In recent weeks and months Lebanon has faced major political upheaval, marked by massive street demonstrations, international political intervention and a national general strike. Lebanon’s political opposition maintains an ongoing open-air demonstration in central Beirut, which commenced on December 1st, 2006, fueled by popular discontent toward the current national government.
Photos from Tadamon! Montreal.
In recent weeks and months Lebanon has faced major political upheaval, marked by massive street demonstrations, international political intervention and a national general strike. Supporters of the Lebanese opposition gather in central Beirut during the first week of the ongoing sit-in central Beirut in December 2006.
Probe launched into complaints by three detainees in Kandahar
OTTAWA–Two separate probes are underway into a complaint that up to three prisoners suffered injuries while in the custody of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, the Toronto Star has learned.
The allegation, if substantiated, could rock military morale and further undermine public support in Canada’s dangerous – and controversial – mission in Kandahar.
Questions are being asked about how as many as three unidentified men suffered injuries to their upper body while being detained by Canadian soldiers in the Kandahar region last April.
And investigators want to know why the military police officers who eventually took charge of the detainees didn’t do their own probe of the injuries.
An Israeli army patrol has returned fire at Lebanese troops after they shot at an Israeli military bulldozer near the border between the two countries.
A Lebanese army spokesman said the bulldozer, which was searching for explosive devices, had crossed into southern Lebanon but Israel has insisted it was on the Israeli side of the border.
The Lebanese army spokesman said: “An Israeli army bulldozer crossed into south Lebanon tonight. Our forces opened fire at it. It pulled back and there was a brief exchange of fire.”
The Independent: Robert Fisk:
Lebanon is a good place to find out what tosh the ‘terror’ merchants talk
So it was back to terror, terror, terror this week. The “terrorist” Hizbollah was trying to destroy the “democratically elected government” of Fouad Siniora in Lebanon. The “terrorist” Hamas government cannot rule Palestine. Iranian “terrorists” in Iraq are going to be gunned down by US troops.
My favourite line of the week came from the “security source” – just how one becomes a “security source” remains a mystery to me — who announced: “Terrorists are always looking for new ways to strike terror… There is no end of the possibilities where terrorists can try to cause terror to the public.” Well, you could have fooled me.
Time Magazine: Written by By Nicholas Blanford/Marakeh.
Lebanon. Friday, Feb. 2nd, 2007
To 17-year-old Rasha Zayoun, the small metal canister with a ribbon attached to the top looked like a toy. Her father, Mohammed, had found it while harvesting wild thyme in a field near her house in the southern Lebanese village of Marakeh, and had taken it home in his bag of herbs.
One evening four weeks ago, Rasha picked up the strange object and played with the ribbon, wondering what it was. “Then I felt a tingle of electricity,” she says. “I threw it from me and it exploded before it hit the floor.”
Ilan Pappé – The Electronic Intifada
Sur ce sujet, j’ai affirmé, il n’y a pas très longtemps, qu’Israel menait une politique de génocide dans la Bande de Gaza. J’ai beaucoup hésité avant d’utiliser ce terme très accusateur mais j’ai décidé de l’adopter.
En effet, les réponses que j’ai reçues, y compris de certains activistes des droits de l’homme, indiquaient un certain malaise quant à l’utilisation d’un tel terme.
J’ai été, pendant un moment, enclin à revoir le terme, mais j’ai recommencé à l’utiliser aujourd’hui avec encore plus de convictions : c’est la seule façon appropriée de décrire ce que fait l’armée israélienne dans la bande de Gaza.
Le 28 décembre 2006, l’organisation des Droits de l’Homme israélienne B’Tselem a publié son rapport annuel sur les atrocités israéliennes dans les territoires occupés. Les forces israéliennes ont tué l’année dernière 660 citoyens. Le nombre de Palestiniens tués par Israel a triplé l’année dernière par rapport à l’année précédente (environ 200).
Selon B’Tselem, les Israéliens ont tué 140 enfants au cours de l’année dernière. La plupart des tués l’ont été dans la Bande de Gaza, où les forces israéliennes ont démoli près de 300 maisons et tué des familles entières. Cela signifie que depuis 2000, les forces israéliennes ont tué près de 4000 Palestiniens, dont la moitié étaient des enfants et fait plus de 20.000 blessés. B’Tselem est une organisation conservatrice, et les chiffres pourraient être plus élevés. Mais il ne n’agit pas seulement d’une escalade des meurtres intentionnels, cela concerne la tendance et la stratégie.
(Lire la suite…)
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter Mackay, who recently traveled to Afghanistan, is planning a larger visit to the Middle East region, with the stated aim of promoting “peace and dialogue”. The Conservative Foreign Minister MacKay will arrive in Lebanon and Palestine in the coming days.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter MacKay, who recently traveled to Afghanistan, is planning a larger visit to the Middle East region, with the stated aim of promoting “peace and dialogue”. Conservative Party Foreign Minister MacKay will arrive in Lebanon and Palestine in the coming days.
Tadamon! Montreal issues this appeal in an effort to highlight the Conservative government’s role and position as an imperialist player in the Middle East.
Canadian intervention in the region is best illustrated by the Conservative government’s open support for Israel’s brutal assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and by Canada’s ongoing military presence in Afghanistan.
Despite common mythology, Canadian policy has seldom been “balanced” or “neutral” concerning the Middle East. Successive Canadian governments have unconditionally supported Israel. History doesn’t substantiate Canada’s supposed role as the “neutral one”.
Canada’s position must be subject to critique in its entirety and in the context of broader Western intervention in the Middle East. The Canadian government openly supports the ongoing occupation of Iraq, despite world opinion having turned against U.S. policy. Canada was the first country in the world to withdraw all financial aid to the Palestinian people after the democratic election of Hamas in the Occupied Territories, sending millions of Palestinians into devastating poverty.
Within the context of Canadian policy in the region, Tadamon! calls on people in Montreal, Canada and in the Middle East to express their opposition to Canadian intervention in the Middle East. (Lire la suite…)
Corey Robin – London Review of Books
Last year marked the centenary of Hannah Arendt’s birth. From Slovenia to Waco, conferences, readings and exhibitions were convened in her honour. This month, Schocken Books is issuing a new collection of her writings, its fifth publication of her work in four years. Penguin has reissued On Revolution, Eichmann in Jerusalem and Between Past and Future. And Yale has inaugurated a new series, ‘Why X Matters’, with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s Why Arendt Matters.
Arendt would undoubtedly have been pleased by all this. She didn’t like attention, but she did love birthdays. Birth meant the arrival of a new being who would, or could, say and do things no one had said or done before. The appearance of such a being, she thought, might move others to speak and act in new ways as well. There was always a certain pathos to this notion. Whatever its promise, birth is a fact of nature. And nature, Arendt insisted, is the sphere not of novelty or freedom but of repetition and routine.
Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that the centenary of Arendt’s birth should have devolved into a recitation of the familiar. Once a week, it seems, some pundit will trot out her theory of totalitarianism, dutifully extending it, as her followers did during the Cold War, to America’s enemies: al-Qaida, Saddam, Iran. Arendt’s academic chorus continues to swell, sounding the most elusive notes of her least political texts while ignoring her prescient remarks about Zionism and imperialism. Academic careers are built on interpretations of her work, and careerism, as Arendt noted in her book on Eichmann, is seldom conducive to thinking.
