MEDIA ROOTS – Ralph Nader answers questions from the audience at Berkeley’s Hillside Club on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at the First Annual Peter Miguel Camejo Commemorative Lecture.  [Transcript Below]

Ralph Nader discusses Occupy Wall Street, Gandhi’s ‘Seven Deadly Social Sins’, media reform, his presidential candidacy and what people can do to fight back.

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Ralph Nader:  “Gandhi’s ‘Seven Deadly Social Sins,’ you’ve probably heard them, that’s his words, ‘Seven Deadly Social Sins.’  Everyone has three words.  Gandhi was really the sound-bite champion.  He’d have been great on TV.

“‘Politics Without Principle.  Wealth Without Work.  Commerce Without Morality.  Pleasure Without Conscience.  Education Without Character.  Science Without Humanity.’

“Science is building drones.  You heard about the coming drone.  You heard about the coming drone?  This is one that’s what’s called Self-Automated.  That is, a software will select the suspects, locate the suspects, execute them.  They don’t even need a button-pusher in Nevada or Langley.  The next drone is gonna be a size of a hummingbird.  With nanotechnology, they’ll put the drone in your hair for surveillance.  You’ll never know it.  It’s a, it’s a coming, 1984 is a masterpiece of understatement. 

“And then, ‘Worship Without Sacrifice.’

“You know, that’s like the so-called organised Christians who organise for war.  You know, they organise for destroying the rights of poor people.  I wonder if Jesus Christ would’ve condemned.

“I added two more.  You gotta bring it up to date.

“Belief Without Thought.’  This is what Peter [Camejo] was against.  ‘Belief Without Thought.’  And ‘Respect Without Self-Respect.’  That’s the most important one of all ‘cos if you respect yourself you don’t say, ‘I don’t have any power.  Why should I do anything?  It doesn’t matter.  It won’t change anything.  It won’t have any effect ‘cos everyone else is not gonna do what I’m doing.’  No.  You do what you do.  And you try to talk to others to convince them.  You never say, you don’t wanna go out of your way to discomfort yourself because a million other people haven’t told you, in one way or another, that they’re doing the same thing. 

“So, the key is how to get people who know what the prob-, there are very few people in this country who are ignorant of the injustices.  I mean they get it handed to ‘em every day.  Right?  You have to, you have to have people who say to themselves that if I know something I have a moral obligation to do something about it, personally.  I don’t care if ten million people don’t do it.  I can’t live with myself, unless I do it.  And once that spreads, you’ll get ten million people.  So, that’s, that’s what we have to look ahead for.”

Question:  What do you think about the Occupy Wall Street protests?

Ralph Nader:  “Well, you know, we don’t know what it is, but it’s refreshing whatever it is.  It’s the young people, uh, probably without jobs, a sense of theatre, uh, make sure there’s no leaders, no organisers, so they’re, become [more] resistant to infiltration.  And they’re modestly violating permits.  Like, uh, the permit to march in the City of New York and, therefore, they’re provoking the police to try to channel them with these orange fences.  And they’re spreading to other areas.  And that’s the kind of spark that gets things underway. 

“I wrote a column years ago, months ago.  I said, ‘How do we know when the spark comes?  I mean, the spark doesn’t usually come from [a] predictable source.  It doesn’t come from the usual suspects, like a bunch of oppressed people in some ghetto, in some city.  It comes like the Tunisian spark, see?  Who would have ever thought a fruit peddler, slapped by a police woman who is rippin’ off his stall…?  And look what happened.  So, this may be a spark. 

“What usually launches things are totally unpredictable episodes that suddenly say to a lot of people, ‘That’s it!  We’ve had enough!’  You know?  So, we’ll see how it turns out.  They’ve got a big band coming to get a bigger crowd.  I always worry about that, if people come just for the music.  Cornel West, Michael Moore, they’ve spoken to ‘em.  Uh, the authorities are very worried about this ‘cos they saw what happened in London.  And they saw what happened in the Middle East, the Arab Spring, and all.  They’re very worried about that.  And so we’ll see.  I think we’re gonna have to wait [many] days and see what goes on.”

Question:  “A number of people have asked, Mr. Nader, given the present crisis and this Presidential year, will you make your announcement here for your candidacy for President of the United States?”  [audience chuckles]

Ralph Nader:  “No. 

“I, [audience laughs] I ran unofficially in the Green Party in 1996.  I ran a none-of-the-above, really unofficial, Candidacy in New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1992, just none-of-the-above.  I got almost as many votes as Jerry Brown.  And he was a rival in New Hampshire.  Then I ran officially in 2000 and 2004 and 2008.  […]

“Four out five people who declared to the pollsters they were gonna vote for us, Nader-Camejo, Nader-Gonzalez, didn’t when they got in the voting booth.  They chickened out and voted for the Democrats or the Republican, whatever.  Mo-, people think all our votes would’ve gone to the Democrats.  No.  The exit polls in 2000 by a Democratic pollster have, uh, Nader-LaDuke, said that 25% of our votes would have voted for Bush, 39% for Gore, and the rest would have stayed home. 

“So, to make a long answer short, it’s time for other people to do it, uh, because, uh, I’m tired of pushing strings.  I’m tired of having a lot of people agree with our positions and they don’t put their vote behind our positions.  And, uh, unless, that’s what I mean by ‘Respect Without Self-Respect.’  We are supported on many issues by a majority of the American people.  A majority of the people wanted us on the Debates.  These are traditional poll, polling companies.  A majority of the people wanted us on the Presidential Debates.  We didn’t get on.  And a majority of the people, I mean, the people, you meet all over the country, ‘I voted for you!’  And I look at ‘em and I say, ‘Uh, where did you vote for me?  Where?  North Carolina?’  I’ll say, ‘I wasn’t on the ballot in North Carolina.’  [audience chuckles]  You know, I mean, people feel like, you know, they wanted to, but.”

Question:  “I just, feeling, hearing all this, I’m just feeling so much that, you know, we get the government we deserve.  When people voted for the lesser-of-two-evils instead of voting for their heart I felt that we really get the government we deserve.  That’s my statement.  My question to you is:  Is there any way that we can get the, uh, the telecommunications and the communications and the airwaves and all that back to the people.  That was our public domain.  And I think if we control that again, we would be able to control the length of the political season that goes on, which is interminable, because the TV, uh, people wanna make profits and they love to create fights that, that they’re not even, they don’t even care who wins.  They’re just making money.  And I think we can also get the money out of, uh, politics.  If we the people own the airwaves, we give the Candidates the right to be on those airwaves, an equal time kind of situation.  They don’t have to pay the TV, get ‘em, put ‘em on free.”

Ralph Nader:  “Yeah.  Well, that was one of the agendas we ran on.  And probably helped keep us off national TV. 

“We own the public airwaves.  We’re the landlords.  The FCC is the real estate agent.  And the radio and TV stations, the tenants.  And they pay us no rent.  They haven’t paid us any rent for this valuable property since 1934, the Communications Act of 1934.  And they decide who says what and who doesn’t say what on our property, namely the TV and radio, the public airwaves.  So, you know?  That’s an easy one, right?  I mean, who’s gonna be against controlling what we own?  Having our own audience, network, our own radio and TV.  It’s our property.  We can say we want two hours a day, here.  We want three hours a day, here.  And then we’ll rent you the rest of the time.  You’ll have to pay rent.  We’re gonna take the rent and put it into studios and reporters and programmers and producers.  And communicate with one another.  And mobilise one another on anything we want, from serious to humour.  Boy, I mean, can you imagine getting on national TV with that?  You see? 

“So, that was a larger part of the Commons.  We had a policy on the Commonwealth where we control what we own.  We own a third of the, America, the public lands and, you know, who controls it the timber, oil, gas, gold, whatever, the companies.  And we own trillions of dollars of government taxpayer R & D.  Who do you think created the internet?  Who do you think built the biotech industry?  Who do you think built the semiconductor industry?  Who do you think built the aerospace?  It was all government R & D!  You wouldn’t recognise it.  I mean, it was all government R & D, out of the Pentagon, NASA, National Institutes of Health.  Half, three-quarters of the anti-cancer drugs came from tax-payer-supported research from the National Cancer Institute with no controls on the prices that the receiving drug companies could charge us.  They were given all this free.  So, you gotta dialogue like that.  You know, you can’t do it with sound-bite. 

“But we’re shut out of our own property.  That should be the calling card.  Let’s start with our assets!  Our assets are the biggest wealth in America.  $5 trillion dollars of pension funds owned by workers.  That could control the New York Stock Exchange Members.  That could control the companies in the New York Stock Exchange.  I mean, about a third of all stock is held by worker pensions.  But, it’s not controlled by worker pensions.  It’s controlled by the banks and the insurance companies or the intermediate. 

“So, you see, it’s not that hard once you get people, uh, just thinking a little bit, getting excited.  You gotta ask ‘em the basic question, ‘Do you want power?  Or do you want to be powerless?  You want multiple choice tests?  You want power or do you want powerlessness?  So, you need thousands of people talking to millions of people.  Just like the populist tradition.  They call themselves lecturers.  I’d have [texted this, no calling].  And they talk to people.  So, if you have a thousand people who are talking to a thousand people a week with these messages.  They would talk to a million people face to face in rooms like this.  You have 10,000 people.  They talk to a thousand people a week in different venues.  You have ten million people.  That’s the way we gotta think.  The hell with the media for the meantime.  One thing they can’t stop us from doing is talking to one another.  And there are a lot of empty auditoriums and empty spaces around the country that we could use to do that. 

“That’s why we need a few very rich people, like George Soros or Ted Turner or whatever.  You know, there’s always a few tiny ones, a tiny percent.  All you need, a tiny percent to say, ‘Here’s a billion dollars.  We want you to hire 20,000 organisers in the country, all over the country.’  You will see remarkable dramatic changes.  There’s no social movement in the country that was created without organising.  And the lack of organisers delay the maturation of these movements, women’s suffrage, abolition. 

“But remember, and there’s a fella yesterday, he came out, gawd, these guys are like so predictable.  This guy was real hardcore, socialist, idealist.  He said, ‘How dare you write a book called Only the Super Rich Can Save Us.  I said, well, remember, it’s in quotes.  It’s in fiction.  He said, ‘I know!  But I saw you on TV!  You explained it.  And you think that we have to rely on rich people to mobilise the masses.’  So, I said, ‘Well, how are you gonna hire the organisers?’  And he wouldn’t listen.  So, I said, ‘Well, you ever heard of the Abolition Movement?  Slavery?’  He said, ‘Yeah.’  I said, ‘Don’t you know that a lot of proper Bostonian rich people funded William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and others?  How about the Women’s Suffrage Movement?  Some rich women funded those people.  Women who were on the ramparts all over the country.  How about the early Civil Rights Movement?  Did you ever hear?’  He, he went away by then.  [audience laughs]  ‘How about the Stern Family?  How about the Curry Family of the 1950s?  Gave a big lot.  Who’s gonna pay for those buses?  Who’s gonna pay for the expenses, the organisers?  […]

“It’s ridiculous.  But, you know what?  After he left, I said, I had the best response to him.  You always think after it’s over.  Here’s what I would’ve said to him right after that:  ‘Hey, you’re a socialist, right?’  He’d have said, ‘Damn right!  I’m proud of it!’  ‘All power to you.  You gotta fight those corporate socialists.’  Okay.  I’d say ‘Hey, you ever hear of Karl Marx?’  He’d say, ‘What?  Are you bein’ funny?’  I’d say, ‘Well, who do you think funded year after year after year Karl Marx?  His name was Friedrich Engels.  And he got co-authorship of the Communist Manifesto.’  But he funded the living expenses of Karl Marx.  And a number of children.  And he didn’t earn it writing Das Kapital. 

“So, we have to, people feel overwhelmed.  They feel depressed, discouraged.  They can’t do anything.  The country’s gettin’ worse.  The world’s goin’ to hell.  [audience chuckles]  Break it down and let’s each do our thing.  And then build it.  Someone strikes gold with a enlightened billionaire whose in their 80s or 90s and has a sense of posterity and is quite enlightened.  As far as I’m concerned, if you had two multi-billionaires givin’ us 15, 20 billion.  And mind you, some of these people are worth 30, 40 billion.  15, 20 billion’s nothing.  You can turn the country around.  How do I know?  I wrote 700 pages of this book only just to prove it.  Very, very detailed.  Once the money, the resources, top-down, bottom-up, movement.”

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Photo by flickr user Sound From Way Out

MEDIA ROOTS- Several research studies have studied job discrimination by sending out resumes with different identifying features and tracking the response rates. For instance, one study conducted by researchers at MIT and University of Chicago sent out thousands of resumes that were identical except for the name of the applicant: in one version, the applicants name was stereotypically “Black” (e.g., Rasheed, Aisha) and another version had stereotypically “White” names (e.g., Greg, Emily). Even though the resumes were identical in terms of qualifications, those researchers found that the “White” resumes had a 30 percent greater chance of getting responses than the “Black” resumes.

EUREKALERT– A new study suggests that openly gay men face substantial job discrimination in certain parts of the U.S. The study, which is the largest of its kind to look at job discrimination against gay men, found that employers in the South and Midwest were much less likely to offer an interview if an applicant’s resume indicates that he is openly gay. Overall, the study found that gay applicants were 40 percent less likely to be granted an interview than their heterosexual counterparts.

“The results indicate that gay men encounter significant barriers in the hiring process because, at the initial point of contact, employers more readily disqualify openly gay applicants than equally qualified heterosexual applicants,” writes the study’s author, András Tilcsik of Harvard University.

For the study, Tilcsik sent two fictitious but realistic resumes to more than 1,700 entry-level, white collar job openings — positions such as managers, business and financial analysts, sales representatives, customer service representatives, and administrative assistants. The two resumes were very similar in terms of the applicant’s qualifications, but one resume for each opening mentioned that the applicant had been part of a gay organization in college.

“I chose an experience in a gay community organization that could not be easily dismissed as irrelevant to a job application,” Tilcsik writes. “Thus, instead of being just a member of a gay or lesbian campus organization, the applicant served as the elected treasurer for several semesters, managing the organization’s financial operations.”

The second resume Tilcsik sent listed experience in the “Progressive and Socialist Alliance” in place of the gay organization. Since employers are likely to associate both groups with left-leaning political views, Tilcsik could separate any “gay penalty” from the effects of political discrimination.

The results showed that applicants without the gay signal had an 11.5 percent chance of being called for an interview. However, gay applicants had only a 7.2 percent chance. That difference amounts to a 40 percent higher chance of the heterosexual applicant getting a call.

The callback gap varied widely according to the location of the job, Tilcsik found. In fact, most of the overall gap detected in the study was driven by the Southern and Midwestern states in the sample — Texas, Florida, and Ohio. The Western and Northeastern states in the sample (California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and New York) had only small and statistically insignificant callback gaps.

“This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no discrimination in those states, just that the callback gaps were small in the case of the jobs to which I sent applications,” Tilcsik explained. “I think it’s very plausible that, even in those states, there might be a large callback gap in some other jobs, industries, or counties. What this does show is that discrimination in white-collar employment is substantially stronger for the Southern and Midwestern states in the sample.”

The research also found that employers seeking stereotypically heterosexual male traits were more likely to discriminate gay men. Gay applicants had lower callback rates when the employer described the ideal candidate for the job as “assertive,” “aggressive,” or “decisive.

“It seems, therefore, that the discrimination documented in this study is partly rooted in specific stereotypes and cannot be completely reduced to a general antipathy against gay employees,” Tilcsik writes.

The technique Tilcsik used, known as audit study, has been used in the past to expose hiring prejudice based on race and on sex. This is the first major audit study to test the receptiveness of employers to gay male job applicants.

Understanding the ways in which these biases might operate at the interview stage of the employment process, or how they might apply to lesbian job seekers in the U.S., requires additional research, Tilcsik says.

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András Tilcsik, “Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 117:2 (September 2011).

Established in 1895 as the first U.S. scholarly journal in its field, the American Journal of Sociology remains a leading voice for analysis and research in the social sciences.

Photo by Flickr user bpsusf

MEDIA ROOTS- The news that King Abdullah would permit women to vote and run in local elections in 2015 was met with the predictable array of responses in the corporate media. Very little was said about American-Saudi relations going back more than half a century. Unmentioned were the anti-egalitarian campaigns that the plutocrats of both societies colluded on, to squash any dissent and threat to the flow and control of oil or petrodollars. 

American policymakers may rehearse and make emphatic speeches in international meetings on human rights or the status of women in other countries, but it’s pretty clear that the policies of succeeding administrations since FDR have created income inequality, political disempowerment, widows, orphans, broken societies, lack of opportunity for education, populations vulnerable to sex trafficking, patriarchy, especially in the majority-Muslim world. 

Conservatives like Laura Bush and well-intentioned but counterproductive liberals often exacerbate the situation for women worldwide, and refuse to acknowledge the role that American foreign policy–serving the interests of a global capitalist class–has in perpetuating, amplifying, and worsening disparities and trauma of women.  

MR

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SLATE– King Abdullah announced on Sunday that Saudi women will be allowed to vote and run for office in municipal elections beginning in 2015. Saudi watchers view the move as a weaker step than allowing women to drive, a right women have been demanding publicly for more than two decades. Why did Saudi women find it easier to get the vote than a driver’s license?

Because the right to vote is meaningless. Elections are mostly symbolic in Saudi Arabia. Only half of the seats on the municipal councils are up for election, while the ruling al–Saud family appoints the other half of the members and the mayors. The councils have little power. The government reserves the right to postpone elections, as it did in 2009. There’s no guarantee that the 2015 elections, in which women are supposed to participate, will happen on time, or at all. Moreover, King Abdullah’s announcement doesn’t carry the force of law. He could change his mind at any time. Or, if the 87-year-old king isn’t around in 2015, his successor could easily go back on Abdullah’s promise to Saudi women.

While voting in municipal elections is hardly a move toward true political authority, Saudi conservatives view female driving as the first practical step away from the kingdom’s guardian system, which keeps women reliant on men. As things stand, women in Saudi cities can’t get around unless they can afford a driver or have a male family member who’s willing to chauffeur them. (Young men with many sisters have it tough in the kingdom.) Public buses have separate doors and seating areas for women, but they are slow and unreliable. Some women are afraid to ride in taxis because there have been reports of inappropriate comments by Saudi drivers. (Foreign-born drivers don’t have the same reputation, because the Saudi criminal justice system has treated immigrants brutally.)

Read more about Why is King Abdullah Willing To Let Saudi Women Vote But Not Drive Cars?

© 2011 Slate 

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MEDIA ROOTS- In 2007, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles stated that Troy Davis, a man charged with killing a police officer in 1991, would never be put to death unless there was “no doubt” of his guilt. Despite a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the case and a lack of hard evidence linking him to the actual killing, Troy Davis was executed last night by lethal injection at 11:08 EST while the world watched in horror. 

No matter what opinion one holds on the death penalty, it is worth noting that over 130 people on death row have been exonerated through DNA evidence that proved their wrongful convictions. Taking that statistic into consideration, it’s likely that people have already been put to death by the state who were not guilty of their crime.

Besides the disturbing fact that innocent people have been placed on death row before, the death penalty judicial process is extremely costly to taxpayers. In CA, taxpayers pay $90,000 more annually per death row prisoner than those regularly incarcerated. Furthermore, the appeals process usually takes decades to complete while death row inmates are held in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement.

Personally, I don’t support the death penalty. There is no ‘humane’ way to kill someone, and I think the process of executing a prisoner by any means is barbaric– especially in front of an audience. More importantly, I would rather have a murderer live out the rest of their life than to risk (literally) sponsoring the murder of one innocent person.

The murder of an alleged killer might be a gratifying moment of closure for the victim’s family members, but it will never fill the void left from losing a loved one. Instead, it will only fuel a vicious cycle of vengeance and hate.

Abby Martin

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For those who think the execution was justified, read the following reasons why the case wasn’t cut and dry via THE GUARDIAN:

1. Of the nine witnesses who appeared at Davis’s 1991 trial who said they had seen Davis beating up a homeless man in a dispute over a bottle of beer and then shooting to death a police officer, Mark MacPhail, who was acting as a good samaritan, seven have since recanted their evidence.

2. One of those who recanted, Antoine Williams, subsequently revealed they had no idea who shot the officer and that they were illiterate – meaning they could not read the police statements that they had signed at the time of the murder in 1989. Others said they had falsely testified that they had overheard Davis confess to the murder.

3. Many of those who retracted their evidence said that they had been cajoled by police into testifying against Davis. Some said they had been threatened with being put on trial themselves if they did not co-operate.

4. Of the two of the nine key witnesses who have not changed their story publicly, one has kept silent for the past 20 years and refuses to talk, and the other is Sylvester Coles. Coles was the man who first came forward to police and implicated Davis as the killer. But over the past 20 years evidence has grown that Coles himself may be the gunman and that he was fingering Davis to save his own skin.

5. In total, nine people have come forward with evidence that implicates Coles. Most recently, on Monday the George Board of Pardons and Paroles heard from Quiana Glover who told the panel that in June 2009 she had heard Coles, who had been drinking heavily, confess to the murder of MacPhail.

6. Apart from the witness evidence, most of which has since been cast into doubt, there was no forensic evidence gathered that links Davis to the killing.

7. In particular, there is no DNA evidence of any sort. The human rights group the Constitution Project points out that three-quarters of those prisoners who have been exonerated and declared innocent in the US were convicted at least in part on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony.

8. No gun was ever found connected to the murder. Coles later admitted that he owned the same type of .38-calibre gun that had delivered the fatal bullets, but that he had given it away to another man earlier on the night of the shooting.

9. Higher courts in the US have repeatedly refused to grant Davis a retrial on the grounds that he had failed to “prove his innocence”. His supporters counter that where the ultimate penalty is at stake, it should be for the courts to be beyond any reasonable doubt of his guilt.

10. Even if you set aside the issue of Davis’s innocence or guilt, the manner of his execution tonight is cruel and unnatural. If the execution goes ahead as expected, it would be the fourth scheduled execution date for this prisoner. In 2008 he was given a stay just 90 minutes before he was set to die. Experts in death row say such multiple experiences with imminent death is tantamount to torture.

© 2011 Guardian

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DEMOCRACY NOW– Troy Anthony Davis was killed by lethal injection by the state of Georgia at At 11:08 p.m. EDT despite widespread doubts about his guilt. The execution occurred shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the execution. Democracy Now! was the only news outlet to continuously broadcast live from the prison grounds last night where hundreds of supporters Troy Davis held an all-day vigil in Jackson, Ga.

Today we hear the voices of Troy Davis’ sister Martina Correia, hip-hop artist Big Boi, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Ed DuBose of the Georgia chapter of the NAACP, two members of the Troy Davis legal team, and more. We also hear from journalist Jon Lewis, a witness to the execution: “[Davis] said to the family [of slain police officer Mark MacPhail] that he was sorry for their loss, but also said that he did not take their son, father, brother. He said to them to dig deeper into this case, to find out the truth. And then he said to the prison staff — the ones he said, ‘who are going to take my life,’ — he said to them, ‘may God have mercy on your souls,’ and his last words were to them, ‘may God bless your souls.'”

Democracy Now Special Report on Troy Davis Execution: Did Georgia Kill an Innocent Man? 1/2

Democracy Now Special Report on Troy Davis Execution: Did Georgia Kill an Innocent Man? 2/2

Russia Today covers the outrage surrounding Troy Davis’s death on the day of his execution.

More information about abolishing the death penalty: http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty

Photo by Flickr user 4WardEverUK