IRAN: STATE STILL STONES WOMEN

by Assieh Amini, Stop Stoning Forever Campaign

Despite official denials, the stoning to death of women and sometimes men for such offenses as adultery continues in Iran, with state sanction. Iran’s Stop Stoning Forever Campaign documents and protests such instances, in cooperation with contacts abroad in the International Campaign Against Stoning. The Campaign’s members have been repeatedly harassed and arrested by Iran’s authorities. The author of this report, Assieh Amini, was arrested most recently at a rally in front of a Tehran courthouse this March, protesting the detainment of several women at a march against enforcement of sharia law in June of last year. While Amini was released after several days, some of those arrested at the June 2006 march were sentenced to more three years—as well receiving a prescribed number of whip lashes. All members of Stop Stoning Forever remain under risk.

One year and three months a go, a man and a woman were stoned to death in Behesht-Reza near Mashad. When we followed up and reported it, the authorities, including the late Karimi-Rad, Justice Department spokesman, denied it. Even our own friends and colleagues repeatedly reminded us that following a directive issued by the head of the judiciary in 1381 (2002), there have not been any stonings in Iran .

While this indifference was going on, another convict in Ahwaz was told to get ready to be stoned to death.

We had gone to Ahwaz to meet with the woman’s lawyer and family to see if there was any way we could save her. That’s when we heard there was another woman in Jolfa in a similar predicament whose case is truly shocking.

The woman in Jolfa had already been taken to be stoned once before. She was a smart woman who had read books on related laws while in prison, and who had reminded the judge on the day of her execution, that her execution would have been illegal since she had not yet received a reply to her latest appeal. The judge was swayed to postpone the execution until the appeal is heard. The woman’s elderly mother and her pro bono lawyers publicized her case as they pursued legal remedies. Eventually, the sentence was overturned, she was re-tried and acquitted of adultery.

These events, which can be amply documented—and what document could be better than living witnesses?—were happening at a time when the authorities were denying them, and ordinary citizens doubted they could happen.

[Translator’s note: Apparently, while stoning is a permissible punishment in Islamic Republic’s penal code, it is not practiced with any fanfare, or even overtly. Most cases involve poor, uneducated defendants, usually women, in rural areas which seldom receive national attention. The sentence is usually handed down by a local judge who then oversees its execution.]

Why This Campaign?

It was during these times that Stop Stoning Forever Campaign came to being. Our goals were to find cases, research them, help find attorneys who would vigorously represent the defense, organize activism & publicity, and, ultimately, free the convicts with an eye towards abolishing stoning altogether. Stoning is a cruel and backward punishment. We knew that raising awareness about an issue like stoning in the 21st century is not just about saving one life or changing one law. It will inevitably lead to examining other draconian or discriminatory laws in the court of public opinion.

Founders of this campaign had previously been active in other human rights and women’s causes. Their focus on stoning was initially seen [by critics] as a struggle over something “that’s not all that important.”

There were several reason this campaign was not initially taken seriously. One was that the number of cases involved was small. Second, it seemed as if this was a single injustice against women and not legally very broad. Third, some people questioned why challenge a law that is not supposed to be enforced anyway?

Fourth, there were some who felt stoning was not a cause for legal activism but a matter of prevailing social customs that consider sexual indiscretions unforgivable. Needless to say, these “customs” typically leave a thousand loopholes for men to escape the charge of adultery. In other words, the fourth group believed that as long as there are people in society who are willing to throw stones at an adulterer—or even willing to witness it as a public ritual—then this loans some legitimacy to stoning as a punishment.

There were more than a few objections but we were aware of the issues. For example, we’ve known all along that when you fight against something like stonings, just as the law needs to be changed, so do certain underlying social power bases that go with it. Case in point: Why is that in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq, it is not the state or law enforcement who carry out stonings, but these stonings, like all other honor killings, are the wish and will of the local men? Furthermore, the more tradition and custom enters the equation, the more anti-woman the formula gets. Why is it, in Pakistan, for instance, the punishment for a man who rapes a woman is to let the victim’s male relatives rape one of the rapist’s female relatives? These are matters of masculine honor which punish any perceived sexual indiscretion by women according to a traditional patriarchal order.

In any case, the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign was formed and carried on for several reasons:

First, the severity of the act embodies “cruel and unusual punishment” prior to a preordained death. Even if someone escapes this fate, you can’t expect them to escape the psychological trauma that follows them for the rest of their lives [not to mention the social stigma]. Stoning convicts are typically some of the neediest, most destitute people in society. It’s hard to ignore them and still call yourself a woman’s rights or human rights activist.

Second, even though the number of stonings in Iran is small, and even though men are among the victims, these cases almost always involve gender discrimination against women.

The nightmare that is the life of a stoning defendant is part of a tunnel of horrors through which a woman has traveled all her life, unable to choose her spouse, unable to get a divorce, precluded from equal inheritance, subjected to her husband’s polygamy, deprived of sexual freedoms, financially dependant, unworthy of her children’s custody, etc. She stands at the end of this tunnel. Are there not people, especially women, who know this tunnel well, and who walk the halls of the legal system, that can help these victims?

This aid, this comfort, does not in any way condone what is referred to as “infidelity.” This is support for a human being’s right to choose his or her fate, regardless of gender. This is support for equality under law. It is also a reflection of the need to reform social institutions to benefit women.

Women’s rights activism in our predominantly visual culture needs visual arguments. The image of half-burying someone alive and stoning them to death is a compelling picture.

One can not read Hajieh’s story and not feel compassion for her. When you read Makrameh’s story, you’ll no doubt appreciate the case for allowing young girls to choose their own spouses. This campaign tries to delve into the lives of the men and women who are victims of stonings and reveal them to society. We want to follow their stories and study the relationship between their particular lives and the place women have in society.

Today, the result may be the knowledge that a person’s life was taken under a barrage of stones. But these events were happening before, away from the scrutiny of public opinion. Once we shine a light on such acts, in a world where international treaties demand respect for human dignity, someone has to answer for these acts. This time, the reality of what heretofore was reported as “sharia justice,” and was recorded in death certificates as “execution without resistance,” can come into public view.

And what about those who ask, “Shall we allow spousal infidelity pass in silence?” The answer to them is that the purpose of our campaign is not to argue criminal justice aspects of infidelity. The focus here is on punishment— the punishment itself—not its relationship to the crime. Whether we consider infidelity a crime, a torturous punishment is illegal and unacceptable. Further legal arguments are beyond the scope of our concerns at the moment.

One of the strangest arguments is that so long as there are people who are willing to throw the stones, and so long as infidelity is unacceptable in our society, nothing will change. Laws do not reflect the wishes of a few hundred people who throw stones at others. Laws must protect the safety of individuals. Laws must be in step with civilized norms of our times. Laws must lead societies away from violence and criminality.

If women like Mahboubeh or Makrameh [current pending stoning cases] had had the right to separate from spouses with whom life under the same roof had become unbearable, had they had some legal refuge in their predicaments, there would not have been infidelity, nor spouse killing. There would not have been any stonings.

Another incredible aspect of these legal proceedings is the inconsistency and inequity of judgments. A woman who was pimped by her husband receives the same sentence as the woman who followed her own heart’s desire. A woman who was in another town at the time of her husband’s murder, and who never confessed to an inappropriate relationship, is given the same sentence as the woman who was found living with her husband’s killer in another town.

Human rights protect every individual. When a woman from the lowest rungs of society enjoys the same legal protections as everyone else, then we can say we have are moving towards equal rights.

Translated by Manesh

——-

This story first appeared July 16 in Rooz Online, and was also run on Meydaan.org

http://www.roozonline.com

http://www.meydaan.org/showarticle.aspx?arid=299&cid=46

See also:

RAPE AND REFORM IN PAKISTAN
Real Change on Anti-Woman “Hudood” Laws?
by Abira Ashfaq, Peacework
WW4 REPORT #132, April 2007
/node/3494

From our weblog:

Iran: execution by stoning for adultery
WW4 REPORT, July 12, 2007
/node/4209

Iran: women’s rights activist gets prison and lashes
WW4 REPORT, July 7, 2007
/node/4188

Iran: women activists attacked
WW4 REPORT, March 6, 2007
/node/3291

—————————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingIRAN: STATE STILL STONES WOMEN 

Dear WW4 REPORT Readers:

Summer’s here—and time is right for the twice-yearly fund drive that sustains our existence.

We hope that WW4 REPORT represents a unique voice in a frankly over-saturated blogosphere. While too much of the media—including the “alternative” media—today condescendingly tell the “media consumer” what to believe, we attempt to provoke our readers to think things through, and to promote dialogue.

For instance, we’ve run lots of reportage from Venezuela which is favorable to President Hugo Chavez (especially from our comrades at Upside Down World). But this month we offer our translation of an analysis from the Caracas anarchist journal El Libertario, which is highly critical of Chavez’s shut-down of RCTV.

In a similar spirit we present this month excerpts from the debate (sponsored by Gush Shalom and edited by our friends at Peacework) between Ilan Pappe and Uri Avnery on one-state vs. two-state solutions for Israel and Palestine.

Instead of just taking easy shots at Bush over the Iraq debacle, we believe in vigorous support for Iraq’s civil resistance. In this spirit, we present this month an interview with Iraqi oil union leaders, conducted by our friends from WBAI Radio’s “Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report.”

This is why we present an Exit Poll each month, and post the results on our weblog. This month, we invite your responses on the RCTV controversy, the One-State solution, and the prospects for a free, secular Iraq.

Since our winter fund-drive you have also received our original on-the-scene journalism from the GWOT frontlines: Gwendolyn Albert on the Czech struggle against the new Euro-missiles, Osman Yusuf on the Somali insurgents, Mohammed Al-Azaki on sectarian warfare in Yemen, Toufik Amayas Mostefaou on Sufism under attack in North Africa, Ike Okonta on the Ijaw militias of the Niger Delta, and my own interview with Bina Darabzand of Iran’s radical-left student movement.

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WORLD WAR 4 REPORT

July 1, 2006

Continue ReadingDear WW4 REPORT Readers: 

VOICES OF IRAQI OIL WORKERS

Oil & Utility Union Leaders on the Struggle Against Privatization

from Building Bridges, WBAI Radio

On June 18, “Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report,” hosted by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash on New York’s non-commercial WBAI Radio, ran an interview with two labor leaders from Iraq’s energy sector: Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, and Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions. They spoke about the reconstruction of Iraq’s oil industry and why the labor movement is opposed to the proposed hydrocarbon law favored by the Bush administration, the Democratic Congress and oil companies, which would put foreign oil interests in effective control of two thirds of Iraq’s undeveloped reserves. They also discussed why they support an immediate end to the occupation, and the prospects for a stable, democratic, non-sectarian future for Iraq.

Mimi Rosenberg: I just would like to say to begin with that we are very honored by your presence. We have a tremendous sense of solidarity and concern for people who are in struggle against acts of tremendous aggression and oppression that emanate from this country. It would be helpful, since we have very little consciousness about the nature of labor organizing [in Iraq], to speak somewhat about the origin and membership in your respective unions.

Faleh Abood Umara: To begin with, we want to thank you for this quite warm welcome in this beautiful city. The history of the Iraqi labor unions is a long one; it goes back to the early twentieth century. And I am honored to be one of the [re-]founders of the oil union after the occupation. This union was established in the 1930’s, and it was the workers union that led very successful strikes against the oil companies back then. One of the most well-known strikes back then is a strike that took place in the city of Gawurpaghi in Kirkuk. In 1946, they led another major strike, and in 1952, they led another strike in the city of Basra. This shows the history of the oil workers’ union is a militant history, from its inception in the 1930’s. Through all that period the Iraqi oil union was struggling for the rights of workers and also for preserving Iraq’s natural resources. And it was struggling in very difficult circumstances up until Saddam Hussein was at the helm. After that, the trade union leaders and members were subjected to the most abject sorts of oppression and destruction. And together with the rest of the trade unions in Iraq, the oil trade union was dismantled in 1987.

When the occupation forces went into Iraq, just two weeks after the occupation, the workers and labor activists initiated the process of founding the union again. And they had democratic elections for the first time, and we gained a lot of successes in preserving the oil resources and preserving the workers’ rights. One of the major gains to the workers was the rectification of wages, and also they managed to allocate lots of land for the workers in the oil sector.

Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein: I will add to what my colleague Faleh has said. After the occupation began on April 9, 2003, workers got the initiative to start to form their unions in various sectors of the Iraqi economy, private sectors and the public sector-mechanic workers and the ports… For example, in the Basra Federation of Labor Unions, now they have about 93 union committees. The number of union leaders is 768; from them 64 members are females. These committees is spread over the transportation union, service union, the agricultural unions, workers’ unions, and the train system unions, and various other sectors.

The electrical workers union was formed in September 2003. And the first conference was held on May 13, 2004. The union has faced so many challenges under the occupation, and the first major obstacle and challenge was the new system that Paul Bremer put together, the wage system. It was so oppressive and unjust that the monthly wage for workers in the 11th degree under this system, it was $50 per month. This by no means allowed the workers buying power to cover their expenses. And they fought for opposing these changes in these laws, and the only unions that managed to make some gains in these demands were the electrical workers union and the oil unions.

Also, the union has fought fraud and corruption in the managerial system that has spread rapidly after the occupation. And they managed also to control corruption through limiting the number of outside contracts. Any new development that is going to be put through has to first be done within the capacity of the company or the [local] technicians that are available to the company, unless they are not able to do it; then it is open for outside contract.

As for the general electrical distribution in Iraq, they had a sit-in on May 12 demanding that electricity be available regularly around the clock for people, because people are suffering so much from electrical interruptions. And it’s possible that in the next couple of days there will be a big strike in the electrical sector regarding this particular issue of continuous availability of electrical supply for the public.

Ken Nash: The oil workers recently suspended a strike against the government oil company, during which time the government issued warrants for the arrest of the oil union leadership, and the oil workers were surrounded by the military. Why did the strike happen, and what’s going on right now?

FAU: This background to the strike was the of the meeting between the Iraqi oil union and the prime minister. But because of the refusal of one of the managers—in particular, the manager of the company responsible for the oil pipelines in Iraq—this forced the workers to go to strike. He refused to apply the agreements that the union leader made with the prime minister in their earliest meeting. And the strike started by stopping one of the major oil pipelines that supply oil from Basra to the rest of Iraq. The Iraqi government issued a warrant to arrest four oil union leaders, and Faleh was one of them.

But we had taken precautions in advance, and prepared for another union leadership; in the case of them being arrested, this union leadership in the shadow would come and take over. And there was a very brave position from the leader of the Iraqi army in Basra. He refused to enact the orders of the arrest, and he said that he would not arrest a person who loves Iraq. But the military still surrounded the area; the union leadership asked their families to leave so they won’t be in the way of harm. The workers themselves took a brave position and refused to leave and said we’re going to stand with you here, and whatever happens, will happen to all of us. They entered into negotiations with the government, the strike was successful, and the workers managed to have some gains.

MR: We haven’t elaborated on the demands. It would be helpful to know what they were.

FAU: The most important demand is to reconstitute the Iraqi national oil company. The other major one is to have some changes in the proposed hydrocarbon law, the oil law draft. The other demand that we also think is very important is to activate the gasoline production project, which they already have a contract with Japan for, with a production capacity of one million liters a day. Some of these demands were answered, they were enacted; others, the prime minister agreed to have a joint committee between the minister of state and the trade union to further discuss it and act upon the recommendations.

KN: Can you expand on the hydrocarbon law? I don’t think everybody is familiar with that.

FAU: The drafted hydrocarbon law in Iraq has so much injustice against Iraqi people’s rights on oil. It was written in American hands, not for the sake of Iraqi interests. And we have documented information that this draft was put together by [US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice and the IMF and the World Bank and presented to the Iraqi government.

We consider that the most dangerous section in this draft law is the production sharing agreements, which allow for the foreign companies to enter Iraqi oil sites, with a share in the production that goes up to 50%. This is something that we can’t agree on and we can’t accept. And the Iraqi national oil company would have no say in establishing production levels. We insisted to parliament and the prime minister that the Iraqi national oil company should be the only owner and supervisor of the Iraqi oil fields and oil production, and we are only going to have contracts with these foreign companies for the sake of developing the oil sector. As a union, and a national company, we need to develop these oil fields and we need to have new technology, but not on the basis of production-sharing. We don’t need anybody to share in our oil production. It’s fine for these companies to come and work based on contracts, and when they finish their contract we give them their money based on [the terms of] the contracts, but not on the basis of production-sharing.

There’s now about 18 American companies ready to enter the Iraqi oil market. This is why the US is trying to push this law down the throat of the Iraqi government and the Iraqi parliament. It is possible that the American media is suppressing this piece of information from the American public. What is known is that the last oil exploration in the US, in Texas, was in January 2004—that means that average oil production in the US has been on the decline. In the year 2014, [US domestic] oil production will go down to zero, and by that time also the US will need to import 28 million barrels a day. This must be the major reason for the US to pressure for this law to go through as fast as possible.

MR: What we haven’t discussed—and to humanize our guests, and the Iraqi people—is the nature of life, and the nature of being a labor leader in Iraq at this time. And I was hoping that you could tell us more about that.

HMH: The suffering of the Iraqi union members and leaders is more or less the same as the suffering of the Iraqi people. And they suffer for years; they are still suffering, endlessly, from the occupation. One of the aspects of the occupation is the deterioration of the security situation in Iraq. Because of that, many of the labor union leaders and members were targeted by these acts of terrorism, and explosions, and the state of war that’s going on in Iraq. We have many union leaders who have been assassinated. [National labor leader] Hadi Saleh was hanged two years ago, and just two months ago the vice president of the trade union federation in Mosul was assassinated. Also, the head of the mechanic trade unions in Baghdad was assassinated. And in the time of Paul Bremer, the American forces attacked and targeted the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions [offices] in Baghdad.

One of the major issues that we suffer from in the labor movement is that the laws that were enacted in the time of Saddam against the unions are still in effect. Until this moment, the parliament has not enacted any labor law. We have been demanding the canceling and annulling of the law that was enacted by Saddam in 1987, but this has not happened yet. This resolution that was enacted by Saddam is still in effect. But even though we were demanding the cancellation of Saddam’s Law 150, they didn’t cancel it; to the contrary, they enacted another, an even worse law than the 150. And by that law government expropriated all the assets of the unions in Iraq. And in spite of all demands and sit-ins and mobilization against this new law, Number 8750, the government continues to enforce it.

MR: There’s so much more to explore. But I would absolutely be remiss if I did not look at your positions on the US occupation and the question of the removal of US troops.

HMH: We believe that all the problems that the Iraqi people are suffering from—from unemployment to insecurity, to deterioration of the economic situation, to all the social problems expanding—is because of the occupation, the root cause is the primarily the occupation. The problem is that the UN issued Resolution 1438 which gave some sort of legitimacy for the occupation, based on the UN charter and international law, that the protection of occupied countries is the responsibility of the occupier. But what happened in Iraq is the opposite: instead of protection, we have lack of protection and deterioration of the situation; that’s why our main aim of this visit is to meet with the American people and ask them to pressure the government to withdraw from Iraq and end the occupation.

FAU: My sister Hashmeya has already said most of what I want to say. I want to add that as Iraqis we don’t want to see our country under occupation. We want to end the occupation, and we are here to reach out to the American people to stand up with us in solidarity to stop this bloodshed that is happening for the Iraqi people and the American people. And that we work together for peace.

MR: But the Democrats’ position is: Certainly we should end the occupation, but if we move too quickly there will be a bloodbath.

FAU: The occupation is the main reason for violence. We are a people who have a history that goes back 7,000 years, and we have been living together with all our differences, our beliefs, our religions, our walks of life, and we didn’t fight. And even if we had fought each other, we are still brothers and we can resolve our issues together. And I don’t really count on the Democratic Party a lot because Bill Clinton was also Democratic and he bombed Iraq with cluster bombs. But still, I will hope they will help us in ending the occupation.

HMH: The question is—we are now under the occupation, but is the occupation now stopping the bloodbath in Iraq? It is not doing that.

KN: Do most of the people in Iraq believe as you do, that the occupation should be ended immediately?

FAU: I wish that you could believe me that not just most of the Iraqis, but all the Iraqis, don’t want the occupation.

HMH: Myself, Hashmeya, as a union leader—all my union, all the workers, want the occupation to end immediately.

MR: We have some very backward notions here, or maybe we’re just kept ignorant, about the role of women in Iraq, and the nature of oppression of women in Iraq. You are a prominent trade union leader, who has led major demonstrations against private contractors. Can you just explain a little bit more about women in Iraq?

HMH: In the era of Saddam Hussein, woman was more or less in the shadow. And she went through immense suffering because woman lost her brothers or her husband in the wars that Saddam started. And she took upon herself many responsibilities of supporting her family and raising her kids. Then came the years of sanctions, and this put even more suffering and more hardship on her. After the fall of Saddam, we were hoping that women’s situation would be better. Unfortunately, came the Law 137, that canceled the progressive women’s law that was enacted in 1959, Number 188. This new law referred issues of women and issues of family to [the authorities of] each person’s respective sect or religion. Women all over Iraq reacted against this law, and the Iraqi women’s associations played a major role in the mobilization against the law. And this law was canceled after these wide mobilizations. We consider that a victory for the will of Iraqi women. Also, Iraqi women managed to have a reasonable percentage of Iraqi women elected—I think around 25% are elected members of parliament are women. We demanded that the percentage be upped to 40% in the coming elections. We think that the woman is becoming more aware of her role in the society.

MR: Special thanks to our trade union leaders from Iraq.

KN: Our guests have been addressing audiences around the United States on a solidarity tour sponsored by US Labor Against the War.

Transcription: Melissa Jameson

———

The podcast of this program is online at A-Infos Radio Project
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=23641

RESOURCES:

2007 Iraq Labor Solidarity Tour
US Labor Against the War, June 4-29
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?list=type&type=103

Action alert on Decree 8750
US Labor Against the War, June 27, 2006
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=11099

“A People’s History of Iraq” by Bob Feldman
Toward Freedom, July 27, 2005 (background on labor struggles of the 1930s)
http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/516/60/

Energy Statistics > Oil imports > Net by country
NationMaster.com
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_imp_net-energy-oil-imports-net

See also:

IRAQI UNIONS DEFY ASSASSINATION AND OCCUPATION
by David Bacon, WW4 REPORT, September 2005
/node/1026

WORKER UNIONS IN IRAQ: AN INTERVIEW WITH AMJAD ALJAWHARY
by Benjamin Dangl, WW4 REPORT, October 2005
/node/1143

From our weblog:

Iraq: southern oil strike is on
WW4 REPORT, June 7, 2007
/node/4028

—————————-

Reprinted and transcribed by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingVOICES OF IRAQI OIL WORKERS 

NO GREEN ZONE FOR ETHNIC MINORITIES IN IRAQ

by Bill Weinberg, New America Media

Amid daily media body counts and analyses of whether the “surge” is “working,” there is an even more horrific reality in Iraq, almost universally overlooked.

The latest annual report by the London-based Minority Rights Group International, released earlier this year, places Iraq second as the country where minorities are most under threat—after Somalia. Sudan is third. More people may be dying in Darfur than Iraq, but Iraq’s multiple micro-ethnicities—Turcomans, Assyrians, Mandeans, Yazidis—place it at the top of the list.

While the mutual slaughter of Shi’ite and Sunni makes world headlines, Iraq is home to numerous smaller faiths and peoples—now faced with actual extinction. Turcomans are the Turkic people of northern Iraq, caught in the middle of the Arab-Kurdish struggle over Kirkuk and its critical oilfields. Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, now targeted for attack, trace their origins in Mesopotamia to before the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century. So do the Mandeans, followers of the world’s last surviving indigenous Gnostic faith—now also facing a campaign of threats, violence and kidnapping. The situation has recently escalated to outright massacre.

In late April, a grim story appeared on the wire services about another such small ethnic group in northern Iraq. Twenty-three textile factory workers from the Yazidi community were taken from a mini-bus in Mosul by unknown gunmen, placed against a wall and shot down execution-style. Three who survived were critically injured.

Yazidis, although linguistic Kurds, are followers of a pre-Islamic faith which holds that the Earth is ruled by a fallen angel. For this, they have been assailed by their Muslim neighbors as “Devil-worshippers” and often subject to persecution.

The wire accounts portrayed the attack as retaliation for the stoning death of a Yazidi woman who had eloped with a Muslim man and converted to Islam. After the killings, hundreds of Yazidis took to the streets of Bashika, their principal village in the Mosul area. Shops were shuttered and Muslim residents locked themselves in their homes, fearing reprisals.

Yazidis have often been the target of calumnies, and the stoning story may or may not be true. If it is, it says much about the condition of women in “liberated” Iraq, where “honor killings” witness a huge resurgence. In any case, it says much about the precarious situation of minorities in post-Saddam Iraq.

By eerie coincidence, April 24, the day the story of the massacre appeared on the wire agencies, also marked the 92nd anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide, commemorated in solemn ceremony by Armenians worldwide. Following the mass arrests of that day in 1915, some 1.5 million met their deaths in massacres and forced deportations at the hands of Ottoman Turkish authorities. The Yazidis, whose territory straddles contemporary Turkey and Iraq, were targeted for extermination in the same campaign.

The Yazidis may be targeted for extermination again. After the Mosul massacre, a statement from the League of Yazidi Intellectuals said that 192 Yazidis have been killed since the US invaded Iraq—not including the most recent 23 victims.

It is telling that the US refuses to officially acknowledge the Armenian genocide, out of a need to appease NATO ally Turkey. More disturbingly, the US is now presiding over the re-emergence of genocide in the same part of the planet.

The US went into Iraq in 2003 to put an end to a regime which had committed genocide against the Kurds in 1988 (when, lest we forget, it was still being supported by Washington). In doing so, the US merely created a new genocidal situation. Even if the aim was to control Iraq’s oil under a stable, compliant regime, the result has been Yazidis massacred, Assyrian churches bombed, the majority of the Mandeans forced into exile in neighboring countries.

The armed insurgency and the forces collaborating with the occupation seem equally bent on exterminating perceived religious and ethnic enemies. In April 2004, the Badr Brigades of Shi’ite militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burned down the Roma (“Gypsy”) village of Qawliya, accused of “un-Islamic” behavior—like music and dance. Last year, the usually pacifistic Sufis, followers of Islam’s esoteric tradition, announced formation of a militia to defend against the Shi’ite supremacists in both opposition and collaboration. “We will not wait for the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade to enter our houses,” read the statement from the Qadiri Sufis. “We will fight the Americans and the Shi’ites who are against us.” Suicide bombers have also struck Sufi tekiyas (gathering places).

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio recently stated without irony: “We can walk out of Iraq, just like we did in Lebanon, just like we did in Vietnam, just like we did in Somalia and we will leave chaos in our wake.” He may be right. But the alternative may be staying—presiding over, and fueling chaos. Boehner ignores the inescapable reality that US intervention created the current chaos, now approaching the genocidal threshold. It has only escalated throughout the occupation.

This reality raises tough questions for those calling for military intervention in Darfur: will this end the genocide there—or inflame it? And the US failure to even impose sanctions on Sudan, despite four years of threats, again points to oil and realpolitik as imperial motives, rather than humanitarian concerns. Even the renewed warfare in Somalia, topping the Minority Rights Group list, was sparked by the US-backed Ethiopian intervention late last year.

There are secular progressive forces in Iraq who oppose both the occupation and the ethno-exterminationists in collaboration and insurgency alike. These groups, such as the Iraq Freedom Congress and the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, support a multi-ethnic Iraq, and constitute a civil resistance. Their voices have been lost to the world media amid the spectacular violence.

Such voices may have little chance in the escalating crisis. But looking to the US occupation as the guarantor of stability is at least equally deluded. Above all, Iraq’s minorities will likely be struggling for survival in the immediate future, whether the US stays or goes. We owe them, at least, the solidarity of knowing about them.

———

Bill Weinberg is editor of the online journal World War 4 Report

This story first appeared May 15 on New America Media
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news..b 6487caed099f11b120

From our weblog:

Report: Iraq minorities face extinction
WW4 REPORT, February 22, 2007
/node/3242

Iraq: Yazidi workers massacred in Mosul
WW4 REPORT, April 24, 2007
/node/3681

Armenians commemorate 1915 genocide —despite Turkish censorship
WW4 REPORT, April 25, 2007
/node/3688

Darfur: Bush announces sanctions —against the resistance movement!
WW4 REPORT, May 29, 2007
/node/3966

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Reprinted and translated by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingNO GREEN ZONE FOR ETHNIC MINORITIES IN IRAQ 

THE GAS-GUZZLER LOBBY STOPS TIME

Is There a Model-T in Your Future?

by Michael I. Niman, ArtVoice, Buffalo, NY

I remember the future. I believe we were supposed to be wearing silver suits and zipping about in atomic-powered hovercrafts. The future of my childhood, however, is now, and as far as transportation technology goes, things ain’t all that different.

Take government-imposed CAFE standards. “CAFE” stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. Created during the energy crisis of the 1970s, CAFE forced auto-makers to improve fleet gas mileage. The US Senate just passed a controversial bill to increase CAFE standards to require auto-makers to achieve a lethargic average of 35 miles per gallon in their consumer-grade vehicles by the year 2020.

Wow. Let’s put this into perspective. My 1987 Hyundai got an EPA highway rating of 40 miles per gallon, a figure it often surpassed. My current 11-year-old car also earned an EPA rating of 40 miles per gallon, and it averages 38 miles per gallon in real-world driving. So excuse me if I’m not impressed with 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020.

What is futuristic about this bill is the political climate in Washington, where this lame and worthless legislation is currently received as “controversial”—as if it were some sort of ecotopian plan drafted by deep ecologists just back from burning an SUV dealership. The future is now, and it’s dominated by corporate interests that can’t see past tomorrow morning’s stock valuations. Hence, most Republicans in the Senate voted against imposing 1980s Hyundai technology on the American auto industry of the 2020s.

2030 as 1980

Opponents whine that the bill is more radical that it initially seems, imposing four percent per year mileage increases after 2020, culminating in a requirement for private vehicles to average 52 miles per gallon—the same mileage as a 1980s vintage Honda CRX—by the year 2030.

Again, let’s put this all into perspective. Current CAFE standards require what auto-makers call “cars” to average 27.5 miles per gallon, while cars that they deem “light trucks,” often with less interior room than “cars,” can average 22.5 miles per gallon. The 1908 Ford Model T averaged 25 miles per gallon. The “radicals” want 2020’s vehicles to show a mileage increase over the Model T of 40 percent.

Now you can cruise down the Thruway, Mom driving and chatting on the phone, kids watching DVDs, Dad checking the weather with his wireless-equipped laptop, the GPS on the dash pinpointing directions to the next oxygen bar, the speed-trap detector blinking green, the E-Z pass debiting tolls—yet mileage-wise, we’re still ticking along in our open-air Model Ts. I don’t buy it. And consumers aren’t buying it either—that’s why Toyota just surpassed GM as the world’s largest auto-maker.

Speedy Living Rooms

Yes, yes, I’m aware of the counter-arguments. Your Expedition is a nicer ride than a Model T—or even a Honda CRX. But the question right now is what do we really need: a living room on wheels that can beat the neighbor’s mobile rec room off the line at the green light, or a fuel-efficient vehicle that makes your ecological footprint a bit smaller while squeezing your wallet a bit less and keeping a few more dollars Stateside?

The same argument applies to vehicle size. Yes, I understand my 1987 Hyundai and my current car are both smaller than GMC Yukons. But really, how big does a car have to be? My current, 38-miles-per-gallon car has carried, at one time, 13 sheets of drywall and 20 eight-foot, two-by-four studs on its roof racks without any apparent damage and not much strain. It regularly hauls 17-foot canoes and 14-foot kayaks up logging roads. It has carried a mĂ©lange of curb-scored furniture. It moved my entire household, couches, dressers and tables. It pulls sailboats on trailers. Last weekend it hauled a double bed from Buffalo to Utica. And it’s done all this now for 11 years while still cornering better than any machismo-dripping dickmobile. I call it a sporty utilitarian vehicle. It’s especially utilitarian since it’s still rolling while countless supersized cars have been sidelined by fuel costs. So much for finding new paths and blazing new trails as you take your armada of Troopers, Trackers, Scouts, Outlanders, Foresters and (I love this one) Patriots, on an expedition of discovery in search of elusive Hummers.

Okay. So I can’t haul a load of bricks or sand. That’s why Home Depot has that “rent me by the hour” truck parked by the exit door. This is called smart living. I don’t need to drive a moving van to work every day because one day I might need to move. I can’t make this any simpler. You can pack your three kids and your dog into your Ford Focus wagon and have enough roof space left over for all your vacation tools. You just need to pack light, as if you lived on an overburdened planet. You don’t “need” a giant gas guzzler—you’ve just been trained to salivate when you see them. Just like now you’re being socialized to turn up your nose at your SUV-driving neighbor. Yeah, 40 and 50 miles per gallon have been technologically feasible for a long time—we just need to advance socially.

What $335K Buys

Let’s get back to the anti-MPG argument. One of the lead “think tanks” producing anti-MPG propaganda is the National Center for Public Policy Research, which has received at least $335,000 from Exxon/Mobil and a bundle more from various auto and oil industry execs. Led over the years by such notable figures as former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the NCPPR was an early opponent of the Kyoto accords, forming a front group called the Kyoto Earth Summit Information Center to spread carbon-friendly propaganda. The NCPPR is on record stating that “There is no serious evidence that man-made global warming is taking place” and “There are many indications that carbon dioxide does not play a significant role in global warming.”

Gas-guzzling is a hard sell. Hence, most of NCPPR’s propaganda relies on its audience remaining ignorant of reality. Their assault on the new CAFE standards centers on a series of 10-second sound bites, what they call “fast facts on the environment,” which they provide to carbon-friendly media outlets. Among their arguments is that 52 miles per gallon (the 2030 standard) is “especially harsh” and “very likely unobtainable”—a tough argument to sell next year as consumers queue up to by 55+ miles per gallon Volkswagen Jetta TDIs.

NCPPR relies heavily on the pro-corporate and neo-conservative echo chamber for its quasi-science, quoting similar organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Center for Individual Freedom. Their main “10 Second Response” is: “CAFE standards already result in the deaths of approximately 2,000 Americans every year, since smaller cars are less crashworthy.”

Squished Beetles and Rapists

I first encountered “blame the victim” logic when I was a small child. A Cadillac ran a red light on my corner in Brooklyn, t-boning a VW Beetle at 40 miles per hour, instantly killing the family of four that was riding in the VW. As was the case with all accidents on our corner, a crowd of neighbors quickly formed to examine the carnage and watch Mafioso pickup truck drivers divvy up the metallic bounty as we all waited for ambulances to arrive. I still remember one woman holding her face and shaking her head, repeating that small cars should be outlawed.

Nobody saw the Cadillac as being dangerous since the driver was unharmed. This is like blaming a woman for being raped since she was innocently walking to the store rather than out stalking prey herself. Or blaming shooting victims for being shot since they weren’t wearing bulletproof vests.

Yes, when a large vehicle hits a small vehicle, the people in the small car are more at risk for injury. That’s the argument the carbon-lobby is echoing today. And it’s one of the main reasons why people buy SUVs—as a defensive measure against Thruway upscaling. Back to my childhood: I remember standing there as ambulance crews jimmied the crushed carnage from the VW, listening to the Cadillac driver argue, “Da light wuz green, I tell ya.” I thought Cadillacs should be regulated, not Beetles.

Another 10-second pro-carbon argument I found particularly intriguing was that lower gas mileage makes it more expensive to drive; hence, people will drive less, which will be better for the environment. Get it? It’s your neighbor with the Escalade, not the one with the Prius, who’s the greenest. Fuck those sanctimonious, Prius-driving gas hogs. Fuel-efficient cars somehow make your daily commute longer, so let’s do away with mileage standards altogether. I guess you really have to stretch to find an argument supporting fuel-inefficiency.

And finally, there’s the argument that CAFE standards, not the off-shoring of production by the big three auto-makers, will cost American jobs. Let’s get with the program. By 2020, when the 35 miles per gallon standard kicks in, 35 miles per gallon will sound like ancient history. By then we’ll be well past Peak Oil, meaning that we’ll have used up most of the world’s oil reserves, while an industrialized China and industrializing India will have increased their oil consumption exponentially. That scenario alone should push gas prices above seven bucks a gallon in today’s dollars.

Then there’s the impending collapse of the overvalued dollar. We just can’t continue our two-decade-long orgy of importing more then we export, and playing this game on credit. Your buying power today at Target and the Dollar Store guarantees the collapse of the dollar tomorrow as investors shy away from an indebted US economy. When the bill comes due, imports, which in a post-deindustrialized America means damn near everything except wheat and apples, will cost a lot more. And oil is an import. What a gallon will cost in 2020, and then in 2030 dollars, will be a nightmare.

If US auto-makers have any chance of a future, they will have to compete with green hybrid diesel compacts and other fuel-efficient cars currently planned by European and Asian auto-makers. If CAFE standards force auto-makers to get with the program, it might save the industry. American auto-makers are living in a past dominated by cheap oil and inflated dollars. They’re drunks addicted to gas-guzzling SUVs. Alcoholics drink themselves to death. Addicts die. Thirty-five miles per gallon by 2020 is a joke. That’s not the future—that’s the past. And the past is over.

———

Dr. Michael I. Niman teaches journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College. His columns are available online at www.artvoice.com, archived at www.mediastudy.com and available globally through syndication.

This article first ran June 28 in ArtVoice, Buffalo, NY
http://artvoice.com/issues/v6n26/is_there_a_model_t_in_your_future

RESOURCES:

National Center for Public Policy Research
http://www.nationalcenter.org

Global Warming Information Center
http://www.nationalcenter.org/Kyoto.html

—————————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE GAS-GUZZLER LOBBY STOPS TIME 

“ATTENTION MOVE! THIS IS AMERICA!”

Twenty-Two Years After the Philadelphia Massacre

by Hans Bennett, The Defenestrator

“Attention, MOVE: This Is America!” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor declared through a loudspeaker, minutes before the May 13, 1985 police assault on the revolutionary MOVE organization’s home. This assault killed five children and six adults, including MOVE founder John Africa. After police shot over 10,000 rounds of bullets into their West Philadelphia home, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on MOVE’s roof. The bomb started a fire that eventually destroyed 60 homes: the entire block of a middle-class Black neighborhood. Carrying the young Birdie Africa, the only other survivor, Ramona Africa dodged gunfire and escaped from the fire with permanent burn scars.

Today, Ramona recalls being in the basement with the children when the assault began. “Water started pouring in from the hoses. Then the tear gas came after explosives blew the whole front of the house off. After hearing a lot of gunfire, things became pretty quiet. It was then that they dropped the bomb without any warning.

“At first, those of us in the basement didn’t realize that the house was on fire because there was so much tear gas that it was hard to recognize smoke. We opened the door and started to yell that we were coming out with the kids. The kids were hollering too. We know they heard us but the instant we were visible in the doorway, they opened fire. You could hear the bullets hitting all around the garage area. They deliberately took aim and shot at us. Anybody can see that their aim, very simply, was to kill MOVE people—not to arrest anybody.”

After surviving the bombing, Ramona was charged with conspiracy, riot, and multiple counts of simple and aggravated assault. Her sentence was 16 months to seven years, but she served the full seven years when she was denied parole for not renouncing MOVE. In court, all charges listed on the May 11 arrest warrant, used to justify the assault, were dismissed by the judge. Says Ramona, “This means that they had no valid reason to even be out there, but they did not dismiss the charges placed on me as a result of what happened after they came out.”

Concluding Ramona’s 1986 trial, Judge Michael Stiles explicitly told the jurors not to consider any wrongdoing by police and other government officials, because they would be held accountable in “other” proceedings. This would never happen, as Ramona states: “Not one single official, police officer, or anybody else has ever been held accountable for the murder of my family.

“People should not be fooled by this government using words like ‘justice.’ My family members, who were parents of most of those children that were murdered on May 13, have been in prison for almost 30 years to this day, for the accusation of a murder that they didn’t commit, that nobody saw them commit. Meanwhile, the people who murdered their babies are still collecting paychecks, still seen as respectable, and never did a day in jail.”

Origins of the Confrontation

The 1985 police bombing was the culmination of many years of political repression by Philadelphia authorities. Much has already been written about the events of May 13, 1985, but less is told of the “MOVE 9”: Janine, Debbie, Janet, Merle, Delbert, Mike, Phil, Eddie, and Chuck Africa. These nine MOVE members were jointly sentenced in the 1978 killing of Officer James Ramp after a year-long police stakeout of MOVE’s home in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village district. Their parole hearings come up in 2008. Ramona Africa says: “The government came out to Powelton Village in 1978 not to arrest, but to kill. Having failed to do that, my family was unjustly convicted of a murder that the government knows they didn’t commit, and imprisoned with 30-100 year sentences. Later, when we as a family dared to speak up against this, they came out to our home again and dropped a bomb on us, burned babies alive.”

First, some history:

Founded in the early 70’s by John Africa, MOVE sought to expose and challenge all injustice and abuse of all forms of life, including animals and nature. Along with neighborhood activism, MOVE also organized nonviolent protests at zoos, animal testing facilities, public forums, corporate media outlets, and other places.

MOVE’s first conflicts with police began at these nonviolent protests when Mayor Frank Rizzo’s police reacted in their typical brutal fashion. From the very beginning, MOVE acted on the principle of self-defense and “met fist with fist.” Defending this today, Ramona Africa states: “I’m sure the police were outraged that these ‘niggers’ had stood up to them, telling them that they couldn’t come and beat on our men, women and babies without us defending themselves. What are people supposed to do? Sit back and take that shit?”

Given Rizzo’s iron-fist rule, confrontation with MOVE was inevitable. Infamous for his racist brutality as Police Commissioner from 1968-71, Rizzo once publicly boasted that his police force would be so repressive that he’d “make Attila the Hun look like a faggot.” He was elected mayor in 1972, with campaign slogans like “Vote White.” By 1979, his police force would become the first PD ever indicted by the federal government, when the Justice Deptartment brought a suit naming Rizzo and 20 other top city officials (inclusive of police command) for aiding and abetting police brutality.

Police attacks on MOVE escalated on May 9, 1974 when two pregnant MOVE women, Janet and Leesing, miscarried after being beaten by police and jailed overnight without food or water. On April 29, 1975, Alberta Africa lost her baby after she was arrested, dragged from a holding cell, held down, and beaten in the stomach and vagina.

On the night of March 18, 1976, seven MOVE prisoners had just been released and were greeting their family in front of their Powelton Village home in West Philadelphia, when police arrived and set upon the crowd. Six MOVE men were arrested and beaten so badly that they suffered fractured skulls, concussions and chipped bones. Janine Africa was thrown to the ground and stomped on while holding her three-week-old Life Africa. The baby’s skull was crushed, and Life was dead.

After MOVE notified the media of the attack and baby’s death, the police publicly claimed that because there was no birth certificate, there was no baby and that MOVE was lying. In response, MOVE invited journalists and political figures to their home to view the corpse. Shortly after the attack, renowned Philadelphia journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal (now on death row) interviewed an eyewitness who had watched from a window directly across the street. “I saw that baby fall,” the old man said. “They were clubbing the mother. I knew the baby was going to get hurt. I even reached for the phone to call the police, before I realized that it was the police. You know what I mean?” The District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute the murder.

The Standoff Begins

In response to the escalated police violence, MOVE staged a major demonstration on May 20, 1977. They took to a large platform in front of their house, with several members holding what appeared to be rifles. MOVE explained in a statement issued for the event: “We told the cops there wasn’t gonna be any more undercover deaths. This time they better be prepared to murder us in full public view ’cause if they came at us with fists, we were gonna come back at them with fists. If they came at us with clubs, we’d come back at them with clubs, and if they came at us with guns, we’d use guns too. We don’t believe in death-dealing guns. We believe in life, but we knew the cops wouldn’t be too quick to attack us if they had to face the same stuff they dished out so casually on unarmed defenseless folk.”

Speaking through megaphones on the platform, MOVE demanded release of their political prisoners and an end to violent harassment from the city. Heavily armed police surrounded the house, and a likely police attack was averted when a crowd from the community broke through the police line and stood in front of MOVE’s home to shield the residents from gunfire.

Days later, Judge Lynn Abraham responded by issuing warrants for 11 MOVE members on riot charges and “possession of an instrument of crime.” Police then set up a 24-hour watch around MOVE’s house to arrest members leaving the property, a standoff that lasted for almost a year.

Mayor Rizzo escalated the conflict on March 16, 1978, when police sealed off a four-block perimeter around MOVE headquarters, blocking food and shutting off the water supply. Rizzo boasted the blockade “was so tight, a fly couldn’t get through.” Numerous community residents were beaten and arrested when they attempted to deliver food and water to the pregnant women, nursing babies, and children inside.

After the two-month starvation blockade, MOVE and the City came to a fragile agreement under pressure from the federal government and a very sophisticated campaign mounted by a Philly-based community coalition. On May 8, 1978, MOVE prisoners were released, and the police searched MOVE’s house for weapons. Police were shocked to find only inoperable dummy firearms and road flares made to look like dynamite. In the agreement, the DA agreed to drop all charges against MOVE and effectively purge MOVE from the court system within 4-6 weeks. In return, MOVE would move out of their home within a 90-day period, while the city assisted them in finding a new location.

But police began to modify terms of the agreement, focusing on the alleged 90-day “deadline” for MOVE to leave their home. A MOVE statement said that the 90-day time period had been described to them as “a workable timetable for us to relocate,” but “was misrepresented to the media as an absolute deadline. MOVE made it clear to officials that we’d move to other houses but we were keeping our headquarters open as a school.”

At an August 2, 1978 hearing, Judge Fred DiBona ruled that MOVE had violated the deadline and signed arrest warrants that would justify the police siege the following week.

The morning of August 8, hundreds of riot police moved in; bulldozers toppled the home’s fence and outdoor platform, and cranes smashed the windows. Forty-five armed police searched the house and found that MOVE was barricaded in the basement. Police began to flood them out with high-pressure hoses.

Suddenly gunshots were fired, likely from a house across the street. Police opened fire on MOVE’s house—using over 2,000 rounds of ammunition. The police and most of the mainstream media would later report that MOVE had fired these first shots. However, WKYW Radio reporters John McCullough and Larry Rosen both recalled hearing the first shot come from a house diagonally across the street, where they saw an arm holding a gun out of a third-floor window.

The subsequent gunfire was chaotic and mostly directed at the flooded basement. Officer James Ramp was fatally wounded in the melee. Three other policemen and several firemen were also hit. A stake-out officer admitted later, under oath, that he had emptied his carbine shooting into the basement, where he heard screaming women and crying children. At a staff meeting days later, a police captain noted “an excessive amount of unnecessary firing on the part of police personnel when there were no targets per se to shoot at.”

When MOVE eventually surrendered and came out of the house, their children were taken and the adults were viciously beaten. Chuck and Mike Africa, wounded, had been shot in the basement. Live television documented the violent arrest of Delbert Africa. He was smashed in the head with a rifle butt and metal helmet. While on the ground, he was brutally stomped. Twelve MOVE adults were arrested.

At a press conference that afternoon, asked whether this was the last Philadelphia would see of MOVE, Rizzo proclaimed: “The only way we’re going to end them is, get that death penalty back, put them in the electric chair, and I’ll pull the switch.”

Destruction of Evidence

The subsequent case against the “MOVE 9,” was plagued by factual inconsistencies and illegal police manipulation of evidence.

Temple University professor and Philadelphia journalist Linn Washington covered the August 8 confrontation and the trial of the MOVE 9. Interviewed in the recent documentary MOVE, narrated by Howard Zinn, Washington stated that “the police department knows who killed Officer Ramp. It was another police officer, who inadvertently shot the guy. They have fairly substantial evidence that it was a mistake, but again they’ll never admit it. I got this from a number of different sources in the police department, including sources on the SWAT team and sources in ballistics.”

Manipulation of evidence began immediately after the MOVE adults were arrested: Mayor Rizzo ordered the police to bulldoze MOVE’s home by 1:30 PM that day. Police did nothing to preserve the crime scene, inscribe chalk marks, or measure ballistics angles. In a preliminary hearing on a Motion to Dismiss, MOVE unsuccessfully argued that destroying their home had prevented them from proving that it was physically impossible for MOVE to have shot Ramp. MOVE cited the case of Illinois Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, where the preservation of the crime scene enabled investigators to prove that all the bullet holes in the walls and doors were the result of police gunfire.

The photographic evidence presented in court was also incomplete. Before demolishing MOVE’s house, police did take photos of empty shelves and claimed they had been used to store their guns. However, there were no photos of MOVE pointing or shooting guns from the basement windows, of police removing weapons from the house, or supporting the claim that police removed guns from the mud of the basement floor. To the contrary, a police video viewed in court actually shows then-Police Commissioner Joseph O’Neill passing guns into MOVE’s front basement window.

Strongly suggesting the deliberate destruction of evidence, police video footage was also blanked out at the point where Ramp was shot on all three police videotapes presented in court.

Ballistics evidence presented about Officer Ramp’s death is also inconsistent. In the documentary film MOVE, Linn Washington recalls the treatment of evidence at the trial. “They had a big problem with the authenticity and thus the validity of the medical examiner’s report. The prosecutor took out a pencil and erased items in the report that he didn’t like. Now MOVE was objecting and the judge was saying ‘sit down and shut up,’ and allowed the guy to do that.”

On Aug. 8, The Philadelphia Bulletin reported that Ramp had been “shot in the back of the head according to the police log.” The next day, the Daily News instead reported that the bullet head entered his throat at a downward trajectory in the direction towards his heart. Later, in court, the prosecution’s medical examiner, Dr. Marvin Aronson, testified that the bullet entered his “chest from in front and coursed horizontally without deviation up or down.”

In their newsletter, MOVE argued that if they had shot from the basement, the bullet would have been coming at an “upward” trajectory instead of the “horizontal” and “downward” accounts that had been presented. This crucial point aside, it would have been essentially impossible to take a clean shot at that time. The water in the basement, estimated more than seven feet deep, forced the adults to hold up children and animals to prevent them from drowning. Stated MOVE: “The water pressure was so powerful it was picking up six-foot-long railroad ties (beams that were part of our fence) and throwing them through the basement windows in on us. There’s no way anybody could have stood up against this type of water pressure, debris, and shoot a gun, or aim to kill somebody.”

On May 4, 1980, Janine, Debbie, Janet, Merle, Delbert, Mike, Phil, Eddie, and Chuck Africa were convicted of third degree murder, conspiracy, and multiple counts of attempted murder and aggravated assault. Each was given a sentence of 30-100 years. Two other defendants denounced MOVE and were released. Consuela Africa was tried separately because the prosecutor found no evidence that she was a MOVE member.

Mumia Abu-Jamal writes that the MOVE 9 “were convicted of being united, not in crime, but in rebellion against the system and in resistance to the armed assaults of the state. They were convicted of being MOVE members.”

When Judge Edward Malmed was a guest a few days later on a talk radio show, Abu-Jamal called in and asked him who killed Ramp. The Judge admitted, “I have absolutely no idea,” and explained that since MOVE called itself a family, he sentenced them as such.

The remaining free MOVE members moved into a new home on Osage Ave. in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia. Confrontations with the police continued, in which MOVE members were beaten and arrested, and a frequent intimidating police presence around the Osage Ave. house contributed to MOVE’s tensions with their neighbors. However, the media focused on the tensions rather than police intimidation, or MOVE’s efforts to promote dialogue with neighborhood residents.

In May 1985, Judge Lynne Abraham signed arrest warrants on charges of disorderly conduct and terroristic threatening for four MOVE members. When a heavily armed police force arrived at the Osage Ave. house on May 13, the MOVE members refused to come out—resulting in the stand-off, and finally the police assault and bombing of the house. Police maintained they were fired on from the house. But this charge was contested—and the fact that police had already evacuated the entire block pointed to the premeditated nature of the assault.

Preparing for 2008 Parole Hearing

Mike Africa Jr. wants his parents to come home. The son of MOVE 9 prisoners Mike and Debbie, Mike Jr. was born in prison just weeks after his mother withstood police gunfire and a vicious beating on Aug. 8, 1978. Today, Mike Jr. says that growing up without parents is “very hard. It’s like missing part of yourself. The system separated MOVE people like they did because they know it’s hard to deal with being separated from your family.”

After the 1985 bombing, Mike Jr’s grandmother decided to leave MOVE, and brought him and his sister with her. “Not being in MOVE and not having parents was especially hard because I didn’t understand why my parents were in prison I was ashamed. It was never really explained to me until Ramona brought me back to MOVE following her 1992 release.” Since returning to MOVE, Mike Jr. has traveled around the world publicizing the struggle to release his parents and the other MOVE 9 prisoners.

August 2008 will mark the 30th year of the MOVE 9’s imprisonment, and they will be eligible for parole for the first time. MOVE has begun to organize and raise public support for their release. Ramona Africa is particularly concerned about two possible clauses that can be implemented to deny parole.

First is the “taking responsibility” clause, which basically demands a prisoner admit guilt in order to be granted parole. Says Ramona Africa: “That is not acceptable, because it is patently illegal. If a person was convicted in court, to then demand that they admit guilt — even when they are maintaining their innocence, as the MOVE 9 are — is ridiculous. The only issue for parole should be issues of misconduct in prison that could indicate one’s not ready for parole. Other than that, an inmate should be paroled.”

Second is the “serious nature of offense” clause. “This is patently illegal too because the judge took this into consideration and when the sentence was issued, it meant that barring any misconduct, problems, new charges, etc. this prisoner was to be released on their minimum. To deny that is basically a re-sentence. We’re dealing with these issues because when our family comes up for parole, we don’t want to hear this nonsense.”

MOVE held a conference May 12, and is organizing another for later in August, dealing with this issue of parole for political prisoners. Ramona also urges to people to support Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal before the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals: “This brother’s life is on the line here. … He became a target of the government because he was the only journalist that consistently reported on the truth about what was going on with MOVE. Mumia gave us his support uncompromisingly throughout the years and that is why we give him our support and loyalty now.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal writes today: “The muted public response to the mass murder of MOVE members has set the stage for acceptable state violence against radicals, against Blacks, and against all deemed socially unacceptable… The twisted mentalities at work here are akin to those of Nazi Germany, or perhaps more appropriately, of My Lai, of Vietnam, of Baghdad, the spirit behind the mindlessly murderous mantra that echoed out of Da Nang: ‘We had to destroy the village in order to save it.'”

Over the years, MOVE has never been left in peace. The 1978 and 1985 police destruction of MOVE’s homes; the arrest and capital sentence of reporter Mumia Abu-Jamal, who covered the MOVE conflicts; the 1998 death of Merle Africa in prison; and the 2002 custody battle over Zachary Gilbride Africa are only a few examples of MOVE’s long history of confronting the system. This tradition is best summed up by MOVE founder John Africa in his 1981 speech to the jury before he was acquitted of federal weapons charges in the famous criminal trial, “John Africa vs. The System”:

“It is past time for all poor people to release themselves from the deceptive strangulation of society…This system has failed you yesterday, failed you today, and has created conditions for failure tomorrow, for society is wrong, the system is reeling, the courts of this complex are filled with imbalance. Cops are insane, the judges enslaving, the lawyers are just as the judges they confront…trained by the system to be as the system, to do for the system, exploit with the system, and MOVE ain’t gonna close our eyes to this monster.”

———

Hans Bennett (insubordination.blogspot.com) is a Philadelphia-based photojournalist who has been documenting the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE 9, and all political prisoners, for over five years.

This story first appeared May 22 in The Defenestrator, Philadelphia, PA
http://defenestrator.org/Attention_MOVE

RESOURCES:

MOVE Organization
http://www.onamove.com

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
http://www.freemumia.com

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue Reading“ATTENTION MOVE! THIS IS AMERICA!” 

EXPORTING U.S. “CRIMINAL JUSTICE” TO LATIN AMERICA

The ILEA in El Salvador

from CISPES

On June 22, the US House of Representatives voted to approve “foreign operations” funding for 2008, including the funds for International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEAs), the School of the Americas, and a number of other US projects abroad. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts introduced an amendment to the appropriations bill to cut the funding for School of the Americas (or “WHINSEC” as it has been renamed), which was defeated after the Defense Department convinced some pro-military Democrats to argue strongly in support of the SOA. The final version of the appropriations bill includes $15 million for the ILEAs, including the “ILEA-South” in El Salvador, which now enters its second year—showing de facto support for the repression carried out by the Salvadoran national police. The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) fought against funding for the ILEA, and urged Congress to increase oversight of this nascent institution. The following briefing was prepared by CISPES before the vote.

In May, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made a visit to El Salvador in support of foreign investment, “free trade,” and transnational gang-fighting. However, his visit was ironically interrupted by brutal LAPD attacks on a peaceful May Day protest in Los Angeles, underscoring the increasing connection between repressive police institutions in the two countries. Nowhere is that connection more obvious than in the construction of the US-sponsored International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador.

Though Villaraigosa’s visit to El Salvador was ostensibly about attracting foreign investment to El Salvador, the LAPD’s May Day assault on an immigrant rally and Villaraigrosa’s apparent willingness to promote similar tactics abroad played not only to the demands of foreign investors but also conforms to a new US government mandate to appear tough on crime. Fears about “gangs” are to domestic policy what “terrorists” are to US foreign policy—a convenient scapegoat for state-sponsored violence. Villaraigosa’s visit illustrated the ongoing refusal of politicians to address root causes of poverty and forced migration, choosing instead to promote cross-border strategies in which US law enforcement agencies coordinate with their counterparts in other countries to sharpen surveillance, interrogation, and street combat techniques.

US-Sponsored ILEA: Not the solution

In July 2005 Condoleezza Rice announced the opening of the ILEA, a regional police training academy which, according to its directors is designed to make Latin America “safe for foreign investment” by “providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime.” Hundreds of police recruits, along with prosecutors and judges from throughout Latin America, will receive training at the ILEA every year by instructors mostly from US agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the FBI, the latter of which has had a remarkably large presence in El Salvador since opening its own office there in 2005.

Salvadorans refer to the ILEA as a new “School of the Americas” for police. ILEA training was already underway in November 2005, even as the Salvadoran legislative assembly illegally passed the formal agreement with a simple majority rather than the 2/3 vote usually required for international treaties. In 2006 the US Congress voted to approve the ILEA in a buried funding request in the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

Though it’s impossible to say what exactly ILEA graduates have done since the academy opened, the conduct of the Salvadoran police—25% of those graduates—have shown an alarming turn for the worse since the ILEA was inaugurated. In early May the Archbishop’s Legal Aid and Human Rights Defense Office (Tutela Legal) released a report implicating El Salvador’s National Civilian Police (PNC) in eight death-squad-style assassinations in 2006 alone. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran Human Rights Defense Office has also published reports connecting the PNC to death squads, denouncing the militarization of the National University in July 2006, and noting repeated cases of corruption and misconduct within the PNC.

Anti-terrorism: Cracking Down on the Left in El Salvador

In late 2006 the right-wing passed two draconian new laws: an anti-terrorism law and anti-organized crime law. These laws give the police and the government the authority to target protesters and organizers who challenge policies like CAFTA and the privatization of public resources. Common protest tactics, from building occupations to streets blockades, are now conflated with terrorism, and organized student and youth have especially become targets of the latest crack-down. In mid-May the Salvadoran government announced that it would employ the anti-terrorism and anti-organized crime laws against street vendors arrested during a protest in downtown San Salvador.

Such laws are justified by stoking fears over gang violence, but in fact they correspond to a new crack-down on political organizing. By turning a blind eye to PNC misconduct, and by granting political support to the ruling right-wing ARENA party, the US State Department has endorsed this strategy of repression. The strategy corresponds to draconian policies in the US, especially the Patriot Act which has been used to isolate and criminalize social movement and political forces in our country. Like in Latin America, law enforcement policies in poor communities of color in the US are taking a dangerous turn. Anti-gang and anti-immigrant injunctions in the US are on the rise, and a provision in the current Senate immigration reform bill could further this process by taking away the burden of proof for arresting suspected gang members.

Instead of bolstering repression, surveillance, and police misconduct through the ILEA, US officials like Villaraigosa could use their clout to push for an independent investigation into the assassination of Gilberto Soto, a Teamsters organizer who was shot in El Salvador in 2004; or to inquire about the eight death-squad-style assassinations which the PNC has been implicated in; or to question the whereabouts of disappeared students like Francisco Contreras, an organizer last seen with PNC agents in February of this year. Sadly, Villaraigosa played the same role as former Ambassador Douglas Barclay, pushing for beefed up police and advocating on behalf of US corporations who fear an “unsafe climate for business” in El Salvador.

A Campaign to Target all US Military and Police Intervention in the Americas

After CISPES members visited the ILEA in early May a report was published outlining the critiques of the institution as well as the holes in the US government’s rationale for hosting the ILEA in El Salvador. Since then, the campaign to shut down the ILEA has continued, employing grassroots Congressional pressure and education around the corrupt and brutal conduct of the PNC in El Salvador. Should the School of the Americas (SOA) be de-funded in Congress this year, the battleground will shift to fighting the ILEA and other U.S. military and police training facilities in Latin America.

———

This story first appeared June 14 on Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/774/1/

RESOURCES:

CISPES: Stop the ILEA in El Salvador!
http://www.cispes.org/ilea

Tutela Legal del Arzobispado de San Salvador
http://www.tutelalegal.org

From our weblog:

SOA survives House vote
WW4 REPORT, June 25, 2007
/node/4123

Protests in El Salvador: “acts of terrorism”?
WW4 REPORT, May 14, 2007
/node/3830

Central America May Day marches: poetic irony?
WW4 REPORT, May 7, 2007
/node/3779#comment-305380

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Reprinted and translated by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingEXPORTING U.S. “CRIMINAL JUSTICE” TO LATIN AMERICA 

FREE SPEECH IN VENEZUELA

The case of RCTV and the fictional democratization of communication

from El Libertario, Caracas


On May 27, Radio Caracas TelevisiĂłn (RCTV), a pillar of Venezuela’s media establishment, went off the air when its license expired, sparking a wave of angry street protests in Caracas both for and against the closure of the station. Supporters of the decision not to renew the license say RCTV had betrayed the public trust, and particularly point to its unabashed support of the abortive April 2002 coup d’etat against populist President Hugo Chávez. Others have raised concerns about freedom of speech, and point to a narrowing of media voices in Venezuela. While this critique has mostly come from conservatives, the Caracas anarchist journal El Libertario, published since 1995, also sees an ominous trend in the RCTV shut-down. This statement of their position was translated by WW4 REPORT.

The Collective of El Libertario, Venezuelan anarchist newspaper, makes public its reasoned position in the debate generated by the case of RCTV—in which the current government imposes a solution to exchange the vulgarity of the private capitalist television oligopoly for what could be the abomination of monopoly by a bureaucratic and authoritarian state.

For the past two decades, through our publications, the Venezuelan anarchists have denounced and opposed the depravity and bias of the private media corporations such as RCTV. This company has guaranteed its economic success through sleazy oligopolistic practices, opportunistic links with the current state power and the emission of “garbage-content”—with the excuse of “giving the audience what they want.” However, the evils that this company indeed represented are now an excuse for the imposition of a solution that means a repetition and multiplication of the same vices. In the Venezuela of 2007, the baseness of a part of the private oligopoly is to be corrected by the abomination of a state monopoly, increasing the unprecedented advantages for the government and justifying the production of “garbage-content” with the condition of it being “rojo-rojito” [or totally “red,” a reference to the color of the ruling V Republic Movement]. In concrete terms: we do not have Miguel Angel RodrĂ­guez [host of RCTV’s anti-Chavez morning talk show “La Entrevista” (The Interview)] anymore but we will have the acclaimed Mario Silva [host of a popular pro-Chavez program, “La Hojilla” (The Razor), on state network VTV], the presenter of the journalistic paradigm of the V Republic.

The history of Venezuelan television teaches that the private owners of the media have never recognized the right to freedom expression, particularly when this right affects their profits and their privileged political and cultural position. However, neither has the State—before or after 1999 [when Chavez came to power]—behaved differently on this issue, considering television only a medium for the exercise and defense of its power interests. Therefore, little space has been constructed for free diffusion and discussion of ideas on TV—because those who have the power in this field have always called the shots.

And if that wasn’t enough, in the struggle unleashed after the coming of Chávez to the presidency for the control of the state and access to the oil rent, the governmental and oppositionist factions have competed equally to opportunistically and tendentiously use the mass media. It has been converted in a battlefield scenario, where recognition of the right to freedom of expression means to give space to the enemy. In this perverse logic of polarization, those of us who dissent and criticize the contenders for power have been equally detested and excluded by both sides.

However, despite all the nuances that are applicable to the Venezuelan case, several indications lead us to believe that the main risk faced by the struggle to guarantee what little can be preserved of freedom of expression today comes from the state—with its clear intention of creating a communication model tailor-made for a so-called “socialism” that is nothing more than the new face of capitalistic domination in Venezuela. We have no reason to be so naĂŻve as to believe the vociferating personalities like [general manager Marcel] Granier of RCTV or [magnate Alberto] Ravell of GlobovisiĂłn (not to mention the now-silent Armas Camero of TelevĂ©n or [Gustavo] Cisneros of VenevisiĂłn). [TelevĂ©n and VenevisiĂłn are now assuming a pro-Chavez position, and have not protested the RCTV closure.] But the measures taken against those figures will promptly be directed against the rest of the dissidence in the country, including within the government ranks.

We have no doubt about the fact of that we suffer from a regime that is so opposed to any kind of critique or disagreement that it is proclaimed a virtue to reprimand any such manifestation, even from among their adepts. They immediately discredit the legitimacy of any protest against the abuses of power and official incompetence, attributing them to so-called criminal conspiracies (the “CIA,” the “Colombian paramilitary groups,” the “golpista right,” etc.) that would be behind any possible kind of dissidence in Venezuela. According to this paranoiac-Stalinist approach, the mere demand for rights is unquestionable proof of the evil conspiracies that threaten the “revolutionary process,” and the justification to repress to those who make the demand. Indeed, only the authoritarian dogmatism that characterizes the Venezuelan government could justify the aggression to these rights in the name of an absurd “socialism” that is proud to fuck over Granier but comes to an agreement with Cisneros, cedes property rights to the oil trans-nationals and sponsors a new “boli-bourgeoisie” [for Bolivarian bourgeoisie, a reference to the official state ideology].

Faced with this situation, we the Venezuelan anarchists could not do other than put ourselves firmly in the defense of the now-mutilated right to free expression, as of all the other social and political rights which are indispensable for the mere existence and ascendance of autonomous grassroots social movements… [W]e denounce the use of the current situation of confrontation to advance the criminalization of the dissident and the structuring of a juridical order fitting of a police state. Fort instance, the left authoritarian state is supporting measures (the outlawing of road blockades and the burning of tires, for example) that will shortly be used against popular sectors that raise demand. We also denounce the escalating use of armed gangs to confront the protesters in the streets, a new kind of paramilitarism in which the Venezuelan state is copying the practice of its commercial partners: [Colombian President] Alvaro Uribe and the North American multinationals. Finally, we will point out the clear relation between the Venezuelan government and sectors of the globalized economy, such as Gustavo Cisneros—an alliance that seeks to ensure the situation of precarious employment, subordination and servility of the oppressed in our country.

Here are some facts and figures about the “democratization of the radio-electric spectrum” (that often are not to mentioned by the forces of either “Bolivarian socialism” or the “democratic opposition”):

* In 1999, the presence of the Venezuelan state in the radio-electric spectrum was demonstrated only through one TV channel (VTV) and two frequencies of the National Radio. Today, the state has direct control over six television stations (VTV, TVES; Vive TV, Telesur, Avila TV and ANTV), plus two radio networks (NaciĂłnal and YVKE Mundial) with eight radio stations. We must add to this the recently acquired control over CANTV, the biggest provider of telecommunications support in the country.

* In the total budget of the Venezuelan state for the year 2007, 165.3 thousand millions bolivars (more than $77 million) is slated for the communications field.

* [B]etween February 1999 and December 2006, the government imposed 1,339 obligatory transmissions to non-official radio and TV stations for a total of 810 hours, 56 minutes and 42 seconds. This data does not include the transmission of “Alo Presidente” [Chavez’s talk show].

* The movement to establish communitarian radio and TV stations that 10 years ago represented positive steps toward a model of autonomous alternative communication, has been subjugated by the power of the state through economic control. The majority of the 167 radio stations and 28 TV stations that today operate with the denomination of “communitarian” depend upon government subsidies (according to the National Assembly, in 2006 they received 5.7 thousand millions bolivars, approx. $2.6 million dollars), and for that reason they tend to become official mouthpieces and to repeat the same communicational vices they say they reject.

* According to the official mouthpiece [Vice Foreign Minister] Mari Pili Hernández, the hypothetic volume of businesses of RCTV for the year 2007 would be of 420 thousand millions bolivars (more than $195 million). The promise of such a candy, together with the fear of confronting Chavista revanchism can explain what has happened to the rest of the private TV stations (with the exception of GlobovisiĂłn, a fierce oppositionist). For example, according to a report by EU observers about the distribution of TV airtime during the last electoral presidential campaign, VenevisiĂłn gave 84% to the official candidate and 16% to the opposition, while at Televen the respective numbers were 68% and 32%; La Tele, channel 12, fired the journalist Marietta Santana for publicly criticizing the close of RCTV, and the journalist Ana MarĂ­a Hernández resigned after she was prohibited of denouncing irregularities at the state oil corporation PDVSA. Meanwhile the music channel Puma TV was bought in 2004 by Wilmer Ruperti, a notorious “boli-bourgeois” who wants to turn it into a news channel (the announced Canal I).

* During more than 30 years, RCTV (of the corporate group 1BC or Phelps) and VenevisiĂłn (of the Cisneros group) formed the duopoly that imposed their bad habits to the country’s television. This agreement had a economic rather than political character, and on various occasions they confronted each other as well as the current government. This can’t be compared with the economic and political monopoly in the hands of soldiers and selfish interests that we face today. After the Presidential Referendum of 2004, the pact was broken when the Cisneros group decided—for the good health of their businesses—that it was best to make peace with the government, a pact that was sanctified in a meeting held in the main barracks of Caracas between Chávez and Gustavo Cisneros with Jimmy Carter as the mediator. And from that moment on begins a honeymoon between “twenty-first century socialism” and this corporate gang, in which the engagement ring was the renewal of the VenevisiĂłn license for five more years—that began counting the same day that the RCTV signal ended. Of course, to make any Chavista uncomfortable, it is sufficient to remind them that it’s been a short time since their faction fight with VenevisiĂłn and Cisneros ended, or to ask them for the qualitative differences between these enterprises that justify the closure of one and the prizing of the other one.

* The systematic application of a repressive policy against dissenting expressions does not end with the issue of the broadcast licenses for TV signals. It is also seen in the blackmail through which SENIAT [the Finance Ministry] collection fines for real or supposed fiscal irregularities; the criminalization of criticism by means of the numerous judgments against journalists and media not agreeable to government; and the arbitrary application of the Law of Social Accountability of Radio and Television by CONATEL [Telecommunications Ministry] as a weapon against any journalist, program or station to make them to change their position.

———

RESOURCES:

El Libertario
http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario

Controversy surrounding this piece on New York Indymedia
http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/06/87161.shtml

From our weblog:

Exxon quits Venezuela
WW4 REPORT, June 27, 2007
/node/4136

Basque regional government stands up for Hugo Chávez
WW4 REPORT, June 23, 2007
/node/4116

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Reprinted and translated by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingFREE SPEECH IN VENEZUELA 

ISRAEL & PALESTINE: ONE STATE OR TWO?

A Debate between Ilan Pappé and Uri Avnery

from Gush-Shalom/Peacework

Ilan PappĂ© is an Israeli historian who taught at Haifa University. He is the author, most recently, of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Uri Avnery is an Israeli activist, journalist, and former Knesset member who founded Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), one of Israel’s most significant anti-occupation organizations. On May 8, the two men held a public debate in Tel Aviv, sponsored by Gush Shalom, entitled “Two States or One State.” Excerpts from each of their opening statements are presented here, translated by Adam Keller and edited by Peacework, monthly magazine of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Cambridge, Mass. The full transcript of the debate is online at the Gush Shalom wesbite.

ILAN PAPPÉ: One State—We Must Give it a Chance

The tragedy of the indigenous Palestinian population was not only their being the victims of a colonial movement — but specifically being the victims of a colonial movement which sought to create a democratic movement. In the face of the clear Palestinian demographic majority, eleven leaders of Zionism did not hesitate in March 1948 to resolve upon ethnic cleansing as the best means to create a Jewish, ethnically pure democracy over most of Palestine’s territory. Within a year, the ethnic cleansing was carried out.

This crime was retroactively approved by the international community and remained a legitimized means in the hands of the Jewish state, then as well as now, to ensure the existence of a Jewish democracy on the country’s soil. The achievement and maintenance of a demographic majority became a sacred goal.

That is how such formulas were born as “Territory in exchange for Peace” and “Two States for Two Peoples.” These were not recipes for peace or justice to the two peoples, but attempts to limit an expansionist movement which sought to gain more territory without the Arab population living on it.

The insatiable Zionist hunger

There are those who believe that it is possible to satisfy this hunger to settle and create settlements, to dispossess and rule and stay democratic via the creation of a Palestinian state in twenty percent of the territory. The Zionist peace camp sought to increase the number of supporters of the idea of limitation, and assimilate the settlement facts created on the ground, and therefore it knowingly shrunk the territory of the state intended for the Palestinians. As the territory shrunk, the connection increasingly disappeared between the Two State formula and the idea of a fair, full, and viable solution to the conflict. Under the idea of the Two States as a diplomatic international formula, it was generally agreed that the Zionist hunger for as much as half of the West Bank might be satisfied. Later, the Two State formula led inevitably to international support for the imprisoning of the entire Gaza Strip in a modern concentration camp.

Look at it from whatever angle you choose. If justice be the basis for dividing the country, there can be no formula more cynical than the Two State formula: to the occupier and dispossessor, eighty percent; to the occupied, twenty percent in the best and probably utopian case, and more likely a ten percent…divided and scattered. Moreover: the return of the refugees—where will it be, where will it be implemented? In the name of justice, the refugees have a right to decide if they should return, and they have the right to participate in defining the future of the entire country, not just of twenty percent.

We can live together

As Jewish and Palestinian citizens in this state we have relations of blood, of common fate and common disaster which cannot be “partitioned.” Such a division is neither moral nor practical. Let us propose an alternative dialogue including the old and new settlers — even those who arrived yesterday — the expelled of all generations and the people who were left behind. Let us ask which political structure suits us — one which would involve and include the principles of justice, reconciliation, and coexistence. In Bil’in we have struggled shoulder to shoulder against the occupation — we can also live together.

The appeal of Palestinian civil society for imposing boycotts and sanctions should be heeded. The sincerity should be recognized of the moral pressure exerted by associations of journalists, academics, and physicians over the world who seek to sever contacts with official Israel and its representatives, as long as the crimes continue. Let us give this nonviolent way a chance to end the occupation. From here and from there, we will call together for the castigation of a government and a state which continues to perpetrate such crimes; Jews and non-Jews, we will be immune from the stain of anti-Semitism, unjustly cast at us. From every possible point of view — Socialist, Liberal, Jewish or Buddhist — a decent person cannot but call for the boycotting of a regime and a government which for forty years already has mistreated a civilian population only because it is Arab. And decent Jewish persons must let their voices resound more loudly than those of others calling for action and effort.

Whether or not the South African experience is the source and inspiration for the One State solution and for a justified and moral international boycott, it is unacceptable that this way and this vision remain without a thorough examination, only due to a continued adherence to a failing formula which has long since become a recipe for disaster.

URI AVNERY: Two States—There is No Time for Despair

A person can despair and say: There’s nothing to be done. Everything is lost. We have passed the “point of no return.”

I say: There is no reason at all for despair. Nothing is lost. Nothing in life is “irreversible,” except life itself. There is no such thing as a “point of no return.”

There are three questions concerning the One State idea: Is it at all possible? If it is possible, is it good? Will it bring a just peace?

Is a One State solution possible?

Absolutely not. We want to change many things in this state, its historical narrative, its accepted definition as a “Jewish and democratic” state. We want to put an end to the occupation outside and the discrimination inside. We want to create a new basis for the relationship between the state and its Arab-Palestinian citizens. But it is impossible to ignore the basic ethos of the huge majority of the Jewish public who do not want to dismantle the state.

The majority of the Palestinian people, too, want a state of their own. Anyone who thinks otherwise is laboring under an illusion. There are Palestinians who talk about One State, but for most of those, it is just a code-word for the dismantling of the State of Israel. They, too, know that it is utopian.

Would a One State solution be a good thing?

My answer is an unequivocal no. Let’s examine this state, not as an imaginary creature, the epitome of perfection, but as it would be in reality.

In this state, the Israelis will be dominant. They have a complete superiority in practically all spheres — quality of life, military power, technological capabilities. The Israelis will see to it that the Palestinians will be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water for a long, long time.

It will be an occupation by other means. A disguised occupation. It will not end the conflict, but open another phase.

Could a One State solution bring a just peace?

Hardly. This state will be a battlefield. Each side will try to take over as much land as possible and bring in as many persons as possible. The Jews will fight by all means to prevent the Arabs from becoming the majority and coming to power. In practice, this will be an apartheid state. If the Arabs become the majority and try to assume power, there will be a struggle that may become a civil war. A new edition of 1948.

The Two State solution is the only practical solution in the realm of reality. In the most important sphere, the collective consciousness, it is winning all out. There are those who despair because the peace forces have not succeeded in putting an end to the occupation. We have remained a small minority. The government and the media ignore us. True. But we, too, bear a part of the responsibility for that. We have not been thinking enough, we have not identified the reasons for the failures. When was the last time a thorough discussion of the strategies and tactics of the fight for peace took place?

However, it is not enough to point out that the One State solution cannot be realized. This “solution” is also very dangerous.

It diverts the efforts into a mistaken direction. We see this already happening. It both results from despair and produces despair. It causes people to desert the battlefield in Israel and creates the illusion that the real battlefield is abroad. That is escapism.

It divides the peace camp and deepens the gap between it and the public. It strengthens the Right, because it frightens the sane public and causes it to lose sight of a sensible solution.

It pulls the rug from under the feet of those who fight against the occupation. If the whole country between the sea and the Jordan is to become one state anyhow, then the settlers can put their settlements anywhere they like.

Resisting distraction and despair

The situation is terrible (as always), but we are progressing nevertheless.

True, on the surface the situation is depressing and shocking: the settlements are getting bigger, the wall is getting longer, the occupation is causing untold injustices every day.

Perhaps it is the advantage of age: today, at the age of 83, I am able to look at things in the perspective of a much longer time span.

Because under the surface, things are moving in the opposite direction. All the polls prove that the decisive majority of the Israeli public is resigned to the existence of the Palestinian people and is resigned to the necessity of a Palestinian state. The government recognized the PLO yesterday and will recognize Hamas tomorrow. The majority has more or less accepted that Jerusalem must become the capital of the two states. In ever widening circles, there is the beginning of a recognition of the narrative of the other nation.

True, 120 years of conflict have created in our people a huge accumulation of hate, prejudice, suppressed guilt feelings, stereotypes, fear (most importantly, fear) and absolute mistrust of the Arabs. These we must fight, to convince the public that peace is worthwhile and good for the future of Israel. Together with a change in the international situation and a partnership with the Palestinian people, our chances of achieving peace are good.

I, anyhow, have decided to stay alive until this happens.

———

These statements first appeared in the June issue of Peacework, Cambridge, MA:

Ilan Pappé
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/node/612

UriAvnery
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/node/613

The complete transcript is on-line at the Gush Shalom website:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1178719775/

From our weblog:

Ehud Barak plans Gaza invasion —demise of the “Bush Doctrine”?
WW4 REPORT, June 17, 2007
/node/4082

Pappé refutes Chomsky on Israel Lobby
WW4 REPORT, April 4, 2006
/node/1826

Israel represses non-violent protest in occupied West Bank
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 9, 2005
/node/1060

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingISRAEL & PALESTINE: ONE STATE OR TWO? 

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE IN A COLOMBIAN WAR ZONE

Cauca and the Afro-Colombian Renaissance

by Bill Weinberg

Heading south in a “chiva” mini-bus from the teeming and chaotic city of Cali, the road crosses into the southern department of Cauca—one of the most conflicted in Colombia—as suburbs and industrial sprawl gradually give way to small campesino plots and extensive haciendas where cattle graze. On the cusp of this urban-rural divide lies Villa Rica, a community of some 15,000 African descendants. On a wall near where the chiva drops me and my photographer off is a mural depicting Black youth studying, building, playing musical instruments. The legend reads LA JUVENTUD NO VA A LA GUERRA—Youth Don´t Go to the War. It was painted by a group of Villa Rica´s young residents this July 20, Colombia´s independence day.

On the southern edge of metropolitan Cali, Villa Rica must contend with both the urban and rural manifestations of Colombia´s endemic violence— the gang warfare that terrorizes the city barrios and the dialectic of retaliatory bloodshed between guerillas and paramilitary groups that reigns in the countryside. But in Villa Rica, it is the youth—who are most impacted by the violence—that are on the frontlines of resisting it and finding alternatives.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez, now 23, helped found the group Colombia Joven—Young Colombia—when he was only 12. He does some construction work for money, but devotes far more time to his community activism. A young man with an almost relentlessly serious demeanor—in contrast to his friends who joke and sing as they guide us on a tour of the community—Gonzalez explains how Colombia Joven sees cultural revival and recovery of economic self-sufficiency as the keys to an exit from increasing embroilment in the region´s armed conflicts.
“We came together to address unemployment, violence, human rights,” he says. “We have drawn up a development plan for this region of Cauca, based on local micro-enterprises. We want to recuperate values of love and respect to halt the disintegration of families. We want to empower youth so they wont be recruited by armed groups.”

Under Article 55 of Colombia´s 1991 constitution, the Afro-Colombians are recognized as having local jurisdictional authority of the same kind that the indigenous peoples were given by the same constitutional reform. But acheiving real autonomy has been a challenge—especially for communities, such as Villa Rica, outside the Afro-Colombian heartland along the Pacific coast in Choco department. Gonzalez is cynical about the officially-instated Afro-Colombian autonomy. “Its a lie, the state doesn´t respect it,” he says—citing especially the military presence on Afro-Colombian lands in spite of community wishes.

Villa Rica became a self-governing municipality in 1999 as a “fruit of the social struggle,” according to Gonzalez. Before that it was part of mestizo-dominated Santander de Quilichao municipality. Santander has large Indian and Afro-Colombian minorities, but the leaders have always been mestizos. A Black mayor elected in 1998 was promptly removed on corruption charges. After this, the Villa Rica residents began petitioning the Cauca government for a referendum on remunicipalization. The referendum was held the following year, and creation of an independent municipality was overwhelmingly approved by Villa Rica´s residents. Villa Rica´s current Mayor Maria Edis Dinas is a community leader and former Cauca department representative who had led road blockades in the ´80s to pressure for potable water projects and recuperation of usurped lands.

Villa Rica now has its own hospital, but still has no potable water. A truck comes once a week to bring drinkable water; what comes out of tap is contaminated by both biological and industrial pollutants. But the overriding concern for the new municipality is lack of economic opportunity.
There is some agriculture in Villa Rica, with a few residents growing platano, sugar and cacao on small plots to sell in local markets. But with inadequate lands, most youth find work in a nearby industrial park—or join armed groups. The ultra-right paramilitary militias pay the best—but indoctrinate their young recruits with a depraved insensitivity to human life. Gonzalez says paramilitary recruits are literally paid by the head. “They give them chainsaws to cut off the heads and limbs of their victims as proof of the kill,” he says. “They bring them back and are paid for each death.”

Colombia Joven sees recovery of local lands traditionally worked by the region´s African descendants as critical to the struggle against violence and paramilitarization. Under 1993´s Law 70, the empowering legislation of Article 55, Afro-Colombians have the right to recover traditional lands and hold them collectively, in a system similar to the Indian “resguardos” or reservations. In Caloto municipality, to south of Villa Rica, Pilamo Hacienda—once worked by African slaves—is now controlled by an Afro-Colombian community council. The land was first occupied by the descendants of the former slaves in the 1980s, and was titled as an inalienable communal holding—with no right to resale—under Law 70 in 1994. It is now producing fruit, cacao and cattle.

Just outside Villa Rica´s urban center—within the municipality and across the road from the industrial park—lies the former slave-labor cacao plantation of La Bolsa, now a cattle ranch. Juan Carlos and his friends walk us out there, and the expanse of vacant, verdant land contrasts both the tired and overworked campesino plots and shoe-box factories that surround it. We walk through the gate despite the menacing barks of guard dogs that surround the stately and palatial old hacienda house in the middle of the fields. As we wait in a drive-way shaded by centuries-old orchid-laden trees, a young mestizo boy comes out. Gonzalez explains to him that we are journalists who want to see the slave-era relics on the hacienda. But we are told that the patron is not around now, and we will have to return later.

We cross back out the gate. But Gonzalez and his friends lead us down the road and across a barbed-wire fence onto La Bolsa lands. We cross a field and arrive at a patch of trees that shade a cluster of decrepit gave markers of brick and cement. The most recent dates are from the 1930s. The oldest bear no visible markings. Gonzalez tells us that this is where generations of La Bolsa´s slaves and their descendants—the ancestors of Villa Rica´s inhabitants—are buried.
Why haven´t you retaken the hacienda, and claimed it under Law 70?, I ask. For the first time, Gonzalez cracks a wry smile. “That´s a good question,” he admits. He faults lack of education about histoy and land rights under the old Santander municipal government. “Our ancestors struggled for the land and understood their history, but they didn´t have a law. We have a law, but we don´t know our history.”

Slavery was officially abolished in Colombia in 1851, but little changed for many Afro-Colombians, who continued working the same lands under similar conditions as debt laborers. Even before abolition, escaped slaves, or “cimarrones,” sometimes founded their own armed and fortified communities known as “palenques” in the rainforest or mountains, devising elaborate tricks to hide their whereabouts—such as only approaching them walking backwards to throw off trackers. Some palenques still survive as autonomous Afro-Colombian communities. At Palenque San Basilio near Cartagena, in the north of the country, a distinct language is still spoken today, incorporating elements of the African tongues Bantu and Kikongo.

Cimarrones from La Bolsa went to a place called El Chorro, on the banks of the Rio Cauca, and founded a community there—because it was the only land available. Even there, they were eventually forced to flee—both by periodic floods when the river broke its banks and attacks by the gunmen of big landowners who coveted the rivershore lands. In the 1930s, the local story goes, La Bolsa´s owner, Don Julio Arboleda, was killed by a Black child whose parents he had killed. Don Julio´s children who inherited the hacienda were somewhat more modern and enlightened—and also found cattle more profitable than labor-intensive cacao. In 1939, they ceded a large chunk of their lands to their former laborers to found a community on. Blacks from both La Bolsa and El Chorro gathered there and founded Villa Rica as a “vereda” or unincorporated village of Santander municipality.

Villa Rica´s inhabitants trace their ancestry to Guinea, Senegal and Angola; African traditions survive and are being institutionalized in the new municipality. We watch Villa Rica´s children perform the dance called El Chunche at the village community center. Juan Carlos´ friend Einer Diascubi, who beat on the bombo drum to drive the ceremony, says the dance depicts rice harvesting and other means of community sustenance. “Chunche” means pollen in Caucana, the region´s local dialect, and at one point the young dancers writhe on floor shaking off imaginary rice pollen. Diascubi says the Associacion Folklorica Chango was founded 15 years ago to preserve the dances that contain the collective historical memory of Villa Rica.

A new political group, the Unity of Afro-Caucano Organizations (UOAFROC), has recently come together to extend the land recovery movement—much stronger in coastal Choco department—into Cauca. New cross-ethnic alliances are also emerging. “The indigenous and the African descendants are now cooperating to recover their lands,” says Gonzalez. “The Afro-Colombian and indigenous communitiess are the most marginalized in the country. So we took the decision to struggle together.”

Both groups have lost traditional lands to government mega-development projects as well as landlord encroachment in recent years. The Salvajina hydrodam built on the Rio Cauca south of Villa Rica in 1980s affected both Nasa Indians and Afro-Colombians. Black residents of Suarez municipality had thier lands seized by the government for the floodplain, and were relocated. Many ended up joining armed groups, Gonzalez says.

In May 2002, the First Inter-Ethnic Meeting of Cauca was held in Villa Rica´s school building, bringing together both Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders to discuss land recovery and cultural survival. Convened by Villa Rica´s first mayor, Atie Aragon, it was attended by 2,000 local Blacks and some 3,000 Indians, mostly Nasas.

But such efforts are daily ground down by the harsh realities of war and an entrenched culture of violence. In 2002, eight Villa Rica youth were killed by paras or violent crime—in some cases, the bodies were burned or mutilated and thrown into Rio Cauca, in trademark para style. Paramilitary outfits recruit youth to assassinate both accused guerilla collaborators in the mountains and—making the war nearly fratricidal—their own kin who have become gang members. A Villa Rica-based gang called Los Crazy steal cars and hold up buses on the road to Cali—and are targetted for death in the paramilitaries´ “social cleansing” campaign.
In adjacent Puerto Tejada municipality—also with an Afro-Colombian majority—the situation is even worse. Gangs with names like Los Ramallama, Los Emboladores and Los Mechas use military rifles and grenades as well as pistols in wars against both the paras and each other, jacking up a death toll of nearly 600 last year in a municipality with a population of just 35,000. Family members are often killed in retaliation for the killing of paras. A nephew of of Villa Rica´s Mayor Dinas was killed by presumed paras—along with 14 others—in a drive-by shooting in Puerto Tejada in August of this year.

Colombia Joven, which is now present in five Cauca municipalities, continues to wage its campaign against violence and militarization of Afro-Colombian lands. Gonzalez emphasizes that the group was founded well before Colombia´s then-president Andres Pastrana launched a short-lived national program of same name in 1998. The group remains independent of all armed factions—including the government.

When I ask Gonzalez if he has any closing words for readers in the United States, he immediately states that Washington must cut off aid to President Alvaro Uribe´s government. “The government is the greatest perpetrator of violence in our communities,” he says. When I point out that most of the violence in Villa Rica seems to come from ostensibly illegal criminal gangs and paramilitaries, he responds: “The paramilitary groups are funded by the same government. Everybody knows it.”

Before we get on the chiva back to Cali—before sundown, to avoid gang hold-ups—Gonzalez offers his final words: “Every dollar from the United States is one more death. They are cutting health, education, public services— everything is going for the war. The United States government needs to reflect about what it is doing to our country.”

Continue ReadingAFRICAN RENAISSANCE IN A COLOMBIAN WAR ZONE 

[WW 4 REPORT] Dear Readers

Dear Readers:

Welcome to the new issue of World War 4 Report. We wish to draw your attention to a couple of small changes.

First, we have finally got the comments function fixed on our weblog. So please feel free to add your thoughts, critcisms, annotations, etc. There are a few minor hoops to jump through to prevent spam posts, but we hope they are not too burdensome.

Secondly, please note that we’ve added a new line to our kicker, to better reflect our mission, which has morphed somewhat since we first began publishing in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. We have always been concerned with issues of indigenous peoples, stateless ethnicities and cultural survival, but this is becoming a larger part of what we cover. Hence, we are no longer simply “Deconstructing the War on Terrorism,” but also “Defending the Fourth World.” (What we mean by this is explained in our mission statement.)

So please participate in our weblog, and let us know what you think of our evolving direction. As always, donations are greatly appreciated–and urgently needed.

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Continue Reading[WW 4 REPORT] Dear Readers 

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: INGENUE OR PROVOCATEUR?

One Woman’s Journey from Warlord Somalia to Neocon Washington

by Chesley Hicks, WW4 REPORT

Book Review:

The Caged Virgin
An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press/Simon & Schuster 2006 (translated), originally published in Netherlands 2004

Infidel
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press/Simon & Schuster 2007

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, among many things, a Somali-born feminist and former Dutch parliamentarian. Her name gained worldwide attention in 2004 after Theo Van Gogh, the grandnephew of the famous Dutch painter, was murdered for his work with Ali on their short film Submission, an artistic statement on the status of women in Islam.

Ali’s first book, The Caged Virgin, was originally published in 2004 in Holland, where she’d become a well-known, outspoken critic of Islamic oppression of women. A collection of essays, the book lays the bones of Ali’s beliefs and offers some insight to the personal history that thrust her to international prominence.

Her essential contentions in Virgin are first, that Islamic doctrine mandates female subservience, oppression, and abuse; second, that the degradation of women underlies the greater ills and unrest that plague Muslim countries; and third, that it is incumbent upon both Muslims and Westerners to openly critique and take action against violence and oppression committed in the name of religion.

Central to her argument is what she recognizes as Western liberal apologism in the face of Islamic violence against women. In the book’s prologue she writes: “In certain countries, ‘left wing,’ secular liberals have stimulated my critical thinking and that of other Muslims, but these same liberals in Western politics have the strange habit of blaming themselves for the ills of the world, while seeing the rest of the world as victims.”

This contention puts her at variance with many, including leftists with whom she otherwise shares values. Later in the book, she also writes, “Everything you do here in the free west is your choice. For heaven’s sake, grow up! Take responsibility for yourself.”

Such proclamations—obviously ripe for right-wing picking yet coming from an avowed humanitarian, feminist pluralist—have positioned Ali as a boundary-challenging lightning rod of a public figure. At the book’s beginning, she writes: “I have taken enormous risk by answering the call for self reflection and by joining the public debate that has been taking place in the West since 9-11. And what do the cultural experts say? ‘You should say it in a different way.’ But since Theo van Gogh’s death, I have been convinced more than ever that I must say it my way only and have my criticism.”

Reading this for the first time alongside some of her more scathing indictments of Islam, one could wonder if Ali is as much interested in positing herself as a cult of personality as she is in promoting her cause.

That she feels deep and genuine angst over the plight of Muslim women is never in question. But the polemical approach she takes in The Caged Virgin can at times strike the reader as blunt and lacking strategy. People listen to Ali because she is intelligent, extraordinarily accomplished, mediagenic, and knows Islam from the inside. She was raised in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia and witnessed firsthand the complicated, mutually exploitative interplay between religion, culture, and corrupt regimes in those countries. In particular, she argues that the Muslim “obsession with virginity” insidiously undermines and corrupts all of Islamic culture. She was forced to undergo excision (clitoridectomy, or female circumcision) at age five. She arrived in Holland at age 23 because she was making a clandestine escape from an arranged marriage. She knows conflict and developing-world travails better than most Westerners.

Ali compares Muslim women’s internalizing of their subjugation to Stockholm syndrome. She inventories Islam’s unrelenting doctrinaire proscriptions, and describes the reactionary mechanics instilled in its believers. So it seems she might take a more nuanced approach in making an appeal to its would-be dissidents. Instead, Virgin serves incendiary statements aplenty: “Many Muslims lack the necessary willingness and courage to address this crucial issue,” for example, or: “September 11, mark my words, was the beginning of the end of Islam as we know it.”

She has little patience for any abiding of oppression in the name of tolerance. “The worst thing is that this worry about discrimination pushes Muslim women ever further down into the pit,” she writes. “Whom do you help by saying nothing? It’s selfish not to want to appear racist.”

Later chapters in the book sketch Ali’s conflicted relationship with her family and how her charismatic but generally absent father—Hirsi Magan Isse, a scholar and leader of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF)—might have informed her own sense of singular heroism. In one chapter a nearly child-like Ali explains that she does not see herself as a saint: “I’ve been naughty,” she—a real-life, international agent provocateur—writes without irony. “I teased other girls, rung people’s bells and run away.” She proceeds to describe how she feels responsible for stigmatizing the Koran teacher who beat her nearly to death as a child. This simplicity might be due in part to Virgin‘s translation, or a hasty effort to get it published in order to illuminate Ali’s views in the wake of her fast ascent to fame. Though it seems to point to something more profound, it is never clear. The personal anecdotes are intriguing but beg for more detail. Similarly, the book feels at times redundant and meandering, and leaves one wondering where her editors went.

In these ways, Virgin can leave readers scratching their heads. Though bold and explicit in places, the book leaves too much up to readers’ conjecture. Most readers, based on their own prejudices, likely either want her to be right or want her to be wrong. Response to the book, it seems, lies along those lines. An internet search reveals as much.

But one need read no further than Ali’s next book for the full insight required to understand all this and more.

In lucid, fine detail Infidel makes fluid sense of Virgin‘s stark outlines. A chronological memoir that traces Ali’s life from rural Somalia and urban Mogadishu to Nairobi, Mecca, The Hague, New York, Washington DC and many places in between, Infidel lends texture, depth and sense to Virgin‘s angles. It also reveals the author’s deeply compassionate, devoted, sound and powerful mind.

While double the length of Virgin, Infidel is a far more coherent, fleet read. And though more subtle, it is ultimately more rousing in its cause-appeal and firming in its conviction. It also tells an enthralling tale.

At the end of chapter four in Infidel, Ali writes, “That is how, by the time I turned ten, I had lived through three different political systems, all of them failures.”

“The police state in Mogadishu,” she continues, “rationed people into hunger and bombed them into obedience. Islamic law in Saudi Arabia treated half its citizens like animals, with no rights or recourse, disposing of women without regard. And the old Somali rule of the clan, which saved you when you needed refuge, so easily broke down into suspicion, conspiracy, and revenge.”

In describing her childhood growing up in east Africa and the Middle East in the ’70s and ’80s, Ali shows herself always trying to make sense of the turmoil around her. In so doing, she sheds light from below on the reality of life during wartime and under oppressive regimes. And beyond that, what she often reveals is a girl. A girl who is in most ways like any other girl, yet growing up amid deep violence and chaos. The disarray she describes in the culture and politics of her environment likewise tore her family apart, from both the outside and the inside. The external forces-the wars, famine, and repressive culture-she recognizes as inextricably linked with the internal forces of guilt, resentment, deceit, and unreason. And all of that she sees as both caused by and reinforced by blind submission to clan identity and Islam.

As Ali chronicles her interior quest to reconcile her own will and intelligence with the forces around her, she also tells some rich stories about the life, culture and era in which she was raised.

In chapter eight, she describes the events in her life after the fall of Said Barre’s regime and the outbreak of total civil war in Somalia. Her rendering of the weeks she spent trying to rescue relatives from a Somali refugee camp along the Kenyan border bring to life the reality of a such camps in a way few documentaries or news stories ever could.

Unlike Virgin, Infidel delivers Ali’s revelations gradually, via intimate, sometimes painful detail. Neither sordid nor sensational, she tells her tale through the wide eyes of lively girl often literally beaten into submission. As she ages and alternately internalizes and fights the tyranny around her, two consistent threads emerge: love for her family and an indomitable drive toward justice. And in her world, most of the injustice she sees is justified by verses in the Koran.

When she finally escapes the world of her past and makes her way to Holland, she finds her past is already there. Holland in the early ’90s proves a fertile zeitgeist: a microcosm of highly developed liberal democracy and social welfare experiencing a significant immigration wave, much of it Muslim.

Poignantly, even though she’d witnessed more brutality and life-altering change than most adults of any age, Ali was still, in many ways, a girl when she reached the West at age 23. Some of her new-arrival descriptions are amusing. Upon her first night in a hotel, she writes, “I examined the duvet, vowing to tell Haweya [her younger sister] about this amazing invention… The room was small, but somehow cleverly planned to fit: the closets fit into the wall, the TV inside the cabinet. How cool I thought.” Within the context of Infidel, these ultra-earnest ingĂ©nue statements make more sense than they do in Virgin.

In the months and years after she reaches the West, her line of observation and reasoning quickly become vast and sophisticated. She undergoes a self-motivated crash course in philosophy and politics, enrolls in school, and applies her learning to everything she sees around her. She learns Dutch atop all the other languages she knows from having moved around Africa, and so becomes a sought-after interpreter. This brings her into constant contact with the conflicting realities growing within Holland: that of the educated, liberal-minded, secular West and the impoverished, immigrant, religion-bound culture of her past.

The rest has become history. Ali ended up in the Dutch parliament; Theo van Gogh was murdered for his work with her; she was ushered into hiding; she lost and regained her Dutch citizenship; and she finally joined the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC.

Forever grateful to the institutions that she sees as having freed her from submission, Ali quickly comes to the conclusion that Western democracy is a system that works better than any other. She is not a blind proponent of all things Western. She names its faults in sober and unromantic terms. But unlike many native-born heirs to democracy, she sees it as something not to be taken for granted, and has made it her life’s work to defend it. In so doing, she tests it to feel its outermost limits. She pushes its boundaries and revels in its contours. Democracy, she believes, though it must be protected, is also tough. She does not like party politics—it limits thought and reminds her too much of Somali clan identity. Thus she has made some scandalizing jumps between left and right parties in pursuit of her own agenda: namely to advance the rights and protection of Muslim women. During her time in parliament, she called herself a “single issue” candidate. It is the continuation of a singular compulsion to justice that began in her youth in Africa. She crosses boundaries, not to make headlines but to get close to truth. It’s hard to imagine that, in the 21st century, one could move from the Iron Age to the Internet Age, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali went from one to the other within thirty years. This brings an invaluably broad yet balanced perspective to her work.

Ali expresses an unflagging appreciation for the principled minds in Holland who encouraged her to pursue her arguments even when they disagreed with her. She doggedly upholds their model, and abides by the fruition of rigorous debate. Further engagement with varied opposition, one suspects, will nurture her inquiry. So we will watch with eager curiosity what emerges from Ayaan Hirsi Ali from within the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

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From our weblog:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali faces death threats—in Pennsylvania
WW4 REPORT, May 15, 2007
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Dutch legislator to step down following Islamist threats
WW4 REPORT, May 18, 2006
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingAYAAN HIRSI ALI: INGENUE OR PROVOCATEUR?