August 2010, Montreal, Quebec

Photo Beirut skyline from airplane over Mediterranean.

The Tadamon! collective wishes to express its full solidarity with Mr. Samah Idriss, editor of Al Adab (“Literature”) Magazine.

About Al Adab

Since its inception in 1953, this important Arabic cultural magazine has played a key role in encouraging progressive thought and debate in the Arab world.

Published in Beirut, Lebanon, Al Adab magazine has become a meeting place for critical reflection on grassroots democratic movements and a platform for voices decrying both colonization and dictatorship throughout the Middle East.

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criminalization of social movements & the anti-terrorism crusade

Thursday, November 5th 2009
6:30 pm Pavillon J-A-DeSève (DS)
UQAM, Rm DS-1580
320 Sainte-Catherine Street E.
graphic obey

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photo by Tom Llewellin

Photo: Tom Llewellin. Palestinian hip-hop artist Tamer Nafar from DAM.

Hundreds gathered at Café Campus in downtown Montreal for Artists Against Apartheid featuring celebrated Palestinian hip-hop ensemble DAM along with Montreal’s own Iraqi hip-hop artist Narcicyst. An inspiring concert this special edition in the ongoing Artists Against Apartheid series featured rhymes strait from Palestine via DAM who delivered a lively an inspiring performance.

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Interview: Independent Iraqi activist Asma Al-Haidari by Stefan Christoff

Photo: Urban skyline in Amman, Jordan.

Iraq’s refugee crisis extends across the world, as millions of Iraqi refugees have been displaced since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. A majority of Iraqi refugees are living in dire conditions and without permanent status in neighbouring countries, the largest populations residing in Jordan and Syria.

As media headlines remain focused on the ongoing and immediate daily violence inside Iraq, the refugee crisis expanding across the Middle East is often forgotten.

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Crash the party! Bring your shoes!

Thursday, October 22, 11am-1pm
In front of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel,
900 René-Levesque Boulevard

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photos by Sabrien Amrov

Photo: Sabrien Amrov. Qurna performing at Artists Against Apartheid.

At the Quebec Social Forum thousands converged in Montreal from throughout Quebec for concerts, workshops and conferences focused on building social justice movements. On Saturday, October 10th hundreds gathered at cégep du Vieux Montréal for the tenth edition of Artists Against Apartheid, presented as a main cultural event within the Quebec Social Forum.

Featured at the concert was Qurna a conceptual and experimental music project of Iraqi Maqam music, lead by Omar Dewachi on oud and featuring Jérémi Roy on double bass, Pierre-Guy Blanchard on percussion, Sam Shalabi on oud, Radwan Moumneh on saz, Xarah Dion on synth and Zayid Al-Baghdadi on nay. Sabrien Amrov documented the concert via photograph presented now on-line.

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George Bisharat, San Francisco Chronicle October 1st, 2009.

Photo: US President Barack Obama.

US President Barack Obama has placed restoration of the stature of the United States among his primary foreign policy goals. He has already achieved substantial progress in Europe, where polls indicate that he is widely admired. The president’s June Cairo University speech also won praise in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Yet many across the globe still await the substantive policy changes implied by his inspiring words.

President Obama can solidify broader global respect by supporting the recommendations of the just-released Goldstone report in the United Nations Human Rights Council. Richard Goldstone, an eminent South African jurist, led a mission to investigate allegations of war crimes in Gaza last winter.

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concert occurring within the Quebec Social Forum

SATURDAY OCTOBER 10th 20h00
suggested donation 5-10$
Cégep du Vieux Montréal
255 rue Ontario east
room 4.82 A
métro Berri-UQAM

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Muntazer al-Zaidi, guardian.co.uk Thursday 17 September 2009.

Photo: Zoriah (c) Iraq’s national flag painted in Baghdad.

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

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Daily Star by Rami G. Khouri, Saturday, September 19, 2009.

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi. Sky over sea, Beirut, Lebanon.

The amount and quality of available scientific data on the global impact of climate change, I rediscovered at a seminar organized by the Danish Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen this week, is staggering. The debate that swirled around the issues of climate change and global warming just two or three years ago has vanished. There is much more certainty now on the nature and extent of the changes to the Earth’s climate that can be attributed to the impact of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

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