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Illustration: www.whatnowtoons.com is brilliant again. The artist gives a city count, which takes some divination, and gives a great image of corporate media.
The World Joins. From Tawain to Times Square and around the world, the 99% are joining forces. 82 countries on 5 continents are involved now. Cities are too numerous to count (you might leave out Cincinnati or Oakland where the released prisoners from Iran are making speeches against the California prison system, and others). Greece will shut down, especially the police who are tired of being maligned as part of the 1%. Thousands are being arrested. The complete address is included below. We continue to carry live coverage and, if you click on the lower right hand corner of the image, it will take you to a link called “more” with videos and a video library. I saw the NY police try to ride their horses around the crowd. One horse got freaked, bucked like something out of a rodeo -- the cop was no cowboy and provided quite a farce trying to stay mounted. Eventually, the horse decided it had had enough, went to its knees, and refused to have anything more to do with the whole scene.
Lybia. The latest I’ve heard from there is the attacks on black prisoners who are considered mercinaries. One for sure was actually a professional shepherd. Never could trust those black shepherds, you know. Next thing you know, you’d have black shepherds in the U.S. wanting to vote. They better stick to running Pizza Companies and naming them after Mafia figures.
Iran and an Assassination? So we hear about the nefarious assassination plot hatched by Iran (let’s call the President A-Jad, after all, they get away with A-Rod for Alexandro Rocridguez [or whatever] and J-Lo for Jennifer Lopez, both to shorten, no racial stuff going on here) and A-Jad. Supposedly, A-Jad hires an Islamic drug dealer, supported by the Mexican Mafia cartel, funded by Iran, to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. Now stop laughing, it gets better. See, this evil assassination, owner of Jack’s Used Cars, it turns out, is really a very feckless (look it up) individual, reminding his acquaintances of the old Sad Sack of the 50s cartoon strip, the guy who walked around with a cloud dripping light rain over him all the time. He is described as hard-working but unlucky, honest but taken advantage of, a Moslem in name, but seldom going to the Mosque in Huston (much like a congressman and his church). He tried a Kabob restaurant and didn’t do well, went bankrupt, and then tried selling used cars, starting his own place because nobody would hire him. Most people felt sorry for him. Along comes a drug dealer, caught by the feds who force him to attend the Mosque and spy and ferret out enemy agents (or he gets sent to prison on drug charges). The FBI uses him as an informer.
Now this is ludicrous (look it up yourself) enough just from what we really hear on the corporate media. Really, as if Iran, if it really wanted to do the job, would not have used the drug cartel rather than its own very competent apparatus. Actually, what kind of target would that be anyway? Give A-Jad some credit. And keep in mind he does not have the sort of authority our leaders invest him with. Even letting idiot Americans off from the legal authorities requires that he allow the entire process to run its course. He has to deal with the “Supreme Authority,” after all, and that is not Rupert Murdock. He would not use the Mexican Mafia, either. Perhaps Hezbullah (the Army of God) or some other more competent and precise organization would be employed. Oh, yes, and this so-called diplomat’s most recent experience was as a translator for the previous ambassador, a prince who resigned his position after barely tolerating the madness at the U.N. for a week.
There are arguments that Iran is simply imitatinh the United States’ program of assassinating its own citizens abroad, but the U.S. does not consider others as real people, just “collateral damage”. Aside from Alwaki, we also droned his son, who was 15, not 21 as our military reported, and born in, I think, Colorado. He was a U.S. citizen as well. Things just drone on. [Hey, I’m allowed my own puns!]
The Alien Torts Act of 1897 has just been ruled as viable, so you don’t need to be a citizen to sue another citizen, persons such as Shell oil.
The real fun. You have to see clips from the Republican Primary Debates to get real low humor, however, as well as the follow ups. Have you been lucky enough to see the video of Cain singing a song to the John Lennon tune “Imagine?” The first line goes “Imagine…a world without pizza…” and continues to malign Tacos. His economic plan is 9,9,9 which will cost people about a 17% sales tax overall. One white supporter is all for him because he is “a country boy, like me.”
Michelle Bachmann points out that you need to turn 999 upside down. Of course, that is 666, a solid Republican number.
Perry was a cotton farmer, not a rancher, so why the cowboy boots? He is proud of how many prisoners he has executed and the marvelous educational program in Texas which as catapulted to last place in the United States, finally beating out Mississippi. We all now know about Perry’s all day prayer, fast and barbeque for rain in Huston for Texas. Immediately after, the fires spread, not like wildfire, but as wildfire.
Mitt Romney has never led in any of these polls and there are no prospects of this in sight – he hasn’t said anything insane yet.
John Huntsman will skip the debate in Las Vegas as will we.
Anyway, here is a transcript:
Today we bring you their full comments. This video courtesy of Mia Nakano and KPFA’s John Hamilton. You’ll hear first from Shane Bauer, followed by Josh Fattal.
SHANE BAUER: It’s great to be back in Oakland. You know, we got out—we got out of prison over three weeks ago. We were hostages, Josh and I, for 26 months, and Sarah for 14 months. And coming home to this, I mean, we came back to this country a couple weeks ago, but this feels like coming home, coming home to Oakland, coming home to this. This is amazing, you guys. This is really amazing. To come back and see our country coming back to life and see this city coming to life like this is really, really a wonderful homecoming. A lot of people here fought for us and fought—supported our families and struggled nonstop to get us out of prison, and I want to thank you guys for doing that, for standing by us.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you!
SHANE BAUER: This is the perfect place to celebrate our freedom. We’ve been here for a couple days, and feels like this city is a part of me, it’s a part of my heart, and to see this happening is just—I can’t tell you how incredible it feels.
I wanted to mention one person that is very important to us, who has not been able to celebrate our freedom like we have. This person is—his name is Mr. Masoud Shafii. He was our lawyer in Iran. And he—for 26 months, he tried to defend us courageously and skillfully, as best as he could within Iranian law, and he had a very difficult time. And now that our case is over, we’ve been released and sent home, he is not able to celebrate. He has been living under fear of prosecution—persecution since we’ve been freed. He was arrested. He tried to leave the country to come here to see his family, and he wasn’t able to. His passport was taken. He’s constantly under the threat of being put in prison. And, you know, we stand behind him. He defended us. And he, this man, you know, he’s a lawyer, and he’s doing his job. He’s working within the law. And he doesn’t—now that we’re out, we’re free, and we’re speaking, and we’re here talking to you guys and, you know, saying what we want to say around the country, and, you know, he doesn’t have anything to do with it. He’s not influencing us. He doesn’t have any control over us. I just wanted to say that and just say that we’re thinking about him and that we love him.
You know, we were in prison, Josh and I, for 26 months, and we came out. And when we got out, we heard—I mean, this—these occupations had just—were just starting right when we got out, started in New York City, and we were hearing about it, little bit by little bit. And then—but it wasn’t until getting back here to this city that it really hit me that this is serious, this is big. And I feel proud of it. I feel proud of it, of this happening in my city.
But, you know, another thing that we learned when we got out is that there—here in California, there have been thousands of people on hunger strike in prison. You know, nobody—nobody can come out of prison, especially come out of the situation of isolation, solitary confinement, and not feel for other people in that situation. And these people, you know, there have been—from Pelican Bay, thousands of people went on hunger strike, and it’s spread throughout California. This is incredible, you guys. This is really incredible. These people are struggling, like we had to struggle in Iran, for change in their conditions. You know, we lived through solitary confinement. This is psychological torture. And they’re living through that, and they’re struggling to change that. Every day, there’s at least 20,000 people in this country that are in solitary confinement. I can’t tell you guys, standing here right now, what it means to be in solitary confinement. It’s hell. And no person should have to live—live that.
And now, recently, we’ve learned that Pelican Bay hunger strikes have stopped for the time being, because their demands—they’ve been promised by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that the process of how people get put in solitary confinement, or the SHU, is going to be reviewed. And we hope—I hope—that this is really going to happen, and, you know, these people aren’t going to have to go back on hunger strike, they’re not going to have to starve themselves. You know, in prison, that’s the only way to be heard; the only way to be heard is to threaten that you’re going to die. I mean, this is crazy, you know? This is crazy. And we really hope that this promise will be fulfilled.So I just want to say that, you know, inside prison, we—a lot of people here, like I said before, were supporting us and were fighting for our freedom, and we felt that. And it really is what made me get through every day. And I know that the people in prison in California now are feeling that. You know, if people here are supporting them, they’re going to feel it. And I really want to commend this camp for passing a resolution yesterday in the General Assembly in support of the hunger strikers in California. And I want to say, you know, Pelican Bay, they’ve stopped for the time being, but hunger strikes continue in Calipatria and Salinas, and I want the people there to know that my heart goes out to them and that I’m with them, and that everybody here, I think we could say, is with them. Thank you, guys.
JOSH FATTAL: I’ve been on hunger strike for 24 hours in solidarity with the prisoners who have been on hunger strike and who are continuing to be on hunger strike in the state prisons of California. Solitary confinement was the most cruel part of my detention in Iran. And while some prisoners have stopped their hunger strike, there’s still 150 prisoners on hunger strike in California right now with their demands unmet—demands of the end of group punishment, demand for the end of debriefing sessions requiring prisoners to identify gang members, the end of long-term solitary confinement. They want adequate nutrition and greater privileges for prisoners in isolation.
AMY GOODMAN: Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer—you could hear the helicopter hovering overhead—together with Sarah Shourd, they addressed Occupy Oakland.
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Filed under Noam Chomsky, Gaza, Yemen, Drone Attacks, Drones
Noam Chomsky, MIT professor
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AMY GOODMAN: Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit returned home today after five years in captivity in Gaza in exchange for 477 Palestinian prisoners. Another 550 are slated to be released in two months. Forty of the Palestinian prisoners will be deported to Syria, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan. In his first interview, Gilad Shalit expressed support for the freeing of all Palestinian prisoners. While Palestinians are holding a massive celebration in Gaza today, Palestinian prison support groups note over 4,000 Palestinians remain locked up in Israel.
We turn now to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and political dissident. He spoke Monday night here in New York at Barnard College about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the prisoner exchange, and the Middle East, overall.
NOAM CHOMSKY: About a week ago, the New York Times had a headline saying "the West Celebrates a Cleric’s Death." The cleric was Awlaki, killed by a drone. It wasn’t just death; it was assassination—and another step forward in Obama’s global assassination campaign, which actually breaks some new records in international terrorism. Well, it’s not true that everyone in the West celebrated. There were some critics. Almost all of the critics, of whom there weren’t many, criticized the action or qualified it because of the fact that Awlaki was an American citizen. That is, he was a person, unlike suspects who are intentionally murdered or collateral damage, meaning we treat them kind of like the ants we step on when we walk down the street. They’re not American citizens, so they’re unpeople, and therefore they can be freely murdered.
Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist. Some of the critics have brought up the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which says that no person — "person," notice — shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Well, of course, that was never intended to apply to persons, so it wasn’t intended to apply to unpeople.
And unpeople fall into several categories. There’s, first of all, the indigenous population, either in the territories already held or those that were expected to be conquered soon. It didn’t apply to them. And, of course, it didn’t apply to those who the Constitution declared to be three-fifths human, so therefore unpeople. That latter category was transferred into—theoretically, into the category of people by the 14th Amendment, that—essentially the same wording as the Fifth Amendment in this respect, but now a person was intended to hold of freed slaves. Now that was in theory. In practice, it barely happened. After about 10 years, the category of three-fifths human were returned to the category of unpeople by the divisive criminalization of black life, which essentially restored slavery, maybe something even worse than slavery, actually went on 'til the Second World War. And it's being reinstituted now, past 30 years of severe moral and social regression in the United States.
Well, the 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws. The concept of person was expanded to include legal fictions, sustained—created and sustained by the state, what’s called corporations, and was also narrowed over the years to exclude undocumented aliens. That goes right up to the present, to recent Supreme Court cases, which make it clear that corporations not only are persons, but they’re persons with rights far beyond those of persons of flesh and blood, so kind of super persons. The mislabeled free trade agreements give them astonishing rights. And, of course, the court just added more.
But the crucial need to make sure that the category of unpeople includes those who escaped from the horrors we’ve created in Central America and Mexico, try to get here—those are not persons, they are unpeople. And, of course, it includes any foreigners, especially those accused of terror, which is a concept that has taken a quite an interesting conceptual change, an interesting one, since 1981, when Ronald Reagan came into office and declared the global war on terror, what’s called GWOT in current fancy terminology. I won’t go into that here, except with a comment, a note, on how the term is now used, without any—raising even any notice.
So take, for example, Omar Khadr. He’s a 15-year-old child, a Canadian. Now, he was accused of a very severe crime, namely, trying to defend his village in Afghanistan from U.S. invaders. Obviously, that’s severe crime, a serious terrorist, so he was sent first to secret prison in Bagram, then off to Guantánamo for eight years. After eight years, he pleaded guilty to some charges. We all know what that means. If you want, you could pick up a few of the details even in Wikipedia, more in other sources. So he pleaded guilty and was given eight more years’ sentence. Could have—would have gotten 30 more years if he hadn’t pleaded guilty. After all, it is a severe crime, defending your village from American aggressors. He’s Canadian, so Canada could have him extradited. But with typical courage, they refused. They don’t want to offend the master, understandably. Well, the crime of resisting aggression, it’s not a new category of terrorism. There may be some of you old enough to remember the slogan "a terror against terror," which was used by the Gestapo—and which we’ve taken over. None of this arouses any interest, because all of these victims belong to the category of unpeople.
Well, that—coming back to our topic now, the concept of unpeople is central to tonight’s topic. Israeli Jews are people. Palestinians are unpeople. And a lot follows from that as clear illustrations constantly. So, here’s a clipping, if I remembered to bring it, from the New York Times. Front-page story, Wednesday, October 12th, the lead story is "Deal with Hamas Will Free Israeli Held Since 2006." That’s Gilad Shalit. And right next to it is a—running right across the top of the front page is a picture of four women kind of agonized over the fate of Gilad Shalit. "Friends and supporters of the family of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit received word of the deal at the family’s protest tent in Jerusalem." Well, that’s understandable, actually. I think he should have been released a long time ago. But there’s something missing from this whole story. So, like, there’s no pictures of Palestinian women, and no discussion, in fact, in the story of—what about the Palestinian prisoners being released? Where do they come from?
And there’s a lot to say about that. So, for example, we don’t know — at least I don’t read it in the Times — whether the release includes the Palestinian—the elected Palestinian officials who were kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel in 2007 when the United States, the European Union and Israel decided to dissolve the only freely elected legislature in the Arab world. That’s called "democracy promotion," technically, in case you’re not familiar with the term. So I don’t know what happened to them. There are also other people who have been in prison exactly as long as Gilad Shalit—in fact, one day longer. The day before Gilad Shalit was captured at the border, Israeli troops entered Gaza, kidnapped two brothers, the Muamar brothers, spirited them across the border, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of course. And they’ve disappeared into Israel’s prison system. I haven’t a clue what happened to them; I’ve never seen a word about it. And as far as I know, nobody cares, which makes sense. After all, unpeople. Whatever you think about capturing the soldier, a soldier from an attacking army, plainly kidnapping civilians is a far more severe crime. But that’s only if they’re people. This case really doesn’t matter. It’s not that it’s unknown, so if you look back at the press the day after the Muamar brothers were captured, there’s a couple lines here and there. But it’s just insignificant, of course—which makes some sense, because there are lots of others in prison, thousands of them, many without charges.
There’s also, in addition to this, the secret prison system, like Facility 1391, if you want to look it up on the internet, a secret prison, which means, of course, a torture chamber, in Israel, which actually was reported pretty well in Israel when it was discovered, also reported in England and in Europe, but I haven’t seen a word about it here, in at least anywhere that anybody’s likely to look. I’ve written about it, and a couple of others. All of this is—these are all unpeople, so, naturally, nobody cares. In fact, the racism is so profound that it’s kind of like the air we breathe: we’re unaware of it, you know, just pervades everything.
Coming to the title of this talk, it could mislead, and it could be interpreted—misinterpreted—as supporting a kind of conventional picture of the negotiations, such as they are: United States on—over here and then these two recalcitrant forces over there; the United States is an honest broker trying to bring together the two militant, difficult groups that don’t seem to be able to get along with one another. Now that’s—it is the standard version, but it’s totally false. I mean, if they were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party, maybe Brazil, and on one side you’d have the U.S. and Israel, on the other side you’d have the world. That’s literally true. But that’s one of those things that’s unspeakable.
AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky speaking Monday night at Barnard College.
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.
