Writers' Festival profiles activists

BY NICK EVERETT

SYDNEY — A June 1 public meeting entitled "How the West views the East" proved to be a popular focal point of political discussion and debate at the Sydney Writers' Festival. The meeting featured Tariq Ali, Egyptian writers and activists Naawal El Sadawi and Sherif Hetata, and Sydney academic Ghassan Hage. More than 100 people were turned away from the Bangarra Theatre.

Responding to the question, "Are we not ourselves in danger of stereotyping America as the bad guys?", Ali spoke about the tradition of dissent in the US represented by writers such as Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Edward Said.

El Sadawi, a doctor, author and former political prisoner, argued that the key division was not between the West and the East, but between the "2% of the world that owns all wealth, money, multinational corporations, military and the media" and the rest. "They use their wealth to suppress those rebelling against class, racial, patriarchal and religious oppression", she declared.

From Green Left Weekly, June 19, 2002.

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From GLW issue 496