Campaign Against the Wall of Shame

These past few weeks, I’ve met a few people who consider homosexuality to be “un-natural” or to be a “disease that can be cured.”  Typical of such a perspective is the refusal to define “natural” or to define “disease.”  If “natural” is what exists in “nature,” what is found amongst other animals, then homosexuality is quite natural.  It is found among other primates (other than us, that is), other mammals, and even among birds.  Check out this news story about Lesbian Albatrosses :–)

… as a side note, one of the most vociferous opponents of homosexuality (yes, incidentally, all the folks I’ve met recently who considered homosexuality to be a disease and a sin, etc. etc., are men) was stunned when I told him that I may deny my son were he to join the US army but that I would love him equally were he to be a homosexual.  (He raised the comparison – expecting me to welcome my son – hypothetical that he is – to join the US army and to reject him were he to be gay.) I explained though that one is an institution that teaches killing and another is merely a different way of loving. He said he’d rather his son be a serial killer than a homosexual.  sigh…

my dear ecology students: if you could, do go see “Avatar” (the movie) before the final exam.

Here is a link to my latest article in Al-Adab

“Haiti exports nearly 200 million T-shirts each year to the United States, T-shirts stitched by factory workers reportedly making as little as 18 cents an hour. Like children who must make do with mud cookies, these garment workers must make do with a starvation wage – wages even lower than their parents earned working in similar factories 25 years ago….To acquire these factory jobs entire families must move away from rural regions to cities like Port-au-Prince, squeezing into squalid slums of wobbly concrete houses that barely keep off the rain, let alone withstand an earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter scale….But when the bodies are buried and the streets cleared, will we [the United States] continue to exploit Haiti as a source of cheap labor and an outlet for our agricultural surplus?”

Lebanon activists launch campaign targeting Egypt’s “wall of shame”

Stand against the siege of Gaza and the collaboration of the Egyptian authorities in closing Rafah borders with Gaza and building a wall around it.

Protest this Saturday 23rd of January at the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut @ 11:00am.

Today, the Campaign to Stop the Wall of Shame (the Egyptian, US-funded, US-designed steel wall on the Gaza border) was launched, with a press conference at 11 am at Ta Marbouta in Hamra, Beirut.  The Campaign seeks to shed light on the companies and other contractors that are involved in building the wall of the shame, and to use the strategy of boycott and divestment on those contractors and companies.

• Press release (in arabic): egypt conf Final (in a word document); press release-campaign (in neo-office)
• Press release (in english) press release translation
• Letter sent to the Arab Contractors Company from the Campaign (in arabic): letter_to_arab_contractors_final[1]
• Factsheet about the Arab Contractors Company:ACC Factsheet 01.19.10 (1)

I was asked — among other things — to share my ‘favorite quotes.’  In other words: I had to find a quote that represented a certain philosophy of mine. So I chose a few…

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives.” (Audre Lorde)

“Perhaps one day the world, our world, won’t be upside down, and then any newborn human being will be welcome. Saying, ‘Welcome. Come. Come in. Enter. The entire earth will be your kingdom. Your legs will be your passport, valid forever.’” (Eduardo Galeano)

“We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.” (Mahmoud Darwish)

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” (Cree proverb)

So, relief to Haiti is good, right?

Those who give are generous, right?

The US really cares about Haiti. Hey – there’s a black man as President – so he should care right?

uh… no. not at all. :

Here are three articles that shed some light on the US and Haiti

* Disaster Profiteering: US ‘Security’ Companies Offer ‘Services’ in Haiti, January 18

* Why The US Owes Haiti Billions, January 18

and then, get this –> Homeless Haitians Told Not to Flee to U.S. …

From that NY Times article:

“United States officials say they worry that in the coming weeks, worsening conditions in Haiti could spur an exodus. They have not only started a campaign to persuade Haitians to stay put, but they are also laying plans to scoop up any boats carrying illegal immigrants and send them to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Department of Homeland Security officials have also transferred 200 illegal immigrants from the Krome Service Processing Center here — a federal jail for people awaiting deportation — to make room for a possible influx of Haitian migrants.

The State Department has also been denying many seriously injured people in Port-au-Prince visas to be transferred to Miami for surgery and treatment, said Dr. William O’Neill, the dean of the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, which has erected a field hospital near the airport there.”