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Greg Palast on “Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps”
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Mitt Romney, Barack Obama to trade jabs at Al Smith dinner
The two presidential candidates took a break from the caustic criticism of the campaign trail to score political points with biting humor last night in New York City.
President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney peeled off the stump Thursday to attend the annual Al Smith Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. During presidential election years, the event brings the candidates to the same stage to trade barbs and self-deprecating zingers as the race enter its final weeks.
The white-tie affair raises millions for the Gov. Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation and is organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to benefit needy children.
More than 1,600 were scheduled to attend the dinner. The menu includes poached lobster tail and dark chocolate tropical fruit cadeau. Tickets start at $2,500.
The diocese hopes to raise $5 million in grants this year. Last year it gave out $2 million in grants.
President Barack Obama also taped an episode of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” while he’s in Manhattan. The show aired late yesterday.
Comedy Central host Jon Stewart pressed Obama over the government’s changing explanation about the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, according to the Associated Press. When Stewart suggested that even Obama would concede his administration’s coordination and communication had not been “optimal,” Obama said: “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal. We’re going to fix it. All of it.”
Romney has questioned Obama’s handling of the matter and his honesty about it to voters. On “The Daily Show,” Obama insisted information was shared with the American people as it came in, the AP said. The attack is under investigation, he said, and “the picture eventually gets filled in.”
Last night’s Smith dinner fell two days after Obama and Romney exchanged heated jabs during their second presidential debate at Hofstra University. After what many observers thought was an inspired performance by Romney, and a lackluster one by the president, in Denver during the first debate, campaign watchers gave the edge to Obama after Tuesday night.
The latest polling shows the race as virtually tied.
This year’s event also come during the same year as New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan has clashed with the president over a federal mandate that insurance cover the cost of contraception for church affiliated institutions, like Catholic colleges and hospitals.
The mandate is part of the president’s health care reform law known as the Affordable Care Act.
More than a dozen archdioceses from around the country have filed lawsuits claiming the contraception mandate would require church leaders to violate religious beliefs to implement the law.
In March during a speech at Holy Trinity Diocesan High School in Hicksville, Dolan called the mandate a “government intrusion into the church.”
The Al Smith Dinner has been a necessary stop for politicians since World War II. The event is named for the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, who was the first Catholic to run for president. Smith was a four-term governor of New York.
Looking back on life under the Assad dynasty.
BY AHED AL HENDI | OCTOBER 16, 2012
They came for me on December 14, 2006. Plainclothes police carrying automatic weapons stormed into an Internet café in Damascus and grabbed me and a friend. They brought us in a car to the headquarters of the Syrian secret police. Around midnight they dragged me from my holding cell to the man I would come to know only as “Captain Wissam.” He was a tall, dark-skinned officer. He looked at me and smiled. “We will release you in just a few minutes,” he said. “You should be a good citizen.” He then called a guard, whom he ordered to “take good care” of me.
Both men spoke with the distinctive accent of the Alawites; in fact, every single person in the prison did. The Alawite minority has effectively ruled Syria since 1963, and especially since President Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970. So when you hear this accent, you pay attention. Ever since I can remember, this has been the way that the people with real power in our country speak
They did not keep me for a few minutes. They threw me into a cell they called “the Suite.” Measuring five feet by one and a half feet, it had no windows. There was a hole in the floor for a toilet and a hose attached to a faucet in the wall. The hose had two purposes: to keep the toilet clean and to provide me with drinking water. They told me I’d be staying for two years.
As it turned out, they let me go in 40 days. But that was more than enough. During that period, which I spent entirely in solitary confinement, I was interrogated constantly. I was tortured repeatedly, both psychologically and physically. (Forgive me, but I would prefer not to go into the details.) Every single day I feared death. When they released me, I staggered out onto the street, bearded and unkempt, wearing the same clothing I had on at the time of my arrest (though now everything was in tatters). Outside, everything seemed to be normal. People in the streets were walking around and enjoying their lives, smiling and laughing.
This was Syria under the Assads. I had drawn the attention of the secret police because of my membership in a student group that set out to publicize the human rights abuses of the regime. To engage in opposition meant questioning not only the government, but the entire version of reality that it had imposed upon us for decades.
Like millions of Syrians, I started my education at the age of six. My first day at school began with a greeting to our “Great Father,” Hafez al-Assad. We sang songs in his praise. His picture was everywhere: in our notebooks, our textbooks, our classrooms, even in the bathroom. He was the one who protected us from the danger of the imperialists and Zionists. He was the one who regained the honor of the Arabs. At school we learned that Assad’s cleverness had enabled Syria to win the Yom Kippur War, and we used to celebrate this day every year by holding up pictures of Assad marking the victory.
What we didn’t know, of course, was that the regime had actually been defeated. They used to tell us that Bill Clinton said that he fears two things: death and Hafez Al-Assad. Once our teacher told us that an agent of a foreign enemy country had tried to assassinate Assad, but when Assad was in range, the agent couldn’t see him on his rifle scope. The teacher told us that the hand of God intervened to stop the killing.
The portraits of the Great Father were always striking. When he smiled on TV, we felt intense love for our wonderful president. I was enrolled in an organization called “The Baath Party Pioneers.” We dressed in uniforms and chanted every morning that we would stand behind our great leader to smash imperialism and Zionism. Just like any normal school kid, I conformed with the rest.
And why wouldn’t I have? We thought of him as a supernatural being, a kind of god. I remember how once, in the fifth grade, we were wondering whether Assad really used the bathroom; the very thought was strange.
My first shock came at age nine. I was sitting next to my father watching the news on state-run TV, the only channel that we had. There was an interview with a Palestinian activist who ran an Arabic newspaper. I was very surprised. “Don’t they live in tents?” I asked my father. “How can they print newspapers? How do the Israelis allow them to do that?” My father was very nervous and quickly replied, “Yes, they can have newspapers, but it’s hard.”
The person being interviewed was harshly critical of the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. “Are the Israelis going to throw him in jail, like our neighbor?” I asked. “I don’t know,” my father replied curtly.
My neighbor was a political prisoner who belonged to a leftist movement. His children did not see him for seven years. He was released in 2004. When we asked why he was in prison, my family used to say, “He spoke badly about our Great Father, Hafez Al Assad.”
The puzzle of my neighbor perplexed me. How could a country like Israel, portrayed as a ruthless enemy, tolerate criticism, while my neighbor rotted in prison controlled by the merciful father, Assad?
When Hafez’s son died, the whole country dressed in black. We were not allowed to sing on the school bus due to public mourning. Every single person around me cried when he died. Posters all around us proclaimed that the son, Basil Al Assad, was a martyr. I was in fourth grade at the time, and I asked my teacher: “Didn’t you teach us that martyrs are those who die while fighting the enemy?” “Yes,” my teacher replied. “Then why do you call Basil a martyr when he died in a car accident?” The teacher was irate. She hit me hard and told me to bring my father. Because my school was a private Christian school, the problem was contained and the incident was not reported to state security.
In 2000, Hafez al-Assad died, and was succeeded by his other son, Bashar. There was talk of reforms, but that didn’t amount to anything. One thing did change, though: The omnipresent pictures of Hafez were now joined by new pictures of Bashar. The old personality cult was now transferred to the son.
This was the environment of fear in which I lived until I was 19 years old. That was when I figured out why my neighbor was jailed, why Basil was called a martyr, and why countless people didn’t know the whereabouts of their fathers because they had dared to criticize the regime. I learned about many of these things through the Internet, which exposed me to a range of information I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Some friends and I founded a group that we called “Syrian Youth for Justice.” We tried to raise awareness about human rights abuses and to counter the pro-Assad Islamic and national sentiments that were flourishing on our college campus. Activists associated with Hezbollah were openly allowed to recruit students and conduct propaganda. Those, like us, who supported the cause of secularism and democracy were arrested and imprisoned. Some of my friends were sentenced to terms of five or seven years in jail.
Unsurprisingly, many in Syria blamed me and a small group of activists rather than the Assad dictatorship. The state had conditioned people to associate activism with treason. As a result, most people treated activists as dupes or spies of foreign powers. Many of my friends refused to talk to me after I was released, and some of my relatives were even afraid to call and make sure that I was safe. But I knew Syria was a kingdom of silence and humiliation. I never expected the waves of the Arab Spring to reach the Syrian beach.
After my release, I fled from Syria, and lived in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon. After a while I was granted refugee status and came to the United States of America. I will never forget the email I got from Alyssa Teach, a political officer at the American embassy in Lebanon in 2008. “Hi, Ahed, are you still in Lebanon? Please let me know if everything is ok with you.” Since the Syrian government was trying to find me, the American embassy in Beirut was helping me with my papers to apply for refugee status. She was worried that the pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon could get to us, particularly since Assad did not like the idea of an opposition presence in Lebanon.
That email may look normal to many, but for a young man who was raised to hate America and consider it the greatest enemy of the world, it was an incredible feeling. I was hiding from the regime of the “Great Father,” while the “Great Enemy” was checking in on me and helping me.
I never expected that my fellow Syrians would rebel. Now they haven’t only rebelled, they are fighting to the death without fear. Tens of thousands have been killed and yet young men will protest, fight the regime, and refuse to give up. Not everyone has been brainwashed. One of the first things that the protestors did was to destroy the omnipresent images of the two Assads — a signal that the end of the regime is near. As far as most Syrians are concerned, the end can’t come soon enough.
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By Associated Press, Published: October 17CAIRO — Syria’s wealthy, long cultivated by President Bashar Assad as a support for his regime, are seeing their businesses pummeled by the bloody civil war. Factories have been burned down or damaged in fighting. International sanctions restrict their finances. Some warn that their companies are in danger of going under, worsening the country’s buckling economy.Assad may not have lost the backing of Syria’s business elite, but some are losing faith. Many of those who can have fled abroad, hoping to ride out the turmoil, which is now in its 19th month and is only getting worse as rebels and regime forces tear apart the country in their fight for power. Several businessmen interviewed by The Associated Press say resentment is growing against Assad over the crisis — but they also aren’t throwing their lot in with the rebellion. They are hunkering down, trying to salvage their companies.full article here
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[youtube http://youtu.be/dOoHArAzdug?]By Jess Hill
October 15, 2012
It was our first week in Lebanon, and my husband and I were driving up the freeway that links the south of the country to Beirut. A hulking 4WD pulled in front of us, with two people sitting in the front. As the boot of the car came into view, my jaw dropped. Sitting on the floor of the car, hugging her knees, was a Sri Lankan woman, dressed in a pastel servant’s uniform. The whole backseat of the car was empty.
When people call Beirut a ‘cosmopolitan’ city, they’re referring to the easy co-mingling of Lebanese and Westerners. Foreigners from Asia and East Africa — the vast majority of whom are here as domestic workers — are outsiders here, widely considered to be lowly by birth. It’s been now three months since we moved here, and I’m still shocked by the way many Lebanese people treat their domestic servants.
About 200,000 domestic workers work in Lebanon (a country of four million people), and come predominantly from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. In a country divided unforgivingly down lines of status, a foreign maid is the status symbol par excellence. On the weekends, restaurants around Lebanon are filled with families and friends enjoying each other’s company, their maids commonly sitting several tables away, staring into space. In Downtown’s central square, Place de l’Étoile, uniformed house slaves drag their feet after little princes, toddlers who have already been trained to ignore the hired help. They’re not just for the super-rich, either — you can get a full-time maid for as little as USD100 per month (USD250 is considered a generous wage).
It’s not unusual to see a family of four being attended to by two maids — one for each child. Why not? They’re as cheap as chips. They don’t even need their own room — in many houses maids are forced to sleep on the living-room floor, under the stairs, and in rooms built for storing brooms. Often these women have no kin or connections in Lebanon, so there are no consequences for people who treat them barbarously. It’s a miserable, lonely version of Downton Abbey, retooled for a post oil-boom Middle East, starring the world’s downtrodden-for-hire.
JOSEPH EID/AFP/GETTY
An activist at a March 2012 rally holds a sign in reference to Alem Desisa, an Ethiopian maid who took her own life after a video of her being abused was aired on national television.
Last week, I was appalled but unsurprised to read another stomach-turning account of racism here in Lebanon. At Beirut’s international airport, a female employee of Middle East Airlines (MEA), Lebanon’s national carrier, used the intercom repeatedly to instruct Filipinos and Nepalis to “stop talking” as they waited to board a flight. When Abed Shaheen, a Lebanese man based in Dubai, told the woman and her “macho” colleague that this racist behavior was unacceptable, the woman dared him to complain, adding that the airline’s management didn’t want these people on the flight, anyway.
“How would you feel if you ever wanted to travel to Europe, and while queuing for your visa they told you the same thing?” Shaheen repugned. “These people are different,” the MEA employee replied. Then her colleague asked Shaheen to back off from the counter and threatened to void his ticket.
When Shaheen blogged about what he had seen, it made headlines around the world. Lebanese bloggers and tweeters vented their rage at MEA. The female MEA staff member was fired.
But for some Lebanese, the racism exhibited by this woman — though shocking in its brazenness — was simply a reflection of mainstream attitudes in Lebanon. “It is easy to blame or demonise the flight attendants, and it is also easy to miss the real source of the problem. The flight attendants are offering the above “services” because they believe it’s what the customers (i.e. the Lebanese passengers) want,” writes Mustapha Hamoui, who blogs at Beirut Spring.
Commenting on Hamoui’s blog, ‘Dania’ wrote, “It starts at home, when kids see how their parents treat the help like slaves or act in a condescending and mean way to migrant workers at gas stations etc.”
Commenter Suzy Abboud was incensed: “All of you who are talking about Racism [sic] and the bad behavior of one single employee, just tell me honestly how you treat your own maid in your home. Do you allow her to eat with you on the same table. Do you allow her to use your bathroom? Do you allow her to have day off? Do you allow her to get fancy cloth? Do you allow her to go to the beach with you, to swim, not just to sit under the burning sun to watch over your kids? Do you allow her to sleep in a proper room, not on the floor, on the balcony or in the kitchen? You want to talk about MEA? Just start by talking about yourself in your own home before criticising a national and successful company that makes every Lebanese very proud.”
Of course, corporate accountability is vital in these situations, and this woman’s dismissal should at least give other MEA employees pause. The outcry over this incident is also a positive sign. There are activist groups like the Anti-Racism Movement, who work with migrant community leaders to challenge and expose racism, and the government is cracking down on private beach clubs that refuse entry to Asian and African migrants (like the club featured in the video below).
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Y6WU_zh9g&feature=share&list=UUaBBARrvSIU9MDzB2_Hj7MQ?]The racism foreign workers experience is so deeply engrained in Lebanese society the term hardly seems sufficient. It’s like a Middle Eastern caste system: these women are considered lowly by birth. Horrific stories circulate about the beatings and sexual abuse they suffer at the hands of their employers, and how almost a third of them live under house arrest. In 2008, Human Rights Watch reported that on average, one foreign worker was committing suicide in Lebanon every week. Many die after falling from a balcony while trying to escape.
But amidst these regular stories of brutality, it’s the way that Asian and East African women are reduced to objects of derision that disturbs me the most. One particularly creepy little example from earlier this year came from a bar close to where I live in the Christian area of Gemmayze. In January, Life Bar advertised a special Friday night on its Facebook page, encouraging punters to come dressed in their own maid costume. “Speak Like them and look like a Philippino [sic], Bengladish [sic], Sri Lanka [sic] or any maid you want and definitely win 100$ in cash. They do work all the month to get it. Imitate them and win it in some few comedy moments.” The owner canceled the event after it was howled down online, though she insisted it had been ‘misunderstood’.
The problem of racism in Lebanon is enormous, and can’t be solved merely by reactive spasms. Just like every other domestic problem maligning Lebanon — sectarianism, corruption, pollution — solving the problem of racism would require Lebanese people to work together, and to believe in the notion of a Lebanese society. But as one civil society activist told me recently, “Lebanon isn’t a country — it’s a country club.” People here expect the country to serve them, she said, not the other way around.
By Ian PannellBBC News, Aleppo
Aleppo is becoming a defining battle in the Syrian conflictSince the conflict in Syria began 18 months ago, more and more civilians have been drawn into the fighting – and in Aleppo I met a businessman whose experience of torture in custody has turned him into a determined rebel commander.
“The question shouldn’t be ‘Were we tortured?’ it should be ‘When weren’t we?'”
Dr Abdul Raouf used to be part of Aleppo’s successful and wealthy business elite.
But as the Syrian revolution started to grip the country he turned his attention to politics, meeting secretly with others to call for change.
That was when he was arrested.
I met three members of his secret group on the outskirts of Aleppo this week.
Syria’s second city has gone from being a bystander in a growing protest movement, to the key battleground in a vicious civil war.
What drives these men is the six months they spent in the hands of the feared Air Force Intelligence unit.
“Let’s start with Al Khazouk,” says Dr Raouf.
He went on to describe this particular form of torture, which involved having a stick forced into him.
The other men nodded.”Every Syrian knows what Al Khazouk is,” they agreed.
He then demonstrated having electrical wires attached to his chest and genitals. He talked about the beatings, having his ribs broken.
These methods appear to be so frighteningly common that the way they described them was almost casual.
In fact, between swirls of smoke from the doctor’s pipe, the men joked and chuckled while telling the most horrific stories.
But at one point he lost his temper, jabbing the air with his finger, crying, “Wallahi” – “I swear to God”.
He was describing being forced to watch a woman prisoner being raped in front of him and being told by the guards, “We’ll do this to your wife unless you tell us what we want to know.”
Dr Raouf said that before they were arrested, the group had long discussions about whether they should get some sticks to defend themselves during protests.
“But when we were released, we decided to buy every weapon we could afford,” he said.
Today the civil protest movement has become a civil war in which as many as 30,000 people have been killed, according to opposition activists.
The violence has continued to escalate with September being the bloodiest month so far. Desperate times have bred desperate men.
We were sitting in front of one rebel base in the south when a fighter jet roared overhead.
We went around the back of the building to try to film the plane.
Several fighters were gathered there and they eyed us suspiciously.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” they asked.
This was a tight-knit group that kept itself apart from the others.
Some had long beards and flowing robes, a few appeared to be foreigners and they were clearly unhappy to see foreign journalists.
We were escorted back to the front of the building where we were told we should not film the men, not even talk to them.
We discovered later that this was Jabhat al-Nusra, a radical group of armed jihadis suspected by some of having links to al-Qaeda. They claim to have carried out a number of large-scale bombings across Syria.
There are no reliable figures for how many members they have, nor how many extremists and foreign jihadis have entered Syria altogether.
Some estimate they make up as much as 10% of rebel fighters in Aleppo.
In reality there are probably just a few hundred of them but they operate in the most dangerous areas. They use the uncompromising tactics of militant groups elsewhere and their numbers are growing.
At least 34 people were killed and dozens injured in a series of bomb explosionsWhile we were in Aleppo there was a series of massive co-ordinated bomb attacks against government buildings that left dozens of people dead and many more injured. Jabhat al-Nusra said they did it.
“The Islamist groups are helping us get our rights while the West is just watching,” says Dr Raouf.
He has made a pact with the militants and believes they will accept a secular, democratic government and lay down their weapons when the conflict is over.
Some may be sceptical of that.
The doctor then left to visit his men on the frontlines.
Commanders on both sides are now actively targeted for assassination and what he did not know was that someone was tracking his vehicle. Someone wanted him dead.
As he drove on to an open stretch of road, a fighter jet moved in and opened fire on his car leaving him badly wounded.
The West chose not to arm the Syrian opposition for fear of the consequences.
But in many ways the worst of what it sought to avoid has come to pass anyway – massive displacement of civilians, spiralling violence, a significant loss of life, a radicalised opposition and an influx of foreign fighters.
Moderate voices face increased competition.
And the longer it has gone on, the bloodier and more extreme the conflict has become and the greater the threat it poses to an already fragile region.
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Stand-up comedian Louis CK is known for his dark outlook on life and the world around us.
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