Just yesterday, an Iranian cleric was saying that promiscuous Iranian women cause earthquakes. He may have misstated the particular natural disaster.

An asylum seeker in Britain, Bita Ghaedi, conducted a hunger strike for more than a month because she was terrified of being tortured and killed if she is forced to return to Iran. Yet, despite more than 2700 petition signatures sent to UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Bita Ghaedi was violently detained this past weekend and set for deportation this coming Tuesday on April 20, 2010.

After her detention and subsequent escalation of actions from supporters, England ignored yet another hunger strike, demonstrations, and hundreds of letters, emails, calls, and faxes on behalf of Bita Ghaedi. But nature intervened as the volcano that has kept Heathrow Airport closed for five days belched out fresh ash, grounding all flights in and out of Heathrow Airport for the sixth day in a row.

Stranded travelers are fuming, especially since they need to get home to their families. But some are calling it an act of God or a divine intervention.

And since the press is covering the volcanic ash explosion, they could not avoid the hundreds of protesters gathered outside the airport for Bita and turn blind to this gross violation of international law.

Bita Ghaedi’s case presents a slippery slope that has global implications for Iranian dissidents in other countries. If England ignores human rights standards and violates the international principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits forcibly returning a person to a country where her/his life or freedom would be threatened, it provides less of an incentive to other similarly situated countries to uphold the law. Bita Ghaedi undoubtedly warrants recognition as a refugee and merits protections under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to which England is a signatory. We must hold England accountable.

In the meantime, Bita is still being held at the notorious Yarl’s Wood Detention Center and remains at severe risk not only from the Iranian regime due to her political activities, but also from male members of her estranged family if she is deported back to Iran.

Liz Hourican, of Phoenix CODEPINK, at the Phoenix rally on Global Unity Day Stand with Iran, July 25

Is the death or life of Michael Jackson – or any celebrity — more important than, say, acidic oceans, collapsing fisheries, energy decline, a 20 percent increase in the military budget, or an urgent global warming crisis? Whatever happened to Iran? Did the crisis there suddenly stop because Michael Jackson died?

Newspapers may believe they accurately report on our ecological and social challenges, but most Canadians remain completely unaware of the severe catastrophes that may befall them, their children, and grandchildren. Coverage of celebrities in the face of these urgent issues is a strange use of the public’s precious time to become informed. It leads one to believe that there are no serious issues to cover. Or, do editors and writers of Canada’s major papers secretly wish that they were working for People Magazine?

Should Canadians one day awaken to find themselves surrounded by an unstoppable global warming collapse, they will feel betrayed by the media. Global warming has been known by the scientific community for more than a century. James Lovelock had the CO2 data in hand in the 1960s. Yet we continue to pretend to “debate all sides” of this issue, deny facts, and cover our grief and fear in trivial news like Michael Jackson’s auctioned gloves. We all remember the Holocaust as something that has passed, but are we capable, as we often profess, of preventing future ones?

Like doctors, is it not the job of journalists to alert the public of danger, help citizens act in their democracy based on clear facts? This job is not being done.

We need perspective and a sense of our social priorities. If we fail to solve the challenges of global warming, energy decline, toxic wastes, and dying oceans, our progeny could witness a global holocaust beyond anything history has yet experienced. If we fail to confront dictatorships and war, we are bailing on the central role the news is supposed to play. If provided with the correct information most Canadians would prefer this to reliving ABC and Thriller, and feeling nostalgia for someone who was exploited by the press since childhood. Step back, and rethink the role you play.

Andrea Peloso is the coordinator of CODEPINK Toronto, yoga teacher and proud aunt.

Crazy talk? Nope. From Reuters:

Israel’s Arrow II missile defense system was tested at a U.S. range off the California coast on Wednesday but problems prevented the launch of the system’s interceptor, the Pentagon said.

Partly underwritten by Washington, Arrow is designed to defend Israel from missile attacks from Syria and Iran, which Western nations suspect of seeking nuclear arms despite its denials.

Seems to be much here that could make one uncomfortable: the fact that such advanced weaponry is developed and tested here in the States; the fact that American tax-dollars are funding U.S. military efforts not to protect Americans but Israel military efforts, or the fact that the U.S. is complicit, in fact, a partner, in a major military attack on Iran in the future — the very same country that President Obama during his campaign promised to talk with, without preconditions, to create peace.  Helping to fire missiles don’t sound like much of a move toward peace talks.

Anyone else feeling like this is insane??

:

Agha-Soltan, Ebadi, a 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and contributor to CODEPINK’s 2005 book, “Stop The Next War Now,” and Effat Hashemi, the wife of former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who was among the first to call for public protests, represent the incredible strength of Iranian women and their hunger for justice. Demanding reform, regime change, more social freedoms and a fair election, women have sometimes outnumbered men at the demonstrations, and they’ve also fought back police and militia.

For more information, please contact Jean Stevens, CODEPINK national media coordinator, or Jodie Evans, CODEPINK co-founder, at 310-621-5635.