Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

ATTACK ON INFORMATION



The ABSURD TIMES





YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT HIM


Freedom of speech
By
Czar Donic

We still have a First Amendment in this country, and this makes us the envy of most of the world.  Of course, information is important and the only way to ensure that it is available is to prevent governments from suppressing it.  Unfortunately, we do not prevent large corporations from suppressing it.

The most recent arrest of Julian Assange is an example of modern day attacks on information.  We know here that very little of what Assange published was news, or, to put it more definitely, all he really did was provide documentation, proof as it were, of what we already knew.  This, in itself, is a contribution. 

There are some arguments that he committed other crimes, such as helping Manning to hack the government's secret information by trying to assist in cracking a password to government secret files.  It is the password attempt that the entire case hinges on, and the fact is that he failed in being able to do it.  The DNC documents that show a systematic attempt to sabotage the Sanders campaign was not a very difficult thing.  After all, the documents were on AOL and the password was PASSWORD, Mr. Podesta.  Nothing really to complain about.

At any rate, freedom of information is important, perhaps the most important right we have.  There is no reason to sit idly by and allow governments and money to suppress it.  Fat Donny is able to do it for his followers simply by calling facts "fake news," but people a bit more knowledgeable see thought this/  Despite the recent developments in Paris, this is still a most important issue.

Here is some further information on the subject:

On Thursday night, hundreds of people packed into the Old South Church in Boston to hear the world-renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky speak. He looked back at the rise of fascism in the 20th century and the growing ultranationalist movements of today, from Brazil and the United States to Israel and Saudi Arabia.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We're broadcasting from Boston. Today we spend the hour with Noam Chomsky, who visited his hometown of Boston this week, where he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than 50 years. He now teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Over 700 people packed into the Old South Church Thursday to hear the world-renowned dissident and father of modern linguistics speak about threats to democracy, from the issue of Israel-Palestine to the arrest of Julian Assange, from nuclear war to climate change. After viewing part of a new film about him called Internationalism or Extinction, Noam Chomsky talked about the past two years under President Trump.
NOAM CHOMSKY: If you'll indulge me, I'd like to start with a brief reminiscence of a period which is eerily similar to today in many unpleasant respects. I'm thinking of exactly 80 years ago, almost to the day, happened to be the moment of the first article that I remember having written on political issues. Easy to date: It was right after the fall of Barcelona in February 1939.
The article was about what seemed to be the inexorable spread of fascism over the world. In 1938, Austria had been annexed by Nazi Germany. A few months later, Czechoslovakia was betrayed, placed in the hands of the Nazis at the Munich Conference. In Spain, one city after another was falling to Franco's forces. February 1939, Barcelona fell. That was the end of the Spanish Republic. The remarkable popular revolution, anarchist revolution, of 1936, '37, '38, had already been crushed by force. It looked as if fascism was going to spread without end.
It's not exactly what's happening today, but, if we can borrow Mark Twain's famous phrase, "History doesn't repeat but sometimes rhymes." Too many similarities to overlook.
When Barcelona fell, there was a huge flood of refugees from Spain. Most went to Mexico, about 40,000. Some went to New York City, established anarchist offices in Union Square, secondhand bookstores down 4th Avenue. That's where I got my early political education, roaming around that area. That's 80 years ago. Now it's today.
We didn't know at the time, but the U.S. government was also beginning to think about how the spread of fascism might be virtually unstoppable. They didn't view it with the same alarm that I did as a 10-year-old. We now know that the attitude of the State Department was rather mixed regarding what the significance of the Nazi movement was. Actually, there was a consul in Berlin, U.S. consul in Berlin, who was sending back pretty mixed comments about the Nazis, suggesting maybe they're not as bad as everyone says. He stayed there until Pearl Harbor Day, when he was withdrawn—famous diplomat named George Kennan. Not a bad indication of the mixed attitude towards these developments.
It turns out, couldn't have known it at the time, but shortly after this, 1939, the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations began to carry out planning about the postwar world, what would the postwar world look like. And in the early years, right about that time, next few years, they assumed that the postwar world would be divided between a German-controlled world, Nazi-controlled world, most of Eurasia, and a U.S.-controlled world, which would include the Western Hemisphere, the former British Empire, which the U.S. would take over, parts of the Far East. And that would be the shape of the postwar world. Those views, we now know, were maintained until the Russians turned the tide. Stalingrad, 1942, the huge tank battle at Kursk, a little later, made it pretty clear that the Russians would defeat the Nazis. The planning changed. Picture of the postwar world changed, went on to what we've seen for the last period since that time. Well, that was 80 years ago.
Today we do not—we are not facing the rise of anything like Nazism, but we are facing the spread of what's sometimes called the ultranationalist, reactionary international, trumpeted openly by its advocates, including Steve Bannon, the impresario of the movement. Just had a victory yesterday: The Netanyahu election in Israel solidified the reactionary alliance that's being established, all of this under the U.S. aegis, run by the triumvirate, the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton triumvirate—could borrow a phrase from George W. Bush to describe them, but, out of politeness, I won't. The Middle East alliance consists of the extreme reactionary states of the region—Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt under the most brutal dictatorship of its history, Israel right at the center of it—confronting Iran. Severe threats that we're facing in Latin America. The election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil put in power the most extreme, most outrageous of the right-wing ultranationalists who are now plaguing the hemisphere. Yesterday, Lenín Moreno of Ecuador took a strong step towards joining the far-right alliance by expelling Julian Assange from the embassy. He's picked up quickly by the U.S., will face a very dangerous future unless there's a significant popular protest. Mexico is one of the rare exceptions in Latin America to these developments. This has happened—in Western Europe, the right-wing parties are growing, some of them very frightening in character.
There is a counterdevelopment. Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, a very significant, important individual, along with Bernie Sanders, have urged the formation of the Progressive International to counter the right-wing international that's developing. At the level of states, the balance looks overwhelmingly in the wrong direction. But states aren't the only entities. At the level of people, it's quite different. And that could make the difference. That means a need to protect the functioning democracies, to enhance them, to make use of the opportunities they provide, for the kinds of activism that have led to significant progress in the past could save us in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Back with professor Noam Chomsky in Boston in half a minute.
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Attorneys for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are vowing to fight his possible extradition to the United States following his arrest in London, when British police forcibly removed Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he had taken asylum for almost seven years. On Thursday night, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman spoke to Noam Chomsky about Assange's arrest, WikiLeaks and American power.


As President Trump pulls out of key nuclear agreements with Russia and moves to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Noam Chomsky looks at how the threat of nuclear war remains one of the most pressing issues facing mankind. In a speech at the Old South Church in Boston, Chomsky also discusses the threat of climate change and the undermining of democracy across the globe.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue the hour with world-renowned linguist, political dissident Noam Chomsky, who spoke last night here in Boston at the Old South Church.
NOAM CHOMSKY: I want to make a couple of remarks below about the severe difficulty of maintaining and instituting democracy, the powerful forces that have always opposed it, the achievements of somehow salvaging and enhancing it, and the significance of that for the future. But first, a couple of words about the challenges that we face, which you heard enough about already and you all know about. I don't have to go into them in detail. To describe these challenges as "extremely severe" would be an error. The phrase does not capture the enormity of the kinds of challenges that lie ahead. And any serious discussion of the future of humanity must begin by recognizing a critical fact, that the human species is now facing a question that has never before arisen in human history, question that has to be answered quickly: Will human society survive for long?
Well, as you all know, for 70 years we've been living under the shadow of nuclear war. Those who have looked at the record can only be amazed that we've survived this far. Time after time it's come extremely close to terminal disaster, even minutes away. It's kind of a miracle that we've survived. Miracles don't go on forever. This has to be terminated, and quickly. The recent Nuclear Posture Review of the Trump administration dramatically increases the threat of conflagration, which would in fact be terminal for the species. We may remember that this Nuclear Posture Review was sponsored by Jim Mattis, who was regarded as too civilized to be retained in the administration—gives you a sense of what can be tolerated in the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton world.
Well, there were three major arms treaties: the ABM Treaty, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; the INF Treaty, Intermediate Nuclear Forces; the New START treaty.
The U.S. pulled out of the ABM Treaty in 2002. And anyone who believes that anti-ballistic missiles are defensive weapons is deluded about the nature of these systems.
The U.S. has just pulled out of the INF Treaty, established by Gorbachev and Reagan in 1987, which sharply reduced the threat of war in Europe, which would very quickly spread. The background of that signing of that treaty was the demonstrations that you just saw depicted on the film. Massive public demonstrations were the background for leading to a treaty that made a very significant difference. It's worth remembering that and many other cases where significant popular activism has made a huge difference. The lessons are too obvious to enumerate. Well, the Trump administration has just withdrawn from the INF Treaty; the Russians withdrew right afterwards. If you take a close look, you find that each side has a kind of a credible case saying that the opponent has not lived up to the treaty. For those who want a picture of how the Russians might look at it, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the major journal on arms control issues, had a lead article a couple weeks ago by Theodore Postol pointing out how dangerous the U.S. installations of anti-ballistic missiles on the Russian border—how dangerous they are and can be perceived to be by the Russians. Notice, on the Russian border. Tensions are mounting on the Russian border. Both sides are carrying out provocative actions. We should—in a rational world, what would happen would be negotiations between the two sides, with independent experts to evaluate the charges that each is making against the other, to lead to a resolution of these charges, restore the treaty. That's a rational world. But it's unfortunately not the world we're living in. No efforts at all have been made in this direction. And they won't be, unless there is significant pressure.
Well, that leaves the New START treaty. The New START treaty has already been designated by the figure in charge, who has modestly described himself as the greatest president in American history—he gave it the usual designation of anything that was done by his predecessors: the worst treaty that ever happened in human history; we've got to get rid of it. If in fact—this comes up for renewal right after the next election, and a lot is at stake. A lot is at stake in whether that treaty will be renewed. It has succeeded in very significantly reducing the number of nuclear weapons, to a level way above what they ought to be but way below what they were before. And it could go on.
Well, meanwhile, global warming proceeds on its inexorable course. During this millennium, every single year, with one exception, has been hotter than the last one. There are recent scientific papers, James Hansen and others, which indicate that the pace of global warming, which has been increasing since about 1980, may be sharply escalating and may be moving from linear growth to exponential growth, which means doubling every couple of decades. We're already approaching the conditions of 125,000 years ago, when the sea level was about roughly 25 feet higher than it is today, with the melting, the rapid melting, of the Antarctic, huge ice fields. We might—that point might be reached. The consequences of that are almost unimaginable. I mean, I won't even try to depict them, but you can figure out quickly what that means.
Well, meanwhile, while this is going on, you regularly read in the press euphoric accounts of how the United States is advancing in fossil fuel production. It's now surpassed Saudi Arabia. We're in the lead of fossil fuel production. The big banks, JPMorgan Chase and others, are pouring money into new investments in fossil fuels, including the most dangerous, like Canadian tar sands. And this is all presented with great euphoria, excitement. We're now reaching energy independence. We can control the world, determine the use of fossil fuels in the world.
Barely a word on what the meaning of this is, which is quite obvious. It's not that the reporters, commentators don't know about it, that the CEO of the banks don't know about it. Of course they do. But these are kind of institutional pressures that just are extremely hard to extricate themselves from. You can put yourself in the—try to put yourself in the position of, say, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank, which is spending large sums in investment in fossil fuels. He certainly knows everything that you all know about global warming. It's no secret. But what are the choices? Basically he has two choices. One choice is to do exactly what he's doing. The other choice is to resign and be replaced by somebody else who will do exactly what he's doing. It's not an individual problem. It's an institutional problem, which can be met, but only under tremendous public pressure.
And we've recently seen, very dramatically, how it can—how the solution can be reached. A group of young people, Sunrise Movement, organized, got to the point of sitting in in congressional offices, aroused some interest from the new progressive figures who were able to make it to Congress. Under a lot of popular pressure, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, joined by Ed Markey, actually placed the Green New Deal on the agenda. That's a remarkable achievement. Of course, it gets hostile attacks from everywhere: It doesn't matter. A couple of years ago it was unimaginable that it would be discussed. As the result of the activism of this group of young people, it's now right in the center of the agenda. It's got to be implemented in one form or another. It's essential for survival, maybe not in exactly that form, but some modification of it. Tremendous change achieved by the commitment of a small group of young people. That tells you the kind of thing that can be done.
Meanwhile, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists last January was set at two minutes to midnight. That's the closest it's been to terminal disaster since 1947. The announcement of the settlement—of the setting mentioned the two major familiar threats: the threat of nuclear war, which is increasing, threat of global warming, which is increasing further. And it added a third for the first time: the undermining of democracy. That's the third threat, along with global warming and nuclear war. And that was quite appropriate, because functioning democracy offers the only hope of overcoming these threats. They are not going to be dealt with by major institutions, state or private, acting without massive public pressure, which means that the means of democratic functioning have to be kept alive, used the way the Sunshine Movement did it, the way the great mass demonstration in the early '80s did it, and the way we continue today.
AMY GOODMAN: Back with Noam Chomsky in conversation, in 30 seconds.
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Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman in Boston, as we sit down with Noam Chomsky for a public conversation. I asked him about the arrest of Julian Assange.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the Assange arrest is scandalous in several respects. One of them is just the effort of governments—and it's not just the U.S. government. The British are cooperating. Ecuador, of course, is now cooperating. Sweden, before, had cooperated. The efforts to silence a journalist who was producing materials that people in power didn't want the rascal multitude to know about—OK?—that's basically what happened. WikiLeaks was producing things that people ought to know about those in power. People in power don't like that, so therefore we have to silence it. OK? This is the kind of thing, the kind of scandal, that takes place, unfortunately, over and over.
To take another example, right next door to Ecuador, in Brazil, where the developments that have gone on are extremely important. This is the most important country in Latin America, one of the most important in the world. Under the Lula government early in this millennium, Brazil was the most—maybe the most respected country in the world. It was the voice for the Global South under the leadership of Lula da Silva. Notice what happened. There was a coup, soft coup, to eliminate the nefarious effects of the labor party, the Workers' Party. These are described by the World Bank—not me, the World Bank—as the "golden decade" in Brazil's history, with radical reduction of poverty, a massive extension of inclusion of marginalized populations, large parts of the population—Afro-Brazilian, indigenous—who were brought into the society, a sense of dignity and hope for the population. That couldn't be tolerated.
After Lula's—after he left office, a kind of a "soft coup" take place—I won't go through the details, but the last move, last September, was to take Lula da Silva, the leading, the most popular figure in Brazil, who was almost certain to win the forthcoming election, put him in jail, solitary confinement, essentially a death sentence, 25 years in jail, banned from reading press or books, and, crucially, barred from making a public statement—unlike mass murderers on death row. This, in order to silence the person who was likely to win the election. He's the most important political prisoner in the world. Do you hear anything about it?
Well, Assange is a similar case: We've got to silence this voice. You go back to history. Some of you may recall when Mussolini's fascist government put Antonio Gramsci in jail. The prosecutor said, "We have to silence this voice for 20 years. Can't let it speak." That's Assange. That's Lula. There are other cases. That's one scandal.
The other scandal is just the extraterritorial reach of the United States, which is shocking. I mean, why should the United States—why should any—no other state could possibly do it. But why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? I mean, it's an outlandish situation. It goes on all the time. We never even notice it. At least there's no comment on it.
Like, take the trade agreements with China. OK? What are the trade agreements about? They're an effort to prevent China's economic development. It's exactly what they are. Now, China has a development model. The Trump administration doesn't like it. So, therefore, let's undermine it. Ask yourself: What would happen if China did not observe the rules that the United States is trying to impose? China, for example, when Boeing or Microsoft, some other major company, invests in China, China wants to have some control over the nature of the investment. They want some degree of technology transfer. They should gain something from the technology. Is there something wrong with that? That's how the United States developed, stealing—what we call stealing—technology from England. It's how England developed, taking technology from more advanced countries—India, the Low Countries, even Ireland. That's how every developed country has reached the stage of advanced development. If Boeing and Microsoft don't like those arrangements, they don't have to invest in China. Nobody has a gun to their heads. If anybody really believed in capitalism, they should be free to make any arrangement they want with China. If it involves technology transfer, OK. The United States wants to block that, so China can't develop.
Take what are called intellectual property rights, exorbitant patent rights for medicines, for Windows, for example. Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems, through the World Trade Organization. Suppose China didn't observe these. Who would benefit, and who would lose? Well, the fact of the matter is that consumers in the United States would benefit. It would mean that you'd get cheaper medicines. It would mean that when you get a computer, that you wouldn't be stuck with Windows. You could get a better operating system. Bill Gates would have a little less money. The pharmaceutical corporations wouldn't be as super-rich as they are, a little less rich. But the consumers would benefit. Is there something wrong with that? Is there a problem with that?
Well, you might ask yourself: What lies behind all of these discussions and negotiations? This is true across the board. Almost any issue you pick, you can ask yourself: Why is this accepted? So, in this case, why is it acceptable for the United States to have the power to even begin to give even a proposal to extradite somebody whose crime is to expose to the public materials that people in power don't want them to see? That's basically what's happening.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to a record fifth term in office after narrowing defeating former military chief Benny Gantz. In a discussion with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky talks about how President Trump directly interfered with the Israel election by repeatedly helping Netanyahu, from moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem to recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights in defiance of international law.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, what about what's happened in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu winning a record fifth term? Right before the election, he announces that he will annex illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Last month, Trump officially recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of all, if Benny Gantz had been elected instead of Netanyahu, the difference would not be very great. The difference between the two candidates is not substantial in terms of policy. Netanyahu—here's another example of the extraterritorial reach of the United States. Netanyahu is somewhat more extreme. The United States desperately wanted him to be elected. And the Trump administration has been giving gift after gift to Netanyahu to try to get him elected. It was enough to carry him over the roughly 50/50—close to 50/50 election.
One of them, of course, was to move the embassy to Jerusalem, in violation of not only international law, but even Security Council resolutions that the U.S. had participated in. A very dramatic change.
A second, equally dramatic, was to authorize Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights. The Syrian Golan Heights are, under international law, occupied territory. Israel—every major institution, every relevant institution, Security Council, International Court of Justice, all agree on this. Israel did formally annex the Golan Heights. But the Security Council, U.N. Security Council, with the U.S. participating, declared that null and void. OK? Trump unilaterally reversed it—another gift to Netanyahu, saying, try to demonstrate to the Israeli public that, with U.S. backing, he can get anything they want.
The last was Trump's latest, just before the election, his declaration that, if elected, he would annex parts of the West Bank. That was with tacit U.S. authorization.
These are strong measures that were taken to interfere radically with a foreign election. Have you heard something about how terrible it is to interfere in foreign elections? I think maybe that you noticed that somewhere. Here, it's done radically. It's considered fine. But exactly what are the actual consequences of that in terms of the way policy has been evolving? Fact of the matter is, not much.
So, take the annexation of the Golan Heights. In fact, it was declared null and void by the Security Council. It was condemned by the International Court of Justice. But did anybody do anything about it? Has any move been made to prevent Israel's development of the Golan Heights, establishment of settlements, enterprises, development of ski resorts on Mount Hermon? Anything? No, nobody lifted a finger. And nobody lifted a finger for a simple reason: The U.S. won'tallow it. Nobody says that, but that's the fact. Well, now it's formally authorized, instead of just happening.
Take Netanyahu's proposal to annex parts of the West Bank. That's been going on for 50 years, literally. Right after the '67 war, both political parties, both major groupings in Israel—the former Labor-based party, the Likud-based conglomerate—they have slightly different policies, but essentially they have been carrying out a development program in the West Bank which is geared towards the goal, the very clear goal, of creating what will be a kind of Greater Israel, in which Israel will take over whatever is of value in the West Bank, leave the Palestinian population concentrations—like in Nablus and Tulkarm—leave them isolated. In the rest of the region, there are maybe 150 or so little Palestinian enclaves, more or less surrounded by checkpoints, often separated from their fields, able to survive, but barely.
Meanwhile, Jewish settlements are developed. Cities have been constructed—a major city, Ma'ale Adumim, constructed mostly under Clinton, incidentally, under the Clinton years, east of Jerusalem. The road to it essentially bisects the West Bank. Further ones up north. Jerusalem itself is maybe five times the size of what it ever was historically. All of these are linked by highly developed infrastructure projects. You can take a trip. You can—this is basically creating pleasant suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the West Bank. You can travel from Ma'ale Adumim to Tel Aviv on a big highway, restricted to Israelis and tourists, not Palestinians, more easily than you can get from the South Shore to Boston—never seeing an Arab.
All of this has been steadily developed, year after year, with tacit U.S. support. U.S. provides the diplomatic support, a lot of the economic support, the military aid. And meanwhile, the government says, "We don't like it. Stop doing it," but providing the means for it. Well, the only difference in Netanyahu's statement with Trump's tacit backing is, "I'm going to go ahead and annex it, annex all of this, instead of just developing it, subject to eventual annexation." These are the real things that have been happening.
Now, the Netanyahu victory, as I mentioned before, solidifies an alliance that is being—that has been developed, that's been—parts of it have been kind of undercover for years, not formal, but functioning, now coming into the open, of the most reactionary Arab states—primarily Saudi Arabia, one of the most reactionary states in the world; Egypt, under the Sisi dictatorship, the worst dictatorship in Egypt's history; the United Arab Emirates, similar; Israel, right in the center of it. It's part of the international right-wing alliance system, the international reactionary, ultranationalist alliance system that's taking shape with the U.S. leadership, a kind of a new global system that's developing. South America, under Bolsonaro, is another part of it.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, in the United States, there's this growing awareness. For example, the Democratic-Republican vote against Saudi Arabia-UAE's war in Yemen, fueled by the United States. Does that give you hope?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's a very interesting development. That's actually Bernie Sanders. It's what—and notice—and it is a very important development, but let's notice what happened. The Saudi-United Arab Emirate war in Yemen has been a hideous atrocity. There's probably—nobody knows—maybe 60,000, 70,000 people killed, half the population barely surviving. The U.N. describes it as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. It's a real monstrosity. It's been going on year after year, using—Saudi Arabia, UAE are using U.S. weapons—secondarily, British weapons—U.S. intelligence support, U.S. intelligence directly working closely with the Saudis to target bombing and so on and so forth. All of this has been happening with no protest.
Then came the Khashoggi killing, brutal killing of a journalist for The Washington Post. That caused outrage. OK? It should have, but, you know, that's not the reason why the Yemen war should have suddenly had the spotlight shined on it. But it was. Then Bernie Sanders came along, with a couple of others, and initiated the legislation, which put some crimps in the direct U.S. support for the war. Which is significant, but we should put it in the context of what in fact happened. And I think we can be pretty confident that the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton triumvirate will find a way around it and keep the war going—unless the public seriously protests.
Now, there is something else that's worth paying attention to. The support for Israeli expansionism, repression, the whole alliance that's developing, that support has shifted in the United States from the more liberal sectors—roughly, the Democratic Party—to the far right. Not very long ago, support for Israel was based passionately in the liberal sectors of the population. It was a Democratic issue. It isn't anymore. In fact, if you look in the polls, people who identify themselves as Democrats by now tend to support Palestinian rights more than Israel. That's a dramatic change. Support for Israel now is in the most reactionary parts of the population: evangelical Christians, ultranationalists. Basically, it's a far-right issue. Among younger people, this is even more the case.
I mean, I can see it myself, just in my own personal experience. Up until about maybe 10 or 15 years ago, if I was giving a talk at a university on Israel-Palestine, even my own university, MIT, I had to have police protection, literally. Police would try to prevent the meeting from being broken up. They wouldn't let me walk to my car alone. I had to be accompanied by police. Meetings were broken up. Nobody was objecting to any this. It was happening all the time. That's changed totally. And it's a very significant change. I think that sooner or later—I hope sooner—this may lead to a shift in U.S. policy.
There are some very simple moves that could be made in U.S. policy that would change the situation in the Middle East dramatically. So, for example, one simple proposal is that the United States government should live up to U.S. law. That doesn't sound too dramatic. The United States has laws, like the so-called Leahy Law, Patrick Leahy Law, which requires that no military aid can be given to any military organization that is involved in systematic human rights abuses. Well, the Israeli army is involved in massive human rights abuses. If the U.S. were to live up to U.S. law, we would cut off aid to the IDF, the Israeli army. That step alone would have a major effect, not just the material aid, but the symbolic meaning of it. And it's quite possible that with the shift of public opinion, especially among younger people, there might come a point when there will be a call for the United States to follow its own laws. OK? Again, not a very dramatic appeal. And it wouldn't even be breaking new ground.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky. We spoke at the Old South Church Thursday night. He was visiting his longtime home of Boston. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 50 years. At the end of the event, we celebrated his 90th birthday.
Speaking of which, a very Happy Birthday to Anna Özbek and Joe Parker! Special thanks today to Mike Burke, John Hamilton, Tey Astudillo, Denis Moynihan and Amy Littlefield. I'm Amy Goodman, from Boston. Thanks so much for joining us.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

BDS and Our Constitution



THE ABSURD TIMES





[Ed. Note: before this discussion, let's dispense with the notion of TREASON.  Courts have decided that "enemy" as used in the definition applies only to entities mention in a declaration of war.  The last such declaration was in 1942 against Japan.]

First Amendment
By
Czar Donic

We should be glad to have it and it supersedes any other laws to the contrary.  I know of British writers, for example, who publish here rather than even in England to avoid foolish litigation.

The United States brought on the overthrow of India by Ghandi.  It brought on upon itself the civil rights marches by Martin Luther King.  And now it is bringing on upon itself further action, at the urging of Zionist forces here.  Let me explain.

Recently, our President stated that the border wall with Mexico was necessary for our sovereignty as a nation.  That wall would cost 30 to 40 billion dollars and have no effect.  However, our yearly aid to Israel is far more than that.  How could we spend so much money on a foreign government and not on our own country?  We must end aid to Israel for that year and deflect the money to construction of the wall – otherwise, we would have no country and thus be unable to support any other country.  That is, if we swallow the bile fed to us by this administration and the individual states.

This sounds strange, but it was the war against Mexico that brought about Henry David Thoreau's essay ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.  The one key statement he made in that brilliant and inspiring essay was that at the very least one can stop supporting an oppressive action.  Irish soldiers in President Polk's army saw such oppression at that time that they joined the Mexican army.  Thoreau refused to pay his pole tax and was eventually put into the town jail.  The tax was paid for him and he went on with his original mission of leading citizens in a hunt for huckleberries.  He also wrote that essay that inspired the later leaders of such movements in later times, either directly or indirectly.

Right now, 26 States have adopted laws against the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment movement which is designed to call attention to the vicious and cruel Zionist policies of the current occupation force between the Jordan River and the Sea, currently called Israel.  The very least activity one can make is not to knowingly buy any product that is produced in that "country", such as it is.  But now, even that small effort is being made illegal in those states.  The following interviews explain it and also give more detail as to what is happening.  Later, we will again post a copy of Thoreau's original essay in its entirety – it may be awhile, but after all, it was written in the mid-nineteenth century.  Surely, it is time for us to at least advance to that level of responsibility by now.

Perhaps we need to go back to the eighteenth century and the Bill of Rights – in this case, the First Amendment.   Individual states are now adopting laws that are in clear violation of that amendment   At any rate, enough of me.  Here is more detail:
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"A Palestinian-American speech pathologist in Austin, Texas, has filed a federal lawsuit for losing her job after refusing to sign a pro-Israel oath. Bahia Amawi is an Arabic-speaking child language specialist who had worked for nine years in the Pflugerville Independent School District. But she lost her job last year after she declined to sign a pledge that she would "not boycott Israel during the term of the contract" and that she would not take any action that is "intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel." We speak with Bahia Amawi and Gadeir Abbas, senior litigation attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He is representing Amawi in her lawsuit against the Pflugerville Independent School District and the state of Texas.

Twenty-six states have laws preventing state agencies from contracting with companies or individuals aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. BDS is an international campaign to pressure Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights. However, its opponents say BDS is a thinly disguised anti-Semitic attempt to debilitate or even destroy Israel. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. His latest piece is headlined "A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States—So She Lost Her Job."


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept, his latest piece headlined "A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States—So She Lost Her Job."
Glenn, why don't you talk about, you know, exposing this story nationally? But we're talking about the law in Texas. In fact, more than half the states in the United States have a contract like she was being forced to sign, if she wanted to keep her job as a speech pathologist.
GLENN GREENWALD: So, there are 26 states in the U.S. that have some version of this Texas law. They're not all as severe as the one in Texas, though many of them are. Others have various kinds of restrictions on people who boycott Israel, prohibiting the expenditure of any funds to invest in companies, for example, or in pension funds, that have companies that invest—that advocate a boycott of Israel. They all have one thing in common, which is that they impose limitations on the opportunities and abilities of private citizens or private companies that support or participate in the boycott of Israel.
I think the most extreme example, Amy, that actually stuns me the most, is Andrew Cuomo in New York, who in 2016 issued an executive order, because he couldn't get it passed through the Legislature, barring New York state agencies from doing business with companies that boycott Israel. And he actually ordered them to compile a public list, that would be published on a website, of any companies that were found to be boycotting Israel—yes, I can.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Glenn, if you could talk further about: How public do you have to be to be in violation of the law? If you say to a friend you're not going to buy a product from Israel because you don't want to support the occupation by the Israeli state of the Occupied Territories? Do you have to be a card-carrying member, if they have cards of BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement? What would lead you—how would a law like Texas's—when would they say you have violated the law?
GLENN GREENWALD: So, I'm not sure if you were able to hear that last answer, the end of it. I was talking about the law—
AMY GOODMAN: We heard you.
GLENN GREENWALD: —imposed, yeah, by Andrew Cuomo in New York, where he ordered the agencies to use public information to compile a list of companies who said they were boycotting.
In the case of Texas, they're really just relying on the word of the contractor. So, Bahia or others could just lie and say, "I promise not to boycott Israel," even though they really are. Presumably, you could get someone fired if you find out that they really are supporting the boycott of Israel.
And the point I was making about New York and other states is that, at the same time that, for example, Governor Cuomo ordered a boycott—or, barred a boycott of Israel, two months earlier, he ordered his state employees to boycott North Carolina in protest of an anti-LGBT law that that state had adopted. So, in Andrew Cuomo's worldview and the worldview of Texas, you're allowed to boycott other American states and harm American businesses and be employed; you're just not allowed to harm or boycott this one foreign country, Israel. You can boycott Canada or Russia or anybody else. It's just special protection for Israel, that not even American businesses enjoy. That's what makes it so shocking.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Glenn, this prospect of, the possibility of an omnibus budget bill being passed with a similar legislation at the national level, could you talk about that and how little attention it's gotten?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah. So, last year, a Democratic senator from Maryland, Benjamin Cardin, who's one of the most loyal AIPACsupporters, introduced a bill that would actually make it a crime, a felony, to participate in an international boycott of Israel. And it attracted 43 co-sponsors—29 Republicans, 14 Democrats. And the ACLUscreamed and yelled about this. They issued warnings saying this is one of the gravest threats to free speech they had ever seen. A bunch of Democratic senators who had co-sponsored it, like Kirsten Gillibrand and other, withdrew their support.
But now Cardin is back with a somewhat watered-down version, but still very threatening, that's designed to uphold the state laws and also to allow financial penalties on the federal level for anyone participating in a boycott. He's trying to sneak it through a bill that has to be passed, the lame-duck budget bill, so there's no separate vote on this. He would just sneak it in there. And the ACLU is trying to do everything they can to warn people of the grave threat posed by Senator Cardin and his allies to make it a federal crime to participate in the boycott of Israel.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the very act of getting all of this legislation passed to prevent people from participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement seems to indicate that there is a growing fear that the movement is having an impact.
GLENN GREENWALD: Of course. It is having an impact. In fact, we now have two members of Congress, newly elected members of Congress, who are the first Muslim women to be elected to the Congress. They're celebrated stars of the Democratic Party. And they both explicitly support the boycott of Israel. So, you have some members of the Democratic Party, like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, who say that boycotting Israel is anti-Semitic. But now you have this new generation of Democrats who are much more critical of Israel, including two who support the boycott. It's spread on U.S. campuses. It's spreading throughout Western Europe. There are Jewish groups who are so offended by the occupation that they now support the boycott of Israel.
So you're absolutely right, Juan. The reason why there's a worldwide effort to criminalize and suppress and punish it is precisely because they worry that the same thing will happen to Israel as what happened to the apartheid regime in the 1980s in South Africa when they were targeted with an identical boycott, which is the regime and the repression finally fell. And that's what they're most concerned about.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, I wanted to read the beginning of a piece just out by University Michigan professor Juan Cole. He writes—and he's writing about Airbnb. He says, "The living space-sharing company Airbnb on Monday denied an allegation by the Israeli tourism minister that it had suspended its delisting of apartments in Israeli squatter settlements (which are Jewish-only) in the Palestinian West Bank. Airbnb has to boycott the Israeli squatter settlements because they are illegal. The European Union has for some time imposed some sorts of boycott on settlement institutions, and requires the labeling of settler goods, and a full economic boycott is under consideration in countries like Ireland."
He goes on to say, "The argument sometimes heard is that Airbnb is treating the squatters differently than it does other disputed territories. It is a stupid argument and quite dishonest," writes Professor Cole. "There aren't any other countries that are keeping 5 million people stateless and without citizenship in a state, and gradually usurping all their rights and property."
Can you talk about this? For example, Airbnb?
GLENN GREENWALD: The Airbnb case is really interesting, because they didn't say they were going to delist all apartments or properties in Israel proper; they said only in the occupied territory of the West Bank, which the U.N., at the end of 2016, ruled was an illegal occupation. And one of the interesting things about the Texas law that makes it so offensive is it not only bars people from boycotting companies in Israel, but also Israeli companies in the West Bank. You're not even allowed to do the milder, more mainstream version of the boycott aimed just at the illegal settlements in the West Bank that even the U.N. said was illegal.
And now there's a dispute: Has Airbnb really caved in to the pressure and reversed their policy? Israel says they have; Airbnb is denying it. But that's where these laws that we've been just talking about come into play and are so pernicious. Imagine if you're an Airbnb executive. You could stand to lose a lot of state business, because there's so many laws now in so many states—and it might be national—barring governments from entering into contracts with you as a company if you in any way boycott Israel. And this is the coordination that they're trying to impose to prevent this kind of boycott from succeeding.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break and then ask you to stay with us, Glenn. But we're going to be joined by Marc Lamont Hill. Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept. We'll link to his piece, "A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States—So She Lost Her Job." This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

Less than a month after CNN fired Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill for giving a speech at the United Nations supporting Palestinian rights, we speak with him about the international attention his comments have received, academic freedom and why he feels it's more important than ever to speak out about Israeli human rights abuses. Marc Lamont Hill is a professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University. He is the author of several books, including "Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond." We also speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose recent piece is titled "CNN Submits to Right-Wing Outrage Mob, Fires Marc Lamont Hill Due to His 'Offensive' Defense of Palestinians at the U.N."


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to look at the ongoing controversy surrounding CNN contributor and Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, nearly a month after CNN fired him for giving a speech at the United Nations supporting Palestinian rights.
MARC LAMONT HILL: So, as we stand here on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the tragic commemoration of the Nakba, we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words, but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action and international action, that will give us what justice requires—and that is a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Thank you for your time.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Marc Lamont Hill speaking at the U.N. on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in November. Just one day later, CNN dropped him as a commentator, after conservatives and pro-Israel groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, condemned his comments, calling them anti-Semitic. Temple University's Board of Trustees also criticized Lamont Hill's remarks, but the university has said his speech was protected by the First Amendment and that he will remain a professor.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are joined now by Marc Lamont Hill, professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia, the author of several books, including Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond.
Marc, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what you said at the United Nations at this annual event and the fallout from it, your firing by CNN?
MARC LAMONT HILL: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be here. And I encourage everyone to watch the full remarks. I think in a moment of sound bites and 140 or 80 characters, sometimes we can get reduced to small snippets and not get context and texture.
I gave a speech at the U.N., and I was attempting to offer a framework of human rights and to use that as a lens through which to make sense of, to analyze what was going on in the state of Israel, what was going on in the West Bank, what is going on throughout the diaspora, and to make an appeal for the plight of Palestinians, which was the theme of the day. Throughout the speech, again, I juxtaposed particular human rights issues or particular promises from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to the realities of Palestinians on the ground. And at the end of that speech, I also called for a free Palestine, and I used the phrase "from the river to the sea." In terms of calling for a free Palestine from the river to the sea, I was specifically calling or speaking to my belief that a one-state solution is the most fair, just and workable possibility right now. Throughout the speech, I talked about the need for redrawing the border, the pre-'67 borders. I talked about full citizenship rights and full equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, what Israelis will call Arab citizens of Israel. And I called for other kind of international measures, as well, to respond to injustice.
At no point in the speech did I call for the destruction of Israel. At no point in the speech did I call for violence against Jewish brothers and sisters, both in Israel or around the world. That was not my content. That was not my intent. That was not the spirit of the speech. And I think, in fact, the spirit of the speech contradicts what people say that I was saying. Of course, I never want to do harm. I never want to create any sense of pain or fear or anxiety among anyone, but particularly the people I was talking about, and I mean specifically citizens of Israel or Jews throughout the diaspora. Everyone deserves to live with safety, security, self-determination and peace. Jews are no exception to that. And so, I certainly didn't mean that in the speech, but I did call for a free Palestine. And a one-state solution, for me, is the way to do that. Many people responded, however, and were frustrated by that or said that I was somehow secretly dog-whistling for violence. I found that a bit hard to believe. But again, part of why I'm here is to talk through that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Marc, the immediate response of CNN to your remarks, could you talk about their interaction with you? Also, there's a long history of solidarity between African-American human rights advocates here and the Palestinian movement, so this should—the fact that you were expressing this kind of solidarity should come as no surprise, even to the people who employed you at CNN.
MARC LAMONT HILL: Yeah. My conversation with CNN was relatively brief. I received a phone call, and I was told that the speech didn't match their values. I pressed a bit to find out what those values were or what part of the speech didn't match said values. I didn't get a clear answer. I didn't get an answer at all, just the repeated refrain, "This doesn't match our values," at which point we concluded the call. There wasn't like a long, drawn-out argument. There was no antagonistic anything. They made a decision, and I moved on.
But, yes, there is absolutely a long tradition of black support for Palestinians. There's a long support of black internationalism. And if we're going to be honest, there has been a long and deep support of African Americans and blacks throughout the diaspora for the state of Israel. So, we can't ignore that history, either. But it's a long and complicated story. But I think, in the last 51 years, I would say, since the Six-Day War, we've seen the black left, for sure, engage in a kind of internationalism that looks for solidarity not just in Palestine, but with movements in Africa, movements in Latin America, in attempt to really shore up a base and a community of freedom fighters that understand that inequality and injustice is not local, but it's a transnational experience, and in order to redress any problems we have, we have to look internationally. That's what Malcolm X was attempting to do. That's what Martin King was doing toward the end of his life. That's what the Black Panthers were doing. And when we look at current movements, like Black Lives Matter, one of the first things that I found impressive about the Black Lives Matter movement was the fact that they were looking internationally.
AMY GOODMAN: While the president of Temple University has defended your right to free speech, the school's Board of Trustees has condemned your remarks. They said, quote, "That speech included a statement that many regard as promoting violence, the phrase 'from the river to the sea,' which has been used by anti-Israel terror groups and widely perceived as language that threatens the existence of the State of Israel. The members of the Board of Trustees of Temple University … hereby state their disappointment, displeasure, and disagreement with Professor Hill's comments." That, the statement from Temple. Professor Marc Lamont Hill, if you could respond? And talk about what happened, after you were fired from CNN, at Temple, what they said.
MARC LAMONT HILL: Well, I think the statements from Temple have been fairly public, and they've been sort of litigated in the press a great deal.
From my perspective, academic freedom means that we have the right to engage in public discourse, the right to engage certainly in academic discourse, about issues that are of great importance, both long-term and short-term, both historical issues and current issues, both domestic issues and foreign issues, both popular issues and unpopular issues, and popular ideas and unpopular ideas. And so, I imagine Temple University, or any university in the United States, as a space for academics to trade in ideas, and sometimes they're unpopular or controversial ideas. And I think that any attempt to intimidate or threaten or undermine academic freedom can set us on a very dangerous course. And that concerns me, not for me personally, and this isn't specifically about Temple University, but the broader academic climate that we see. The fact that it happened at Temple University was alarming to me, but ultimately they made a decision not to give me any penalty or any punishment, which I think was the right choice.
But I think a statement of condemnation—I respectfully disagree with the board, but the board has its right to do what it wants to do. I simply disagree with it. I think that, also, to send a message apologizing, or, rather, condemning my particular remarks, without condemning any other remarks that have been made by any other university professor at the school, including some folk very close to home who have also made controversial remarks, I think, also sets a very specific precedent. So, again, I respectfully disagree with the university. The board, as private citizens, have their right to respond to my statements and to analyze or critique my statements. And I have a right to offer mine. And I'm just going to move forward and attempt to do careful, principled and disciplined work, as I've tried to do my entire career.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Marc, in your speech, you also raise criticisms of progressives in the United States for their failure to speak out at times on the issues of Israel and Palestine. Could you talk about that, as well?
MARC LAMONT HILL: Yeah. This idea of being progressive except for Palestine is something that can be problematic. I think that if we worry about injustice, we have to be concerned with injustice across the board. Doesn't mean that everybody has to target Palestine as the issue. There are many issues on the board that we have to take seriously. But if you have a position on Palestine, if you have a position on what we call the conflict, then I think to be silent on that issue—or if your position on Israel-Palestine stands in such sharp contrast to all your other ideological positions, I think that's where we get a very, very—we enter a very problematic space.
If I'm interested—if I'm outraged by gentrification, if I'm outraged by the separation of families, if I'm outraged by redlining, if I'm outraged by all of these kind of domestic issues, or even American border issues, then I can't—I have to be able to take that same outrage to every part of the world. And again, it doesn't mean that we only focus on Israel, of course. I have spent a great deal of my time, particularly when I was at Huffington Post, looking at Syria, looking at Yemen more recently. I have written considerably about Saudi Arabia, because I am deeply concerned. Egypt is complicit in Palestinian suffering, as well. So, I have to look across the board, but Israel can't be an exception. Palestine can't be an exception.
And too often in the progressive movement we have folk like Hillary Clinton who will emerge and paint themselves as a progressive figure, but resist any—forgive my earpiece falling—but will resist any criticism of the Israeli state. And I think that that becomes dangerous. We have to be consistent. We have to be morally and ethically consistent.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to the comment of Jewish Voice for Peace, who criticized CNN for firing you, Professor Lamont Hill. Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement, "Who gets to talk about Israel/Palestine? Apparently Rick Santorum? A man who egregiously claimed that there are 'no Palestinians in the West Bank.' That's ludicrous. By firing Dr. Hill, we believe CNN is discriminating against a commentator who spoke up for Palestinian rights. They should make it right and reinstate him." Before we go back to you, Professor Hill, I wanted to bring Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, back into this conversation. Glenn, you wrote about Marc's firing, saying CNN submitted to right-wing outrage mob. Respond.
GLENN GREENWALD: One of the things I found most appalling and disturbing about Marc's firing, aside from the fact that it was just a blatant act of censorship by a news outlet that's supposed to allow an airing of a wide range of views, is that so many of the right-wing pundits and news outlets, like Fox News, that love to pretend to be defenders of free speech and throw a 3-week-long fit if a sophomore at Oberlin boos a professor that they like, said nothing about Marc's firing, just like they refuse to cover the story you covered in the first part of your show about this Israel oath resulting in people's firing. That's very disappointing that so few, not just right-wing pundits, but also even centrist and mainstream Democrats, were willing to speak up on Marc's behalf, because of what he said, that there's so much fear about the Israel issue when it comes to mainstream liberalism.
AMY GOODMAN: Marc Lamont Hill, you have the last word here. If you can talk about what your plans are right now? And are there any behind-the-scenes negotiations going on right now with CNN, the possibility of you coming back?
MARC LAMONT HILL: I haven't been in any conversations with CNN. My plans right now are to continue to do the work that I've been doing, which is activism, which is writing and which is scholarship. I'm open to possibilities, but the key for me is to have a space where we can have a rigorous, honest, principled and humane discussion about everything that's on the table, with Israel-Palestine being no exception.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Marc Lamont Hill, we want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Glenn Greenwald, speaking to us from Brazil, co-founder of The Intercept.
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Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A Palestinian-American teacher in Austin, Texas, has filed a federal lawsuit for losing her job as a speech pathologist after refusing to sign a pro-Israel oath. Bahia Amawi is an Arabic-speaking child language specialist who had worked for nine years in the Pflugerville Independent School District. But she lost her job last year after she declined to sign a pledge that she, quote, "will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract," unquote, and that she will not take any action that is, quote, "intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel."
AMY GOODMAN: Before filing the lawsuit Monday, Bahia Amawi spoke to The Intercept about what happened to her.
BAHIA AMAWI: The point of boycotting any product that supports Israel is to put pressure on the Israeli government to change its treatment, the inhumane treatment, of the Palestinian people. Having grown up as a Palestinian, I know firsthand the oppression and the struggle that Palestinians face on a daily basis.
You know, I have to set an example for my kids. We've got to stand up for what's the justice and for rights and equal opportunity for everybody and humane conditions. And so, for me, it was an easy decision in that aspect. You know, so I could not sign it. I was forced to depart from my job because I will not sign it, and I cannot return back if I don't sign it.
I have been here in the States for over 30 years. I'm an American citizen. I follow the law. And so, I have the luxury of having these rights, which many people in other countries do not have. It infringed on all my principles and, on top of that, my right to speech and also right to protest. It's baffling that they can throw this down our throats, you know, and decide to protect another country's economy versus protect our constitutional rights.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Last year, Texas became one of 26 states with laws preventing state agencies from contracting with companies or individuals aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. BDS is an international campaign to pressure Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights. However, its opponents say BDS is a thinly disguised anti-Semitic attempt to debilitate or even destroy Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! reached out to the Pflugerville Independent School District in Texas, which responded with a statement saying it had, quote, "followed state law, which does not allow school districts to hire a contractor unless the contract contains a written verification that the contractor does not boycott Israel and will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract. The plaintiff did not agree to the contract as written; therefore, it was unable to be executed in accordance with Texas law, " unquote.
Well, for more, we go to Austin, Texas, where we're joined by Bahia Amawi. In Chicago, her attorney, Gadeir Abbas, is with us, a senior litigation attorney with CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let's begin with Bahia. Explain exactly what happened and how you noticed what was in this contract. I mean, you've been teaching in this school district—this is a public school, is that right?—for how long?
BAHIA AMAWI: Yes, this is a public school, and I have been contracting with them for around nine years. And every year I get a contract that's exactly a duplicate of the year before. And this year I got it, as well, the contract, at the initial start of my month, which is August, when school begins. And so I signed the initial contract. It was exactly the same as I sign every year.
But then, later on, a few weeks later, my speech coordinator contacted me and said, "Well, Bahia, we have additional papers this year. This is brand new. And we need people to sign it." So, when I received the papers, I looked through it. It was about maybe a stack of four sheets of paper with a bunch of new compliances and new codes. They appeared to be normal, job-related issues, like background history, criminal history, you know, equal opportunity employment, until I came across the one that has nothing to do with my job, which is Code 2270.001 of the Texas Government Code. And that one, I was reading it, and it states that currently—the contractor must affirm that it currently does not or will not boycott Israel, and basically, in short, causing any economic harm. So, that's when I noticed it.
And right away I sent an email immediately, and I stopped even reading the additional codes. And I sent the email to my speech coordinator telling her, "Listen, I cannot sign this. This is against my principles, against my constitutional rights. And it's also against my moral and ethical values, considering that I am a Palestinian American and I have family that actually live in the Occupied Territories, so it affects me personally, as well." So, it affects me in both ways—as an American citizen and as a Palestinian American, too.
She was kind enough. We have a really good relationship with her. And I've known—like I said, I've known everybody for nine years, so I have a really good relationship with everybody at the school district. And she tried to—"Let me see if I can go around it." After two weeks, she returned back to me and apologized and said, "I'm really sorry, Bahia, but they said they will not pay you if you do not sign this part of the new compliances." And so I kind of had to, you know, forcefully leave at that moment and couldn't return.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bahia Amawi, now, were you aware that this law had been passed in Texas at all? Had you heard anything in the media about it? And why did you decide then that you needed to seek an attorney's help in challenging this?
BAHIA AMAWI: I did not. I was not aware that this law was passed. I've heard of it in other states, but I did not know it passed in Texas. It kind of went under—you know, undetected, I think. It wasn't something they advertised or talked about much in the media. And I'm not a social media person, so I'm not always online. I have four kids, so I'm very busy with them, so I don't go on Facebook or look up things or anything. So, I really had no awareness of this new law being passed.
And when I saw it, it just was unfair in so many ways. It just was—just did not make sense. It was baffling to me and shocking that my position as a speech therapist, helping kids with their speech and, you know, developing with their communication in the elementary school, effects any economic harm on Israel. So, to me, just nothing made sense at all of this. And it was a violation of everything, violation of my First—my freedom of speech, right to protest, my constitutional right. And so, it was actually a no-brainer. I knew that I had to do something about it. And I didn't want this to grow into something more, which it can possibly, you know, and affect everybody, including my kids when they go to the universities. Who knows if they ask us, you know, in a state university if they have to sign it before registering for classes? You know, it may grow into something more. And I knew I had to do something about it.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to look a little more closely at the language contained in the contract. It asks our guest, Bahia Amawi, to sign a pledge that she does not currently boycott Israel and that she will, quote, "not boycott Israel during the term of the contract." The contract goes on to explain, "'Boycott Israel' means refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with, or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in an Israeli-controlled territory, but does not include an action made for ordinary business purposes."
So, let me bring your lawyer into this conversation, Gadeir Abbas. This is one of 26 states that have passed similar laws. In this case, if Bahia was to simply say to a friend, "I am not going to buy something that is made in the Occupied Territories that Israel is selling in the United States," this would make her in violation of the law?
GADEIR ABBAS: Yeah. Bahia would be disqualified from working for any school district in the state that's following this law, simply because she chooses not to buy, for instance, Sabra hummus. So her grocery store decision to not buy Sabra hummus and to buy instead another kind of hummus automatically, under this law, disqualifies her from all public employees—all public employment of all kinds.
And here, Bahia is engaged in core, protected activity that really has a hallowed place in American tradition, from boycotts against British tea, from the Montgomery boycott, from the boycott against apartheid South Africa. Bahia's actions and choices to spend her money in a particular way are expressive conduct that are protected by the First Amendment. And here, Texas, the state of Texas, is siding with a foreign country's policy preferences over the needs of Bahia's students. And let's remember here, in the final analysis, Bahia's students are being deprived of their speech pathologist in exchange for accommodating the policy preferences of a foreign country. That's illegal and objectionable.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Gadeir Abbas, given that there are 26 states that now have similar laws in place, and legislation that has gotten very little, if any, national attention, it must indicate that there is an intensive lobbying effort going on at the state level, and either by the state of Israel or by lobbying groups employed by groups in defense of the state of Israel. Do you know anything about this lobbying campaign that's been going on?
GADEIR ABBAS: Well, it's extremely successful. I mean, in Texas, for example, it passed the Legislature almost unanimously, on a bipartisan basis. And yeah, these bills have passed with relatively little controversy. And it's only escalated. Congress right now, it's Ben Cardin, a Democrat, who is pushing to include a criminal version of this state law and the continued resolution that is set to expire on Friday. And so, we might have, by the end of this week, a federal law that criminalizes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and the activity associated with it.
And here, it just goes to show that for some issues—and Israel and Palestine are one of them—that the pro-Palestinian voices, the folks that are advocating for Palestinians to have equal rights, don't have necessarily an ally in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party and really must look to the activists and the movement for Palestinian rights itself to vindicate these basic rights to speak out in favor of Palestinian rights.
AMY GOODMAN: I'd like to turn to Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaking about the anti-BDS legislation last year in May.
GOVGREG ABBOTT: Israel is one of Texas's largest trading partners. And then, of course, there is the issue about the essential international ally that Israel plays for both the United States and the state of Texas. As a result, any anti-Israel policy is an anti-Texas policy. … Any boycott of Israel is considered to be un-Texan. And Texas is not going to do business with any company that boycotts Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: So that's Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaking about the legislation a year ago. Bahia Amawi, are you an active member of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement?
BAHIA AMAWI: I am not actually an active member of BDS at all. Just personally, for myself, if I'm aware of a product that is—you know, supports Israel or is made in the country, then I just have a personal—I make a personal choice to avoid it, because I don't want to support their ongoing occupation and aggression and subhumane treatment of the Palestinians, that's making me kind of like a silent participant complicit with the whole occupation. So, I actually—I'm not aware of it. I don't even go through and find out the list of things. I just happen to know about it, or, you know, if somehow I found out, then I just avoid it. But other than that, really, I'm not an active member.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what's been the reaction of your fellow employees at the school or other teachers, as well, to this, the results of what's happened to you in this case?
BAHIA AMAWI: Yeah, well, so, when I had to forcefully leave, I notified my co-workers, my co-evaluators. I work on an early childhood team, which are the ones that—usually in association with, and they depend on me to do the Arabic evaluations. So, when I told them, they were kind of shocked, because after nine years, they were like, you know, "Why? What's happening? What's changed all of a sudden?" So that's when I shared with them this new compliance. And they were just disturbed as much as I was, and appalled. And they supported me. And they say, you know, "We understand, and we hope you do pursue and do something about it." So they were very encouraging and very supportive. And they were hoping that I can return eventually, which is my goal.
I want to be able to go back to work again, because there's a need for a speech therapist who speaks Arabic to evaluate students who have Arabic as a second language. It is actually beneficial to be a speech therapist with another language, bilingual in another language. There's such a need all over.
AMY GOODMAN: Gadeir Abbas, is there any reference to any other state, any other country, in this kind of contract that you have to sign, a kind of oath to another country?
GADEIR ABBAS: No, there's no other country that's mentioned in the state of Texas law. There's no other country mentioned in any of these laws in the more than 25 states that have passed them or the executive orders that have been issued by governors. This is only about Israel. And it really is unique in American history to have a law that specifically prevents Americans from boycotting a particular foreign country. I've never seen any kind of historical analog to what we're seeing here.
And the fact of the matter, though, is that free speech rights in the United States are very well protected. And boycott activity, Supreme Court and other courts have held over and over again, is a core expressive action that Bahia and others are welcome and entitled to take. And so, whatever the state of Texas and the governor of Texas believes—obviously, he has cast his lot with Israel rather than Texas citizens like Bahia, who are put in the position of losing their job or advocating for their beliefs—the Constitution is designed, and the Bill of Rights exists, to protect Bahia's right to protest the policies of Israel in the Occupied Territories as she sees fit.
AMY GOODMAN: Gadeir Abbas, we want to thank you for being with us, senior litigation attorney with CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, representing Bahia Amawi in her lawsuit against the Pflugerville Independent School District and the state of Texas."