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MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky discusses the position of the Republican presidential candidates on issues such as climate change and calls them "utterly outlandish." "I’m not a great enthusiast for Obama, as you know, from way back, but at least he’s somewhere in the real world," Chomsky says. "Perry, who’s very likely … to win the primary and win the nomination, and maybe to win the election, he’s often in outer space." [includes rush transcript]
Earlier this month, Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and other senior diplomats after the release of a United Nations report on Israel’s attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in 2010. The report accused Israel of "excessive and unreasonable force" in its attacks on the Gaza aid ship, Mavi Marmara, which killed nine people. But it also called on Israel to issue a statement of regret and compensate the families of the dead, as well as the wounded passengers. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, refused to apologize. We talk to MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky about the relationship between Turkey and Egypt, long key allies for Israel, and how the deterioration of their relations "contributes very substantially to Israel’s isolation in the region." [includes rush transcript]
As the manhunt for Col. Muammar Gaddafi continues, MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky questions the legality of the continued NATO bombing campaign. "My own feeling was that you could have made a case for a no-fly zone and protection of civilians, but I think it’s much harder to make a case for direct participation in a civil war and undercutting of possible options that were supported by almost the entire world," Chomsky says. "What’s important in Libya is, first of all, it has a good deal of oil," he adds. "There are some reasons to anticipate that it might turn out not too badly, but it’s—I think it would be a very rash person who would try to make a prediction now." [includes rush transcript]
In Yemen, the government’s violent crackdown on protesters has intensified, leading to the bloodiest two days in several months. At least 21 protesters have been killed today in the capital of Sana’a. On Sunday, 26 demonstrators were gunned down, and hundreds were injured. Demonstrators are calling for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule as he has repeatedly broken promises to step down. Last week, Saleh authorized his vice president to negotiate a transfer of power with the opposition. The initiative was proposed by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and sets the path for a peaceful transition of power from Saleh, who has ruled Yemen since 1978. We go to Yemen for an update from Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a political analyst based in Sana’a and co-founder of the Democratic Awakening Movement. [includes rush transcript]
As President Obama prepares to outline a deficit-reduction plan that includes tax increases, as well as cuts to programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, anthropologist David Graeber proposes a radical solution: cancel the debt of the nation’s poor. "Debts between the very wealthy or between governments can always be renegotiated and always have been throughout world history. They’re not anything set in stone," says Graeber, author of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." "It’s, generally speaking, when you have debts owed by the poor to the rich that suddenly debts become a sacred obligation, more important than anything else. The idea of renegotiating them becomes unthinkable." [includes rush transcript]
Demonstrators are marching on Wall Street today on the third day of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street," which began on Saturday when thousands gathered in New York City’s Financial District. Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have slept outside near Wall Street for the past two nights. We play a video report on the protest by Democracy Now!'s Sam Alcoff and get a live update from the streets from Nathan Schneider, editor of the blog "Waging Nonviolence." We also speak with David Graeber, an anthropologist who participated in the activities. "If you look at who showed up [in Egypt and Spain], it was mostly young people, and most of them were people who had gone through the educational system, who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs," says Graeber. "The system has completely failed them... If there's going to be any kind of society worth living in, we’re going to have to create it ourselves." [includes rush transcript]
It was 40 years ago this week when New York state police raided the prison in Attica, New York, ending a prison uprising to protest inhumane conditions at the facility. On Sept. 13, 1971, then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller ordered armed state troopers to raid the prison. Troopers then shot indiscriminately some 2,000 rounds of ammunition. In the end, 39 men would die: 29 prisoners and 10 guards. After the shooting stopped, police beat and tortured scores of more prisoners. Newly uncovered audio recordings reveal that President Richard Nixon enthusiastically supported the violent operation when he spoke by phone with Rockefeller on the day of the raid. Rockefeller confides in Nixon that before the raid, he thought it was possible that as many as 300 prisoners could be killed, but went ahead with the operation anyway. Throughout the tapes, Nixon discusses the racial component of the uprising, describing the prison rebellion as "basically a black thing." Nixon would go on to erroneously state that all of the victims of crackdown were African American, downplaying the multiracial leadership within Attica at the time of the uprising. We speak to University of New Hampshire at Manchester historian Theresa Lynch, who helped disclose the tapes. [includes rush transcript]
The campaign to stop the Sept. 21 execution of death row prisoner Troy Davis has been led by his sister, Martina Correia, who herself is fighting for her life in a bout with cancer. We’re joined by Troy Davis’s other sister, Kimberly Davis, from Savannah to talk about the global day of action to save her brother. "Even though Martina is sick now in the hospital, she is still fighting from her hospital bed," Davis says. "We’re not only fighting for justice for Troy; we’re fighting for the Troy Davises that came before him, for the Troy Davises that are going to come after him. The fight for Troy Davis has brought a whole new family to us...all over the world." [includes rush transcript]
Thousands of people who believe the state of Georgia is about to execute an innocent man are rallying behind the high-profile death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis. Davis was convicted of the 1989 killing of an off-duty Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail, but has always maintained his innocence. His case has become a focal point for anti-death penalty activists in the United States and abroad, attracting supporters such as Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The Georgia Superior Court has scheduled Davis’s execution for next Wednesday, Sept. 21. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses who implicated Davis have recanted their testimony, and there is no physical evidence that ties him to the crime scene. With his legal appeals exhausted, the fate of Troy Davis rests largely in the hands of Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Parole, which could commute his death sentence and spare his life. Yesterday, supporters delivered a petition containing more than half a million signatures to a state parole board in support of clemency for Davis. We speak with Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of NAACP, a leading organization in the campaign to stop Davis’s execution. "It’s been activism that has kept Troy alive to this point," Jealous says. [includes rush transcript]
The Obama administration is facing scrutiny following the failure of a solar energy company that received half a billion dollars in government aid and then went bankrupt, laying off about a thousand workers. Newly disclosed internal White House emails show just 60 days after Obama took office, his administration rushed to approve a $535 million loan guarantee to the solar panel manufacturing company Solyndra, despite warnings from the Office of Management and Budget that the loan had not been properly vetted. The White House had advocated Solyndra receive the loan as part of Obama’s stimulus package in order to create green jobs and assist American solar panel manufacturers competing with heavily subsidized Chinese counterparts. Republican opponents of green jobs initiatives could attempt to highlight the firm’s collapse during the upcoming elections. We speak with Joe Stephens, the Washington Post investigative reporter who broke the story. "There are people who are critical of green jobs overall and think they don’t really work, especially at this time during a recession," Stephens says. "Solyndra might become a household name during the presidential campaign." [includes rush transcript]
A new documentary links Guatemala’s turbulent past with those who are active players in its present. The film, "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator," which is part political thriller and part memoir, spans four decades, following several people as they search for the details that can be used to hold accountable those responsible for the genocide in which Guatemalan military and paramilitary soldiers killed more than 200,000 people. The film documents the movement by Mayans to seek justice, featuring Nobel Prize winner and indigenous Guatemalan activist, Rigoberta Menchú, who is challenging Pérez in the presidential election. We’re joined by the film’s director, Pamela Yates, and by Fredy Peccerelli, director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation. The film documents his team’s work to unearth mass graves in a search for those killed by the military, even as he faces threats from clandestine groups that want the truth to stay buried. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]
A retired military general has won the first round in Guatemala’s presidential election, leading to a runoff election in November. If elected, General Otto Pérez Molina would become the first former military official to win the presidency since the end of the military dictatorships in 1986. Human rights groups have accused Pérez of being directly involved in the systematic use of torture and acts of genocide in Guatemala in the 1980s. Pérez has run largely on a platform of using "an iron fist" to crack down on drug cartels. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Mayan activist, Rigoberta Menchú, is one of nine other candidates challenging Pérez. Democracy Now! discusses the election and its implications with human rights attorney Jennifer Harbury. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a guerrilla leader, was tortured and killed in 1982 by members of the Guatemalan army. She is the author of a book documenting her quest to undercover what happened to him, called "Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala." She has new evidence linking General Otto Pérez Molina to her husband’s death. [includes rush transcript]
Former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham is calling on President Obama to reopen the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks after new information has emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis in the 9/11 plot. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. The FBI was tipped off about the couple but never passed the information on to the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks, even though phone records showed the couple had ties to Mohamed Atta and at least 10 other al-Qaeda suspects. Graham joins us to discuss the news he’s called "the most important thing about 9/11 to surface in the last seven or eight years." As the former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a post he held on September 11, 2001, Graham chaired the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks. He’s just written a novel called "Keys to the Kingdom,” which follows a fictitious former senator and co-chair of the 9/11 congressional inquiry who is murdered near his Florida home after he uncovers an international conspiracy linking the Saudi Kingdom to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Graham says he chose to write the novel after his 2004 non-fiction book, "Intelligence Matters," was heavily censored. [includes rush transcript]
Simon Enoch, Director of the CCPA Saskatchewan Office, puzzles about Stephen Harper and Gerry Ritz's about-face on direct democracy in the wake of the CWB producer plebiscite.
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A new U.S. Census Bureau report reveals the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million—one in six Americans—the highest number since the Bureau began tracking such data more than 50 years ago. According to the report, blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 54 percent of the poor, with whites at 9.9 percent and Asians at 12.1 percent. Children under 18 suffered the highest poverty rate. Meanwhile, the number of Americans with employer-provided health insurance has also continued to decline, and the ranks of the uninsured now hovers just below the 50 million mark, the most in more than two decades. Analysts say the numbers would have been worse if not for government assistance programs, including extended unemployment compensation, stimulus spending, Obama’s health reforms, and Social Security. We speak with Heidi Shierholz, labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. [includes rush transcript]
Near the end of Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas drew boos from the crowd and a rebuke from other candidates on the podium when he criticized U.S. foreign policy in discussing the roots of the 9/11 attacks. "We’re under great threat because we occupy so many countries," Paul said. "We have to be honest with ourselves. What would we do if another country, say China, did to us what we do to all those countries over there?" Our guest, Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani, responded to Dr. Paul’s comments by saying, "He sounds like a professor. I mean, he’s trying to educate his audience, and the audience is not ready to be educated. It wants to be rallied to a cause that it doesn’t have to think about." Mamdani is the author of several books, including "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror." [includes rush transcript]
As the African Union meets today, Columbia University professor and Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani joins us to give his take on the regional and global implications of NATO’s intervention in Libya, which he says threatens to increase the militarization of the African continent. Mamdani is the author of several books, including "Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror" and "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror." We’re also joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Anjali Kamat, who has just returned from 10 days in Libya following the rebels’ victory in Tripoli. [includes rush transcript]
The Dominion is a monthly paper published by an incipient network of independent journalists in Canada. It aims to provide accurate, critical coverage that is accountable to its readers and the subjects it tackles. Taking its name from Canada's official status as both a colony and a colonial force, the Dominion examines politics, culture and daily life with a view to understanding the exercise of power.