The National-U.S. Arab Chamber of Commerce (NUSACC) released a report March 15 saying that U.S. merchandise exports to the Arab world are expected to increase sharply this year, “shattering” the record set in 2006.
Montreal, 15 April 2007 — A girls’ team is being barred from competing in a Tae Kwon Do tournament taking place in Longueuil, Quebec today. The CCMM Ultimate Tae-kwon-do Club showed up at the annual Quebec regional Raymond Mourad Championship today only to be told that the girls’ team could not participate, on the grounds that their heads are covered.
BEIRUT: Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN special representative for children and armed conflict, wrapped up her visit to Lebanon on Thursday after three days of meeting with officials and private groups to address the current situation of children in the country and the continuing effects of last summer’s war with Israel on their lives.
During her three days in Lebanon, Coomaraswamy met with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Social Affairs Minister Nayla Mouawad, Justice Minister Charles Rizk and MP Mohammad Raad of Hizbullah.
I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this – allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world – have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can’t be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.
BEIRUT: Women from across the Middle East wrapped up a four-day Nationality Campaign conference on Thursday aimed at pressuring their governments to enable women to exercise equal citizenship and nationality rights. Participants in the event, held at the Radisson Hotel, pledged to continue lobbying their governments for their rights in accordance with their respective constitutions and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
“We are asking for full and equal rights in citizenship among women in the Middle East, to allow them to pass on their nationality to their non-native husbands and children,” declared Lina Abu Habib, regional coordinator of the “My Nationality: A right for me and my family” campaign.
Ali Fayyad, Director of the Studies and Documentation Center, Lebanon. August 2006
After the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in April 2006, Hezbollah felt compelled to join the government to ensure a balance between the various Lebanese forces and protect Lebanon’s vulnerable position in the regional equation. This paper by the head of Hezbollah’s main think tank, asserts that the movement is determined to abide by Lebanon’s democratic political system based on the rule of consensus, and to support a strong central state, a transformation in the movement’s understanding of the requirements of the Lebanese domestic balance and its appreciation that internal stability is central to its national project if it is to succeed in its pan-Arab and Islamic mission.
It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton’s boss, Rep. Ike Skelton, (D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that “the overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning”.
Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label by the Bush administration.
The “T word” is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, Second Chance and focusing on the “catastrophic leadership” crisis caused by the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
Another area that would benefit from discarding the “terrorist label” is the Bush administration’s ongoing campaign against Hezbollah. There is considerable doubt among international lawyers whether Hezbollah should ever have been classified as a terrorist organization.
At the urging of U.S. and Israel, Canada classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which limits the group’s ability to raise funds and travel internationally. A Canadian peace coalition called Tadamon Montreal is working to remove Hezbollah from the Terrorism list in Canada.
In the so-called war on “terror” the most powerful weapon being deployed is the word itself. In the post-9/11 geo-political climate, throwing in the word “terrorist” automatically mutes coherent and critical debate. Any valid and necessary criticisms of North American governments and their foreign policy are silenced and demonized with the use of that one word, while opposition to foreign invasion and imperialist plundering can be at once quelled and criminalized by deeming it terrorist.
Canada’s anti-terrorist list is being used in this very way-as a vehicle for stifling, demonizing and criminalizing resistance to the North American imperialist project and Canada’s role in it. At the same time the word acts as subterfuge from the mass terror perpetrated by the US and its imperialist baby brother-Canada. What Canadian citizens need to ask is just who does this labeling protect? Does it protect the Canadian population who has never suffered at the hands of Hezbollah, or does is protect the Canadian government and business elite who are part of a North American project to ransack the world’s resources while discrediting and eliminating any parties that stand in the way? To understand the distinction we need to understand imperialism, as well as the one-sided and suspect way in which “terrorism” is currently defined.
