilation is mostly carried out in the nation of Cameroon, but is practised in other nations as well.

It is time for society to come to grips with the fact that women are far more than the traditional roles they have been groomed for since birth. The idea that a young girl must have a portion of her anatomy mutilated because of how a man might react to her shifts the responsibility of our actions away from the perpetrator of the aggressive act onto the individuals being victimized. As long as we continue to view women as the “weaker” or “fairer” sex we continue to subjugate them in our minds, weakening them before even engaging them in a dialogue. How can we advance as a society if our very mode of thought prevents us from viewing women as equals to men? Is that equality possible when our language serves to weaken them, implying that they need the strong hand of a man to aid them in their times of trouble?

After the mutilation of women's bodies in order to control their sexual lives and sexuality comes the recent attempts in the United States by the GOP at completely controlling every aspect of women's reproductive rights, down to their ability to control whether or not they will be able to receive counselling for family planning through one of the most trusted organizations in existence. Planned Parenthood has come under the same type of attack in the Congress of the United States that resulted in the defunding of ACORN, an organization that was wrongfully accused of wrongdoing through a “sting operation” that turned out to be less of a “sting” and more of an “operation”, being sponsored by a neo-conservative entity on the Blogesphere who likens himself to a journalist (no link is provided to the ACORN videos for the simple reason that I refuse to direct attention to that individual; it is easy enough to find if you are interested).

The GOP attacks on women and their essential rights, unlike the attacks on ACORN, seem to be driven by their desperate attempt at discrediting anything and everything that President Obama stands for and what his administration represents. The 112th Congress of the United States consists of a total of 541 elected officials from 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia, divided into the 100 member Senate and the 435 member House of Representatives, which has 6 non-voting delegates. Of these 541 elected officials only 88 are women. With this disparity of representation it is hardly a surprise that the agenda of the GOP has been allowed to become one aimed at overtly oppressing the rights of women, by denying them access to health care and services that are uniquely designed for their particular health issues.

Contrary to the myths being perpetuated by the noise machine of the right wing, Planned Parenthood does much more than merely providing for women's preventative health care than anything else, providing a wide variety of services, including mammograms and screenings for cervical cancer as well as numerous other services making it one of the most trusted health care providers in America. At least one in five women has used Planned Parenthood once in their lives as a means of maintaining their health, and the majority of the work done by Planned Parenthood is aimed at preventative health care, working towards the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. If the GOP, which claims to be “pro-life” is really as anti-abortion as they say they are, what they should be doing is increasing the funding to an organization like Planned Parenthood for the simple reason that they actually prevent the overall number of abortions by providing women with choices before they become pregnant.

The myth is that Planned Parenthood uses abortion as a form of birth control. This is an ugly, obscene fallacy that is being used by those on the right to hack away at the funding of women's health. This is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt at placing another element of control over the reproductive cycle, from conception through to the end. It goes hand in hand with the attempts, by some legislators, to redefine the access that women have to abortions in certain instances so that victims of incest or date-rape would not be forced to carry any children resulting from these brutal acts to term.

No woman should be forced to make that terrible choice, but it is their choice to make, guaranteed under the law. The Republicans have no right to act as the “moral guardians” when they were not given a mandate for this act. The 2010 election were about jobs, not reproductive rights; it's time to get the agenda back on course and stop trying to oppress women just because that's the traditional role of the GOP.

There can be no denial, not then, nor now: “The rising of the women means the rising of the race”. One hundred years after it began International Women's Day is as important a symbol for women across this planet as it was when it was first started. For women living in risk of mutilation, at risk of contracting HIV/Aids from husbands or boyfriends who view them as sexually inferior, believing that promiscuity is acceptable for males, for women who work for less than men: International Women's Day is a symbol of hope that must never be forgotten until every right has been won. It is true that after 100 years much has changed, for the better, but there is so much more that needs to be done; regardless of the gains that may have been made, the struggle has not ended ... and the battle has been joined.

In Honour of International Women's Day

March 8 is the day we celebrate International Women’s Day, a day to honour and acknowledge the importance of the women in our lives and to reflect on the importance of those who, thanks to their selfless contributions, have made the world a much better place in which to live. This year the celebration falls on the first day of the work week, but that does not confer a day off for all of the working women of the world, it merely provides the day upon which the occasion is to be observed; alas, International Women’s Day does not – as of yet – command the same level of celebratory spirit as Thanksgiving Day or Memorial Day, though it is surely at least as important, particularly when you consider the significance of what is being celebrated.

If the importance of an event is tied to its historical background and what it commemorates then International Women’s Day should be held as one of the major observances on the calendar; it is a day that celebrates only a small sample of what women have strived to accomplish since its inception in the last century in their quest to preserve the species which could not exist without the pains of their labours. It is only through the anguish of women’s labour and the pains that they have endured throughout the ages that has allowed for the development of our modern society and continues to allow for the very existence of our lives today.
Without the struggles that women have endured, often at the risk of their very lives, we would be living in a society where civil rights was far from being the fulfilled dream that it has become in many parts of the world, and the struggle continues. Without the struggles of women, without the constant vigil that they keep at the eternal flame of hope for generations yet unborn, the chance of our civilization escaping the turmoil that has become its constant threat would be, at best, minimal. Women fight for civil and human rights for the simple reason that they understand that true equality only exists when everyone is treated with dignity and respect and are truly equal: anything less is the equivalent to the continued enslavement of all humanity, regardless of race, colour or creed. Without full equality for all men and women, without ensuring that all peoples are provided the opportunity to be self-determinate in the selection of who they shall be governed by, and without the right to access quality health care and education, the work of women and the symbol of what International Women’s Day is all about will continue to stand as a beacon of hope for the future.

The day shall come when the things these brave women struggle for becomes the cause of everyman for we shall realize that their struggle is our struggle; we shall recognize that what we call women’s issues are not that, they are things that men fought for in their unions at the turn of the twentieth century, but memories of labour solidarity are often precariously short, particularly when it is in the best interest of those in power to cultivate an atmosphere of amnesia. When the labour unions fought for their right to exist and to negotiate their first contracts they had to face the ‘scabs’ and strike-breakers who were sent in by management to break their will, to drive them back to work for less than what they had been making before they became ‘organized’, but that was not acceptable. By sticking together – by struggling for their rights as exploited employees – the unionized employees of the United States and Canada won such dramatic concessions from their bosses as the ‘right’ to have a forty-hour work week, the ‘right’ to have an un-paid coffee break (sometimes two) of fifteen minutes, the ‘right’ to have an unpaid lunch of thirty minutes, and sometimes the ‘right’ to even have a pension after working for twenty-five years or more.

In tribute to International Women’s Day I could easily create a list of a number of women whom I look up to and admire for their contributions to various fields of study, the arts, politics, and life in general, but such a list would fall pathetically short of fully expressing the breadth of the respect and appreciation that I feel for a group of people that I consider to be amongst the greatest to have lived. It is a list that, were I to produce it, would include several dead notables, not the least of whom would be Rosa Parks for the role she played as a young women in the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. No list would be complete without the inclusion of such extraordinary women as Clara Schumann, George Sands, and Marie Curie.

Of course, there is no way that this tribute could end without acknowledging the most important woman in the world: she is the woman from whose life mine own began. My mother marched on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., and was active in the civil rights movement in the United States before moving to Canada in 1967, the year before I was born. Her struggles for the advancement of ‘the cause’ did not end after marriage or becoming a mother; if anything, having a child made her all the more cognizant of the need for change. After the United Nations declared 1975 the International Year of the Woman my mother was a member of a grass-roots group called ‘Women Helping Women’ that took the ‘struggle’ to the street and sought out practical solutions to the issues facing women during bleak economic times.
The times have changed, thus the struggle continues.

Hold onto the Dream

Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the now infamous 'I have a dream' speech, delivered by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington. While I was not born until 1968, both of my parents - strangers to each other in 1963 - traveled to Washington to hear Dr King speak. [As an aside, my mother traveled on a bus with my grandmother and, when they arrived in Washington D.C., from New York, my grandmother broke her ankle when she stepped off of a curb and miscalculated its height ... but, she stayed for the event.]

This post came to being as a response to an article posted by DesertPeace, on his blog. He was at the rally as well and, yes, he is my father (though I have wondered on occasion if there could be a mistake, then I see my hairline and these thoughts are immediately dismissed ... not to mention the 'duck waddle' ... there is a predisposition in our family to 'walk like ducks' ... but I digress. Suffice it to say, I have not questioned issues of paternity for a long time).

As a result of his article I posted the following reply, but I decided to turn it into a post of its own, with some minor changes.

You may see a video of the speech here (it will open in a new window).

There are many people who are convinced that the dream espoused by Dr King is dead. As dead as King himself. There may be cause to believe this; at times the United States gives one the impression that it is going to implode upon itself, finally reaching a critical mass that cannot exist for one more minute and which must destroy itself lest it destroy everything in the surrounding area. The alternative is to allow this seemingly ever-increasing organism to continue to lash out at other nations as they try to get their way in political matters. This path has led the United States, over the past eight years, to travel down a path of war against a nation that had nothing to do with attacking them, torturing political prisoners for questionable information about potential attacks that could not be verified by other sources, and a litany of other offenses that make the term 'civil rights' appear to be an umbrella phrase for the types of things that the government is going to limit or take away, all in the name of 'security' and the 'protection of freedom'.

The protection of freedom, however, can only exist when all people share the freedom. There cannot be freedom for a portion of society when another portion languishes in any form of inequality. This is as true today as it was during the time of slavery, or back when the Catholics expelled the Jews from Portugal in 1492. Freedom cannot discriminate, it must be universal in order to exist. So long as there are people in the United States who are oppressed as a result of their economic standing or because they are perceived as being lesser than the rest of the group to which they are being compared, freedom will only be an ideal to which people aspire but which is not achieved. The simple reason that this is that the nation is unable to confer the same rights and freedoms to all when it knows that this involves something more basic than any legislation could deliver or any march could confer, it requires the education of the public.

Once the population of America learns that they are EACH afforded the same rights and opportunities, guaranteed by LAW (something that you can only learn if you stay in school, which the ultra right count on not happening to those who they want to keep down), what can stop people from actively pursuing a future that does not have anything to do with the perpetuation of the stereotypes that have kept them locked into poverty since the end of the Civil War?

Image Copyright by Ben Heine
The Dream must not be allowed to die, it is far too important, far too vital, and far too essential to the future of America. The Dream must be revitalized, taken to its extreme, and it can be, if only people would stand up and demand from their elected officials the things that they asked for during the election campaign. A president will only do what they believe the people want, if the electorate seems to be turning away from the core message, what does that tell the administration? Many from the Civil Rights 'movement' voted for Barack Obama - seeing him as a direct result of the dream. Now is the time to continue with that vision; now that he is in office, continue to write to him and encourage him to maintain his focus, to not abandon his agenda and to fight for the rights of those that elected him. A silent majority is, quite frankly, useless.

Dreams can only die when the dreams are allowed to be forgotten. Just imagine what would have happened if everyone who was at that march went back home and became a genuine agent for change. Rather than just talking about 'having been there' and reminiscing about how wonderful it was they could have used the event as a rallying cry to galvanize their cause, to collectively join together - both black and white, Jew and Gentile, to create the America that was dying to be born.

After the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. the dream didn't die, the man did; the dream, however, became something of a hallowed fantasy that was more spoken of in whispers of awe rather than in the tones of something that could actually be accomplished. Even with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after the assassination of JFK, a bill that was brought to fruition with the help of a junior senator from Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy, there was not as much support as there should have been for the simple reason that the 'movement' found it difficult to separate their hatred of Lyndon Johnston and his involvement in Vietnam.

Once Martin Luther King, Jr. was out of the way the civil rights movement was right where the south wanted it; instead of having a galvanizing force to keep the blacks, whites, Jews, and other colours of the rainbow working together for a single cause there was now a myriad of agendas competing to be heard. This allowed the southern states to react to the new laws without worrying about pesky 'leftists' from the north as they were seemingly less interested in risking their lives now that their guiding light had been removed from the picture.

Perhaps that sounded cynical; good, it was supposed to sound cynical. There is nothing worse than taking something like the messages delivered by Dr King and dismissing them, saying they have not been achieved, or will not be achieved, without asking the very serious question: why not. What is the cause of the failure? Where there not enough people invested in the cause that this should not have succeeded with flying colours? Of course, the answer is that it should have been an overwhelming success; there is no reason on earth for the cause of civil rights to have been stalled in the United States, unless there is an inherently racist nature in a certain part of the nation that is resistant to the entire prospect of civil rights and liberties. In fact, one might actually begin to believe that there is a portion of America that would be perfectly happy to re-institute the old lynching laws where it was legal to hang 'colored' folks from trees if'n there was a witness to the wrong doin', especially if one of them dared to look at a white girl askance, or was uppity enough not to step off of the sidewalk when white folk were approaching from the other direction.

God forbid these colored folk learned their letters. You know what they says about 'educated Negroes', don't you? Well, actually, I can't recall, but it can't be good, can it?

Give me a break. The end of the Jim Crow laws was the best thing to happen to America since the end of the Civil War, until the rise of the Civil Rights Movement - but when that movement did not, en masse, renew itself and turn out to support the initiatives that came out - the Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act - they lost their vision, they lost their teeth, they lost their cause.

Certainly, there was great merit to the Civil Rights Movement morphing into the 'Peace' movement, and the 'Anti-War' movement - but, unfortunately, the organizers were very narrow minded in the focus and could not see the forest for the trees. They did not understand that there was a marked difference between the domestic policies of a government and their foreign policies. Was Johnson involved in an outrageous, unlawful war in Vietnam? Certainly - it was horrible and should not have been allowed to continue. However, what he was trying to do on the 'home front' was an entirely different matter and that, regardless of the war, deserved the support of those who had been fighting for the rights of others; those pieces of legislation proved to be fundamental for the future of the advancement of Civil Rights in America, regardless of whether or not 'the movement' was there to support those who created the legislative language. They simply missed the boat.

History is often a recounting of the stories telling us about lost opportunities or seemingly unique occurrences that led to a totally unlikely outcome. In the history of the Civil Rights Movement the name of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. will never be easily forgotten, but the acts of his many followers - after his death - will go down as one of the greatest losses of potential political power the United States has ever known.

It reminds me, very much, of what happened when a 'community organizer' rallied the support of grass-roots individuals, using the Internet and anything else at his disposal to create an irresistible atmosphere that countered anything his opponents could muster. People have been intent on trashing his presidency without giving him a chance to do his job, but it is always easier to judge than to allow someone the opportunity to do what they have promised. After all, before he was elected, did the previous president include the spending on the war in the numbers on the debt? No. Why? Because it looked bad; on the other hand, this guy has - but it looks bad - yes, it does, but it is truth. Now he gets blamed for it; how sad. Short memories make things like George W. Bush possible.

It also makes the passing of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. even sadder for we forget how often the dream is invoked, and then forgotten. Why forget? Pick it up and carry that dream; it encompasses all that America has not yet achieved, all that it can be, all that it should be, all the promise that has not yet been fulfilled by those words, 'We the people,' - a declaration that rings hollow if it does not represent all of America, not only a select part of the nation.

That is a tragedy from which there may be no recovery.

Edited: October 21, 2009.

The Dream Lives On: 40 After MLK

While I do not usually post articles so quickly after such a lengthy post, this is a special case as this is a special day. On this day, forty years ago, one of the greatest humans to have walked the face of the earth, the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, had his life snuffed out by the callous act of assassination; an act that, to this day, remains in the minds of many an act as unresolved as the assassination of that other icon of the 1960’s, JFK. The death of this great man came only a few short months before my birth, in August 1968, and I grew up with the collective memories of my parents and their experiences with MLK being recounted to me virtually from the day I was born.

“I have a dream,” was not something that I heard repeated as only a detached phrase, as something without meaning or context. My parents were careful to explain the importance of this “dream”; they took great pains to instil in me a respect for my fellow man, regardless of their race, religion, sex, or any other consideration. Colour blindness was something to be proud of in our house as it was evidence that we looked at the world the way it should truly be seen; looking at people the only way they should be seen, without regard for their race or religion.

The dream of Martin Luther King became something that, as I grew up, I longed for as well; longing to see a day when peoples in countries like South Africa, Chile, Israel, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States could live in true freedom, not just the surface freedoms spoken of by the talking heads that spoke for their governments. It amazed me to see, as a child, how black people in South Africa and America shared so much in common; both peoples living in a state of apartheid, though one was technically ended by Lyndon Johnson when he ended segregation and passed the Civil Rights Act.

Learning about the legacy of Martin Luther King, as a child, was something that was as normal for me as was learning about the other important things in life; the idea of how important it was to not use violence for the furtherance of one’s goal was not merely King’s message, it was the message, and yet, how much has that message been heeded? After forty years how much more is needed before that dream is realized?

Illustration © by Ben Heine

In the United States, some would say, this is the year of a dream, the year in which a woman and a black man are contending for the opportunity to contend for the highest office in the land. At the same time the very fact that I have identified one of the candidates as a black man has done a great injustice to that man, a man who is far more than an “African-American”, or anything else anyone may want to call him in an attempt to diminish what Barack Obama stands for. An article that appeared on Ben Heine’s excellent site poignantly expressed this issue in a way that far exceeds that I could hope to, so I shall direct you there (please come back!). Remember, we are more than the sum of our parts, we are more than anything that can identify us as being simply “black” or “white”, as being “Jews” or “Palestinians”; we are the culmination of all the experiences that have gone into developing our character, and it is our choice as to what that character is going to look like to the rest of the world when we are faced with adversity. Are we strong enough to follow King’s dream?

So, in the words of the Reverend King, just how far is the United States from having that “dream” of his from coming to fruition? The very fact that the remaining two candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination for presidential candidate do not fall into the classic model of the American politician would seem to be indicative of the great number of changes that have taken place over the past forty years, but it is barely a beginning. With the signing of the anti-segregationist laws during his term in office Lyndon Johnson galvanized the Southern electoral districts so far away from the Democratic Party that they barely show up on the political radar screens these days. The extreme right, the political extremists, the racists, the “Christian” right and the various other flat-earth mentalists decided that the Republican way better represented their ideals, so long as it kept “them” out of their back yards. Founded in 1973 by conservative minister Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority was born out of the hatred of anti-segregationism, having turned to the likes of Senator Jesse Helms at the beginning of the organization’s history.

More must be done.

The wisdom with which Reverend King spoke transcended his time, and indeed, it has transcended all time. The speech he delivered to so many supporters in Washington is a perfect example of the type of thinking that needs to be echoed, loudly, by today’s leaders, ideas that must never be allowed to be forgotten, and that must be put into practice around the world. Rather than creating strife by focusing on race it is time to forget the colour of the individual standing – or living – next to us. Their struggle is, truly, our struggle, regardless of the backgrounds that make one person so different from another.

“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.” (Complete speech here)

One short paragraph from a long speech, and yet it speaks volumes: whites were there with the blacks, side by side. They understood that the struggle for equality was one that was not borne alone by the black man, but a shared burden; so long as the black man was persecuted in America no one was free. No one is free.

If there is one thing that Americans love to talk about more than anything else it is “freedom” and the “price” of said freedom. They love to invoke the blood shed for their right to live in America and all that other jingoistic stuff that ignores the most essential facts regarding the history of the violation of rights that has taken place in the past and is currently taking place under the umbrella of “national security”. For the first time in American history the black man is probably marginally less maligned in the eyes of the institution for the sole reason that the post 9/11 racial profile doesn’t include anyone wearing an afro.

Given the number of individuals that have been detained, sometimes for months or even years, merely because they were travelling on a passport from a “suspect” nation, or they “looked” suspicious (read: they were wearing traditional Arab dress, were reading a Qu’ran, were praying, or conducting themselves in any number of other overtly threatening ways), it would seem that the “dream” has a long way to go before it is fully realized.

We can do more. We cannot walk alone.

New Extremist State: Israel at Work

Hate is a terrible thing; it festers in one’s spirit, leading to the commitment of dreadful acts. We are not born with hate in our hearts, nor do we gravitate to this most unnatural of human emotions, children must be taught to hate. The evidence of this is easy to see in any playground populated by pre-schoolers who have not been influenced by the political, religious or other biases of their parents. When there are other children present in the playground the children will play together, even when not having been introduced. Why is this? Why should children be capable of doing something that adults seem so incapable of accomplishing?

The reason is simple, and it is something that adults need to re-learn: while older children will become judgemental as they are introduced to the “adult” world, the innocent pre-schooler has yet to develop the ability to judge others. When does this change? When parents begin defining a child’s place in society it sets the course for the ingrained prejudices that will rule the mind of the growing child; by limiting who they are able to play with, who they are allowed to visit after school, and all of the other influences that go into the rearing of a child a child learns what is “good” and what is “bad” and establishes a demarcation zone within their mind in which all things to be hated are placed.

Having lived in neighbourhoods that have been very multi-cultural I have seen, with my own eyes, the truth of how beautiful it is to see children playing together in peace: a rainbow of colour, laughing and running around, totally absorbed in the very real business of having fun. I have also seen the obscenity of a parent physically dragging their child away from a sandbox because they shouldn’t be playing with such “dirty” children. It wasn’t difficult to understand that the parent was addressing the brown skin of the Lebanese children, and she even gave me a nasty glare as she passed me, errantly assuming that one of the “dirty” urchins in the sandbox was mine. As a response to this ignorant individual I gave her a greeting of “good afternoon” … in German … with a click of my heels and a slight bow of my head. Somehow it seemed appropriate to bestow as much of a Nazi salute as I would give, without raising my arm.

Hatred is what allowed the Nazis to thrive, survive, and drive across the continent, killing with impunity. Their hatred against anyone who did not fit into their paradigm of the “master race” was fanatical beyond comprehension, leading to the attempted extermination of not only the Jews but the Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and scores of others who fell into the category of “unter menschen”. The “sub-humans”, individuals that the Nazis deemed unworthy to share the world with, were gathered up, shipped off and slaughtered. Their rights were taken away, subjugated as slave labour they fed the war machine the weapons used to kill other innocent lives until their usefulness wore out due to sickness, exhaustion or through the mere malice of the concentration camp guards who killed with impunity.

While the Holocaust ended in 1945 the lessons learned by the horrors of the hatred perpetrated by Hitler and his henchmen have not been passed down through the generations of surviving Jews into the land that was supposedly created as a haven from another holocaust. According to an article that DesertPeace posted there is a law in the State of Israel making it a criminal offence to call any act of the Israeli government a “Nazi act” of aggression. The most recent outcry coming from the extermination of an entire Palestinian family while they slept in the middle of the night on the 15th of February. Three children and their mother died when the Israeli Air Force used precision munitions to assassinate their father, Ayman Al Fayeq, who was suspected in “acts of terror”.

I was born of Jewish parents and am aware that at anytime I can travel to Israel and claim the “right of return”, but I have not done this nor do I plan to do so: in fact, until my brother, Ishmael ibn Ibrahim is granted the same “right of return”, I shall not set foot in the land that has become a model of Zionist Fascism. I am not constrained by the laws of Israel so I shall say what DesertPeace cannot: the actions of the Israeli government are no better than those of the Third Reich. They use terror tactics to control weaker individuals, they control every avenue of economic advancement of people living within the land who are not Jewish, often preventing them from earning a living by closing the checkpoints that Palestinians must pass through in order to travel from their homes to their places of employments, and they impose punishments upon people without having had the benefit of a trial.

Ayman Al Fayeq and his entire family were slaughtered by the IAF in the middle of the night. How can this possibly be acceptable? Even if Al Fayeq was a terrorist, what could his children have done to warrant being immolated by a bomb in the dark of night? The Nazis did similar things to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Lodz Ghetto, through the travelling Einsatzgruppen, and other terror forces that made the Third Reich notorious for their inhuman treatment of non-Aryans. How is this different from what the Zionist Fascists are doing in Israel?

The land was given to us by God. We cannot divide the land. We must protect Israel. It is very easy to fall upon the old scriptures that promise the land to the children of Israel, forgetting that they immediately fell into disobedience and disobeyed the instructions that the Lord provided for the people before they took possession of the land. Inconvenient, and yet … what does it mean? First, you cannot go back in time and erase the mistakes of two thousand years with genocide today. The argument about not dividing the land that God has given as an inheritance hinges upon the first issue: since this present state of Israel is NOT that which was given to the children of Israel, there is no injunction against giving land to the Palestinians, though I still contend that living together is the best solution.

Defending the land must be proportional to the force being used by the attacker. You do not respond to a stick with snipers, you do not fire artillery at unarmed demonstrators … unless you are in Israel. When Hezbollah launched Katyusha Rockets, weapons that do not have sophisticated navigational equipment and rarely hit their targets with full effect, Israel has regularly responded with precision bombing and artillery far beyond the proportion of the original attack, striking the neighbourhood from which the rockets were launched. Given that the IAF has munitions that are capable of striking within 9.6 metres of the designated target (standard JDAM available for the F-16, used in the slaughter of the Fayeq family) it would seem reasonable that the IAF might start resorting to the "surgical strikes" that the USAF has been employing since the development of these precision guided munitions to such great effect in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

If the Israeli government does not want to have their actions and policies likened to those of the Nazis all they have to do is start acting more like humans and less like the monsters that they have modelled themselves after; take the lessons of history and apply them now, before it is too late.

New Year’s Wishes: a Lump of Coal in your Stocking?

A Seasonal Missive from the CrazyComposer
Cartoons © by Ben Heine
A recent comment to submitted to this blog (posted here only recently due to a moderation error) asked my opinion on the content of a particular website relating to “a Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East conflict”. I have neglected to respond to the question, though the intervening time has given me a great deal to think about. Before addressing the issues raised in the website, however, there are some other things that I would like to say (well, it is my blog): The end of the year is always a time that arouses mixed feelings for me as I reflect on the things that have been accomplished, the many things that have not been done (for whatever reason), and the numerous other things that have been added to the list of things that I now want to do at some point in time. This is also the time that is used to reflect upon the events that have taken place in the world; what news has emerged as the most significant of the year, what individual(s) have had the most influence on our world … for better or worse.

Thus, the question regarding my thoughts on a website relating to Jewish/Palestinian relations seemed more than appropriate as it fit in perfectly with the seasonal reflections that my mind has been making; near existential musings, perhaps, on the state of our species and its ability to drag itself out of the mud and mire in which it is so firmly entrenched. The discussion of politics and political issues is one that can become deeply frustrating for me (quite quickly, at times, as it would seem my patience for the level of human idiocy is growing shorter and shorter with the passing of days), particularly when those involved refuse to allow themselves to see any other side of an issue merely because it represents an ideology that is foreign to their own political beliefs. This is especially apparent when it comes to the issues surrounding the “Jewish” state, also known as Israel, and the “Palestinian” question … or the “occupied territories”, or whatever other term has been used from time to time.


Let me be quite blunt about my position relating to Israel from the beginning, before even referring to the site in question and anyone else’s comments: if you are incapable of living in peace next to someone who is not of the same ethnic background, religion or political persuasion, you should move to another continent, shave all of your body hair off, cover yourself in honey and roll around in a nest of fire-ants. You should only dress in pink taffeta, and have the word “idiot loser” tattooed upon your forehead. The idea that we are unable to live next to people that are different from us, today – in the 21st century – is beyond anachronistic; it is a reflection of the most closed-minded, racist, bigoted, xenophobic idiocy that has ever inhabited this planet. If this is a description of a Jewish Israeli, too bad; if it describes a Palestinian, tough: when you point a finger at one person there are several pointing back towards you, so there are NO innocents in this conflict when people pre-judge their neighbours.

Ignorance kills; period. End of statement. While ignorance is near the top of that list, nationalism that is allowed to overrun an individual’s ability to reason is another thing that leads to death; such vehement belief systems are found within the supporters of Zionism and the fundamentalist supporters of the Palestinian movement. If this seems extreme, that is too bad; I’ve been listening to stories about the “war” going on in Israel since I was born, since the Israelis captured Jerusalem in 1968. If anyone honestly believes that this can be resolved by anything less than a fundamental shift in human behaviour. In order to promote such a change I propose a United Nations Joint Resolution: Be it resolved that all parties in Israel/Palestine shall live peacefully or they shall be deported to Albania (I hear it is lovely at this time of year … not). Any use of force or violence of any kind will result in an immediate deportation and fines against the government of no less than $1,000,000 (U.S. funds), to be paid to the families of victims/survivors.

I certainly doubt there would be too many “repeat offenders”.

The main premise of the author’s comments, from what I have gleaned from the reading, is that the peace process is doomed to failure, essentially, for the simple reason that the Zionist cause is honourable and just while the Arabs (also known as the Palestinians in this little saga) are completely untrustworthy, inherently dishonest, and predisposed to being deceptive when it comes to matters relating to negotiations.

From the outset the author has established that they do not believe that a lasting peace between the Jews and Palestinians (though he stubbornly refers to them as “Arabs” or, on rare occasions, “Palestinian Arabs” throughout the text) is not only impossible, it is “unusual, immoral, and illegal”. The only thing unusual about the author’s comments is that they so thinly veil the racism and hatred that the author possesses for the non-Jewish individuals making claims on the “Holy Land”. When reading things like “Peace process is highly unusual … illegal … immoral …” amongst many other completely meaningless straw-man arguments that are based on the acrimony aroused by generations of stubbornness making communication and reconciliation impossible.

The issue of peace in the middle-east, especially in Israel, always seems to come back to the subject of the land and the myriad issues that arise from the various parties involved. Is it possible to placate every side with one, all encompassing solution, a resolution that will satisfy the Zionist positions while also placating those of the Palestinians? Anyone that believes that it is, that the vitriol of centuries – nay, millennia – may be resolved after some discussions has allowed themselves to become enamoured by the seductive idea that “peace on earth, good will towards man” is something more than a line in a cleverly composed Christmas carol.

There truly is problem with the peace process, but unlike what the author of “We need a respite from peace” has written, it is not about what the Arabs/Palestinians bring to the table; it has everything to do with the process itself and the inherently flawed philosophy that has been invested into the very nature of the Holy Land and its relationship to Jews, Christians and Moslems. Any people proclaiming to be members of any of the aforementioned faiths who then use violence in order to advance their cause are, quite simply, hypocrites; they are anything but what they claim to be, and are certainly not representatives of the three faiths that call that piece of real estate the Holy Land.

We view the three religions as mere labels to apply to people regardless of the actions that are carried out in the names of those religions. Millions have been killed in the name of “God” (or “Allah”) while at the same time it is asserted that “Yahweh is merciful” and “God is love” and “Allah is benevolent” in classes for young believers in each faith. The problem is not that this teaching is flawed (this isn’t a polemic on the primacy of one faith over another, nor will I entertain such questions – my position should be apparent from previous posts), it lies in the fact that fundamentalism breeds fanaticism and fanaticism breeds minds that are perfectly prepared to be taken advantage of by ruthless individuals bent on promoting their own agendas, regardless of the costs in human lives.

I remember when a particularly vicious terrorist attack took place in Israel when I was a child, living in Sudbury. My parents tried to explain the situation to me as best they could, but the savagery of the situation made even their astute comments seem unable to fully explain the situation. It all boiled down to this, my father ultimately said; “how can you stop someone that is prepared to kill themselves in order to advance their cause?” It didn’t seem to matter whether or not you supported the claims of the Palestinians or disagreed with the policies of Israel; could you do so and agree with the tactics of the terrorist elements acting on behalf of the Palestinians?


No; violence does not bolster any position, it undermines the moral grounds of every argument and diminishes the legitimacy of any claim that may have existed. Violence begets violence and breeds mistrust, hatred, and a myriad of other negative things that work in opposition to true peace. More than anything else violence breaks the human spirit which then seeks something else to fill the void created by the legacy of violence.

There is only one way in which the Holy Land can experience the fruits of a genuine peace process, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the pale counterfeit that has been plaguing the region since the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. True peace will only come when the land is forgotten and people are given the priority that they deserve, the dignity that all humans are entitled too, regardless of their race, religion, or creed. When people are able to accept the differences that have driven them apart and decide that they can live beside each other in peace, there will be true peace; until then the process is an utter waste of time.

A recent example of the curse of fundamentalism has been provided through the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The subsequent suicide bombing (by the same deranged individual) left many others dead and injured. Do not forget that there are other places in the world where “peace process” is a concept arousing desperation and acts beyond anything in which any sane individual should be engaged. Can anything profitable ever come out of this sort of violence; is it not possible to imagine that there is at least one qualified individual in all of Pakistan to replace Bhutto as the leader of the PPP?

Who was responsible for this act of ultimate inhumanity? There are some that are already saying that al-Qaeda is to blame, raising the question as to who had the most to gain from this vicious act. In the end, it doesn’t really matter who had the “most” to gain from this and other despicable acts; supposed gains made through violence are rendered as worthless as lead, tainted by the blood shed for them. It is easier to see that everyone loses when violence is used: we lose our dignity as humans, we abdicate our morality, and our spirits are diminished in the process.

If there is one comment the author of “Respite” has made that truly demonstrates the futility of the argument espoused by the Zionist fundamentalists it is the following: “Peace process is highly unusual. Every other nation destroyed whatever aborigines happened to live on the land that nation chose to build a state.” What the writer of those comments forgets, as many of their predecessors have and, alas, as many of those who follow in their footsteps shall inevitably do so as well, is that this is not an intellectual exercise in the realm of theories; we are dealing with real, living people here, people that have not been eliminated through a war of conquering or a subsequent genocide (how terribly inconvenient for Israeli). The people that Israel has to contend with have been living in the land for as long as the land has been promised to the Children of Israel. Is it the fault of the Palestinians that the forefathers of the modern Israelis were incapable of obeying the commands of the Lord?

The Old Testament tells us that the Children of Israel were commanded to “cleanse” the land, before taking possession of it, which they did not do; they decided that their way was better than that of the Lord God Almighty. By deciding to follow their own devices the Children of Israel cut themselves off from the promises of the Lord, opening themselves up to the troubles that have befallen them for the past several thousand years.

What I am saying is that you cannot now decide to commit the genocide that you failed to commit when you were brought to the Promised Land. Above all else we must learn lessons from history, lest we allow ourselves the curse of repeating the mistakes and tragedies of the past. History tells us that there is indeed a tradition of the vanquished peoples of the world becoming enslaved and extinguished, but that is not something that should be exalted, it should be observed with the solemnity that hindsight allows the learned pupil to provide insight and wisdom, that those mistakes need not be repeated by future generations.

By stating that the peace process is “unusual” for the reason that vanquished peoples do not live side by side with those who defeated them is tantamount to endorsing genocide; it is a comment that demonstrates that the Zionist movement has learned nothing from the lessons of history. It demonstrates that the Zionist movement has taken nothing from the ravages of war that nearly led to the vanquishing of the Jews in the middle of the twentieth century; is this the type of history that the Jews should be trying to perpetuate against another people? Should Jews not be fighting to the death to live in peace with others, knowing the awful price that nationalism exacts when taken to extremes.

If anyone should have learned about the importance of setting aside differences in the name of being able to live together in peace it is the survivors of the Holocaust: a people that were nearly wiped off the face of the earth by the xenophobic racial purity theories espoused by the Nazis. What is the difference between the near-genocide perpetrated against the Jews (Slavs, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled, and numerous others) and the ongoing atmosphere of apartheid and attempted genocide that has been enacted against the Palestinians over countless years?


I have met survivors of the Camps, both Jew and non-Jew, and there has always been a common denominator amongst these remarkable individuals: they share a desire to see a world without war, a world where everyone can live together in peace. This is something that they would gladly give up their lives to achieve. The violence perpetrated over the “Holy Land” is the worst example of historical ignorance, of a people refusing to learn lessons that cannot afford to be explained more than once. Even little children know that there is nothing to be gained from hatred, when will the Zionists and other fundamentalists grow up and follow their lead?

Raise Your Voices!

A woman in Iran had the audacity to try and defend herself while a monster was attempting to brutally rape her. In the process of her struggle she stabbed this beast, and he died (the world mourns the passing of a violent, misogynistic reprobate who has demonstrated that the only way he can receive pleasure is at the suffering and degradation of another … such is the tragedies that we must endure to see the advancement of our species … In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen … ah … the death of a rapist … okay, I’m over it).

As a result of the tireless work of former Miss Canada, who shares the first name of the victim, this victim has been spared further victimization at the hands of Shari’a law. At the interpretation of the law, Nazanin Fatehi was condemned to death … her crime? Murder. Nazanin Afshin-Jam, the former Miss Canada, became aware of this poor woman’s plight and took up her struggle – a seemingly hopeless cause – and she managed to change the hearts of the Iranian judiciary.

This is just to prove that the struggle for human rights must never be stopped. One person DOES make a difference and when we are at that point in time when we think that we aren’t doing anything useful all we need to do is remember that signing petitions and forwarding articles to people is an important part of the process.

Nazanin Afshin-Jam collected over 300,000 signatures on her petition, and found out about this case because someone she knew heard about a woman named Nazanin and forwarded the article to her … imagine if that hadn’t happened … the execution would have taken place.

Read the CTV article here.