Meanwhile, an ongoing uproar in Canada has resulted from Professor Sunera Thobani's talk a few days ago.

[Vancuver Sun - OTTAWA - 2 October 2001]: 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.

[National Post - OTTAWA - 2 October]: A leading voice of feminism in Canada told 500 cheering women at a conference yesterday that U.S. foreign policy is "soaked in blood" and only a fool would fail to examine the power of the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Sunera Thobani, a women's studies professor at the University of British Columbia, said the United States is "the most dangerous and powerful global force unleashing horrific levels of violence. "From Chile to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Iraq, the path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood," said Ms. Thobani, a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

Ottawa contributed $80,000 to the three-day conference.

The conference is called Women's Resistance: From Victimization to Criminalization. One of the conference organizers characterized Ms. Thobani as a popular speaker and an important intellectual voice in the country.

Ms. Thobani said she felt the pain of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, but wondered who is feeling the pain of "the victims of U.S. aggression?" She added: "U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood. And other countries of the West -- including, shamefully, Canada -- cannot line up fast enough behind it.

"But the people, the American nation that Bush is invoking, is a people which is bloodthirsty, vengeful and calling for blood. They don't care whose blood it is, they want blood. And that has to be confronted."

The women in the audience -- academics, union members, mental health workers and advocates for female inmates, embraced her anti-American rhetoric, repeatedly interrupting her with cheers and standing ovations.

Hedy Fry, the federal Secretary of State for the Status of Women, and Landon Pearson, a Liberal Senator and the daughter-in-law of the late prime minister Lester B. Pearson, sat on the podium with Ms. Thobani. Neither immediately denounced the speech, but neither stood or applauded when Ms. Thobani received a standing ovation.

Ms. Pearson could not be reached for comment.

Later, Ms. Fry told the House of Commons: "People in this country are allowed to say what they want. I did not support it. I did not applaud it. I got up and left immediately following. I stand in the House right now and say that I condemn the speech." Ms. Fry said she had expected the conference to deal exclusively with the subject of violence against women.

John Manley, the Foreign Affairs Minister, told the House: "Mr. Speaker, we have made it repeatedly plain that we view any kind of attempt to create moral equivalency between anyone's policies and what happened on Sept. 11 to be utterly unthinkable, outrageous and indefensible." Joe Clark, the Tory leader, described Ms. Fry as a "continuing running embarrassment" to the government and country. Last spring, Ms. Fry incorrectly said crosses were being burned on the lawns of Prince George, B.C.

Mr. Clark said Ms. Fry should have walked away immediately, while Stockwell Day, the Canadian Alliance leader, said: "For a minister of the Crown to sit on that stage and not disavow those remarks [at the time] was equally horrendous."

Another speaker at the conference, professor Julie Sudbury, from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., said: "Sept. 11 has created a blank slate for global domination of the Bush agenda of militarism and global capitalism ... He's no longer the Texas hangman. He appears to have become the global hangman."

Lee Lakeman, of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, and one of the conference organizers, said she supported Ms. Thobani's remarks.

"I can certainly assure you from the floor it was perfectly obvious that the majority of the room wants to call for peace and wants us to have supportive attitudes toward the Third World and the aspirations of the third world," she said, adding she considered the $80,000 donated by the federal government to be inadequate.

[Globe and Mail - OTTAWA - 2 October 2001]: Canadian feminist Sunera Thobani said yesterday she is sorry for the victims of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, but she lashed out at the United States, saying its foreign policy is "soaked in blood."

Ms. Thobani, the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, said the United States is the "most dangerous and the most powerful global force unleashing horrific levels of violence."

Her remarks were loudly applauded at a conference in Ottawa on the victimization of women. But they were later condemned in the House of Commons by federal politicians, including cabinet ministers.

But the condemnation from Hedy Fry, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women, came too slowly to satisfy the opposition. Ms. Fry, who spoke earlier at the conference, remained on the stage during Ms. Thobani's speech, sitting in silence during the attack on the United States. Liberal Senator Landon Pearson sat next to the stage during the speech.

Opposition politicians said that before leaving the conference, Ms. Fry should have made it clear to the audience of about 500 that the government does not believe there is any moral equivalence between U.S. foreign policy and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ms. Thobani, a university professor, said that the terrorist attacks should not be used to coerce Canadian women into backing U.S. foreign policy. "From Chile to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Iraq, the path of U.S.foreign policy is soaked in blood. There will be no emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until the Western domination of this planet is ended."

Ms. Thobani said she feels the pain "every day" of the thousands of dead and missing in the U.S. terrorist attacks. "But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression? " she asked.

Later in the Commons, MP Chuck Strahl of the Democratic Representative Coalition said that Ms. Fry remained silent while she should have at least walked off the stage in protest.

Canadian Alliance MP Grant Hill said Ms. Fry's silence means she was standing "shoulder to shoulder" with Ms. Thobani.

Ms. Fry said she wasn't standing with anyone. "I was actually sitting on a podium."

The minister said she left immediately after Ms. Thobani's remarks.

Mid-East Realities

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/10/441.htm