PAST MIDNIGHT (literally and figuratively)
Thank God for Ralph Nader, and thank God for Israeli peace activtists and brave journalists.
Listen to Ralph Nader and Illan Pappe (Israeli academic) here.
And check out my man Gideon Levy here. Go, Gideon.
I'm sure they're out there, but I as a non-Arabic reader would love to hear from far more Arab journalists and activists on the problems internal to their countries (I'm obviously fond of Lebanese-American professor As'ad Abu-Khalil, but I'd like to hear of and from more). So anybody out there have good dissidents I should know about, please let me know.
And of course, the same goes for every single country of the Afrikan planet. Please, please, please let me know.
I'm taking this current Israeli war against Lebanon very personally because of my work there last year and my great affection for the amazing people I met, but I want to make absolutely clear that I have nothing but contempt for Hezbollah's violence and for the brutality committed by the governments of Syria and Iran (and I've spoken out against both constantly, not the least because each is responsible for torturing and/or killing Canadians, but more because of the vast and disgusting violence they inflict on their own people). I certainly hope that the people of northern Israel subject to Hezbollah's rocket attacks will be safe. I don't wish them harm, I wish them peace and safety from the horrifying aggression and destruction of their country to which Israel is subjecting them. And I wish safety and peace to all the people of beautiful Lebanon, including the dark-skinned foreign workers on the second-lowest tier of Lebanese society, and the Palestinian refugees who are at the very bottom.
Yesterday I ran into a guy I know at a rally for peace in Lebanon . He asked me, and I was quite shocked that he would ask me this question (in fact, I'm still not sure why he asked me this question), "Do you think that Israel should be wiped off the map?" (I think he was either playing devil's advocate or grotesquely misreading my comments to him about restorative justice... i.e., reparations). Good heavens, no. I wish that every country of that region (and the rest of the planet) should be transformed by the nonviolent democratic struggle of its peoples for a secular, non-racial, pluralistic government which promotes equitable sharing of wealth. I hope that I live to see the day when Jewish and Palestinian people in Israel will be equal citizens in a state as (yes, flawed, but generally) pluralistically peaceful as Canada (please forgive me, all the First Nations people who just read that comment... I'm obviously not referring to the grave injustices done to you so that the rest of us settlers can live in luxury while you live at the bottom of Invader-Canadian society). I hope I live to see the day when the people of Darfur live in peace, justice and prosperity, when women in Saudi Arabia and Kurds in Iran and Iraq and gay and lesbian people in Namibia and Zimbabwe can live in freedom with the opportunity to know joy, self-expression, hope and what it's like to eat three kot-tam meals a day and drink clean water and write almost anything you like or say almost anything you can think of without fear of being locked up, burnt, electrocuted, gassed, bombed, genitally mutilated, infected with HIV or malaria or cancer or....
Man, it's 1:52 in the kot-tam morning and I'm sad and angry and just would love to see EVERYBODY STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR KILLING PEOPLE. FOR KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE, EVEN FOR KILLING GUILTY PEOPLE. CAN WE JUST, MAYBE FOR ONE YEAR, PLEASE STOP FINDING EXCUSES FOR VINDICTIVE INFLICTION OF PAIN? CAN WE STOP ALLOWING PEOPLE, BECAUSE OF OUR INDIFFERENCE, TO SUFFER AND BE IMPRISONED, TORTURED, POISONED OR STARVED TO DEATH?
If you want to pray, pray. If you want to donate, donate. If you want to send pencils, send pencils. I don't care. Just please do something before midnight tomorrow so that if a freaking dinosaur-ending comet smashes into the Earth, you'll be able to say, "At least I started to try."
Listen to Ralph Nader and Illan Pappe (Israeli academic) here.
And check out my man Gideon Levy here. Go, Gideon.
I'm sure they're out there, but I as a non-Arabic reader would love to hear from far more Arab journalists and activists on the problems internal to their countries (I'm obviously fond of Lebanese-American professor As'ad Abu-Khalil, but I'd like to hear of and from more). So anybody out there have good dissidents I should know about, please let me know.
And of course, the same goes for every single country of the Afrikan planet. Please, please, please let me know.
I'm taking this current Israeli war against Lebanon very personally because of my work there last year and my great affection for the amazing people I met, but I want to make absolutely clear that I have nothing but contempt for Hezbollah's violence and for the brutality committed by the governments of Syria and Iran (and I've spoken out against both constantly, not the least because each is responsible for torturing and/or killing Canadians, but more because of the vast and disgusting violence they inflict on their own people). I certainly hope that the people of northern Israel subject to Hezbollah's rocket attacks will be safe. I don't wish them harm, I wish them peace and safety from the horrifying aggression and destruction of their country to which Israel is subjecting them. And I wish safety and peace to all the people of beautiful Lebanon, including the dark-skinned foreign workers on the second-lowest tier of Lebanese society, and the Palestinian refugees who are at the very bottom.
Yesterday I ran into a guy I know at a rally for peace in Lebanon . He asked me, and I was quite shocked that he would ask me this question (in fact, I'm still not sure why he asked me this question), "Do you think that Israel should be wiped off the map?" (I think he was either playing devil's advocate or grotesquely misreading my comments to him about restorative justice... i.e., reparations). Good heavens, no. I wish that every country of that region (and the rest of the planet) should be transformed by the nonviolent democratic struggle of its peoples for a secular, non-racial, pluralistic government which promotes equitable sharing of wealth. I hope that I live to see the day when Jewish and Palestinian people in Israel will be equal citizens in a state as (yes, flawed, but generally) pluralistically peaceful as Canada (please forgive me, all the First Nations people who just read that comment... I'm obviously not referring to the grave injustices done to you so that the rest of us settlers can live in luxury while you live at the bottom of Invader-Canadian society). I hope I live to see the day when the people of Darfur live in peace, justice and prosperity, when women in Saudi Arabia and Kurds in Iran and Iraq and gay and lesbian people in Namibia and Zimbabwe can live in freedom with the opportunity to know joy, self-expression, hope and what it's like to eat three kot-tam meals a day and drink clean water and write almost anything you like or say almost anything you can think of without fear of being locked up, burnt, electrocuted, gassed, bombed, genitally mutilated, infected with HIV or malaria or cancer or....
Man, it's 1:52 in the kot-tam morning and I'm sad and angry and just would love to see EVERYBODY STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR KILLING PEOPLE. FOR KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE, EVEN FOR KILLING GUILTY PEOPLE. CAN WE JUST, MAYBE FOR ONE YEAR, PLEASE STOP FINDING EXCUSES FOR VINDICTIVE INFLICTION OF PAIN? CAN WE STOP ALLOWING PEOPLE, BECAUSE OF OUR INDIFFERENCE, TO SUFFER AND BE IMPRISONED, TORTURED, POISONED OR STARVED TO DEATH?
If you want to pray, pray. If you want to donate, donate. If you want to send pencils, send pencils. I don't care. Just please do something before midnight tomorrow so that if a freaking dinosaur-ending comet smashes into the Earth, you'll be able to say, "At least I started to try."
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