[mobglob-discuss] Sunera Thobani: War Frenzy

[Jill M]

Sunera Thobani on "Finding the Future: Series on Vision TV

Finding the Future
Vision TV
Wednesday, Oct. 2,  7:30 p.m.

In the 13-part series Finding the Future, author Des Kennedy invites such 
leading thinkers as Linda McQuaig, Wade Davis, and Frances Moore LappJ to 
discuss their visions of tomorrow's world. World Premiere, starts Wednesday, 
Oct. 2, 7:30 PT

[Note: the premiere episode features a discussion with Canadian academic 
Sunera Thobani, who sparked controversy last fall with a speech that was 
harshly critical of U.S. foreign policy and the war on terrorism.]
___

War frenzy
By Sunera Thobani
http://www.zmag.org/thobanireplies.htm

My recent speech at a women's conference on violence against women has 
generated much controversy. In the aftermath of the terrible attacks of 
September 11, I argued that the U.S. response of launching 'America's new 
war' would increase violence against women. I situated the current crisis 
within the continuity of North/South relations, rooted in colonialism and 
imperialism. I criticized American foreign policy, as well as President 
Bush's racialized construction of the American Nation. Finally, I spoke of 
the need for solidarity with Afghan women's organizations as well as the 
urgent necessity for the women's movement in Canada to oppose the war.

Decontextualized and distorted media reports of my address have led to 
accusations of me being an academic impostor, morally bankrupt and engaging 
in hate-mongering. It has been fascinating to observe how my comments 
regarding American foreign policy, a record well documented by numerous 
sources whose accuracy or credentials cannot be faulted, have been dubbed 
'hate-speech.' To speak about the indisputable record of U.S. backed coups, 
death squads, bombings and killings ironically makes me a 'hate-monger.' I 
was even made the subject of a 'hate-crime' complaint to the RCMP, alleging 
that my speech was a 'hate-crime.'

Despite the virulence of these responses, I welcome the public discussion my 
speech has generated as an opportunity to further the public debate about 
Canada's support of America's new war. When I made the speech, I believed it 
was imperative to have this debate before any attacks were launched on any 
country. Events have overtaken us with the bombing of Afghanistan underway 
and military rule having been declared in Pakistan. The need for this 
discussion has now assumed greater urgency as reports of casualties are 
making their way into the news. My speech at the women's conference was 
aimed at mobilizing the women's movement against this war. I am now glad for 
this opportunity to address wider constituencies and in different fora.

First, however, a few words about my location: I place my work within the 
tradition of radical, politically engaged scholarship. I have always 
rejected the politics of academic elitism which insist that academics should 
remain above the fray of political activism and use only disembodied, 
objectified language and a 'properly' dispassionate professorial demeanor to 
establish our intellectual credentials. My work is grounded in the politics, 
practices and languages of the various communities I come from, and the 
social justice movements to which I am committed.

ON AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

In the aftermath of the terrible September 11th attacks on the World Trade 
Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration launched "America's War on 
Terrorism." Eschewing any role for the United Nations and the need to abide 
by international law, the US administration initiated an international 
alliance to justify its unilateral military action against Afghanistan. One 
of its early coalition partners was the Canadian government which committed 
its unequivocal support for whatever forms of assistance the United States 
might request. In this circumstance, it is entirely reasonable that people 
in Canada examine carefully the record of American foreign policy.

As I observed in my speech, this record is alarming and does not inspire 
confidence. In Chile, the CIA-backed coup against the democratically elected 
Allende government led to the deaths of over 30,000 people. In El Salvador, 
the U.S. backed regime used death squads to kill about 75,000 people. In 
Nicaragua, the U.S. sponsored terrorist contra war led to the deaths of over 
30,000 people. The initial bombing of Iraq left over 200,000 dead, and the 
bombings have continued for the last ten years. UNICEF estimates that over 
one million Iraqis have died, and that 5,000 more die every month as a 
result of the U.N. imposed sanctions, enforced in their harshest form by 
U.S. power. The list does not stop here. 150,000 were killed and 50,000 
disappeared in Guatemala after the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup; over 2 million 
were killed in Vietnam; and 200,000 before that in the Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki nuclear attacks. Numerous authoritarian regimes have been backed by 
the United States including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the apartheid regime in 
South Africa, Suharto's dictatorship in Indonesia, Marcos in the 
Philippines, and Israel's various occupations of Lebanon, the Golan Heights 
and the Palestinian territories. The U.S. pattern of foreign intervention 
has been to overthrow leftist governments and to impose right wing regimes 
which in turn support U.S. interests, even if this means training and using 
death squads and assassinating leftist politicians and activists. To this 
end, it has a record of treating civilians as entirely expendable.

It is in this context that I made my comment that the United States is the 
largest and most dangerous global force, unleashing horrific levels of 
violence around the world, and that the path of U.S. foreign policy is 
soaked in blood. The controversy generated by this comment has surprisingly 
not addressed the veracity of this assessment of the U.S. record. Instead, 
it has focused on my tone and choice of words (inflammatory, excessive, 
inelegant, un-academic, angry, etc.).

Now I have to admit that my use of the words 'horrific violence' and 'soaked 
in blood' is very deliberate and carefully considered. I do not use these 
words lightly. To successive United States administrations the deaths 
resulting from its policies have been just so many statistics, just so much 
'collateral damage.' Rendering invisible the humanity of the peoples 
targeted for attack is a strategy well used to hide the impact of 
colonialist and imperialist interventions. Perhaps there is no more potent a 
strategy of dehumanization than to proudly proclaim the accuracy and 
efficiency of 'smart' weapons systems, and of surgical and technological 
precision, while rendering invisible the suffering bodies of these peoples 
as disembodied statistics and mere 'collateral damage.' The use of embodied 
language, grounded in the recognition of the actual blood running through 
these bodies, is an attempt to humanize these peoples in profoundly graphic 
terms. It compels us to recognize the sheer corporeality of the terrain upon 
which bombs rain and mass terror is waged. This language calls on 'us' to 
recognize that 'they' bleed just like 'we' do, that 'they' hurt and suffer 
just like 'us.'

We are complicit in this bloodletting when we support American wars. Witness 
the power of this embodiment in the shocked and horrified responses to my 
voice and my words, rather than to the actual horror of these events. I will 
be the first to admit that it is extremely unnerving to 'see' blood in the 
place of abstract, general categories and statistics. Yet this is what we 
need to be able to see if we are to understand the terrible human costs of 
empire-building. We have all felt the shock and pain of repeatedly 
witnessing the searing images of violence unleashed upon those who died in 
New York and Washington. The stories we have heard from their loved ones 
have made us feel their terrible human loss. Yet where do we witness the 
pain of the victims of U.S. aggression? How do we begin to grasp the extent 
of their loss? Whose humanity do we choose to recognize and empathize with, 
and who becomes just so much 'collateral damage' to us? Anti-colonial and 
anti-imperialist movements and theorists have long insisted on placing the 
bodies and experiences of marginalized others at the centre of our analysis 
of the social world. To fail to do so at this moment in history would be 
unconscionable. In the aftermath of the responses to my speech, I am more 
convinced than ever of the need to engage in the language and politics of 
embodied thinking and speaking. After all, it is the lives, and deaths, of 
millions of human beings we are discussing.

This is neither a controversial nor a recent demand. Feminists (such as of 
Mahasweta Devi, Toni Morrison, Gayatri Spivak and Patricia Williams) have 
forcefully drawn our attention to what is actually done to women's bodies in 
the course of mapping out racist colonial relations. Frantz Fanon, one of 
the foremost theorists of decolonization, studied and wrote about the role 
of violence in colonial social organization and about the psychology of 
oppression; but he described just as readily the bloodied, violated black 
bodies and the "searing bullets" and "blood-stained knives" which were the 
order of the day in the colonial world. Eduardo Galeano entitled one of his 
books The Open Veins of Latin America and the post-colonial theorist Achille 
Mbembe talks of the "mortification of the flesh," of the "mutilation" and 
"decapitation" of oppressed bodies. Aime Cesaire's poetry pulses with the 
physicality of blood, pain, fury and rage in his outcry against the 
domination of African bodies. Even Karl Marx, recognized as one of the 
founding fathers of the modern social sciences, wrote trenchant critiques of 
capital, exploitation, and classical political economy; and did not flinch 
from naming the economic system he was studying 'vampire capitalism.' In 
attempting to draw attention to the violent effects of abstract and 
impersonal policies, I claim a proud intellectual pedigree.

INVOKING THE AMERICAN NATION

In my speech I argued that in order to legitimize the imperialist aggression 
which the Bush administration is undertaking, the President is invoking an 
American nation and people as being vengeful and bloodthirsty. It is de 
rigueur in the social sciences to acknowledge that the notion of a 'nation' 
or a 'people' is socially constructed. The American nation is no exception.

If we consider the language used by Bush and his administration to mobilize 
this nation for the war, we encounter the following: launching a crusade; 
operation infinite justice; fighting the forces of evil and darkness; 
fighting the barbarians; hunting down the evil-doers; draining the swamps of 
the Middle East, etc., etc. This language is very familiar to peoples who 
have been colonized by Europe. Its use at this moment in time reveals that 
it is a fundamentalist and racialized western ideology which is being 
mobilized to rally the troops and to build a national and international 
consensus in defence of 'civilization.' It suggests that anyone who 
hesitates to join in is also 'evil' and 'uncivilized.' In this vein, I have 
repeatedly been accused of supporting extremist Islamist regimes merely for 
criticizing US foreign policy and western colonialism.

Another tactic to mobilize support for the war has been the manipulation of 
public opinion. Polls conducted in the immediate aftermath of the September 
11 attacks were used to repeatedly inform us that the overwhelming majority 
of Americans allegedly supported a strong military retaliation. They did not 
know against whom, but they purportedly supported this strategy anyway. In 
both the use of language and these polls, we are witnessing what Noam 
Chomsky has called the "manufacture of consent." Richard Lowry, editor of 
the National Review opined, "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or 
whatever it takes, this is part of the solution." President Bush stated, "We 
will bear no distinction between those who commit the terrorist attacks and 
those who harbour them." Even as the bombing began last weekend, he declared 
that the war is "broader" than against just Afghanistan, that other nations 
have to decide if they side with his administration or if they are 
"murderers and outlaws themselves." We have been asked by most public 
commentators to accept the calls for military aggression against 
"evil-doers" as natural, understandable and even reasonable, given the 
attacks on the United States. I reject this position. It would be just as 
understandable a response to re-examine American foreign policy, to address 
the root causes of the violent attacks on the United States, and to make a 
commitment to abide by international law. In my speech, I urged women to 
break through this discourse of 'naturalizing' the military aggression, and 
recognize it for what it is, vengeful retribution and an opportunity for a 
crude display of American military might. We are entitled to ask: Who will 
make the decision regarding which 'nations' are to be labeled as "murderers" 
and "outlaws"? Which notions of 'justice' are to be upheld? Will the Bush 
administration set the standard, even as it is overtly institutionalizing 
racial profiling across the United States?

I make very clear distinctions between people in America and their 
government's call for war. Many people in America are seeking to contest the 
'national' consensus being manufactured by speaking out and by organizing 
rallies and peace marches in major cities, about which there has been very 
little coverage in Canada. Irresponsible media reporting of my comments 
which referred to Bush's invocation of the American nation as a vengeful one 
deliberately took my words out of this context, repeating them in one 
television broadcast after another in a grossly distorted fashion.

My choice of language was, again, deliberate. I wanted to bring attention to 
Bush's right wing, fundamentalist leanings and to the 
neo-colonialist/imperialist practices of his administration. The words 
'bloodthirsty' and 'vengeful' are designations most people are quite 
comfortable attributing to 'savages' and to the 'uncivilized,' while the 
United States is represented as the beacon of democracy and civilization. 
The words 'bloodthirsty' and 'vengeful' make us confront the nature of the 
ideological justification for this war, as well as its historical roots, 
unsettling and discomforting as that might be.

THE POLITICS OF LIBERATING WOMEN

I have been taken to task for stating that there will be no emancipation for 
women anywhere until western domination of the planet is ended. In my speech 
I pointed to the importance of Afghanistan for its strategic location near 
Central Asia's vast resources of oil and natural gas. I think there is very 
little argument that the West continues to dominate and consume a vast share 
of the world's resources. This is not a controversial statement. Many 
prominent intellectuals, journalists and activists alike, have pointed out 
that this domination is rooted in the history of colonialism and rests on 
the ongoing maintenance of the North/South divide, and that it will continue 
to provoke violence and resistance across the planet. I argued that in the 
current climate of escalating militarism, there will be precious little 
emancipation for women, either in the countries of the North or the South.

In the specific case of Afghanistan, it was the American administration's 
economic and political interests which led to its initial support for, and 
arming of, Hekmatyar's Hezb i Islami and its support for Pakistan's 
collaboration in, and organization of, the Taliban regime in the mid-1990s. 
According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, the United States and 
Unocal conducted negotiations with the Taliban for an oil pipeline through 
Afghanistan for years in the mid-1990s. We have seen the horrendous 
consequences this has had for women in Afghanistan. When Afghan women's 
groups were calling attention to this U.S. support as a major factor in the 
Taliban regime's coming to power, we did not heed them.

We did not recognize that Afghan women's groups were in the front line 
resisting the Taliban and its Islamist predecessors, including the present 
militias of the Northern Alliance. Instead, we chose to see them only as 
'victims' of 'Islamic culture,' to be pitied and 'saved' by the West. Time 
and time again, third world feminists have pointed out to us the pitfalls of 
rendering invisible the agency and resistance of women of the South, and of 
reducing women's oppression to various third world 'cultures.' Many continue 
to ignore these insights.

Now, the U.S. administration has thrown its support behind the Northern 
Alliance, even as Afghan women's groups oppose the U.S. military attacks on 
Afghanistan, and raise serious concerns about the record of the Northern 
Alliance in perpetuating human rights abuses and violence against women in 
the country. If we listen to the voices of these women, we will very quickly 
be disabused of the notion that U.S. military intervention is going to lead 
to the emancipation of women in Afghanistan.

Even before the bombings began, hundreds of thousands of Afghan women were 
compelled to flee their homes and communities, and to become refugees. The 
bombings of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and other cities in the country will 
result in further loss of life, including the lives of women and children. 
Over three million Afghan refugees are now on the move in the wake of the 
U.S. attacks. How on earth can we justify these bombings in the name of 
furthering women's emancipation?

My second point was that imperialism and militarism do not further women's 
liberation in westerm countries either. Women have to be brought into line 
to support racist imperialist goals and practices, and they have to live 
with the men who have been brutalized in the waging of war when these men 
come back. Men who kill women and children abroad are hardly likely to come 
back cured of the effects of this brutalization. Again, this is not a very 
controversial point of view. Women are taught to support military 
aggressions, which is then presented as being in their 'national' interest. 
These are hardly the conditions in which women's freedoms can be furthered. 
As a very small illustration, just witness the very public vilification I 
have been subjected to for speaking out in opposition to this war.

I have been asked by my detractors that if I, as a woman, I am so critical 
of western domination, why do I live here? It could just as readily be asked 
of them that if they are so contemptuous of the non-western world, why do 
they so fervently desire the oil, trade, cheap labour and other resources of 
that world? Challenges to our presence in the West have long been answered 
by people of colour who say, We are here because you were (are?) there! 
Migrants find ourselves in multiple locations for a myriad of reasons, 
personal, historical and political. Wherever we reside, however, we claim 
the right to speak and participate in public life.

CLOSING WORDS

My speech was made to rally the women's movement in Canada to oppose the 
war. Journalists and editors across the country have called me idiotic, 
foolish, stupid and just plain nutty. While a few journalists and columnists 
have attempted balanced coverage of my speech, too many sectors of the media 
have resorted to vicious personal attacks. Like others, I must express a 
concern that this passes for intelligent commentary in the mainstream media.

The manner in which I have been vilified is difficult to understand, unless 
one sees it as a visceral response to an 'ungrateful immigrant' or an uppity 
woman of colour who dares to speak out. Vituperation and ridicule are two of 
the most common forms of silencing dissent. The subsequent harassment and 
intimidation which I have experienced, as have some of my colleagues, 
confirms that the suppression of debate is more important to many supporters 
of the current frenzied war rhetoric than is the open discussion of policy 
and its effects. Fortunately, I have also received strong messages of 
support. Day by day the opposition to this unconscionable war is growing in 
Canada and all over the world.

I would like to thank all of my family, friends, colleagues and allies who 
have supported and encouraged me.
__

An Empowering Experience
Sunera Thobani speaks
by Ai Lin Choo
http://www.ubyssey.bc.ca/article.shtml?/20011019/featureThobani.htmlf

Sitting in her office, surrounded by stacks of books and papers, Sunera 
Thobani looks like any other professor.

As she sits across from me, crosses her legs and asks how the traffic was on 
my way over, I can't help but wonder if this is the same woman who has been 
labelled "hysterical" and a "nutcase" in the past three weeks.

Cheerful and composed, Thobani hardly looks like someone who has been—and 
still is—the target of physical threats. And instead of appearing outraged 
or discouraged, as I very much expected her to be, Thobani is incredibly 
calm and says she's more motivated now than she's ever been.

"I would actually call it an experience that has really strengthened me in 
my views and in my politics. It's just reinforced for me the importance of 
rejecting responses which are really designed to uphold the status quo," 
said the UBC women's studies professor.

Even though she admits that she was taken aback by the amount of attention 
her speech generated, she says that she has not taken any of the attacks 
personally. She says that, in a way, she wasn't surprised at the concern 
generated by her speech, as she thinks the resulting media frenzy was used 
as a forum to discuss Canada's role in the war. She believes that this is 
one of the main reasons stories are still being published about her.

"People might oppose the war for a whole number of reasons and I think there 
needs to be a climate in which people can actually voice their concerns and 
be treated intelligently. So, if anything, this has really just taught me 
the critical need for public debate, for public forums, because there's a 
lot of anxiety they feel about this as well. And on top of that, if they 
feel they can't speak or they're going to be villified if they speak, I 
think it just feeds the anxiety, it just feeds fear in our society," she 
said.

Thobani came under heavy public criticism after delivering a speech at a 
Woman's Resistance Conference in Ottawa on October 1. Speaking out against 
violent US retaliation to the September 11 attacks in New York and 
Washington, Thobani referred to US foreign policy as "soaked in blood" and 
said that "there can be no women's emancipation—in fact no liberation of any 
kind for women will be sucessful unless it seeks to transform the 
fundamental divide between the North and South, between Third World people 
and those in the West who are now calling themselves American."

Since then, Thobani has been caught in a nation-wide furor that has 
condemned her speech as "hateful," "disgraceful" and "anti-Western."

"I think, personally, I've been villified, but that really is a strategy 
that's been used for a very long time by the powers that need to silence 
people who don't agree with them and who are actually interested in 
mobilising people to oppose their policies, so I think it's a really old 
strategy," she said.

Thobani explained that the motivation behind her speech included 
considerations of the threats facing women around the world, adding that she 
felt that it was an appropriate forum to talk about what the war would mean 
for women and how it would increase violence against them on a global level.

Before the conference, Thobani said she felt sure that the US would resort 
to military retaliation in response to public outcry and hysteria' and that 
she felt it was important to discuss the issue before the US actually made a 
decision to attack Afghanistan.

"So if we want to talk about timing, what would be the right timing? After 
Afghanistan has been destroyed? After everybody in Afghanistan has been 
killed? Would that have been the appropriate time? I think the appropriate 
time was then, to debate this, to discuss Canada's role before any bombing 
started."

On a personal level, Thobani says that the amount of hate mail and threats 
she's received so far have definitely affected her. This is something she's 
never experienced before in her life, she said, and is shocked about how 
explicit some of the threats have been.

"I've had threats as direct as people saying 'We know where you live. We 
know where you go. We know where you go to eat. We're going to get you'. 
It's been as direct as that. Other people say that 'We wish you'd go to 
Afghanistan and be beheaded,' and, 'I hope that in your next lifetime you're 
born as a woman in Afghanistan and I hope your next lifetime comes really 
soon,'" she said.

Thobani seems incredibly calm and composed for someone whose life has been 
placed at risk, and even smiles while explaining the content of some of the 
mail she's received.

"I think by now I probably know every single word there is in the English 
language for women's bodily parts, so that's the kind of hate mail I have 
been receiving."

But when asked about the hate crime complaint that has been filed against 
her, Thobani tenses up and anger fills her voice.

"Well, I think it's baseless. I think it has no merit and I think lots of 
people, legal experts, have said that this is a baseless complaint, but I 
don't know if that will be enough for the complaint to be dropped against 
me," she said.

Thobani then goes on to explain her frustration with the RCMP. She is still 
obviously angry that the complaint was made public and says that even though 
the RCMP reasoned that the complaint was made public out of concern for her 
safety, Thobani insists that she had never asked for their protection and 
that she should have therefore been consulted.

RCMP Corporal Michael Labossierre, the RCMP's designate on the BC hate crime 
unit, informed two Vancouver Sun reporters about the hate crime complaint 
last week. Labossierre said that his decision to make the complaint public 
was to show that majority groups can also be targets of hate, thereby 
disputing the usually held belief that hate is promoted against visible 
minorities. The next day, Labossierre released a public apology and called 
his comment "unguarded."

But Thobani emphasises that despite the negative reactions to her speech, 
she does not want to downplay the amount of support that has been offered to 
her. She says that not only has her immediate family been great, but she has 
also received tremendous support she's been receiving from faculty members, 
students and members of the general public as well.

"A lot of people are very concerned with what this means for us and a lot of 
people feel like they have no role in being able to influence the public 
debate about Canada's role in this war. The support that I'm receiving shows 
to me how critical the need is and how urgently people feel that they want 
to talk about this," she said.

Books, articles and small gifts are just some examples of the ways people 
have been showing their support, says Thobani. She also feels that she felt 
it is important to mention that many members of the public who don't agree 
with some parts of her analysis, but want to have intelligent discussions 
about the war, havealso offered their support.

Thobani, however, admits that this has been an extremely stressful period of 
time for herfamily, and glances at a framed picture of her 16-year-old 
daughter while explaining that her immediate family has, nonetheless, never 
faltered in their support of her.

"I mean it's been a real learning lesson for [my daughter] to find out how 
women of colour are seen and treated in this country. It's been a real 
learning lesson for a lot of her friends as well because it's sparked such 
racism and sexism in some sectors of the media and I think that for these 
young kids, for teenagers of today, it's really showing them what kind of 
society they actually live in and what the risks are for speaking out," she 
said.

Similarly, Thobani says that her womens studies students have been asking 
the same questions and said that.

"They're searching for those voices which are sometimes allowed to break 
through this otherwise male-dominated discussion about really important 
politics that women are not supposed to concern themselves with."

While Thobani initially requested security during her class to ensure the 
safety of her students, she says that she doesn't think safety is a concern 
any longer. So far, none of her students have reported claims of harassment.

Both UBC students and faculty have shown tremendous support for Thobani over 
the past three weeks and in an interview conducted on October 4, Tineke 
Hellwig, chair of the women's studies program, said that the department 
fully supports the professor.

UBC students have also organised in support of her and have helped to 
advertise a Canadian Federation of Students online message board where about 
500 people have signed their names in solidarity with the professor.

"I think [the experience] has really taught me the importance of continuing 
to speak out and the importance of feminists carrying on and doing the work 
that they have been doing in the women's movement for a long time. If 
anything, this has shown me how critical the need is for feminists across 
the country to keep doing the work they do and to try and create space for 
an intelligent discussion of many of the critical issues we face in the 
world today," Thobani said.

She added that while some people have questioned the strenth of the language 
she used in her speech, she feels the words chosen were carefully and 
deliberately picked. She criticised the way people are taught to use neutral 
language when discussing foreign policy. She gave the example of the phrase 
"collateral damage" and pointed out that when people die, the damage done is 
much deeper.

"These are actual human beings who get bombed, and who bleed when they 
die...and I think for us, who are being made complicit in these politics, we 
should really have a good sense of what these policies look like from the 
ground and I think it forces us to recognise the human costs of policies 
like this. So I think that the language I used is extremely important to me. 
I mean I don't use these words lightly. I choose them very carefully and I 
think that we really need to be aware of the profound human costs of these 
policies," she said.

Thobani also asserted that it was an "unjustifiable" distortion to run a 
couple of sentences, completely out of context, repeatedly, in the news, and 
called for a greater amount of democracy in our media.

She said that she felt more visibility had to be given to the numerous 
vigils, rallies and protests that are being held across Canada to capture 
dissenting voices in the country, adding that with the increasing number of 
people being killed in Afghanistan, she is certain that anti-war sentiments 
are going to get stronger.

"The media must hold opposing views and we don't have that in Canada. If 
anything, this experience has taught me how seriously the media controls all 
the places of public expression and debate and how vicious it can get," she 
said.

"The thing that has made me stop and think is the extent to which people in 
this country feel silenced by the way the media has been treating this 
issue. I mean, I didn't realise that people felt just so marginalised by 
this and, you know, these are mainstream people, people who have been 
phoning me. They're not people of colour, they're also men," she said.

When asked if she would do it all over again, Thobani instantly replied 
"absolutely," and explained that, all in all, this has been an "empowering" 
experience for her.

"I feel I have nothing to hide. My speech is out there for everybody in the 
world to look at—it's readily available—and I would say the same things 
again tomorrow because I have nothing to hide," she said.

"I think it's just really critical for more of us to stand up and oppose 
this war, and say that it shouldn't happen; not in our name."

Copyright 2002 Ubyssey Publications Society
__

Media reaction to Thobani a "hate campaign."
Dateline: Thursday, October 18, 2001
By Michele Landsberg
http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature.cfm?REF=169

Never before - or at least not since the War Measures Act - have I watched 
such a calculated, hot and hateful propaganda campaign. The hysteria whipped 
up against Professor Sunera Thobani has been unrelenting since she spoke on 
October 1 at an Ottawa conference on the criminal justice system and women. 
Comparing her actual words with what the media have told you, the public, 
has been a frightening exercise.

She did not even remotely imply that "America deserved what it got."

She did not say that "Americans are blood-thirsty and vengeful."

She did not say, or imply, that women in the Third World are more free than 
North American women.

If you were deceived by the uproar in the conservative press, don't feel 
embarrassed. As cynical as I usually am about the shenanigans of 
conservative commentators, I too was taken in this time by the sheer 
brazenness of their lies.

At first, reading the news stories, I was dismayed that, at a time when all 
of us are still sick at heart about the terror attacks, Dr. Thobani would 
appear to diminish the seriousness of that slaughter. I was amazed that 
Thobani would imply, ridiculously, that North American women are less 
liberated than women in the developing world. I should have known at once 
that a sophisticated academic like Thobani would never have said any such 
thing.

   It's hardly a revolutionary concept - if we rights-rich northern women 
can revel in a high standard of living when women elsewhere work in 
conditions of brutal poverty and slavish lack of human rights, are we really 
so free and liberated?

Thobani was a panellist at an intense, very successful conference organized 
by the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the Canadian 
Association of Sexual Assault Centres. The subject was, to potboil a crammed 
agenda, the way disadvantaged women end up being criminalized by the very 
laws that purportedly exist to protect them. More than 90 per cent of the 
aboriginal women in federal prisons, for example, are survivors of physical 
and/or sexual assault. Women who fight back against violent husbands are, 
now that we have "zero tolerance" policies, often counter-charged and 
criminalized. A pregnant woman, like Kim Rogers of Sudbury, who tries to get 
off welfare by going to school with a student loan can be criminally 
convicted as a welfare fraud, locked up in house arrest and left to die 
alone in a heat wave.

That was the context of the conference. Activists, ex-prisoners, front-line 
workers and feminist academics debated how to offer services to women 
without merely helping to shore up an unjust system. An Indian woman spoke 
passionately about the racism she suffered as a child in Canada.

Then Thobani rose to speak. She first rejected the idea that Canadian women, 
including aboriginals, can fight for themselves alone. We are all 
inter-connected, all linked in this era of globalization. It's hardly a 
revolutionary concept -if we rights-rich northern women can revel in a high 
standard of living when women elsewhere work in conditions of brutal poverty 
and slavish lack of human rights, are we really so free and liberated? How 
long before the Third World exacts a price from us?

When Thobani said that none are free until all are free, she was echoing a 
sentiment often expressed by mainstream churches. "Love thy neighbour," she 
said - twice.

Did you see that quoted? Of course not. The righteous right-wingers were 
busy whipping themselves and their readers into a red-eyed rage over stuff 
Thobani never said. Margaret Wente in the Globe called Dr. Thobani an 
"idiot". The Globe editorials raged against her "foolishness". B.C. Liberal 
premier Gordon Campbell waxed pompous about her "hateful, destructive 
comments ". I won't even describe the near-moronic fulminations in The 
Toronto Sun, which actually called NAC " Communist-linked". Foreign Minister 
Manley said her speech was "outrageous".

What a pack of cowards, rushing to climb onto a propaganda bandwagon about a 
speech they clearly neither heard nor read.

The National Post was, predictably, the most meretricious, reprinting a 
"condensed version" of Thobani's speech that craftily carved out all the 
paragraphs that made her meaning clear. George Orwell, we need you now. Yes, 
Thobani, in urging her audience to resist the call to war, talked about U.S. 
foreign policy "soaked in blood". So what? Factually,she's right. The bombed 
and maimed and dying civilians in Iraq can tell you that. So can peasants in 
Guatemala, the mothers of the "disappeared" in Argentina, the thousands of 
tortured and murdered in Chile. These were not mere glitches in an otherwise 
noble path of foreign relations. As much as we admire American democracy, 
its energy, creativity, its extraordinary generosity and pioneering 
leadership in human rights, we'd be dim-witted not to acknowledge also the 
darker acts of its overweening power - -from the Greek junta to Iran-Contra.

This isn't even a question of Thobani's "right to free speech". It's a 
question of our ability to sustain a little complexity, and bear with the 
intellectual discomforts of ambiguity, despite George Bush's dicta about 
black and white, good and evil.

   True, Thobani's speech was tough and passionately delivered. But there 
are deeper reasons for her being singled out for such vicious attack

Speaking of Bush, Thobani most emphatically did not call the American people 
"bloodthirsty and vengeful". In fact, she vigorously rejected that 
depiction, which, she pointed out, was "invoked by Bush". Just as Canadians 
are not unanimously baying for blood and howling for war, neither are 
Americans, Thobani insisted, drawing attention to the U.S. peace movement.

Does this sound anything like the quotes you read in other media?

The clue to the whole squalid hate campaign emerged by chance in a Globe and 
Mail cartoon, which depicted the Taleban fighters listening contentedly to a 
broadcast of Thobani's speech. With a sudden start, I remembered that 
Thobani is a Muslim, a woman who had spent most of her adult life resisting 
Islamic fundamentalism.

Racism against her is nothing new. When she was acclaimed the president of 
the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in 1993, a blithering 
little Tory MP falsely rushed to denounce her as "an illegal immigrant". His 
stupidity was echoed this month by Stockwell Day, who demanded that the 
Liberals denounce Thobani to the U.S. government. (I'm sure Colin Powell is 
weeping into his pillow because Thobani insulted his country).

Thobani is a brown-skinned woman in a sari, a feminist, a Muslim, and she 
attacked American dominance of the world through economic globalization, 
which just happens to be the sacred, untouchable religious creed of the 
conservative media. True, Thobani's speech was tough and passionately 
delivered. But there are deeper reasons for her being singled out for such 
vicious attack.

Now that we're at war, a sinister demand for groupthink has dominated the 
media. It has proven terrifyingly easy to whip up a public hate campaign 
against one woman, based entirely on a few out-of-context and distorted 
quotes. These attacks ,sadly, do serve one cautionary purpose: they show us 
how slickly we can all be duped, and how glibly bigotry can hide behind the 
Canadian mask of tolerance.

This article was first published in the Sunday Star on October 14, 2001, 
page A2.


cathywoods at shaw.ca
www.creativeresistance.ca

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