Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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Jobless Recovery and the Federal Reserve Holdout
Today we welcome back Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and his son Max Wolff freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics to discuss the current economic recovery, is it recovering without job growth? Rick is also the author of the book, Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, where he takes the reader back to 2005 and step by step reveals how policies, economic structures and wage-to-profit systems led to a global economic collapse.
We get a critical update from both Rich and Max. Will there be another leg down as predicted. Another leg down meaning, will the economy continue to drop? This was mentioned because of the way people were investing, investing in a way that expected the market to drop.
Rick Wolff / Max Wolff :
- There’s a recovery in some parts and not others. The missing piece of the economic puzzle is job growth.
- Housing assets are 35 percent off their 2006 peaks. 15.5 million people unemployed. 1 out of 6 in the labor force in a dire economic situation. Misery index, looks at long term unemployed – 27 weeks or more.
- 41 percent of our unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks.
- Average unemployment benefits cap out at 2000.00 a month
- “Phony ‘Economic Recovery’, Real Alternatives” – article by Rick Wolff
- You have to wonder that we live in a time of massive unemployment, the recovery didn’t deal with that problem, and yet we don’t have a national discussion of “direct employment.” We did need a banking bailout, we chose to bail out some elements of society and not others.
- A couple of hundred billion dollars for say kids to continue to got to school on the subway, or community colleges can stay open, or job training programs, or the state of California can stay open, we decided was a waste of money?
- The average person in the US has a 30 day life expectancy without International finance.
- 61 thousand UAW workers laid off.
- US Cash for Clunkers program, borrowed European model but replaced old used cars with new SUVs, and increased price of used car parts.
- Oregon Example: Last summer, the state legislature controlled completely by the Democratic party passed a bill to face their 700 hundred million dollar shortfall, not by cutting social programs, but by taxing the corporations and the rich. Unions, liberal folks, and the democratic party (left of where it is in the rest of the country)
- We need 110 – 120 thousand new jobs a month to keep up with population growth. Jobless growth recovery from 2002 to 2007 was from explosive consumer debt.
- People buying more things without getting jobs (credit) The last 18 months we witnessed the largest re-distribution of wealth in US history. The bottom 80 percent stood still and the top 20 percent lead by the top 5 percent shot up.
- 7.8 million homes in the foreclosure pipeline
Guest – Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
Guest – Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.
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Radio Documentary – It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories
April 24, 2010 marks the beginning of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race 95 years ago. Carried out by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire, over half of the Armenians living in the Empire were killed. To commemorate this, the first genocide of the 20th century, Law and Disorder co-host Heidi Boghosian and producer Geoff Brady present a 90-minute program titled, It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories.
We wish to thank WBAI for their commitment to recognizing the Armenian genocide, and are grateful to the individuals we interviewed for opening their hearts and sharing the difficult memories of the past.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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Israeli Policy and Palestinian Children – Nora Barrows-Friedman
We talk today with the Nora Barrows-Friedman, she is the host of radio show Flashpoints at KPFA in Berkeley California. Nora spent the last month in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. She’s been investigating stories about the ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights and has been frequently traveling to Palestine since 2004. Today we look specifically at the Israeli policy against children from arresting, detaining, interrogating, torturing, imprisoning and beating children, some as young as 10. Nora says International laws designed to protect children — including the UN convention on the rights of the child are being circumvented and violated on a daily.
Nora Barrows Friedman:
- Kids randomly picked off the street, allegedly for throwing stones. The Israeli punishment is 10 years in prison for a child.
- Israeli military can arrest (Palestinian only) children as young as 12. Right now there are 300 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons.
- Hebron is a city where settlers have been given half of the old city, a settlement colony is inside the Palestinian community
- These two young children were followed and taken into a military center inside the settlement colony.
- This whole family had been destoryed by these illegal actions against these 2 brothers. The only recourse this family has is to take it to the Israeli military court. Motive: trying to get Palestinian families to leave.
- This family lives in an area where settlers have their eye on, seems to be very deliberate.
- There are hundreds of women in Israeli prisons, there’s a story where a woman gave birth in the prison, and the baby is now a prisoner.
Guest – Nora Barrows Friedman: Senior producer and co-host of KPFA’s Flashpoints.
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Obama’s Plan for Elimination of Nation-Controlled Nuclear Power
Nine nations now have a combined total of more than 22 thousand nuclear weapons. The United States has about 5 thousand nuclear weapons, 500 of them are land based warheads which can fly in three to four minutes after the order is given. President Obama recently hosted a nuclear security summit in DC with more than 45 foreign leaders, he traveled to Prague and signed a treaty that would cut the combined US and Russian stockpile by a third. Meanwhile, the US nuclear stockpiles have been shrinking for the last 40 years. We talk more about the current nuclear disarmament effort with attorney Peter Weiss is Vice-President, former President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
Peter Weiss:
- Leave the doomsday clock where it is. Reaffirming of the status quo. The agreement with Russia in reducing the nuclear weapons allowed to each country from 2200 to 1500. They count all the warheads on a bomber plane as one, instead of 10 or 12 weapons.
- Jimmy Carter: A single nuclear armed submarine had enough weaponry to destroy every Russian city of 100 thousand or more.
- Nuclear Posture Review – Zero document / “It’s difficult to operationalize a vision.”
- Obviously there is a great danger of loose nukes. No one seems ready to adopt an anti-nuclear convention except the countries that don’t have nuclear weapons.
- Conference in Riverside Church on May 1, 2010, United For Peace and Justice
- The anti-nuke movment will be re-energized.
- The US wants to be the sole repository of weapons grade nuclear material, committment from Chile, and Canada, to ship WGNM to the US. That’s kind of weird isn’t it?
Guest – Peter Weiss, former Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights and Vice President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
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Why Human Rights are Indispensable to Financial Regulation
Today we speak with Radhika Balakrishnan, Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College, about her recent article in the Huffington Post titled Why Human Rights are Indispensable to Financial Regulation. Balakrishnan enumerates the global human fallout from the world financial crisis. The World Bank estimates an additional 400 thousand children will die before their fifth birthday, while those responsible for the turmoil are benefiting from bailouts and promotions. She references the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its inclusion of economic and social rights, that is the right to work, to education, to rest, to an adequate standard of living. Dr. Balakrishnan has also outlined steps for meaningful reform that we will also examine today. She is currently working on a project trying to use human rights norms to evaluate and construct macroeconomic policy.
Radhika Barakrishnan:
- We pretend there is no criteria regulating (economic policies) We argue in our piece, that human rights have a way to set up an ethical basis and framework. Most people don’t know that human rights include economic and social rights.
- In the United States the assumption is you can vote the people in to give you social and economic rights.
- The idea that the market is this Greek Oracle that we can’t question. . . is a problem.
- We’re saying there is a form of biased market regulation, where the state has the interest of the financiers and the banks.
- and not those of the working people and the working class. One example is the minimum wage.
- The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate, one is to have price stability, the other is the right to work.
- In the United States, we have not signed the Convenant on Economic and Human Rights.
- The Federal Reserve is a government agency and the fact that they act in a cloak of secrecy is a real problem.
- I think there is a great case to be brought, as far as freedom of information.
- What kind of financial models are they using to make their decisions? This cloak of secrecy because you independence to make monetary policy? But independence doesn’t mean secret.
- Their Board of Governors are from the commercial banks, whose interest will they work for?
- Bailout Bill – TARP / This went to financial agencies to give them the money. 720 Billion dollars overnighted to the Federal Reserve has not gone out? The Stimulus Money, for employment creation, though it was used for tax cuts.
- Congress did not extend unemployment benefits for Spring recess.
- The United States is coming up for the Universal Periodic Review in the Human Rights Council of Geneva
- The Center for Women’s Global Leadership
Guest – Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. Previously, she was Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. She has worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program. She is currently the Chair of the Board of the US Human Rights Network and on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has published in the field of gender and development.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Gaza, Human Rights, Iraq War, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander, author of the new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness joins hosts. Michelle book has been called an incisive critique of racial caste system in America. As many celebrate the “triumph over race” with the election Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in the US are locked behind bars or permenantly labeled felons. Michelle Alexander, a former litigator who is a legal scholar, argues that the civil rights community—and all of us— are challenged to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.
Michelle Alexander:
- I began in my own research to question the prevailing political media narrative about the reasons of people of color and ghetto communities cycle through the criminal justice system today, it is not as it appears.
- I argue that in a few decades after the collapse of Jim Crow, we as a nation, have managed to re-create as a racial caste in America, in some major American cities, the majority of African American men, are locked behind bars, labeled felons for life.
- Legally discriminated in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits. We have not ended racial caste, we redesigned it.
- The Drug War was declared in relation to racial politics, not drug crime. About 30 million were arrested for drug offenses after the launch of the drug war. Most were for marijuana possession, now considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
- Drug markets like American society generally are segregated by race and class
- The Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible for these cases to be brought.
- Baldus Study: McKleskey v Kemp
- Finding proof of conscious intentional discrimination is nearly impossible. Severe racial disparities are of no consequence, immunized not just the death penalty.
- I wrote this book, largely because I was deeply troubled by the failure of civil rights organizations and black leadership in this country to place mass incarceration and the war on drugs at the top of our racial justice agenda.
- Ten of millions of people in the United States are now regulated permanently to an under-caste, who are barred by law from seeking jobs or housing, public benefits, food stamps.
- Prisons have been holding many rural towns together as jobs have disappeared. The majority of people put behind bars are non-violent offenders. Every race suffers from this drug war, there are white people doing decades in prison for drug possession charges. The suffering of the drug crosses the color lines, and we got to be able to galvanize a level of public awareness and support.
- Something akin to a racial caste system is alive and well in the United States.
Guest – Professor Michelle Alexander, joined the OSU faculty in 2005. She holds a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Prior to joining the OSU faculty, she was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, where she served as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic.
Professor Alexander has significant experience in the field of civil rights advocacy and litigation. She has litigated civil rights cases in private practice as well as engaged in innovative litigation and advocacy efforts in the non-profit sector. For several years, Professor Alexander served as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.
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Ayman Mohyeldin, Al-Jazeera TV correspondent
Ayman joins hosts in the studio. He is an Al Jazeera TV correspondent and former CNN producer based in Baghdad. He was the only news producer allowed to observe and report on the US handover of Saddam Hussein to an Iraqi judge. Ayman has been stationed in the Gaza Strip since May 2008, where he has covered the Gaza siege. Ayman talks with hosts about his experience covering the destruction during Operation Cast Lead. Filmmakers and producers are working on a documentary film about Ayman’s war reporting in Palestine. Facebook link
Ayman Mohyeldin:
- Saturday December 27th, 2008, I had been based in Gaza. It had been quiet in Gaza up to November 4th.
- We started hearing the first wave of Israeli air-strikes that destroyed government buildings, police station within minutes. It kicked of a series of air strikes throughout the day. 200 hundred Palestinians were killed that day.
- We really saw everything, I can’t begin to describe the horrors of what we saw. On the first day we went to the main Gaza hospital.
- People of Gaza were trapped in a territory subjected to a very modern sophisticated, well trained and equipped Army.
- By Israel’s own admission rocket fire into Israel had dropped 98 percent 4 months ago (before Operation CastLead)
- What were the real reasons for the attack, the war was unnecessary given what was achieved in the 4 months prior.
- The siege on Gaza has allowed Hamas to tighten it’s grip on Gaza. The siege has not punished Hamas.
- Palestinians have recycled the rubber and steel from the destruction.
- I was standing on a rooftop and they were dropping hundreds of leaflets from planes, that read “your area is going to be attacked, if have any information about Hamas, please call this number.”
- Goldstone Report: Israel while bombing did not distinguish between military and civilian targets. Not a mistake.
- Targets include – Mosques, schools, ambulance drivers, government buildings, ministries, Palestinian Legislative Council Building.
- Gaza, historically was not an affluent place, it was a merchant trade route from Africa into Asia and Europe.
- Stunted growth is starting to appear among Palestinian children.
- Gaza: Desperate, frustrated, a sense of abandonment by the international community.
Guest- Ayman Mohyeldin, Arab American journalist based in the Middle East and is the Gaza Correspondent for the English language channel Al-Jazeera. Previously a producer with CNN and NBC, Ayman was one of the first western journalists allowed to enter and report on the handing over and trial of the deposed President of Iraq Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Torture, Truth to Power
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Citizen’s Battle Against Haliburton Gas Drilling Heats Up
Environmental community groups from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania gathered last week in Philadelphia, pulling together strategies to protect the Marcellus Shale watershed from natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The shale is believed to hold some of the world’s largest deposits of natural gas, and those that want to mine this resource say it will reduce dependence on foreign oil and boost the economy. The environmental and public health costs are too high say opponents. They point out that gas drilling causes increased runoff because the water used in drilling won’t be returned to streams.There will be more erosion, water quality will worsen. The lesson is clear from other locations that had the same drilling. Near the Jonah gas field in Wyoming, there was a drop in wildlife of 50%, an increase in crime, loss of businesses, a drop in property values, accidents like wildfires, more traffic, and a greater need for emergency services are some of the impacts of gas drilling. Damascus Citizens Man lights tap water on fire – video
Late last week, the EPA stated it will investigate how hydraulic fracturing will impact water supplies and water quality in New York State. The Upper Delaware River Watershed Basin is the source of pure water for 20 million people in Philadelphia, New York City and half of New Jersey. 171 products and 245 chemicals are used among millions of gallons of water and sand. Halliburton’s gas well drilling process is now exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, The Clean Air Act and The Right To Know Act.
Susan Blankensop:
- I live in New York City and I have a part time residency in Pennsylvania.
- In January of 2008, some neighbors of mine starting speaking about these land-men who were coming around the neighborhoods speaking to private land owners, and offering them money for their mineral rights under their land.
- It was all secretive, they said don’t tell your neighbor because I’m offering you a better deal.
- Then we started hearing about this Marcellus Shale and natural gas deposits, hydro fracturing and horizontal drilling. They’re offering 3500.00 an acre with 18 percent royalties.
- Haliburton is the company that developed Hydro-fracturing is where they drill down into these deep shale levels. They go vertically down about a mile then bore horizontally and start setting off mini-explosions. Other companies involved – Chesapeake Energy /Fortuna – Now Talisman Hess
- Explosions – a high velocity mixture of water, chemicals and sand, creating fissures, then the gas escapes up the well. Each time they drill a well, they use an estimate of 5 to 9 million gallons of water, just to drill one well. Each time they fracture a well, it’s another 5-9 million gallons of water, and they can fracture a well multiple times.
- Huge amounts of water, where are they getting the water? Huge amounts of chemicals, 275 different toxic chemicals. After they drill the well, they end up with millions of gallons of industrial waste, this radioactive water. 40-70 percent of it stays underground.
- 90 percent of the New York City’s drinking water comes from ground zero of where Haliburton wants to drill into the Marcelle Shale for natural gas.
- MILLIONS OF ACRES HAVE ALREADY BEEN GIVEN UP FOR DRILLING
- The land owners stand to gain from this, but everybody is going to be affected by the contamination of the water. It’s going to turn the countryside into an industrial zone.
- TIMETABLE: In New York State, they’re (drilling companies) are waiting for the DEC guidelines.
- However, the EPA, came out with a statement, saying that those guidelines were totally inadequate. (No long term, cumulative effects of contamination) The hydro-fracturing, has no federal regulating body.
- Movie Documentary – – Gas Land, Directed by Josh Fox
- Organizing – at this point – stay as local as you can. Each area is different.
- Natural gas burns relatively cleaner than oil and coal, but it’s still a hydrocarbon. It’s still polluting, and the extraction process is highly contaminating.
- NYH2O – Events: Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 7 PM / John Jay College, Gerald W. Lynch Theater /899 10th Avenue @59th Street, NYC
- Symposium and Public Programs for Natural Gas – April 14-15, Cooper Union
Guest – Susan Blankensop, public speaker and member of Damascus citizens a non-profit advocacy group.
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Left Forum: How to Make a Revolution in the US
We hear from our own co-host Michael Smith and Historian Paul LeBlanc who spoke at the Left Forum panel titled, How to Make a Revolution in the U.S. Paul teaches history and political science at LaRoche College.
Historian Paul LeBlanc:
- One percent of the families own 40 percent of the wealth, top 20 percent own 80 percent of the wealth.
- Economic power translates into political power. This is an international reality, this inequality of wealth and power. A revolution involves flipping this.
- So that there is an equal share of wealth and power. An economic democracy that is equal in power throughout the world. The oppressed workers no longer accepting the rulership over them, that’s a revolution and that’s what we need. We have crisis, and capitalism generates crisis.
- The movie Children of Men, shows global demonstrations, but they didn’t change the balance of power in society.
- People who are struggling for social change, can be co-opted by those who have power to repress, make adjustments. We have to oppose Imperialism, extraction industries, for those who own and control multi-national corporations, which exist not to meet the needs of the people of the Earth but to maximize profits for those who have economic power.
- They will do WHATEVER is necessary to maintain power and profit. They’re doing it in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatning to do the same in other regions.
- We have a responsibility to oppose that. Building anti-war movement. I think I’m going to die before we make the revolution. We need to replace Capitalism.
- They thought Obama would end the wars. Obama wanted to be president of the United States empire.
- Anti-war movement weakened. There is a lack of cadre. People who know how make a leaflet, organize a meeting. Who know how to use a series of meetings that will result in a demonstration, and that demonstration will be part of an overarching strategy, that will build an increasing militant and radical majority. We need to develop cadre. A strategic perspective that fights for victories in the here and now.
Speakers – Michael Steven Smith and Historian Paul LeBlanc. Professor LeBlanc graduated from University of Pittsburgh – B.A., M.A., Ph.D. He’s written many books including, “Black Liberation and the American Dream” (2003) / “U.S. Labor in the Twentieth Century” (edited with John Hinshaw, 2000) / “A Short History of the U.S. Working Class” (1999) and “Rosa Luxemburg: Reflections and Writings” (1999)”
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Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Inside the Lawfare Project: Netanyahu’s Attack on Human Rights NGO’s Hits the States
Earlier this month, the Lawfare Project, a not-for-profit organization described as dedicated to raising awareness about the abuse of the law and legal systems, held an event at the New York Lawyers Association. The project’s goals state: to facilitate a response to the perversion and misapplication of human rights law, mobilize resources and bring interested parties together in a common forum.
Max Blumenthal, award-winning journalist, was there, and reports back in his recent article, Inside the Lawfare Project: Netanyahu’s Attack on Human Rights NGO’s Hits the States. Our own Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights was also a target. Blumenthal writes, The Center for Constitutional Rights was singled out because its founder, Michael Ratner, went on the recent Gaza Freedom March with Code Pink. None of the factual documentation these groups released was challenged by the NGO Monitor report or in Herzberg’s presentation. Instead, the groups and their leadership are being targeted with a scattershot of accusations that recall McCarthyism in its crudest form.
Max Blumenthal:
- This conference was convened at the New York Lawyers Association, with the Dean of the Columbia University Law School presiding over it.
- Politicians, neo-conservative think tank heads, and Israeli high officials, convening basically to bash the Goldstone Report which they consider to be the zenith of law fare against Israel.
- To bash the human rights groups that contributed data to the Goldstone Report.
- Law fare: Using law as a means to conduct foreign policy. Past manifestations of law fare, used by British to legitimatize laws to break up their colonies.
- Law fare Project, singled out human rights groups such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and Michael Ratner
- Israel is going further and further outside of the scope of international law. Instead of Israel having to deny charges of war crimes in a public forum they attack Judge Goldstone.
- PR firms associated with the Lawfare Project. 5wPR, which used to represent birth right of Israel. The firm is run by Ronn Torossian, who has been involved with settler attacks on Palestinians.
- They’re being funded by the law firm of Pat Robertson. The American Center for Law and Justice.
- This is I think really an effort of public diplomacy by the Israeli government funded by right wing Jewish and Christian Zionists interests.
- The NGO monitor headed by Gerald Steinberg, who is notorious in helping to de-fund, and de-legitimatize all Israel human rights groups. Israel had its first human rights march this year.
- Human rights group members in Israel, have their homes graffit’d with “price tag”, settler slang for you’ll be assassinated.
- In addition, you Michael Ratner were singled out as a traitor to the United States of America, openly and you’re in this NGO monitor black list. Put together by NGO monitor legal advisor, Ann Herzberg, you are accused of NGO lawfare. You and Human Rights Watch.
- We heard David Matas who is a Canadian lawyer, says this is equivalent to anti-Semitic gangs beating up Jews in the street, – – because International law is the legacy of the holocaust, it should always side with Israel.
- Michael Ratner: Israel wants an exemption. I’ve gone after human rights violaters in nearly every country in the world. We do a little bit of work on human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank and all of a sudden I’m an enemy of United States, I’m anti-Semitic.
- They’re seeking emotional and subtle ethnic justification for their defense without debating the Goldstone Report.
- I think it puts Jews in danger, when they claim the Gaza assault which killed more than 700 civilians is somehow a reflection of the Jewish ethos.
- The image of it is intended to intimidate those who want to speak out, especially in the Jewish community but haven’t done so yet. We sound hopeful on this show, but this is a time for deep, deep concern.
- People are wondering, where’s the Palestinian Ghandi? My father was a White House advisor, my mother worked in the White House, my father worked in the Washington Press Corp Israel is in the grip of a mass psychosis.
- In the youth of Israel, we’re seeing a trend in favoring apartheid.
Guest – Max Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
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Khalil Gibran International Academy Principal Discriminated Against.
Last week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the Department of Education discriminated against interim principal Debbie Almontaser in 2007 when they forced her to resign from Khalil Gibran International Academy. The school was envisioned to provide knowledge and understanding of Arab language and culture and controversy arose before its doors opened. As we covered in November of 2007, Almontaser was forced to resign after she was quoted explaining in the New York Post that the word “intifada” literally means “shaking off” in Arabic. This was in reference to a controversy stirring over a t-shirt that read “Intifada NYC” created and worn by a group called Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media. Almontaser came under criticism by the community for not denouncing it. The EEOC ruling calls on the Department of Education to reach a “just resolution” as well as meet Almontaser’s demand, of a reinstatement, back pay, damages and legal costs. Communities In Support of KGIA
Alan Levine / Mona Eldahry:
- DOE had capitulated to mob pressure, to community prejudice, when the firestorm erupted after the New York Post article, August 2007.
- DOE, instead of quelling the fire, days went by and the fire grew. Debbie Almontaser’s qualifications were questioned, she was told if she didn’t resign the school would be closed.
- Debbie was out of central casting for the position, she couldn’t have been more perfect for it. The DOE knew about that record, that’s why they selected Debbie as principal for Khalil Gibran International Academy.
- The EEOC found that because the DOE capitulated, they became the discriminator.
- Mona : The t-shirts in question, had nothing to do with Debbie, but somehow she was associated with them. The DOE required Debbie to do this interview with the New York Post, not with the Times.
- The Post misquoted and misrepresented her as the EEOC found.
- Alan: The DOE had succumbed to the kind of prejudice that the Khalil Gibran International Academy was intended to dispel.
- The claim is based on that Debbie Almontaser was attacked by a bigoted community based on being an American Muslim and a government agency to its great shame capitulated to that prejudice.
- Certainly the DOE could have expected a strong reaction from the Arab-American community.
- Alan: The DOE investigation is accessible to us, what people said in this investigation will be part of the record in this case (federal) The EEOC is the premier agency in the country for evaluating employment discrimination claims.
Guests, attorney Alan Levine and Mona Eldahry, co-founder of Arab Women Active In the Arts.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Gaza, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Rachel Corrie wrongful death v Israel
This month, the Haifa District Court in Israel will begin hearing eyewitness testimonies in a civil lawsuit filed in 2005 by Rachel Corrie’s family against the State of Israel for her unlawful killing in Rafah, Gaza. On March 16, 2003, Rachel was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer while trying to protect the home of a Palestinian doctor from demolition. She was run over and killed by an IDF soldier who was operating the bulldozer. Seven years later, Rachel’s parents are still seeking the truth. The trial is expected to show the circumstances of her death and hold the Israeli military reponsible. Four eyewitnesses to Rachel’s killing have been recently granted visas by Israel to testify but Israel is refusing to allow the Palestinian doctor who treated Rachel and confirmed her death into Israel.
Maria LaHood:
- CCR represented Rachel Corrie in the United States because she was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer. The same month in 2005, the Corries brought a suit against Israel, in Israel for the killing.
- This suit was on the advice of the US State Department. You can sue Israel, the country. Israel claims immunity.
- Israel’s defense that the bulldozer driver couldn’t see Rachel Corrie in the bright orange jacket.
- Expert witness says Israel’s heavy machinery operator policy says do not use around people.
- Rachel was defending the home and the bulldozer crushed her. Rachel was with the International Solidarity Movement. The Corrie family will present their evidence to the Israeli court and then there’s a 30 day break in the trial. This is not a jury trial, it is before a judge. Corries are asking for information, and accountability.
- In the attacks of Gaza a year ago, more than 4000 houses were demolished.
- Someone was filming at the border at the time of Rachel’s death, the actual part of the tape where she was crushed is missing.
- Mamilla Cemetery Case Update: We’ve asked the special rapporteurs of the United Nations to intervene.
- Michael Ratner: It does seem to be intentionally provocative. To be doing this on a cemetery and calling it the “Center for Tolerance” MamillaCampaign website.
Guest – Staff attorney Maria LaHood. Maria specializes in international human rights litigation, seeking to hold government officials and corporations accountable for torture, extrajudicial killings, and war crimes abroad. Her cases include Arar v. Ashcroft, against U.S. officials for sending Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria where he was tortured and detained for a year; Matar v. Dichter, against an Israeli official responsible for a “targeted assassination” that killed 15 Palestinians; Belhas v. Ya’alon, against a former Israeli official responsible for the 1996 shelling of a United Nations compound in Qana, Lebanon, that killed over 100 civilians; Corrie v. Caterpillar, on behalf of Palestinians killed and injured in home demolitions, and Rachel Corrie, a U.S. human rights defender who was killed trying to protect a home from being demolished.
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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by Jim Douglass
JFK, The Unspeakable, is the first book of 3 on the assassinations of the 1960s. Orbis Books has commissioned author James W. Douglass to write about the murders of JFK, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and his the third will be on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. The heart of JFK the Unthinkable, is not how Kennedy was killed or how Kennedy became a threat to the systemic war machine, but why DID Kennedy die? Author James Douglass says Kennedy knew that he would die and had the guts to stand up to the system and take the hit. This narrative was lost for decades, obscured by disinformation about Kennedy’s character and the conspiracy of his assassination. One review summarizes Douglass’s book in this way : JFK’s belated effort to turn America from an armed culture of victory to a member of an international peaceful world was shot down in Texas for a reason.
Jim Douglass:
- John F. Kennedy’s experience in WWII: He was in the South Pacific, he volunteered. He was on that PT boat.
- What happened on that PT boat, is that it got split into two by a Japanese destroyer. He lost brothers and friends at that time. An extraordinary experience being adrift on the ocean warning other PT boats. The experience create a distrust in military authority.
- He said that he wanted to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds.
- As Kennedy said to his friends, “they figured me all wrong.”
- The Unspeakable: the kind of evil and deceit that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to describe. The midst of war and nuclear arms race, the assassinations of Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcom X that the term was used.
- JFK’s vision is articulated in the address June 10, 1963, arising from the turnaround of the missile crisis and Bay of Pigs.
- He wanted to move step by step into a disarmed world. Nikita Khrushchev put that speech all over the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a deeply misunderstood part of our history, because it’s usually portrayed as Kennedy going to war with Nikita Khrushchev and beating him.
- The truth was that Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were in over their heads, the US generals wanted nuclear war, because they had more warheads than the Soviets.
- Nikita Khrushchev: We now have a common enemy from those pushing us toward war.
- At that point the Cold War turned upside down because Kennedy and Khruschev became closer to each other than either was toward their own military power system.
- Vietnam: Kennedy’s military people would not give him an exit policy. He signed the withdrawal order from Vietnam before he was assassinated.
- His friends said that he had an obsession with death. It was not an obsession but a real assessment that he was going to die. If you try to turn around a national security state that is dominating the world,
- and you do so as president of the United States, of course you’re going to die. Kennedy knew that.
- The book is a story on the deliberate destruction of hope, the vision of change, a turning of this country all of which was happening and had to be stopped. US Agencies killed Dr. Martin Luther King – 1999 Verdict
- We’re in the same scene right now with Petraeus and McChrystal setting up Obama. They were dictating terms to Obama, unlike Kennedy, he did not face them down.
- We need to get out ahead of Obama so that he can do something.
Guest -author, James W. Douglass. He’s a longtime peace activist and writer. James and his wife Shelley are co-founders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, Alabama.
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