Am Johal

Interview with Stephen Lewis

Am Johal — 2007-09-29T09:15:00Z

On the Phone from Nairobi Serena Hotel

September 11, 2007

This week former UN Stephen Lewis, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, was invested as Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe – a knighthood which is Lesotho's highest honour. (...)

Vancouver's Olympic Legacy

Am Johal — 2007-02-26T07:08:00Z

Poverty Cleansing the Downtown Eastside by Public Policy

As nice smiling Canadians wave their maple leafs and commodified aboriginal logos in anticipation of the 2010 Winter Olympics, poor people are getting fucked over in Vancouver. And no one seems to care.

Despite all the promises to the contrary, Vancouver's Olympic Games have failed to be sustainable. Instead, slick public relations by VANOC and support from Vancouver's tight-knit corporate media sector have masked a public policy imperative to drive out seniors, income assistance recipients and those suffering from mental illness and addiction from the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Policing, private security and property flipping have been the rules of the game. With more security on its way and the property frenzy continuing, Vancouver City Hall is not acting adequately to set up barriers to displacement.

This idea of 'fixing' the neighbourhood means the permanent displacement of the long term low income community that has called this neighbourhood home for decades.

It's Expo 86 all over again — just slower and carried out over more years. (...)

- / ZNet

The Obscenity of Vancouver's Olympic Games: Here Comes Frankenstein

Am Johal — 2007-02-06T00:22:58Z

Vancouver Olympics are a 'whitewash' on the social and environmental front.

No, we can't blame it all on the Olympics. The

downtown peninsula was already about to be built up

and real estate economics were savouring the asset

value of neighbouring Downtown Eastside property.

Oh, but what to do with the poor people? Kick them

off welfare after two years, stop the construction of

social housing, put in the Safe Streets Act and bring

in Project Civil City? The surveillance cameras are

surely soon to follow?

City Councillor Kim Capri asks why people are no

longer displaying civil behaviour? Go figure. (...)

The Aesthetics of Execution

Am Johal — 2006-12-31T20:10:00Z

It is a form of irony, that in his final moments of life, Saddam Hussein, the half-baked ‘Butcher of Baghdad,' appeared more dignified than his executioners – anonymous hooded police officers, randomly chosen, hastily carrying out last minute orders while taunting him. The cell phone video that was shown with a minute of advertising preceding it on Western media websites just added to the impromptu and anti-climactic nature of the event. (...)

A Complicated Kindness

Am Johal — 2006-12-18T16:14:00Z

Though North America's first heroin prescription trial is being described as successful in its early stages, it is being plagued with ethics questions regarding its research design and manner in which addicts are leaving the study.

The study, which began in February 2005, will have approximately 157 participants in Vancouver. Half of the volunteer participants were assigned to receive pharmaceutical-grade heroin (the experimental group) and half have been receiving methadone (the control group). (...)

- / Seven Oaks Magazine

Could Sanctions and Divestment End the Occupation?

Am Johal — 2006-08-16T19:13:41Z

Recently, the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees drew praise and criticism for taking a position supporting a divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel aimed at ending the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Many other churches and organizations have supported the campaign which originated with Palestinian civil society, political leaders and labour unions. However broad based support has been harder to find.

Additionally, some organizations within Israel have also supported this approach including the more grassroots areas of the peace movement who have felt boxed in by the confusing politics of Israel's mainstream peace movement which has supported the construction of the Separation Wall and the bombing of Lebanon. (...)

US Involvement Questioned

Am Johal — 2006-08-14T22:38:00Z

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is questioning the US's role in the ceasefire agreement.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged that US officials met with Israel in May to outline attack options against Hezbollah. The veteran New Yorker journalist has claimed Israeli officials travelled to Washington to meet with American officials. (...)

A Million Mutinies Now

Am Johal — 2006-08-10T02:02:00Z

The Canadian economist and US Presidential advisor, John Kenneth Galbraith, once famously wrote, “Faced with the choice between

changing one's mind and proving that there is no need

to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

As the Israelis seek to justify their preoccupation

with violence in the name of peace, Hezbollah

continues to fire rockets. As the television screens

show Israeli air raids in Beirut, a few minutes later

the UN planes land in the distance on the dilapidated

runway with emergency supplies. It makes for a rather

metaphoric visual of the power structures and human

ingenuity involved in sanctioning a killing spree of

innocent civilians. It has now been absolutely confirmed that the international system is rife with bullshit just as it was in the case of Rwanda, Sudan and the Balkans. (...)

Is Israel Any Safer Now?

Am Johal — 2006-08-04T19:40:39Z

In the narrative which has transpired following the escalation of events the past three weeks, Israel has continued to make the claim to its domestic audience

that they would be safer as a result of the IDF military response. In a country which has mandatory military service, its citizens have largely supported the war effort. Except for a few demonstrations in Haifa,

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the broader public largely endorsed the actions of the Israeli government.

To say that Condolleeza Rice's visits to the region were embarrassing for the United States would be a profound understatement. Not even the Israeli public took her presence here or her apparent calls for a

ceasefire seriously. (...)

What Exactly is an "Existential" Threat, Mr. Olmert?

Am Johal — 2006-07-29T22:47:00Z

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, by declaring the attack on Lebanon as an "existential" one, set forth a dangerous series of events which will only serve to do long-term damage to Israel. It was an overstep and overreaction which will have profound and deep consequences in the years to come.

It will also bolster the case of churches, labour unions and human rights organizations which are calling for a divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel in an attempt to force the state to change its policies related to the occupation.

"Existential" threats do not absolve Israel of the responsibility to comply with international law. Carrying out these kinds of policies is clearly an 'existential' threat to innocent civilians and even UN employees. (...)

What Are the Root Causes, Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice?

Am Johal — 2006-07-26T19:44:22Z

For months and years, independent media commentators have been using the term 'root causes' to highlight the role of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as one of the primary contributing factors to a destabilized Middle East.

At the G-8 Summit, US President Bush said, "One of the interesting things about this recent flare-up is that it helps clarify a 'root cause' of instability in the Middle East - and that's Hezbollah and Hezbollah's relationship with Syria, and Hezbollah's relationship to Iran, and Syria's relationship to Iran. Therefore, in order to solve this problem it's really important for the world to address the 'root cause.'" (...)

100 Hours in the Holy Land

Am Johal — 2006-07-24T19:06:10Z

Jerusalem/Ramallah - I am contemplating what is now known as the Haifa Suitcase Dilemma. I left it in an apartment and left with only a backpack last Sunday when the rockets started to land.

Do I go back there to get it, or do I just leave it there and get on the plane without it? What is the morality associated with such a decision? What is the genuine level of danger? What is my life worth? Why do I get to leave and others have no option, but to stay there?

I am in a coffee shop in a Jerusalem neighbourhood not far from the market. I am sitting with two friends and I tell them, “This place is depressing. I don't want to come back here - there's nothing I can do to contribute. Nothing gets better, it just gets worse.”

One of them says, “We don't need your guilt.”

From time to time, one is obligated to quarrel with oneself in order to maintain a relative sense of sanity when events take on a life of their own. The American writer Susan Sontag once wrote a beautiful passage about the experience of war:

To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell's flames. Still, it seems, a good in itself to acknowledge, to have enlarged, one's sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others. Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hand-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.

No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia. (...)

Conversation with Vanunu

Am Johal — 2006-07-18T21:49:00Z

"In the dark, every face looks the same, but the bullets fly, illuminating the night and in his 'enemy's' eyes, one can see his own pain."

Graffiti scrawled on a wall in a Jerusalem hostel

Jerusalem - It was nine and we had finished watching the BBC news in the hostel. Everyone was snickering about the framing of the story by the British broadcaster - some openly called it a colonial broadcast. This was a young, progressive crowd who wanted a more critical approach to the story that had been unfolding for days. (...)

From Haifa to Jerusalem: Thoughts While Getting Out of Katyusha and Fajr Missile Range

Am Johal — 2006-07-17T21:51:00Z

Is the US interested in destroying Iran's military capability?

Jerusalem - Here, we all feel like the boxer Roberto Duran, who was known as "The Hands of Stone." In a rematch fight with Sugar Ray Leonard in New Orleans in 1980, after having defeated the American gold medalist during the 'Brawl of Montreal', he turned his back to the ring in the eighth round, let his hands fall and uttered the immortal words, "No Mas, No Mas."

No More. No More. (...)

Beautiful Madness

Am Johal — 2006-07-14T00:58:38Z

The Israeli borders are flaring up.

Haifa - War and chess is what mathematicians and economists call a zero sum game. It is a game built on a model which requires one winner. The problem with developing international diplomatic policy on something as unforgiving as game theory means that civilian deaths become the de facto reality when the struggles of the ego cannot be averted by either side.

Stopping this march to madness is a daily struggle of perseverence, patience and determination. Unfortunately, in this context, there are no ends, only means. And the game continues. It is war all the time. (...)