SIT and Castleton State College were our 2nd and 3rd stops on the tour. We met Mary Hayward at SIT who organized everything for us. We pulled up and Raed got out of the car and pointed out we had a flat tire. Chelsea got on the phone with the car service folks and Mary got on the phone with the maintenance folks at SIT to see how we could fix it. With in an hour we had a local tire shop picking up the van and fixing it to our relief.
Despite the car fixing anxiety, the event itself went really well, the SIT students were critical and engaged and the speakers had a lot to download. Raed discussed how people in the US have been so affected by invasion psychology that some believe if we want something like oil then we are entitled to make war to get it. He made the analogy that there are rules that people follow when it comes to domestic issues that are simply not applied in the international arena. Raed used the example that in the US if we heard a neighbor getting abused we would not break there door down and shoot the abuser in the head to liberate the abused women, we would call the authorities, or find a community solution. But in the case of a cross-boarder situation the US would bomb and invade a county for the “liberation of women.” Raed spoke about how foreign invaders can never ‘bring democracy’ democracy can never be brought to a place or people, the people themselves must create their own democracy or systems they cannot be enforced. I think this itself goes against the idea of democracy, which is governance of, by and for the people.
Castleton, VT
We made it, Matt from the Real Action Film Club was outside ready with a group of volunteers to help us un-load and set up. Despite being a little late we arranged the room and got in place in time. Our venue was the atrium off of the cafeteria. It was a large room with a podium and tables for folks to eat.
We were very glad to be at Castleton, it was in some cases a hard sell. Many students at the college were in the National Guard, or were enlisted and going to be fighting in Iraq. One such student attended the event. In this community we were told it is hard to raise the issues of the war being un-just, illegal, and imperial since so many families are serving. Still we had an audience of some committed students who were clearly apposed to the Iraq war and some who were on the fence. I am glad we could bring our messages to this group of students and professors.
The professors sponsoring the event were from the communications department and asked a lot of questions about how Iraqi and Iranian leaders are represented in the media. Raed and Rostam both confirmed the communications Professors suspicions that there have been many false translations of Middle Eastern leaders speeches including a recent one by Mahmoud Amenajad (Iran’s President). They both said there are entire organizations focused on spinning news from the Middle East. One NGO they sited is called Memri the acronym for Middle East Media Research Institute. A group that provides translations of Arabic, Farsi for major media outlets, academics and politicians voluntarily. They said Memri is run by former Israeli intelligence/security operatives with funding from militant Zionists. As a result their translations are politically motivated. Memri intentionally represents major figures words and newspaper articles from the Middle East to create inaccuracies and sway public opinion. In the article Selective Memri (click here) Brian Whitaker of The Guardian Newspaper UK investigates whether the ‘independent’ media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems, not surprisingly he finds out it is not!
I think this is really important information to let people know; there are actually groups that work with major media outlets to sabotage politics and sway public opinion using false information. For the informed it wasn’t new news, Professor’s Conroy and Ghosh who attended the event were nodding their heads, I had not heard of this before. Check out MEMRI online, there has been a lot written about it.
Jessica
