Event : Roundtable – After #ParisAttacks : colonial violence, racism & war
Date : 9 décembre @ 6:30pm
Location : Café Aquin (*), local A-2030 (Pavillon Hubert-Aquin, 2nd floor)
Université du Québec à Montréal
400 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est, station Berri-UQÀM
Facebook event

The November 13th attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead, were a grave tragedy, and exist only in the context of a greater continual process of violence and war in which France, NATO, the US and Canada have been central to such horrors. When Francois Hollande declared that “we are at war”, it was quite accurate but what had been left out, is that France has always been at war against those it seeks to oppress and dominate.

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By: Rami El-Amine and Mostafa Henaway

No matter how it unfolds, the Egyptian revolution will go down in the history books as a defining moment in the 21st century. Millions of Egyptians brought down one of the world’s most repressive regimes, that of the U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak, in just 18 days. Their bravery, perseverance, and tactfulness in the face of the regime’s brutal crackdown not only triggered uprisings across the Arab world but inspired and influenced protests against government austerity in the U.S., Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Despite the fact that it is only a few months old, it’s important to begin piecing together a people’s history of the revolution to convey what happened and how it happened so that the lessons from this critical struggle can be disseminated.
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I had expected conditions in Gaza to be bad, but I was still shocked at the devastation when I went there in July.

Last month my companion and I entered Gaza at the Erez crossing through a modern building reminiscent of an airport terminal. After questioning by the Israeli border police, we left the building and had a kilometre walk to pick up transportation.

It was as if we had travelled to another planet. The sandy track is surrounded by the blown-up remnants of Gaza’s former industrial district. Rubble stretching for hundreds of metres lines the route.

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Britain’s first Muslim minister has attacked the growing culture of hostility against Muslims in the United Kingdom, saying that many feel targeted like “the Jews of Europe”.

Shahid Malik, who was appointed as a minister in the Department for International Development (Dfid) by Gordon Brown last summer, said it has become legitimate to target Muslims in the media and society at large in a way that would be unacceptable for any other minority.

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Un comité spécial de l’ONU, qui enquête sur les pratiques israéliennes affectant les droits de l’homme dans les territoires palestiniens occupés, a déclaré mardi avoir été empêché par Israël d’y accéder.

« Les autorités israéliennes ne nous ont pas permis de visiter les territoires palestiniens et n’ont donné aucune raison pour expliquer leur refus », a dit dans une conférence de presse à Amman le chef du comité, Prasad Kariyawasam, précisant toutefois qu’Israël ne reconnaissait pas leur mandat. Les trois membres du Comité spécial de l’ONU d’enquête sur les pratiques israéliennes affectant les droits de l’homme des Palestiniens et des autres Arabes des territoires occupés par Israël ont déjà visité l’Egypte et doivent se rendre en Syrie.

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Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has published a new report titled, “Extra-judicial executions … Official, Declared Israeli Policy” covering Israeli extra-judicial executions against Palestinians during the period from 1 August 2006 till 30 June 2008. The report is the ninth of its kind in a special series on extra-judicial executions by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) against Palestinian activists during Al-Aqsa Intifada.

The first part of the report discussed international standards prohibiting extra-judicial executions. These included the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and additional protocols and the Rome Statute. The second part discussed the official Israeli position vis-à-vis extra-judicial executions. Israeli legislative, executive, and judicial authorities officially support this policy, making Israeli the only state in the world that officially commits these crimes.

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Photo: Walking in south Lebanon 2006. Interview by Stefan Christoff for Tadamon!

In recent weeks, major media outlets in Canada have featured numerous news reports on Hezbollah, outlining that the armed Lebanese political party is planning military operations in North America. Media reports have been based on anonymous intelligence sources in the U.S. and Canada.

Major media coverage in Canada was ignited by a T.V. report from the U.S.-based ABC news network claiming that Hezbollah was planning operations in Canada in response to the assassination of Hezbollah’s military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, in Syria this past winter.

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Photo: Dubai skyline. Interview by Stefan Christoff for Tadamon!

Dubai is famed internationally for lifestyles and modern monuments etched by extreme wealth, a city state in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that has become an unlikely hub for international finance. In a region bombarded by the chaos of the U.S.-driven ‘war on terror’, Dubai a small city state located on the edge of Iran and Iraq has become a city of glamor and glitz, a striking paradox that has enchanted many around the world.

Dubai’s shining exterior is quickly becoming world famous, including a series of three-hundred constructed islands mapping out the shape of world, an indoor ski mountain in the boiling temperatures of the Persian Gulf and the soon to be completed Burj Dubai, now the tallest man made structure in the world.

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BEIRUT: The peoples of Lebanon and Palestine have an ambivalent relationship. In the years since the terms “Lebanon” and “Palestine” were assigned their 20th-century political meanings, they have accumulated meaning, just as the experiences of their citizens have diverged.

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On 11 June, eight-year-old Hadeel Al-Sumairi was killed when her home in southeastern Gaza was shelled by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Less than a week earlier, eight-year-old Aya Hamdan al-Najjar was killed by a rocket fired from an IOF helicopter. These two young girls had been living just a few kilometers apart, both in villages in the southeastern Gaza Strip near the border with Israel. Their violent deaths highlight both the continual dangers facing families who live anywhere near the Israeli border — and the grim and rising child death toll in the Gaza Strip. Sixty-two children have been killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip this year — almost double the number of children who were killed by the IOF in Gaza during the whole of last year.

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