Category: environment

Miko Peled: Political activism at a price

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Ronit Lentin

miko-peledIn  the wake of the UK and Ireland tour by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, I want to write about an email exchange I had with him and reflect on left wing Israelis profiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Though troubling, the dialogue was straightforward enough. Miko posted his plans for his UK and Ireland lecture tour on his Facebook page. After I heard he was charging for his Irish leg of the tour, I asked him on Facebook how much he was charging. He asked me to email him – he clearly did not want his fees disclosed in the public Facebook space. This was the email exchange, on March 31.

Miko: “I usually ask for $1500-$2500.  During my UK tour coming up I asked 500-1000 pounds. Why do you ask?”

Me: “I am asking because it rankles with me that you are making a living from the oppression of Palestinians, I suppose”.

Miko: “This is a cynical thing to say, and quite foolish, and considering my work it is totally uncalled for. Still, you can be rankled all you like, I am not the one oppressing the Palestinians, nor am I the one making a living off of their oppression.
I have a message that people want to hear, many people and I think it is an important one. I had to decide whether to sell my business and spread the message or stay home. I opted for the former I cannot afford to do it for free. Unlike others, I am independent, self employed and there is no institution or government that will pay to spread the message that I convey. It is excruciatingly hard work, to constantly travel and speak, there is plenty of money out there and I don’t see why it has to be done for free”.

On April 6, Miko published his UK and Ireland itinerary, enabling me to do a quick calculation, giving him the benefit of the doubt and allowing £500 (rather than £1,000) for each UK lecture and €500 for the Irish leg of the tour: Continue reading “Miko Peled: Political activism at a price”

Anti Deportation Ireland: End deportations now

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Ronit Lentin

anti-deportation-irelandThe death a couple of weeks ago of Immanuel Marcel Landa, an elderly Congolese man,  in Mosney, the 49th person to die in the direct provision system since 2000, focused my mind, yet again, on the invisible plight of Ireland’s asylum seekers. Ireland’s impetus to control asylum seekers rarely links the conflict zones which produce asylum seekers with their human consequences. Instead, the racial state demonises asylum seekers, stems their flow, often preventing them from landing to present their applications, all in order to regain control.

Asylum applications in Ireland have been going down ever since their peak in 2002 at 11,634; the number of applications received in 2011, 1,250, represented a 28% decrease on the corresponding figure of 1,939 in 2010. In 2012 (by June) only 458 asylum applications were made. The government seems delighted with the decrease in asylum applications. In 2010 Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern commended ‘the ongoing work within INIS, including the asylum agencies, to combat abuse while at the same time ensuring fairness and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of procedures in this area’.  At 1.5% at first instance and 6% on appeal, Ireland is distinguished by the lowest acceptance rate in the EU, where the average is 27%. Continue reading “Anti Deportation Ireland: End deportations now”

100 months to save the world?

Ronit Lentin

I have a little grand daughter – I want her to have a world. Yet my mind has been sharpened by reading the prediction of the Onehundred months group (http://onehundredmonths.org/) that in just 100 months time, if we are lucky, climate change will reach an irreversible stage. It’s frightening to think how little governments, international organisations, and you and I have internalised this message. The group’s message is clear: the level of carbon dioxide is the highest ever due to human activity, as 1,000 tonnes of CO2 are released into the Earth’s atmosphere every second, yes, second. If we do nothing, the earth’s climate will be shifting into a more volatile state with catastrophic consequences, yet the British are building a third runway in Heathrow and opening a new generation coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, while the US presidential hopeful Barack Obama is reversing his policy over petrol prices, promising not to reduce American dependence on fosil fuels, but rather on Middle East oil.

Continue reading “100 months to save the world?”