With remarkable foresight, in March an NDP member of the Ontario legislature, Peter Tabuns, introduced a bill (proposed law) to ban fracking in Ontario. (Fracking = hydraulic fracturing of the earth’s crust for gas and oil.)
With remarkable stupidity, the ruling Liberal government immediately denied any need for such a bill. There is no fracking yet in Ontario, said Natural Resources Minister Bill Mauro, so there is no need for a ban. More detail here.
Without a ban, the door stays wide open. Wherever the door is open, oil and gas corporations walk right in and start drilling. And wherever frackers drill, disaster follows. Ask people on what’s left of the ground in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, the Dakotas, south England…
Fracking consumes and poisons millions of litres of fresh water – for every well. The drillers inject a toxic brew of chemicals under high pressure to smash underground shale and force oil and gas to the surface. Fracking operations leak vast quantities of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas. They also set off earthquake epidemics where such incidents have been rare. And then there are the pipelines to transport the gas/oil to refineries and ports, and with pipelines, spills and explosions.
Result: Immense profit for a few, incalculable harm for the rest of us and the earth.
Worldwide, as soon as people become informed about fracking, resistance grows rapidly, and people have won government bans and moratoria in many municipalities, provinces, states and countries. Check here for an up-to-date list.
Meanwhile in Ontario, the door – our door, by the way – remains wide open.
In a 2014 poll, 75% of Ontarians supported a moratorium on fracking. As Peter Tabuns understands, the time to close the door is now, before it’s too late.
The bill to ban fracking is scheduled to come to a vote on May 7, a week from now. Send a message to Premier Wynne, via a new email campaign from the Council of Canadians: Ban fracking in Ontario. Close the door now.
The underground story on fracking and the growing resistance is here, inside Bold Scientists. Scroll down to chapter 10, The unsolved problem.
In the early hours of March 19, Israeli soldiers took Mustafa Sheta from his home. Sheta’s arrest came a few days before the Freedom Theatre’s annual General Assembly in Jenin.
This is the latest in a long series of assaults by the Israeli occupation forces on personnel of the Freedom Theatre, a vibrant cultural centre in the Jenin refugee camp.
Thirty-five, father of three children, Mustafa Sheta is secretary of the Theatre’s board. He is also a researcher and journalist, with a well-known commitment to social and humanitarian activism. He works with the United Nations, and is currently studying for a Masters degree. Recently he won an honours award and plans to pursue further studies in London, England later this spring.
“Since Mustafa joined the board last year he has been a tremendous resource for the theatre”, says Jonatan Stanczak, managing director of The Freedom Theatre. “His dedication, involvement and communication skills have meant a lot to us. We are doing all we can to follow his case. Until recently there was no information at all available but we just learned that there will be a court hearing in a few days.”
Avigail Abarbanel: “The message to those of us who support the Palestinians is to get ready to escalate our support. It is about to get very very tough.”
BDS: more than ever, the best chance for real change.
Palestinians mourn victims of Israeli air strikes in Gaza City, 12 July.
Many of us feel enraged but helpless in the face of Israel’s war crimes, with the active complicity of elites and mainstream media in Europe and North America. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls the long siege of Gaza “an incremental genocide.”
The rage is understandable, but we are not helpless. There is something we can do.
“We Palestinians trapped inside the bloodied and besieged Gaza Strip call on conscientious people all over the world to act, protest and intensify boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel until it ends this murderous attack on our people and is held to account.
With the world turning their backs on us once again, we in Gaza have been left to face massacre after massacre. As you read these words, over 120 Palestinians are dead now [157 by July 14, with no end in sight], including 25 children. Over 1,000 have been injured including countless horrifying injuries that will limit lives forever –- more than two thirds of the injured are women and children.
We know for a fact that many more will not make it through the next day. Which of us will be next, as we lie awake from the sound of the carnage in our beds tonight? Will we be the next photo left in an unrecognizable state from Israel’s state-of-the-art flesh-tearing, limb-stripping machinery of destruction?
We call for a final end to the crimes and oppression against us. We call for:
Arms embargos on Israel, sanctions that would cut off the supply of weapons and military aid from Europe and the United States on which Israel depends to commit such war crimes;
Boycott, divestment and sanctions, as called for by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society in 2005
Without pressure and isolation, the Israeli regime has proven time and time again that it will continue such massacres as we see around us now, and continue the decades of systematic ethnic cleansing, military occupation and apartheid policies.
We are writing this on Saturday night, again paralyzed in our homes as the bombs fall on us in Gaza. Who knows when the current attacks will end? For anyone over seven years old, permanently etched on our minds are the rivers of blood that ran through the Gaza streets when for over three weeks in 2009 over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including over 330 children.
White phosphorous and other chemical weapons were used in civilian areas and contaminating our land with a rise in cancers as a result. More recently 180 more were killed in the week-long attacks in late November 2012.
This time what? 200, 500, 5,000? We ask: how many of our lives are dispensable enough until the world takes action? How much of our blood is sufficient? Before the Israeli bombings, a member of the Israeli Knesset Ayelet Shaked of the far-right Jewish Home party called for genocide of the Palestinian people.
“They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes,” she said. “Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.” Right now nothing is beyond the murderous nature of the Israeli State, for we, a population that is mostly children, are all mere snakes to them.
As said Omar Ghraib in Gaza, “It was heart shattering to see the pictures of little boys and girls viciously killed. Also how an elderly woman was killed while she was having her iftar at Maghreb prayer by bombing her house. She died holding the spoon in her hand, an image that will need a lot of time to leave my head.”
Entire houses are being targeted and entire families are being murdered. Early Thursday morning the entire al-Haj family was wiped out — the father Mahmoud, mother Bassema and five children. No warning, a family targeted and removed from life. Thursday night, the same again, no warning, five more dead including four from the Ghannam family, a woman and a seven year old child amongst them.
On Tuesday morning the Kaware family did get a phone call telling them their three-story house would be bombed. The family began to leave when a water tank was struck, but then returned with members of the community, who all came to the house to stand with them, people from all over the neighborhood.
The Israeli jets bombed the building with a roof full of people, knowing full well it was full of civilians. Seven people died immediately, including five children under 13 years old. Twenty-five more were injured, and eight-year-old Seraj Abd al-Aal succumbed to his injuries later that evening.
Perhaps the family was trying to appeal to the Israeli regime’s humanity, surely they wouldn’t bomb the roof full of people. But as we watch families being torn apart around us, it’s clear that Israel’s actions have nothing to do with humanity.
Other places hit include a clearly-marked media vehicle, killing the independent journalist Hamed Shehab, injuring eight others, a hit on a Red Crescent rescue vehicle and attacks on hospitals which caused evacuations and more injuries.
This latest session of Israeli barbarity is placed firmly in the context of Israel’s inhuman seven-year blockade that has cut off the main life-line of goods and people coming in and out of Gaza, resulting in the severe medical and food shortages being reported by all our hospitals and clinics right now.
Cement to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed by Israeli attacks had been banned and many injured and ill people are still not being allowed to travel abroad to receive urgent medical treatment which has caused the deaths of over 600 sick patients.
As more news comes in, as Israeli leaders give promises of moving onto a next stage in brutality, we know there are more horrors yet to come. For this we call on you to not turn your backs on us. We call on you to stand up for justice and humanity and demonstrate and support the courageous men, women and children rooted in the Gaza Strip facing the darkest of times ahead. We insist on international action:
Severance of diplomatic ties with Israel
Trials for war crimes
Immediate international protection of the civilians of Gaza
We call on you to join the growing international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign to hold this rogue state to account that is proving once again to be so violent and yet so unchallenged.
Join the growing critical mass around the world with a commitment to the day when Palestinians do not have to grow up amidst this relentless murder and destruction by the Israeli regime. When we can move freely, when the siege is lifted, the occupation is over and the world’s Palestinian refugees are finally granted justice.
ACT NOW, before it is too late!”
Signed by:
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
University Teachers’ Association in Palestine
Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (Umbrella for 133 orgs)
General Union of Palestinian Women
Medical Democratic Assembly
General Union of Palestine Workers
General Union for Health Services Workers
General Union for Public Services Workers
General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers
General Union for Agricultural Workers
Union of Women’s Work Committees
Pal-Cinema (Palestine Cinema Forum)
Youth Herak Movement
Union of Women’s Struggle Committees
Union of Synergies—Women Unit
Union of Palestinian Women Committees
Women’s Studies Society
Working Woman’s Society
Press House
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
Gaza BDS Working Group
One Democratic State Group
Q (usually rhetorical, not wishing to hear an answer): Where are the Palestinian Ghandis?
A: Through six decades of Israeli military occupation, countless Palestinians have engaged in nonviolent resistance to the occupation. Many Ghandis have been killed by the Israeli military, and several thousand are currently held in Israeli prisons, many without charge. The Israeli authorities keep trying to break the resistance with terror and violence. Non-violent resistance complicates their perpetual propaganda goal: to equate Palestinian resistance with terrorism, and to portray Israelis as perpetual victims. But still, despite everything, resistance continues.
This is the story of one Palestinian Ghandi who needs our help – or at least our voices.
Hassan Karajah
Grassroots International, which “works to create a just and sustainable world by building alliances with progressive movements,” reports:
Can you imagine what it would be like if military forces came to your home in the middle of the night, searched your mother, brother, and sisters (including a young child), ransacked your family’s belongings, blindfolded and arrested you, all without any known charges?
This is what happened just two weeks ago to Hassan Karajah, Youth Coordinator of Grassroots International’s partner, Stop the Wall. (More detail about Hassan and the arrest.)
Will you stand with us to take action and demand Hassan’s immediate release?
For years, he has been organizing Palestinian youth throughout the West Bank to defend their human rights, develop leadership skills and mobilizing nonviolent resistance to the Wall and to the Israeli occupation.
Hassan played an important role in the coalition of youth groups, farmers and trade unions which, together with international supporters, came together in January to occupy land in an area slated by the Israeli government for settlement expansion in the West Bank, Bab Al-Shams. Is it a coincidence that Hassan was arrested just two weeks after the Israeli government forcibly evicted Palestinians from this area?
In a May 2012 interview, Hassan Karajah said: “The repression we are currently facing…is simply an attempt to cancel our right to freedom of expression and assembly…. We are apparently asked to sit at home and watch our last lands being confiscated, our homes demolished and thousands of Palestinians being taken away to Israeli jails, many even without trials or charges. But we will not sit at home and we will not be silent.”
For the past two weeks, Hassan has been held in an interrogation facility, and has reportedly been badly beaten. No known charges that have been brought against him, and as of this writing he has not been allowed to see his lawyer.
This is not the first time that Israeli forces have detained partners of Grassroots International without charges. Recently leaders of both Stop the Wall and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees were summarily arrested and thrown into detention facilities.
Your action – and the support of thousands of others like you – successfully pushed for the release of human rights defenders in the past. Together with the efforts of Stop the Wall and international allies, we can do it again, at the same time demanding an end to the criminalization of all human rights defenders and social movements everywhere that fight for rights to land, water, and food sovereignty.
Without a ban, the door stays wide open. Wherever the door is open, oil and gas corporations walk right in and start drilling. And wherever frackers drill, disaster follows. Ask people on what’s left of the ground in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, the Dakotas, south England…
Michael Riordon 