I am walking the streets of Ras Beirut where I grew up, where my parents’ home still exists in Diaspora; as I promenade while doing some errands within a four square kilometer area, I feast my eyes on the sign […]
Israel is losing the propaganda war. Mainstream newspapers now provide ample reason to conclude that Israel oppresses the Palestinians with sadistic enthusiasm based on flimsy excuses. (The Palestinians, after all, have lost the military war. Even Hamas works hard to […]
Rezeq Faraj and the “Descent into Hell” It was when I read Palestine: le refus de disparaître, the 2005 book of our dear departed friend Rezeq Faraj, that I realized the full extent of the Palestinian people’s continuing “descent into […]
Over the last few years, the intensity and breadth of the solidarity actions for Palestinian rights dramatically increased. The second Intifada was followed by a campaign of non-violent direct-action, popularized in the West Bank by a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization, the […]
Shatila is a part of the Lebanese war that will never be forgotten, but it is a part of Beirut that few want to remember. I’m an ex-resident of and a frequent visitor to Beirut, but I had never even […]
Bil’in, situated to the west of Ramallah, is a village typical of the eastern Mediterranean from many points of view: the white houses that are arranged along the length of roads that hug the meanderings and natural contours of the […]
Kamal AlJafari’s Port of Memory (2010) is situated in the port of Jaffa. The film explores the formation of time in space—durational affect—and constitutes a relation of space and architecture via the cinematic lens that conjures up a new way […]
Ilustrado. By Miguel Syjuco, Hamish Hamilton Canada, an imprint of Penguin Group, 308 pp., Toronto 2010. Miguel Syjuco (pronounced See-hoo-koh), with Ilustrado, has achieved what Salman Rushdie achieved with Midnight’s Children: a brilliant irruption into the literary scene. He also […]
A colleague of mine suggested that I contribute an article on my interest in the question of Palestinian rights and intention to participate in a World Education Forum taking place in Palestine at the end of October. At the time […]
Media coverage of the peace talks presently underway in Washington is generally pessimistic about the prospects of success. It tends to be depicted as formalized theatrics, with a “down-to-business” atmosphere, dark suits, hand-shaking, and canned speeches. Little, if anything, is […]
One party asks for more than he is willing to settle for. The other party offers less than he is ultimately willing to concede. Both parties haggle until they reach a compromise. Such is the universal law of negotiating. As […]
The armed settlers descend from their colonies on the hill tops on the Palestinian farmers of Sousia day in and day out, damaging their crops and orchards and denying them access to their own land and wells. Settlements Mansions […]
Canada and Israel – Building Apartheid by Yves Engler, a co-publication of Fernwood Publishing and RED Publishing,ISBN: 9781552663554,Publication Date: Feb 2010, Pages: 168 Right off the bat, let’s take an excerpt from a blurb on the book issued by – […]
In Gaza breast milk for two years a well-spaced brother organic baby food furniture safety-checked growth carefully plotted then a well-chosen small school private lessons perhaps helmets even for sledding certainly for riding, figure skating enrichment in Gaza […]
In a café somewhere a light switch clicked behind a blue paint-chipped door. The bright light which crept out from between it and the worn wooden floor disappears and two men watch from a small table across the room. They […]
[from my Iraq suite, “Howl to the Dying of the Moon”] * A lean desert wolf howls... A child is being carried to her grave her tiny mouth closed forever but do not weep - do not weep! just open […]
In January 2009 Caryl Churchill penned the play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza in response to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead military strike upon Gaza. Cast Lead lasted 3 weeks, ending January 18th 2009 and was responsible for the […]
I am a Japanese Writer. By Dany Laferrière. Translation by David Homel. Douglas & McIntyre, 2010. I am a Japanese Writer is a novel about a writer who is neither Japanese nor speaks Japanese, but is actually Black and hails […]
THE ISSUE: This summer Montreal Serai focuses on the environment through a variety of viewpoints. Jacqueline Fortson, who has moved to Canada from Mexico, gives us a contemporary photo-essay “Montreal – Nature and the City: What makes Montreal a […]
Bio: Sandra Levy, originally from Montreal, now resides in Victoria, B.C. She studied art at Concordia University, École des Beaux Arts de Montréal and Arizona State University. She also did graduate work in biology at Concordia University. She taught […]
Unpaved paths have been part of human activity for at least 12,000 years, and the histories of roads and cities are deeply linked. Together with waterways, rutways or tracked-roads ( ancient “railways”) were key arteries for commerce and social […]
With apologies to Bill Clinton and Jean Charest The word is in: we are now deep into the world’s Sixth Great Extinction. Over the 543 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon, that vast period in which life made […]
Note: At the bottom of this article you will find a powerful video version, best seen at full screen. When I was first offered to opportunity of moving to Montreal, I deeply questioned myself, not knowing whether I would […]
When I was a boy, my parents often reminded me of the reality of the working class. Its work, the big tasks it accomplished from day to day. Its trade-union action. And its yearning for dignity. For my […]
I – Every Piece of Green on Earth “Everything come up out of ground –language, people, emu, kangaroo, grass. That’s Law.” –Hobbles Danaiyarri, from Yarralin, Northern Territory, Australia* In September 2008, I was attending a conference on urban […]
One does not have to be a militant environmentalist. Neither does one have to be a duck, a penguin or a halibut to feel encrusted, choked and oxygen-less. One needs to be just an engineer and scientist here, in […]
It is perhaps inescapable, my being born and raised in a North American suburb in the latter half of the twentieth century, that my poetry should show some concern with the environmental crisis. However, being poetry, the four poems here […]
[First published in A. Rivista anarchica, anno 40, n.2 (352) aprile 2010, pp. 47-49, Milano, Italia. Translation by Maya Khankhoje] Imperialism is a phenomenon which dates back all the way to antiquity, its epicenter having changed throughout the […]
In 1996, legislation was passed in the state of California that deregulated the production and sale of electric power for the big three big power producers and retailers: San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), Southern California Edison, and Pacific Gas […]
The British, ever adroit in matters related to furry-four footed creatures (except perhaps for the English beaver that disappeared in the 1500s), report that there are forty to sixty thousand urban foxes in England. They’re everywhere. Church lawns. Looking […]
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