Boston: Questions Grow

Flowers lie at the site of the first explosion on Boylston Street after the street reopened to the public for the first time since the Boston Marathon bombings in Boston, Massachusetts April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

Flags continue to fly at half mast in Boston, Massachusetts after the mysterious bombing at the Boston Marathon. On Tuesday, April 16, over 1500 neighbors attended a candlelight vigil for the Richard family of Dorchester, who lost 8 year boy Martin, while his sister lost a leg and his mother’s eyes were seriously injured. The clock at Peabody Square has been stopped at 2:50, “the time on Monday when our world stopped,” writes Bill Forry of the Dorchester Reporter. The fence around the clock, draped with black cloth, contains a memorial for little Martin, filled with bouquets of flowers, balloons, teddy bears, and prayers written by children. It is nearly impossible to walk by without becoming choked up by tears. Local elementary schools held a moment of silence at 2:50pm on the first Monday back to school after the worst April vacation ever. The people of Dorchester are definitely taking the attack very personally.

“Martin was only 8 and he still held his mother’s hand last Friday when they walked to the Tedeschi’s for a gallon of milk. Martin wasn’t a saint and he shouldn’t be made a martyr or a symbol. He was a little boy who got killed because someone – some unknown person or group – has perceived grievance against us. Our world has stopped… The day will come when justice is done for Martin. We will wait – all of us together – for that day,” writes Forry.

Boston, Cambridge and Watertown residents were all told by the Massachusetts governor to stay inside their homes on Friday, and not to allow anyone in but police SWAT teams, who scoured the area for a missing suspect, entered homes without warrants and pointed guns at residents’ heads while ordering them out of their homes. After the lockdown order was lifted a Watertown resident wandered into his yard, then the 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was located and shot several times by police, then taken into custody with wounds to the throat that will forever prevent him from speaking. His brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was already killed in a previous firefight with police, in which an explosive was detonated, leaving a hole in the street. The facts of the case are extremely confusing, with conflicting eyewitness reports, and huge amounts of photography circulating online.

Curiously, the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston including the local police totally ignored the citywide lockdown. People were warmer than usual, walking around in the sunshine or painting their houses in pleasant non-compliance with the citywide order to stay inside. All businesses except for government buildings were open. It seems that a lot of people have made the intention to connect more deeply with their local community. There is widespread belief that the two suspects, who emigrated to the US about a decade ago, are indeed guilty of the Boston bombings. There is among the local community also almost blind faith in the authorities’ version of events, though the surviving suspect was not provided with a lawyer and all we know is what we have been told on TV, which keeps changing. Meanwhile the world community reacts with massive skepticism.

Probably the most plausible explanation is that the two brothers were set up by the FBI. 17 out of 20 of the last “terror arrests” since 9/11 were actually FBI frame-ups, according to Fox News. The two suspects definitely fit the profile of the emotionally vulnerable pot-smoking, drunken loners who lacked any community support from their local religious community; foreign students with divorced parents who live overseas. No one was able to protect or guide them or notice what they were up to.

Justin Raimondo reports on antiwar.com that the brothers’ mother Zubeidat, speaking from her home in Russia, claimed the FBI had been keeping watch on her eldest boy for up to five years. She said: “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what sites on the internet he was going to. They were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites. They were controlling him.”

Were the two just terror patsies who received money for agreeing to bomb something? Indeed, the car they drove and the clothes they wore did not seem to correspond with their actual life status as poor students working minimum wage jobs on the side. The police response to their crime was like nothing Boston has ever seen. Even people who believe the suspects to be guilty were shocked by the liquidation of rule of law as well as the police’s brutality, either killing or permanently silencing the suspects, so that we can never hear their side of the story.

One of the most bizarre events of Friday’s lockdown was the police decision to raze the home in which the suspects reportedly lived in Cambridge. Official reports claim that explosives were found in the house, and therefore the entire house needed to be exploded to ensure that no explosives went off unintentionally. Friends in Cambridge reported that all the neighbors came out of their homes to watch the home demolition. With the the suspects’ home exploded, we lose any evidence about their motives. What if there were diaries, books, personal letters, or official documents in there that would give us some information? Everything that the police has done has led to more questions, rather than answers.

What we do know is that neither son was a leader of any religious or political organization. The tweets publicized online seem to imply that he had almost zero personal opinions.

Cops Say Marathon Bombers Amateurs

One day after the Boston Marathon was interrupted by two bomb blasts, speculation abounds regarding the perpetrator(s), possible motives, and whether or not the government had foreknowledge. 

“The pattern is becoming too, too familiar. So, Boston cops were having a bomb squad drill the same day as the Boston bombing, just like the attacks on Sept. 11 in New York and the 7/7 attack in London,” Cynthia McKinney, former US Congresswoman said.

The Boston Marathon has been held on Patriot's Day, the third Monday of April, since 1897. The state holiday commemorates Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolution. The marathon race from Hopkinton, Massachusetts to Boston's Copley Square attracts about a half-million spectators every year.

The first bomb exploded around 2:50 pm at the Fairmont Hotel along Boylston Street. The second bomb detonated approximately 10 seconds later near to the bleachers close to the finish line.

Tracy Munro of Cambridge, Massachusetts posted on Facebook, “I was a couple doors from the explosion at the finish line. The bomb exploded suddenly while we cheered on runners. Clanking cowbells. Holding up signs of support. Boom. Boom. Everyone started to run for safety. It was hysteria. I stopped myself suddenly and I went back to help and found a young child laying in the street, who was badly injured. Her leg was blown off. I held her head and talked to her until help came while others tied off her leg to stop the bleeding. Her name is Jane. And she held on to me while we carried her to the ambulance. Jane's brother, Martin, did not survive. I'm horrified, but we are safe. It took a long while to track down my family and friends but all are safe and accounted for. I am horrified and in true shock. I appreciate all the love and support. I am not a hero. I am a mother who would hope someone would come to Stella's aid in this situation if I couldn't. She was just a baby, she was so strong and brave. I'm going to try and find the family. Somehow. Life is precious. Stop complaining. I love you all. And. I hope they find who did this and burn them alive.”

A rumor started by the New York Post, that a foreign student from Saudi Arabia who was injured in the bombing was being questioned, has led many to fear an anti-Muslim backlash. The Huffington Post reported, “Security officials at Boston's largest mosque requested police to guard its campus in the wake of Monday's deadly explosions at the Boston Marathon, a sobering reminder that Muslims in the U.S. often face threats after alleged terrorist attacks.”

President Obama intervened on national TV to calm the public saying, “We still don't know who did this or why they did this.” White House officials stated that “a thorough investigation will have to determine whether it was planned and carried out by a terrorist group, foreign or domestic.”

The date of the April 15 attack corresponds with Israeli Independence Day, Tax Day, and Patriots Day. Most political analysts suspect right wingers or Muslims. The bombers are believed to be amateurs. 

No one has taken responsibility for the bombing. The Pakistani Taliban and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have denied any role. A home in Revere, Massachusetts was raided by the FBI but no further information has been made available. Police are searching for an unknown person who was filmed standing on a rooftop watching the pandemonium below without emotional reaction. 

What we do know about the explosions that killed three and injured 170, is that they were caused by two small homemade pipe bombs filled with BB pellets or ball bearings and nails, which were hidden inside two trash cans. Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital removed 20 to 40 pieces of shrapnel from some of the wounded. Terror experts said devices like the ones used in Boston could be made for $100 with instructions found on YouTube. This style of homemade pipe bomb is typical of teenagers who are experimenting with explosives for laughs.

One of the more disturbing aspects about the bombing is that it could have been inspired by a recent episode of Family Guy, which aired on March 17, 2013. In this prime time TV cartoon, the main character Peter is shown driving his car through the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Peter is shown smiling in his blood-drenched car, raising a clenched fist as he crosses the finish line past many dead bodies. Peter then becomes interested in converting to Islam, as a result of a new friend, Mahmoud, who gives him a cell phone. Wearing Islamic clothing, Peter dials the phone and an explosion is heard outside. He dials the phone a second time and another explosion is heard, and people screaming. The first explosion followed by quiet (most people did not know what happened) and the second explosion a few seconds later followed by screaming, as depicted in the cartoon episode, corresponds eerily with the real event.

State and local officials told CNN's John King that there was no known credible threat prior to the explosions, though there are reports of heightened security and bomb squads present even before the race. University of Mobile’s Cross Country Coach, who was near the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a series of explosions went off, told local news he thought it was odd there were bomb sniffing dogs at the start and finish lines. Stevenson said he saw law enforcement spotters on the roofs at the start of the race. He's been in plenty of marathons in Chicago, D.C., Chicago, London and other major metropolitan areas but has never seen that level of security before. "They kept making announcements to the participants do not worry, it's just a training exercise," Coach Ali Stevenson told Local 15.

David Jesser, a teacher at Joseph Lee School, who ran the marathon to raise money for the local elementary school, said: “Nothing seemed atypical to me in terms of security. There's always a large police presence and there's always some military lining the course as well as some running the race. It seemed pretty normal to me, although I could not see the area of the explosion and don't know if security looked any different in that area. But for 25.8 miles it seemed pretty normal... I guess there were about 4500 runners that didn't finish and we were right up at the front of those runners. I think around 23,000 ran yesterday.”

Update on CMUs: McGowan Revolves Through Custody Aref Given Diesel Therapy

Daniel McGowan (Photo from www.supportdaniel.org)

Last week, TMO reported that former CMU (Communication Management Unit) prisoner Dan McGowan was released to a halfway house in Brooklyn and had succeeded in obtaining information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that explained why he had been moved from the general prison population to the high security prison unit often referred to as “Little Guantanamo.”

McGowan, an environmental activist profiled in the Oscar-nominated documentary “If a Tree Falls,” wrote in his Huffington Post blog on April 1, 2013 that he had been sent to the CMU in retaliation for publishing political commentaries, which included articles exposing CMU prison conditions.Will Potter, author of “Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege,” wrote in 2010 that “the government is arguing two competing claims simultaneously: (1) That Communications Management Units are needed because the inmates are heightened security risks, and (2) That traditional oversight is too cumbersome because these inmates are not dangerous enough. The aim is, admittedly, to place more unchecked power in the hands of lower-ranking government officials… and to keep political prisoners with “inspirational significance” from communicating with the communities and social movements of which they are part.”

Two days after McGowan’s article appeared in the newspaper, he was arrested by federal marshals and re-incarcerated without explanation.

Jenny Synan, McGowan’s wife asked a BOP (Bureau of Prisons) official why her husband had suddenly been re-imprisoned four months after his release. She was told that his article violated a term of his release that restricted him from interacting with the media.

The Center for Constitutional Rights stated on Thursday:

“We have received information that this was triggered by an opinion piece he published on the Huffington Post Monday, ‘Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU) for My Political Speech.’ If this is indeed a case of retaliation for writing an article about the BOP retaliating against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than ironic, it is an outrage.”
“They already have a lawsuit against them for things like this,” McGowan’s wife said. “He just posted his thing a few days ago about all this stuff — about his political beliefs and speech — and they do something to him because of his post about this. It’s crazy.”

BOP national spokesman Chris Burke said that under a general media policy, “inmates cannot do interviews without permission. So if there’s some sort of a phone interview or a sit-in interview, those have to be pre-approved.”

Tracy Rivers, a residential reentry manager for the BOP in New York, said that in general, prisoners can be punished for violating a BOP rule that prohibits giving interviews to the news media without official approval.

But that rule says nothing about prisoners writing blog posts.

On Friday, April 5, McGowan was re-released after his lawyers confirmed that McGowan had been re-imprisoned on the basis of an unconstitutional prison regulation:

“Daniel McGowan has been released from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he was taken into custody yesterday and is back at the halfway house where he has been residing since his release from prison in December. Yesterday, Daniel was given an ‘incident report’ indicating that his Huffington Post blog post  violated a BOP regulation prohibiting inmates from ‘publishing under a byline.’ The BOP regulation in question was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2007, and eliminated by the BOP in 2010. After we brought this to the BOP’s attention, the incident report was expunged.”

The jailing of environmental activist Daniel McGowan is under review, a Federal BOP official said Friday morning.

According to reports, McGowan has adjusted well to life at the halfway house. He has found a job with a New York law firm, and hopes that there will be no more obstacles to reporting to work.
CORRECTION:

Last week, TMO reported incorrectly that former CMU prisoner and McGowan’s co-plaintiff in lawsuits against Attorney General Holder and the BOP, Imam Yassin Aref was relocated to a high security prison unit under “SIM” classification. Aref is actually residing in a low security prison under the classification “CIM.”

Attorney Kathy Manley clarified by email, quoted with permission, that Aref “is at his second low security prison, FCI Loretto, in PA. Before that, he was at another low security one – FCI Allenwood, also in PA, but closer to his family and us. They told him they moved him because he requires CIM, or Central Inmate Monitoring. That makes no sense, for at least a couple different reasons – for one, they can monitor someone more easily if they stay in the same place. Two, they are basing this on a claim that he ‘threatened government officials,’ which, like their other claim that he communicated with JEM (Jaish-e-Mohammed) is provably false – even based on information from the prosecution. (They’ve been saying this all along and it’s based on the sting operation, where all he did was witness a loan he thought was perfectly legal.) We think they are giving him what the prisoners call ‘diesel therapy,’ where they move someone around a lot if they become very popular, which he has been, everywhere they have sent him.”

Manley clarifies, “He’s been under CIM the whole time – they just hadn’t said it to him before (although it was listed in a printout they gave him years ago). Since they moved him out of the CMU, I think the CIM hasn’t affected him too much – he was transferred to a low security prison, and seems to have been treated pretty much the same as the others there. The only difference I’ve noticed seems to be that they transferred him again, and may keep doing so. (But I don’t think it’s really because of the CIM.)

“In fact, we suspect that they moved him out of the CMU for a couple reasons. One, he was the lead plaintiff in the CCR lawsuit challenging the CMUs (Aref v. Holder) and they were trying to moot the lawsuit (luckily it’s still going forward and he’s still the lead plaintiff. Another plaintiff is Daniel McGowan who is now in a halfway house and just had an article on the CMUs in HuffPo which led to his briefly being locked up again).

“Also, he learned in 2011 via a FOIA request from the FBI that at some point they thought he was someone in Al Qaeda named Mohammed Yassin. And we think that was the main reason they went after him with the sting in the first place. At some later point they must have realized he was not that guy, especially since a man in Al Qaeda named Mohammed Yassin was killed in 2010 in a missile strike in Palestine. And… it was soon after that that they moved him out of the CMU.”

CMU Prisoners Seek Answers

Daniel McGowan, one of the only white men to serve time in a CMU (Communications Management Unit) prison, has been released to a halfway house in Brooklyn, NY. McGowan was incarcerated for acts of arson credited to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in protest against the Oregon logging industry.

Of the CMU inmates who are there because of a link to terrorism, Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) says, “The vast majority of these folks are there due to entrapment or material support convictions. In other words, terrorism-related convictions that do not involve any violence or injury.”

Alia Malek writes in The Nation, “CCR attorneys also noticed the presence of CMU inmates who had neither links to terrorism nor communications infractions. They fell into three general groups, with occasional overlaps. The first had made complaints against the BOP either through internal procedures or formal litigation, and their placement appeared retaliatory. The second held unpopular political views, both left- and right-leaning, from animal rights and environmental activists to neo-Nazis and extreme antiabortion activists. The third seemed to be Muslims, including African-American Muslims, whose convictions had nothing to do with terrorism and ranged from robbery to credit card fraud.”

With the help of attorneys from CCR, McGowan along with co-plaintiffs Yassin Aref, Royal Jones, and Kifah Jayyousi filed a lawsuit in 2010 against Attorney General Eric Holder and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, questioning why they were transferred from the general prison population to CMUs in Marion, Illinois and Terre Haute, Indiana.

The lawsuit states, “Like all prisoners designated to the CMU, Plaintiffs received no procedural protections related to their designation, and were not allowed to examine or refute the allegations that led to their transfer.”

Earlier this year, Yassin Aref was able to overturn his “terrorism” conviction and was moved to a low security prison closer to his family. However, TMO has learned through personal emails from Aref that he has suddenly without any warning been moved to some other kind of high security prison and put under a new classification called “SIM.”

Aref was told the reason for his transfer is that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) claims he has been convicted for threatening the government, though he was never charged with threatening the government. His attempts to correct the information and to find out why he was moved back into a high security prison have been ignored.

On April 1, 2013 McGowan published a very important article, “Court Documents Prove I was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU) for my Political Speech” in the Huffington Post, which describes an ordeal very similar to Aref’s:

“I was a low security prisoner with a spotless disciplinary record, and my sentencing judge recommended that I be held at a prison close to home. But one year into my sentence, I was abruptly transferred to an experimental segregation unit, opened under the Bush Administration, that is euphemistically called a “Communications Management Unit” (CMU).”

While serving his time, McGowan continued to write and publish political commentaries.

“No one in the BOP ever told me to stop, or warned me that I was violating any rules. But then, without a word of warning, I was called to the discharge area one afternoon in May 2008 and sent to the CMU at Marion. Ten days after I arrived, still confused about where I was and why, I was given a single sheet of paper called a “Notice of Transfer.” It included a few sentences about my conviction, much of which was incorrect, by way of explanation for my CMU designation… Frustrated, I filed administrative grievances to try to get the information corrected, and find out how this decision had been made. When that did not work, I filed a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. I got nowhere. The BOP would not fix the information, and wouldn’t explain why they thought I belonged in a CMU.”

“Only now — three years after I filed a federal lawsuit to get to the truth — have I learned why the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) sent me to the CMU: they simply did not like what I had to say in my published writing and personal letters,” McGowan explains.

Authored by Leslie Smith, the Chief of the BOP’s so-called “Counter Terrorism Unit,” memos catalog in detail things McGowan had said in past years in order to justify his designation to the ultra-restrictive units:

“My attempts to ‘unite’ environmental and animal liberation movements, and to ‘educate’ new members of the movement about errors of the past; my writings about ‘whether militancy is truly effective in all situations’; a letter I wrote discussing bringing unity to the environmental movement by focusing on global issues; the fact that I was ‘publishing [my] points of view on the internet in an attempt to act as a spokesperson for the movement’; and the BOP’s belief that, through my writing, I have ‘continued to demonstrate [my] support for anarchist and radical environmental terrorist groups.’”

Another ELF activist, Marie Mason, who is serving a 22 year sentence on “enhanced terrorism” charges due to property damage including shooting a bottle rocket into a Monsanto office building after hours in protest against GMOs (no one was hurt), was also moved without explanation to a CMU-like prison this year. Mason is an artist, musician, and writer who has a wide following of supporters. She had been housed in a normal women’s prison where she worked in the kitchen with other inmates and was even allowed to teach guitar lessons. Despite good behavior, she now has to spend most of her day in lockdown and has very limited personal contact.

Earth First! Newswire reported on legal challenges filed by Mason related to her sudden and unexplained relocation to a “control-management”-type women’s prison in Carswell, Texas. Ryan Abbot writes that the “FBI denied her FOIA request, to cover up the government’s ‘Green Scare’ program, meant to chill the speech rights of environmental activists.”

A large percentage of these prisoners being isolated under intense scrutiny are passionate idealists, above average intelligence, highly educated, and many of them are eloquent and prolific writers. McGowan was writing for the Huffington Post even while in prison; Aref is a poet with a list of email subscribers; Mason has her own blog where she gives and receives community support. For example, Marie Mason addressed a group of labor organizers with “Words of Encouragement and Respect” on the need to coordinate actions with environmentalists and peace activists.

This is precisely the type of speech that McGowan discovered that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) believes is adequate cause to isolate a prisoner: speech intended to unite political activists of various ideologies. It is genuinely ironic that CMUs are being used to isolate and closely monitor prisoners, while at the same time allowing them email access in order for them to voice their political opinions and even advise people on the outside. It seems to be some kind of social experiment, about which much more needs to be learned.

==
CLASSIFICATION
a poem by Yassin Aref

If the worst trial is,
the one that makes you laugh
then the best joke should be
the one that makes you cry.

My indictment and accusation
my trial and conviction
were the drama and fiction
still I got 15 years in prison

First the placed me in PC
in the name of my protection
then they sent me to CMU
“to manage my communication”
I was cut off from my family
with no any physical contact
even with my baby and children

Now BOP keeping SIM on me
stating I “had been convicted
for threatening the US government”
and I am danger to the community
but why? and how? they always,
refuse to answer my questions

That’s why
I am puzzled
not sure what should I do
call this the worst trial
and laugh on it
or name it the best joke
and cry? 

Haitian Americans Lead Fight Against UN Cholera Outbreak

Haitians are still stinging from the dismissal last February by the United Nations of their claim for justice on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people who have fallen ill and 8,000 who have died and continue to die since UN peacekeeping troops leaked raw sewage into the Artibonite River.

Within days of renewed UN presence in Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010, a disease never before seen on the island suddenly became a raging epidemic: Cholera. 

The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) held an event last week in Boston to raise awareness about Haiti’s cholera crisis and to gain support for their legal case against the UN, in conjunction with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Haiti, as they continue to demand water sanitation, compensation for victims, and a public apology from the UN.

The IJDH event featured the award-winning movie “Baseball in the Time of Cholera,” followed by a panel discussion moderated by Haitian journalist Charlot Lucien and which featured local community leaders Marie St. Fleur, Esq., Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s chief of advocacy and strategic investments; state Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry; Jean Ford Figaro, MD, health education coordinator at Boston Medical Center; and Brian Concannon, Jr., Esq., director of IJDH.

In November 2011, IJDH filed a petition at the UN headquarters in New York seeking $100,000 for the families or next-of-kin of each person killed by cholera and $50,000 for each victim who suffered illness or injury from cholera. After a 15 month delay and after 3,000 additional deaths, the UN announced that Haitian claims for compensation “weren’t receivable” under article 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations.

The Guardian reports, “This is not the first time that the UN has invoked its own immunity, but it is a highly unusual move made more controversial by the extreme distress in Haiti to which it relates.” 

Award-winning journalist Jonathan Katz describes in his book, “The Big Truck that Went By” how the UN actively discouraged and even impeded journalists and public health investigators attempting to trace the source of the disease. The UN never admitted responsibility, even as a UN-commissioned report left little doubt. Adrian Walker reports in the Boston Globe:

“Among the peacekeepers dispatched in the wake of the Haiti earthquake was a team from Nepal, a country that was then suffering an outbreak of cholera. They brought the disease with them, and it spread when raw sewage from their camp found its way to a major river… A few months after that, tests confirmed that it matched the strain afflicting the Nepalese.”

On November 15, 2010 a riot broke out in Cap-Haïtien. Protesters demanded that the Nepalese brigade of the UN leave the country. At least 5 people were killed in the second day of riots, including one UN personnel. During the third day of riots UN personnel were accused of shooting at least 5 protestors but denied responsibility. On the fourth day of demonstrations against the UN presence, police fired tear gas into a camp for Internally Displaced Persons in the capital.

Given the UN’s assertion of immunity in Haiti, finding a court willing to sue the UN will be a major challenge.

“If we can get them into a courtroom, the case itself is easy,”

Concannon insists. “Their liability is so obvious.”

Armin Rosen writes in the Atlantic, “If a multinational corporation behaved the way the UN did in Haiti, it would be sued for stratospheric amounts of money. And that’s just for starters: Were Unilever or Coca-Cola responsible for a cholera outbreak that killed 8,000 people and infected 640,000 more, and for subsequently covering up its employees’ failure to adhere to basic sanitation standards, it is likely their executives would have difficulty visiting countries claiming universal legal jurisdiction.”

Nicole Philips, speaking in IJDH’s office in Haiti, noted that almost three times as many people had died in the continuing crisis as in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Cholera is projected to kill as many as 1,000 people a year until it is eradicated. Haiti’s health ministry reported a spike in cases nationwide in December 2012 and January 2013, with active outbreaks continuing. Hospitalizations (2,300 per week) and deaths (40 per week) have tripled since Hurricane Sandy struck the island, causing more deaths than the cyclone took in all countries combined.

The cost of building the long overdue water sanitation system Haiti needs in order to stop the spread of cholera is estimated at $2.2 billion.

Concannon argued, “They have a peacekeeping force in Haiti that costs $650 million a year, even though there hasn’t been a war in Haiti in our lifetime. If they cut that force in half, that would free up $325 million to fight cholera… $325 million a year would solve the problem.”

Alok Pokharel, a legal fellow at IJDH told the Dorchester Reporter:

“Cholera remains a threat to the lives of most Haitians and a key challenge to the government of Haiti. Victims need immediate attention from the government of Haiti and the international community, including the Haitian community in the US, to speak out against the UN’s injustice. Standing up against the UN is an utmost necessity if victims are to get justice and Haiti is to get protection from future death and sickness… We urge every Haitian in Boston and stakeholders to help create momentum in pushing the UN to accept its liabilities.”

“No one should have to die from a disease that can be avoided with soap and water, and the collective will to make them available,” writes Curt Welling, President of AmeriCares in a letter to the New York Times.

“Cholera, which spreads through contamination of food or water, can be prevented with good sanitation. It’s even easier to treat: Medicine is usually not required, just the speedy replacement of lost fluids,” notes Katz.

The Guardian reports, “While rebuffing the compensation claims, the UN has vowed to continue its efforts to contain the epidemic. So far the UN has spent $118m on medical equipment, health networks, water and sewerage improvements, health education at schools and other programs designed to stem the crisis.”

A Haitian man, who lost his 5-year-old daughter to cholera, told Al Jazeera, “When you lose a child, you never know what the child might have become. Maybe he or she may have saved this family from this misery.”

Patience Is Struggle

TMO 

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is the first day of Spring, I think as I trudge through slippery snow and slush. It seems almost like time has stalled, as the world waits for hope. This week marks ten years since Rachel Corrie inspired the world with her act of selfless martyrdom to (unsuccessfully) defend the home of a Palestinian doctor.

Since then, the news of the day continues to be painfully frustrating.

Palestinian hunger striker Ayman Sharawna has been released but deported to Gaza. He is banned from visiting with his family in the West Bank for the next ten years. 

Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi waits for death. He stopped taking liquids on the 241st day of his hunger strike. He refused the Israeli offer to deport him to Gaza: 

“We are fighting for the sake of freedom of our land and return of our refugees in Palestine and diaspora, not to add more deportees to them.

This systematic practice through which Israel aims to empty Palestine from Palestinians and bring strangers in their place is but a crime.

Therefore, I refuse being deported and I will only agree to be released to Jerusalem as I know that the Israeli Occupation is aiming to empty Jerusalem of its people and turn Arabs to become a minority group of its population. The issue of deportation is no longer a personal decision, it is rather a national principle. If every detainee agrees to be deported outside Jerusalem under pressure, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people. I would prefer to die on my hospital bed to being deported from Jerusalem.”

The Israeli Magistrate Court of Jerusalem issued a sentence of 20 months in prison for Medhat Issawi, the brother of Samer Issawi, on charges of organizing solidarity activities with prisoners inside Jerusalem and being a member of the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

Their mother wrote a moving plea for help to President Obama on the occasion of his visit to the Holy Land:

“I am a Palestinian mother. Like thousands of other Palestinian mothers I ache and suffer. I am the mother of Fadi who was assassinated by Israel in 1994 in the spring of his life, and the mother of Medhat who is now in Israeli prison and the mother of Ra’fat whose home Israel demolished and left his family homeless; I am the mother of Shireen, Firas and Shadi who could not avoid the repeated detention and torture. We are a family that Israel deprives from water and would have deprived us food and medicine if they could.

“You, who comes to the land of Peace after being crowned with a Nobel Peace Prize and whom through his long four years of presidency failed to accomplish a single pursuant for peace or lift the grievances off a person, this is your chance to save Samer from the canines of this brutal occupation. So as not to wonder with millions of others in the world (I ask): Why did you come to us?”

To her earnest plea, there is no response, just bitter news that the US is planning on boycotting the UN Human Rights Council’s debate on illegal Israeli settlements.

Two young sisters, Sawsan and Nasim Shaheen began hunger striking together on February 20 in a tent in front of the United Nations building in Ramallah. They have joined the Palestinian hunger striking prisoners in order to demand the liberation of political prisoners incarcerated by Israel, reports Palestine Monitor.

While westerners debate the pros and cons of boycotting Israel, the mother of Ibrahim Baroud protests alone on a road in Gaza. Traffic drives around her but a message is sent by her eyes: “Please dear world, feel for a mother whose son is in prison for more than 25 years, what is still left in my life but to hug him, tell me?”

Israel has suspended family visits to prisoners from Gaza for three weeks for Jewish holidays, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday.

“Verily, with hardship, there is relief” (Quran 94:6).

A British convoy to Gaza, named after the Turkish humanitarian aid ship sank by Israeli gunships in 2010, is now stranded. Activist filmmaker Iara Lee reports:

“Mavi Marmara is sailing on wheels from UK to Gaza. Our convoy’s members are stuck at this moment at Libya/Egypt border, suffering extreme heat during the day, extreme cold at night, with no food nor water… They left London and drove south through France and Spain, crossed to North Africa and travelled through Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and finally tried to cross Egypt to reach the Rafah crossing into Gaza. The whole trip was expected to take about two weeks, but as past experiences, we have been encountering a lot of delay!”

“Libya has granted the UK aid convoy exit and no return, but Egypt doesn’t want to grant them entry!!! After traveling over 4,000 miles so far, there are neither toilets nor shower facilities… only a cafe nearby… Convoy crew is stuck in no man’s land since they can’t return to Libya nor proceed to Cairo/Rafah in Egypt. The saga continues…”

Ten years ago, Rachel Corrie demonstrated that there is no power in the world greater than Patience. When the Israeli bulldozer came towards her, she did not flinch. She stood there like a beautiful flower facing a lawnmower.

The late Edward Said explained in 2003 that “the Meaning of Rachel Corrie” is that victory comes to those who maintain their dignity.

“Palestinians have refused to capitulate or surrender even under the collective punishment meted out to them by the combined might of the US and Israel… Under the worst possible circumstances, Palestinian society has neither been defeated nor has it crumbled completely.”

And so we wait, and we wait for freedom. The silent endless nothingness of the stalled life, the isolation, that cramped feeling, needing to stretch, wanting to explode, wishing to wake up in a life that we could enjoy, but not knowing how to escape the pressures closing in, the darkness, the damp cold. Hopes and dreams postponed for a future time when we might find a way forward. One might feel like one is being crushed to the point of disintegrating. One might feel like one is about to crack! Yet this must also be the feeling the seed goes through as it comes to life, pushing through the cold mud.

Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose.

(Bette Midler)

Poor But Smart? Aim High, Say Researchers

Most American high school students from poor families, who earn excellent grades, are not aware that top notch colleges and universities want them, says a recent study.

“The vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource-poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply,”

researchers Caroline Hoxby of Stanford’s economics department and Christopher Avery from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government have discovered. Their findings are reported in an exciting research paper called “The Missing “One-Offs”: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The study shows that high-achieving, low income high school students who come from school districts too small or underfunded to support selective public high schools (where students must pass an exam to attend advanced level classes), usually go unnoticed. Recruiters from top-notch universities are especially unlikely to target poor but smart students in rural areas. These students are also much less likely to encounter an adult who has ever attended a selective college. As a result, high achievers from low income families, who do not live in an urban center near high class universities, are most likely to apply to nearby community colleges, even when they could have been admitted to a highly selective university.

The research study “adds to our understanding of structural inequality in America and the striking barriers to social mobility. But in a sense it’s an optimistic story,” writes Matthew Yglesias in an article entitled “Smart, Poor Kids Are Applying to the Wrong Colleges” on Slate.com.

The biggest determining factor for whether or not a low-income high achiever will apply to a high class college is whether or not the child has a mentor. In most cases this mentor is a parent, but it can also be another adult, who leads the child through the process of applying for colleges and financial aid, as well as giving the child the confidence to want to embark on a learning adventure.

Upper and middle class families typically help their children shop around for colleges, often visiting college campuses and optimistically submitting several applications to different schools, only deciding where to go after hopefully having received several acceptance letters, and after carefully researching the schools’ qualities and the availability of financial aid. In this way, the student’s academic abilities are closely matched with the academic offerings of the school they choose. However, the researchers found that poor high achievers who are not personally recruited by a high class college will usually not even bother applying.

The bright side is that “high-achieving, low-income students who do apply to selective institutions are admitted and graduate at high rates.”

Most students with SAT or ACT scores in the top 10 percent come from high-income families. “Just 17 percent of high-achieving students are from families estimated to be in the bottom quartile of the income distribution. But while low-income students are underrepresented among high achievers, 17 percent is still a lot of people—something like 25,000 to 35,000 per year. Of those, about 70 percent are white, 15 percent Asian, and 15 percent black or Hispanic.”

Only 8% of these poor but smart kids ever apply to selective universities.

“Each year, 10,000 or 20,000 of America’s brightest high-school graduates don’t go to a great college not because they can’t afford one but because they don’t realize they should apply,” writes Yglesias.
The best solution? Go ahead and apply for dream colleges that seem out of reach, while assuming that financial aid will be made available.

Every university website has a “Financial Aid” section. Under the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, for example, families with incomes below $65,000 are not even expected to contribute to college costs.

All you have to do is get admitted. The Financial Aid webpage for Harvard University states:

“Harvard College has provided assistance to students who need help in meeting their education expenses for over 350 years, enabling us to seek out the most outstanding scholars in the world and open our doors to students of exceptional ability and promise, regardless of their financial circumstances. Over 60% of undergraduates will receive an estimated $172 million in need-based Harvard Scholarship aid in 2012-13… A typical student may receive over $150,000 in Harvard scholarship assistance over four years and the majority of students receiving scholarship are able to graduate debt-free.”

The dark cloud inside the silver lining is that not everyone who goes to college, even the best of colleges, will automatically get a good job when they graduate. The skills that help you earn good grades:  being quiet, following instructions, memorization and regurgitation, etc. are not the skills that will help you succeed in the “real world.” Real world success also involves social popularity, a strong background of meaningful experiences leading to deep emotional reservoirs, calculated risk-taking, idealism, creativity and even sometimes more than a bit of aggressive self-seeking.

Susan Adams writes in Forbes magazine that “the old-fashioned idea of spending your time at college exploring intellectual pursuits and putting off entry into the real world of work is no longer relevant.

If you haven’t started networking, putting together a LinkedIn profile and doing internships in high school, you should start your freshman year.”

Dan Shawbel, author of “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future,” insists: “The longer you wait, the worse off you are.”

While the majority of young people look to their parents for advice and mentoring, Shawbel advises against over-relying on parental guidance.

“Unless your parents work in the field you want to pursue, they are not going to be able to help you most effectively. You’ve got to find someone who is doing what you want to do.” He recommends using your school’s career resource center, accessing the alumni association, and joining a professional development or industry-specific group or club.

In this author’s experience, joining the Muslim Students’ Association email list of the school you attend or wish to attend is highly recommended as a tool of communication for making friends. It is also extremely useful as a tool for locating roommates, which is especially important when seeking accommodations far from home.

Having a career goal is probably the most important aspect of success.

Visualizing what you wish to achieve is essential to staying motivated and focused on your education as a path to an interesting life.

Egypt Sentences Israeli to 2 Years

On Monday, March 4, 2013 an Egyptian court sentenced an Israeli to two years in prison for sneaking into the Sinai in an alleged attempt to enter Gaza. Andre Pshenichnikov, 24, was detained on Dec. 31, Egyptian security sources said.

The family of Andre Pshenichnikov told Israeli website Walla News they were surprised by the verdict, noting the maximum penalty for infiltration is normally six months. Egyptian security officials claim Pshenichnikov was filming security installations in Sinai and asking drivers for information.

The 23-year-old Jewish immigrant from Tajikistan already made headlines last summer when he was detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. There he told police that he wants to break all ties with Israel, give up his Israeli citizenship and obtain a Palestinian one instead. “I hate Zionism,” he told the Associated Press in June 2012. “I want to be part of the Palestinian resistance.”

According to Pshenichnikov’s girlfriend, when he attempted to enter Egypt, Israeli authorities detained him for three days for no reason. After his release from Israeli detention, he crossed into Egypt and was then arrested by the Egyptian police. Svetlana Pshenichnikov, Andre’s mother, told Army Radio that he’d received a visa to enter Egypt last week, but that he’d encountered “a problem with his documents.”

Pshenichnikov was held in an Egyptian prison for over a month until he was ordered to be released and deported. However, he was back behind bars the very next day, after the Sharm al-Sheikh public prosecutor ordered a retrial of the left-wing activist. An appeal of his two year sentence is planned for later in the week. Meanwhile, his case arouses a great deal of speculation. Is he an Israeli spy? Commentator Israel Shamir believes the young man is rather an innocent idealist:

“Andre did the impossible. He crossed the biggest chasm there is. Imagine a white boy from Philly, picking cotton and living with blacks in a cabin on a Mississippi plantation in the days of Jim Crow. No Freedom Rider went that far. He broke an important taboo: so many Israelis are convinced that the Palestinians would kill them on sight, at first occasion. By his example he refuted this fantasy. He renounced apartheid personally by living with Palestinians… He did not go there to explore Palestinian way of life, or to write for a newspaper; he was not looking for publicity, he did not hide nor emphasize his Israeli identity. He did not act as an activist, marching at demos and enjoying popularity. He just rented a room, worked at a building site or waited tables in a tourist restaurant just like any Palestinian youth of his age in Deheishe, lived with ordinary people on his salary.”

“Though his actions were reckless, his intentions were noble, and we need such people,” Shamir concludes.

Shamir has advocated for a long time in favor of a One State Solution for Israel and Palestine. He does not believe people should wait for governments to decide their fate. Israelis themselves should go make friends with Palestinians and voluntarily dissolve the Jewish State.

“I signed a separate peace treaty with all my neighbors in the Middle East. As for me, Syrian children may come and swim in the Sea of Galilee, and children of Palestine are welcome to amusement parks of Tel Aviv, while I shall sip Lebanese arak at Bardaouni in Ramallah. The refugees of Gaza may come back to the fields they owned before 1948, and deal directly with the few old Polish Jews who “privatized” the lands. Keep me out of it.”

However, this recent incident shows that at this point in time, Arabs are not yet willing to protect a Jew who renounces Zionism and comes to live with them without official invitation or permission. Each time Pshenichnikov was arrested, it was the Palestinians or the Egyptians that handed him over to the authorities. Because of his openness in supporting the Palestinian cause, he was instantly mistrusted and considered to be stirring up trouble.

Former Israeli jazz musician Gilad Atzmon has also received a lot of opposition from Diaspora Palestinians, who have excluded him from the debate about Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel, at the request of Jews in the BDS movement who feel threatened by Atzmon’s views on Jewish identity politics. Many other deep thinkers have been told that they are not welcome to hold hands with the Palestinians. Even this author has at times been alienated by those who fear that my outspoken support could cause them more problems.

Obviously, it’s a control issue. People who renounce their country, or their religion, or their social and political brainwashing, are free radicals, anarchists. If society accepts their right to question the status quo, other people will start questioning the status quo too. But each person will do it in their own unique way, without any organizational goal or structure. Peace is very dangerous in the sense that no one can control it, just like no parent can control a son who fell in love. In medical terms, a “free radical” is an agent that causes cancer. It infects a living organism and if it is not neutralized, it will disrupt the system and eventually cause it to die. If peace were to erupt, existing governments would no longer be needed.

Of course, there is also the very real problem of infiltration and instigation by spies posing as free radicals, who are actually agents of the enemy, as we have seen time and time again with FBI informants trying to set people up for fake terrorist plots.

Pshenichnikov, whose mother is a Christian, will not receive much sympathy from any Palestinians or Egyptians simply because he is an Israeli immigrant and therefore not to be trusted. He will not receive much sympathy from Israelis, since he is an enemy of Zionism. The Russian government has reportedly taken interest in his case. It will be interesting to see if they decide to negotiate his release.

BDS Panel at Brooklyn College Draws Crowd: Detractors Humiliated

Judith Butler began her February 7 talk at Brooklyn College in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel by saying, “Usually one starts by saying that one is glad to be here, but I cannot say that it has been a pleasure anticipating this event. What a Megillah! I am, of course, glad that the event was not cancelled, and I understand that it took a great deal of courage and a steadfast embrace of principle for this event to happen at all.”

In response to the public furor of last week, the Mayor of New York spoke out in defense of Brooklyn College.

Bloomberg said he “couldn’t disagree more violently” with the BDS movement, but “if you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.”

“The last thing we need is for members of our City Council or State Legislature to be micromanaging the kinds of programs that our public universities run and base funding decisions on the political views of professors,” said the mayor. “I can’t think of anything that would be more destructive to a university and its students.”

Bloomberg’s decisive words effectively ended the New York City Council’s campaign against Brooklyn College for holding the Students for Justice in Palestine event.

Political Science teacher at Brooklyn College Robin Corey reported delightedly: “Now that the mayor, the New York Times, and just about everyone else have come down hard on all the government officials and politicians who tried to force my department to withdraw its co-sponsorship of the BDS panel, the “progressive” politicians have issued a second letter to Brooklyn College President Karen Gould, in which they backpedal, backpedal, backpedal pull back from their earlier position. No longer, it seems, must we “balance” this panel or withdraw our co-sponsorship.”

BC Philosophy professor Samir Chopra sighs, “That it took a billionaire mayor to explain these simple matters to our progressive leaders is, well, what can one say?”

“While it was gratifying to see Dershowitz forced into retreat it is important not to exaggerate Bloomberg's role,” writes commentator John Halle.

“Some of those targeted by Dershowitz turned out to be experienced organizers and more than a little media savvy, deluging the twitter accounts of the officials, demanding answers from them and circulating via facebook a petition which quickly received over 2,500 signatures. Within days those local officeholders concerned with maintaining their reputations among their liberal constituents withdrew their names from the Fidler letter clearing the way for Bloomberg and the Times to issue ringing endorsements of academic freedom. And so what began as a potential fiasco ended as an inspiring lesson in grassroots organizing.”

As the instigator of the threats against Brooklyn College, Alan Dershowitz found himself at the brunt of not only mockery but the public shredding of his arguments.

Opined fellow New York attorney David Samel on Mondoweiss: “People often comment that Dershowitz is a clown who does not deserve the time and effort to discredit him. I could not disagree more... His brazen hypocrisy and serial dishonesty should be challenged regularly.”

“The outside agitators, like Alan Dershowitz, did us a favor. If they hadn’t tried to shut it down with City Council members, it would have been just another ho-hum event on campus,” said Jane Hirschmann, a member of Jews Say No (to occupation).

As a result of all the publicity, the panel discussion between Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti drew hundreds to the audience, filling the room to capacity, with more people turned away.

Butler exclaimed, “I thought it would be very much like other events I have attended, a conversation with a few dozen student activists in the basement of a student center.”

Gail Sheehy reported in the Daily Beast that “the forum went off without a single hateful word. At most, 100 protesters stood across from the Student Center... Police, out in force, were confined to directing traffic.”

BDS, the largest pro-Palestine civil movement, states three goals: end the occupation, end apartheid, and guarantee the right of return of Palestinians to their homeland. When Barghouti characterized the Israeli apartheid as more brutal than what American blacks went through before Martin Luther King Jr., he received a standing ovation.

Chemi Shalev reports in Haaretz, Israel: “Overzealous Israel defenders used a five-megaton bomb to swat a fly, and it blew up in our faces...The result of all of this surfeit and excess was a clear-cut, perhaps unprecedented PR coup for BDS and a humiliating defeat for Israel’s interests... the “pro-Israel camp” found itself, not for the first time, portrayed not only as heavy handed but a bit unhinged as well.”

Shalev concludes that “far too much of the public discourse on Israel has been dominated and dictated by super-conservatives and ultra-nationalists and the billionaires who fund them... who view any measured or nuanced debate about Israel as treason, who are hell bent on making their observation that liberals are turning away from Israel into a self-fulfilling prophecy... and will eventually erode the genuine bedrock of support that Israel enjoys in America.”

Professor Chopra is not so sure. “The pressure brought on Brooklyn College from the outside was an attempt to regulate discourse on campus. And in that, I fear it has succeeded in many ways. For one, this event does not make the controversial panel discussion on campus more likely. It makes it more unlikely. Which department or university administration wants to go through this fiasco again?”

This author does not share Chopra’s pessimism. For decades, BDS and other Palestine Solidarity groups have been kicked off campuses around the US due to angry threats from pro-Israel activists. The academic attack on Brooklyn College is standard. What is new is that the administration remained strong and refused to cancel the event.

Meanwhile, Gaza farmers are renewing a call for boycott of Israel to protest the destruction of their land and property as well as the 2006 Israeli ban on Palestinian exports, which devastated Palestinian agriculture, reports Electronic Intifada.

Palestinian farmers joined together with protesters Saturday to plant olive trees on Israeli-razed farmland and to implore international supporters to join the boycott of Israeli agricultural produce. They say the boycott is the “only hope for justice for Palestinian farmers being targeted by the Israeli army and oppressed by Israel.”

“We hope that it will put pressure on Israel to stop targeting us and allow us to farm our land as we used to.”

NY Students Prevail

Students who organize Palestine Solidarity events on US campuses have come to expect pro-Israel groups to bully and threaten the university administration in an effort to cancel their student activities, whether they are educational workshops or poetry readings.

But pro-Israel advocates crossed a line this month when they pressured Brooklyn College to cancel an event co-sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP). The crusade against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), led by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) along with torture advocate Alan Dershowitz, was so heavy handed that it provoked an international discussion on academic freedom in America.

Perhaps due to the worldwide attention, the college has (so far) refused to cancel the event scheduled for February 7, in which leading Palestinian rights activist Omar Barghouti and Jewish scholar Judith Butler are to discuss Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). 

“As with many similar events, the Brooklyn College event is under attack, based on completely unfounded allegations of anti-Semitism. The truth is, boycott, divestment and sanctions are non-violent tools with a long history of being used by civil society to make social change, notably in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa and the civil rights movement here in the United States. In no way can it be construed as anti-Semitic,” reads a statement by Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP). 

Glenn Greenwald writes in the Guardian UK that “the ugly lynch mob now assembled against Brooklyn College and its academic event is all too familiar in the US when it comes to criticism of and activism against Israeli government policy… But this controversy has now significantly escalated in seriousness because numerous New York City elected officials have insinuated themselves into this debate by trying to dictate to the school’s professors what type of events they are and are not permitted to hold.” 

Al-Awda New York reports: “At first, the demand from Dershowitz and a handful of city politicians urged the Brooklyn College political science department to rescind its co-sponsorship. Now, Lewis Fidler, Assistant Majority Leader of the NYC Council, and several other members of the City Council are threatening to pull Brooklyn College’s funding unless the school cancels or condemns the event.”

“Imagine being elected to public office and then deciding to use your time and influence to interfere in the decisions of academics about the types of campus events they want to sponsor. Does anyone have trouble seeing how inappropriate it is – how dangerous it is – to have politicians demanding that professors only sponsor events that are politically palatable to those officials? If you decide to pursue political power, you have no business trying to use your authority to pressure, cajole or manipulate college professors regarding what speakers they can invite to speak on campus,” writes Greenwald.

According to Al-Awda, students all along the West Coast currently face similar censorship attempts. “Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim Student Association chapters in the large University of California system are being subjected to systematic silencing and intimidation at the local, statewide, and national level. Lobbying by well-funded pro-Israel groups has led to biased “campus climate” reports, a  California State assembly bill, and spurious federal complaints (leading to prolonged investigations); all deliberately and falsely conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Jewishness.”

According to their website, the US Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security is “charged with administering and enforcing the Antiboycott Laws under the Export Administration Act of 1979. Those laws discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of Israel sponsored by the Arab League, and certain Moslem countries, including complying with certain requests for information designed to verify compliance with the boycott.” 

“Conduct that may be penalized include agreements to refuse or actual refusal to do business with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies, and agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about business relationships with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies… The penalties imposed for each “knowing” violation can be a fine of up to $50,000 or five times the value of the exports involved, whichever is greater, and imprisonment of up to five years. During periods when the EAR are continued in effect by an Executive Order issued pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the criminal penalties for each “willful” violation can be a fine of up to $50,000 and imprisonment for up to ten years.”

It certainly would seem to change the game, however, if a US company is being urged to boycott Israel by fellow Americans, not just by the Arab League. It may be time to change the law. At this point, however, the controversy is just about the right to discuss boycotting Israel! 

Ambassador Chas Freeman in his remarks to the December 2012 Jubilee Conference of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy talked about Israeli Hasbara and the control of narrative as an element of strategy. Freeman stated that manipulation of information is an essential element of modern warfare:

“In politics, perception is reality. Narratives legitimize some perceptions and delegitimize others. Narratives can be drawn upon to reinforce stereotypes by imposing favorable or pejorative labels on information and its sources. Such labels predispose recipients of information to accept some things as credible, to disbelieve others, and to regard still others as so tainted or implausible that they can and should be ruled out of order and ignored.” This approach “seeks actively to inculcate canons of political correctness in domestic and foreign media and audiences that will promote self-censorship by them.”

What we are seeing now is that pro-Israel Hasbara has lost its effect on people. It used to be that even just meekly asking why Jews support Israel would result in the cruel and sudden loss of childhood friends, but these techniques are no longer working. Students no longer feel ashamed or afraid of discussing Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian population. It still happens that people who advocate for Palestine are attacked, verbally or otherwise. But now, they are instantly embraced by a warm group of supporters who urge them to continue speaking. 

“We pledge to continue our organizing on campus, to highlight the Israeli oppression of Palestinians, and to support and elevate the voices of Palestinian organizers and liberation movements. We will continue to educate, engage students, and mount campaigns using the non-violent tactic of boycott, divestment and sanctions. Despite the threats of powerful figures, we vow to continue to demand justice for Palestine,” pledged the National Students for Justice in Palestine.

The Golden Rule and the Gold Standard

In his book, “The Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham: Islam and the Future of Money,” Imran Hosein makes a compelling argument in favor of returning to the Gold Standard, a concern shared by many non-Muslim economists. 

Avik Roy writes in the National Review, “Investors see over and over again the pattern by which governments depart from hard-money policies (such as the gold standard) in order to engage in deficit spending, and then devalue their currencies in order to reduce the value of the debts they then incur. It is a story that all too frequently ends in credit default and economic collapse.”

Hosein similarly promotes the minting of Islamic gold dinars in order to produce what he calls a riba-free economy. Since paper money is subject to inflation and devaluing currency, a debt-based society must indulge in charging or paying interest, which is against Islam, and often results in financial slavery. Islamic law requires that debts be paid with items that have intrinsic value, such as dates or precious metals. 

Such views are viewed as threatening to the money lenders. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) prohibits gold-backed currencies for its member states. Thus, those who promote gold-backed money are often thought of as economic terrorists. 

Nevertheless, as the dollar continues to decrease in value, demand for gold has increased. Many countries have started minting Islamic coins, which have become very popular for trading as currency. Today, a gold dinar sells for $250 while a silver dirham is worth $6.53. Even in places like Norwich, England you can purchase a haircut or lunch using these Islamic coins, as a result of local community organizing.

Large banks and nations still use gold to settle their debts. The gold is (or was) stored at the Federal Reserve Gold Depository in New York City, or the similar institutions at the Bank of England and Bank of France. In 2009, an international scandal erupted when a German gold bullion dealer discovered that a gold bar was fake. 

What Really Happened reports in “Robbing Mali to Pay Germany” that: “Because many of the fake gold bars had the marking of US sources, nations began to ask for audits and tests of the gold bullion held in their name by the New York Federal Reserve. To the surprise of many, the New York Federal Reserve refused! Indeed the New York Federal Reserve refused the German government permission to simply look at their bullion!”

The German government has now demanded that their physical gold be repatriated back to Germany from both the Bank of France and the New York Federal Reserve. Switzerland also intends to repatriate all of their gold held by the New York Federal Reserve and other central banks.

“Both the Bank of France and the New York Federal Reserve have stated that the process of returning the gold will take years… The delay makes the situation clear. Neither the Bank of France nor the New York Federal Reserve actually have the gold Germany deposited.” 

Mali is one of the world’s largest gold producers. Together with neighboring Ghana they account for 7-8% of world gold output. As Germany started demanding their gold back from the Bank of France and the New York Federal Reserve, France (aided by the US) decided to invade Mali to fight “Islamists” working for “Al Qaeda.” 

Why are France and the US bombing Mali instead of just buying the gold they need? The problem is, China is able to outbid France and the US. Like the US and French interference in Sudan, this war is being waged to prevent China from investing in African minerals. Gold mining has also led to political unrest in the Congo. No doubt the Islamist struggle for Mali is deeply connected to the nation’s quest for self-determination, including the right to mine and sell gold in a way that benefits the people of Mali.

Even in the absence of war, gold mining is hard and dangerous work that comes with huge ethical considerations brought to light by environmentalists and fair labor activists. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated last year that the cost of cleaning up metal mines in the US alone could reach $54 billion. Major jewelry companies have come under pressure to show a traceable supply chain for their gold. JCK magazine reports: 

“The No Dirty Gold campaign calls gold mining one of the “world’s dirtiest industries,” claiming that one ring’s worth of gold production creates 20 tons of mine waste. The mining industry disputes that characterization and that figure, but no one doubts that gold mining—particularly its use of cyanide—affects the environment… Dirty gold mining has also brought health concerns and land disputes to communities surrounding the mines.”

“Typically, men live in gold mining camps for a month or two at a time, working 12-hour days, seven days a week. At the end of a 6- to 8-week shift, the men rotate out of camp to their homes for two weeks of rest. These long periods away from families have led to the rise of commercial sex workers in small villages near the mining areas. HIV infections are then spread into the general population when miners infect their spouses and unborn children. High rates of HIV infection have been recorded in every gold mining country, especially South Africa where some mines have reported one in three miners infected.”

As Muslims press forward, advancing the use of gold currency as halal money, we will need to balance our enthusiasm with concern for ethical investments that do not harm the environment or exploit workers. We must also become alert about the question of whether the gold we buy was stolen through war or if it was acquired in a fair manner.

“O ye who believe! Do not appropriate each others’ property and wealth in a manner that is unjust and unfair: Rather, let business be transacted in a manner that brings mutual satisfaction.” (Quran 4:29)