Feminist's anti-U.S. speech causes uproar

Josey1

Feminist's anti-U.S. speech causes uproarHedy Fry jeered by opposition for sitting silent Peter O'Neil Vancouver Sun Tuesday, October 02, 2001 Canadian Press files / Sunera Thobani, shown in a 1994 photo, said Monday that recent terrorist attacks pale in comparison to U.S. aggression. Fred Chartrand, Canadian Press / Hedy Fry says in Ottawa Monday she was 'disgusted with the rant by Sunera Thobani.' OTTAWA -- A B.C. feminist told a cheering audience here that the United States government is more threatening to the world than international terrorism.Sunera Thobani received several standing ovations from about 500 delegates attending the Women's Resistance Conference on Monday.Her comments caused a political uproar, with opposition MPs condemning Secretary of State Hedy Fry for sitting silently as Thobani spoke. MPs called on the government to fire Fry, charging that she should have immediately condemned Thobani's statements."Today in the world the United States is the most dangerous and the most powerful global force unleashing horrific levels of violence," said Thobani, a women's studies professor at the University of British Columbia and former head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women."From Chile to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Iraq, the path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood."Thobani said she empathizes with the human suffering following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing. "But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression?"In an interview with The Vancouver Sun Monday night, Thobani said her comments were directed at George Bush, not the American people. "I made a 40-minute speech. I provided a contest for those comments. I was basically advocating an end to war," she said."If America wants to lead this war, then I'm against American foreign policy." In her speech, Thobani also ridiculed any suggestion that the U.S. would be advancing women's rights by ousting Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which has forbidden women from working, attending school, or showing their faces in public."It's really interesting to hear this talk about saving Afghani women," she said. "Those of us who have been colonized know what this saving means."The Tanzanian-born Thobani became the first non-white president of the NAC in 1993, a position she held until 1996.As the outspoken leader of the NAC, Thobani created much controversy when she said in 1995 that only white, middle-class women had benefited from the feminist movement.Monday she said women will never be emancipated until the U.S. and the West stop dominating the world."The West for 500 years has believed that it could slaughter people into submission and it has not been able to do so. And it will not be able to so this time, either."After Thobani's speech, opposition MPs said Fry, the Chretien government's secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women, who also delivered a speech at the conference and was on the podium while Thobani spoke, should have sent an immediate message that the speech went too far."She should apologize to Canadians and our American cousins for not condemning these comments and walking out on this insulting and inflammatory speech," said Chuck Strahl, deputy leader of the Tory-Democratic Representative coalition.New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough, whose party was once a close ally of NAC's, said Fry should have offered "an unequivocal rejection of the kind of cheap sloganeering, of the excessive rhetoric."This is a time to be building tolerance, to be building bridges, not to create greater divisions," McDonough said.Fry defended freedom of speech within Canada, but said she didn't applaud and immediately left the event after Thobani spoke."I condemn that speech," the Vancouver Centre MP told jeering opposition MPs."I thought the speech that was made by the expert of NAC to be incitement."Opposition MPs said Fry, who wrongly portrayed Prince George as a haven for cross-burning racists earlier this year, has made one too many blunders and must be fired."The history of this minister is not a very happy one and I think it is time for a change," said Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day.McDonough said Fry doesn't have the credibility to travel across Canada and speak publicly against intolerance.poneil@sns.southam.ca http://www.canada.com/search/site/story.asp?id=CDE733D8-9F7F-4D77-9F89-96504B1B7F50

Josey1

TEXT;Colonized in the name of the WestNational PostThis is a condensed version of Sunera Thobani's speech to the Women's Resistance Conference in Ottawa on Monday.- - -There will be no emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until the Western domination of this planet is ended. And more than ever, more than ever, we need to heed those words. Especially as all of us are being herded into the possibility of a massive war at the behest of the United States. We need to hear those words even more clearly today.We have seen and all of us have felt the traumatic pain of watching those attacks and trying to grasp the facts of the numbers of peoples who died. We feel the pain of that every day we have been watching it on television. But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression? Two-hundred thousand people killed only in the initial war on Iraq. That bombing of Iraq has continued for 10 years now. Do we feel the pain of all the children in Iraq who are dying from the sanctions that were imposed by the United States? Do we feel that pain on an everyday level? Share it with our families and our communities and talk about it on every platform that is available to us? Do we feel the pain of Palestinians who now for 50 years have been living in refugee camps?This new war against terrorism that's being launched, it's very old. And it's a very old fight of the West against the rest. Consider the language which is being used to mobilize people: calling the perpetrators evil doers, irrational, calling them the forces of darkness, uncivilized, intent on destroying civilization, intent on destroying democracy. They hate freedoms, we are told.Every person of colour, and I would want to say also, every aboriginal person, will recognize that language. It was used to justify our colonialization by Europe. We were colonized in the name of the West bringing civilization, democracy, freedom to us.All of us recognize who is being talked about when that language is being used. The terms crusade, infinite justice, cowboy imagery of Dead or Alive posters. We all know what they mean.People in the West also recognize who this fight is against. Cries heard all over the Western world: We're all Americans now. People who are saying that recognize who this fight is against.People who are attacking Muslims or any person of colour who looks like they could be from the Middle East, without distinguishing, recognizes who this fight is against. These are not just slips of the tongue that Bush quickly tries to reject. They reveal a thinking, a mindset.And it's horrific to think that the fate of the world hangs on the plans of people like that. This will be a big mistake for us, if we just accept that these are just slips of the tongue. They are not. They reveal the thinking, and the thinking is based on dominating the rest of the world in the name of bringing freedom and civilization to it.Reject this kind of jingoistic militarism and recognize that as the most heinous form of patriarchal racist violence that we're seeing on the globe today.The women's movement has to stand up to this. There is no option for us. We have to fight back against this militarization. We have to break the support that is being built in our countries for this kind of attack.The lesson we have learned and the lesson that our politicians should have learned is that you cannot slaughter the people into submission. For 500 years they have tried that strategy.The West for 500 years has believed that it can slaughter people into submission and it has not been able to do so. And it will not be able to do so this time, either.