BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE DODD-FRANK WALL STREET, which I heard EVERY CANDIDATE at the GOP Presidential Debate say they wanted to REPEAL!! WHY???

Create a Sound Economic Foundation to Grow Jobs, Protect Consumers, Rein in Wall Street and Big Bonuses, End Bailouts and Too Big to Fail, Prevent Another Financial Crisis 

Years without accountability for Wall Street and big banks brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the loss of 8 million jobs, failed businesses, a drop in housing prices, and wiped out personal savings. 

The failures that led to this crisis require bold action. We must restore responsibility and accountability in our financial system to give Americans confidence that there is a system in place that works for and protects them. We must create a sound foundation to grow the economy and create jobs.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE LEGISLATION

Consumer Protections with Authority and Independence: Creates a new independent watchdog, housed at the Federal Reserve, with the authority to ensure American consumers get the clear, accurate information they need to shop for mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products, and protect them from hidden fees, abusive terms, and deceptive practices.

Ends Too Big to Fail Bailouts: Ends the possibility that taxpayers will be asked to write a check to bail out financial firms that threaten the economy by: creating a safe way to liquidate failed financial firms; imposing tough new capital and leverage requirements that make it undesirable to get too big; updating the Fed’s authority to allow system-wide support but no longer prop up individual firms; and establishing rigorous standards and supervision to protect the economy and American consumers, investors and businesses.

Advance Warning System: Creates a council to identify and address systemic risks posed by large, complex companies, products, and activities before they threaten the stability of the economy.

Transparency & Accountability for Exotic Instruments: Eliminates loopholes that allow risky and abusive practices to go on unnoticed and unregulated -- including loopholes for over-the-counter derivatives, asset- backed securities, hedge funds, mortgage brokers and payday lenders.

Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance: Provides shareholders with a say on pay and corporate affairs with a non-binding vote on executive compensation and golden parachutes.

Protects Investors: Provides tough new rules for transparency and accountability for credit rating agencies to protect investors and businesses.

Enforces Regulations on the Books: Strengthens oversight and empowers regulators to aggressively pursue financial fraud, conflicts of interest and manipulation of the system that benefits special interests at the expense of American families and businesses.

STRONG CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION WATCHDOG

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

 Independent Head: Led by an independent director appointed by the 

President and confirmed by the Senate.

  Independent Budget: Dedicated budget paid by the Federal Reserve

system. 

 Independent Rule Writing: Able to autonomously write rules for

consumer protections governing all financial institutions – banks and non-

banks – offering consumer financial services or products.

  Examination and Enforcement: Authority to examine and enforce 

regulations for banks and credit unions with assets of over $10 billion and all mortgage-related businesses (lenders, servicers, mortgage brokers, and foreclosure scam operators), payday lenders, and student lenders as well as other non-bank financial companies that are large, such as debt collectors and consumer reporting agencies. Banks and Credit Unions with assets of $10 billion or less will be examined for consumer complaints by the appropriate regulator.

 Consumer Protections: Consolidates and strengthens consumer protection responsibilities currently handled by the Office of the Comptroller of the 

Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, National Credit Union Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Federal Trade Commission. Will also oversee the enforcement of federal laws intended to ensure the fair, equitable and nondiscriminatory access to credit for individuals and communities.

 Able to Act Fast: With this Bureau on the lookout for bad deals and schemes, consumers won’t have to wait for Congress to pass a law to be protected from bad business practices.

 Educates: Creates a new Office of Financial Literacy. 

 Consumer Hotline: Creates a national consumer complaint hotline so

consumers will have, for the first time, a single toll-free number to report

problems with financial products and services.

  Accountability: Makes one office accountable for consumer protections. 

With many agencies sharing responsibility, it’s hard to know who is responsible for what, and easy for emerging problems that haven’t historically fallen under anyone’s purview, to fall through the cracks.

 Works with Bank Regulators: Coordinates with other regulators when examining banks to prevent undue regulatory burden. Consults with regulators before a proposal is issued and regulators could appeal regulations they believe would put the safety and soundness of the banking system or the stability of the financial system at risk.

 Clearly Defined Oversight: Protects small business from unintentionally being regulated by the CFPB, excluding businesses that meet certain standards.

LOOKING OUT FOR THE NEXT BIG PROBLEM: ADDRESSING SYSTEMIC RISKS

The Financial Stability Oversight Council  Expert Members: Made up of 10 federal financial regulators and an

independent member and 5 nonvoting members, the Financial Stability Oversight Council will be charged with identifying and responding to emerging risks throughout the financial system. The Council will be chaired by the Treasury Secretary and include the Federal Reserve Board, SEC, CFTC, OCC, FDIC, FHFA, NCUA, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and an independent appointee with insurance

expertise. The 5 nonvoting members include OFR, FIO, and state banking,

insurance, and securities regulators.

  Tough to Get Too Big: Makes recommendations to the Federal Reserve for

increasingly strict rules for capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management and other requirements as companies grow in size and complexity, with significant requirements on companies that pose risks to the financial system.

 Regulates Nonbank Financial Companies: Authorized to require, with a 2/3 vote and vote of the chair, that a nonbank financial company be regulated by the Federal Reserve if the council believe there would be negative effects on the financial system if the company failed or its activities would pose a risk to the financial stability of the US.

 Break Up Large, Complex Companies: Able to approve, with a 2/3 vote and vote of the chair, a Federal Reserve decision to require a large, complex company, to divest some of its holdings if it poses a grave threat to the financial stability of the United States – but only as a last resort.

 Technical Expertise: Creates a new Office of Financial Research within Treasury to be staffed with a highly sophisticated staff of economists, accountants, lawyers, former supervisors, and other specialists to support the council’s work by collecting financial data and conducting economic analysis.

 Make Risks Transparent: Through the Office of Financial Research and member agencies the council will collect and analyze data to identify and monitor emerging risks to the economy and make this information public in periodic reports and testimony to Congress every year.

 No Evasion: Large bank holding companies that have received TARP funds will not be able to avoid Federal Reserve supervision by simply dropping their banks. (the “Hotel California” provision)

 Capital Standards: Establishes a floor for capital that cannot be lower than the standards in effect today and authorizes the Council to impose a 15-1 leverage requirement at a company if necessary to mitigate a grave threat to the financial system.

ENDING TOO BIG TO FAIL BAILOUTS

Limiting Large, Complex Financial Companies and Preventing Future Bailouts

 No Taxpayer Funded Bailouts: Clearly states taxpayers will not be on the hook to save a failing financial company or to cover the cost of its liquidation.

 Discourage Excessive Growth & Complexity: The Financial Stability Oversight Council will monitor systemic risk and make recommendations to the Federal Reserve for increasingly strict rules for capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management and other requirements as companies grow in size and complexity, with significant requirements on companies that pose risks to the financial system.

 Volcker Rule: Requires regulators implement regulations for banks, their affiliates and holding companies, to prohibit proprietary trading, investment in and sponsorship of hedge funds and private equity funds, and to limit relationships with hedge funds and private equity funds. Nonbank financial institutions supervised by the Fed also have restrictions on proprietary trading and hedge fund and private equity investments. The Council will study and make recommendations on implementation to aid regulators.

 Extends Regulation: The Council will have the ability to require nonbank financial companies that pose a risk to the financial stability of the United States to submit to supervision by the Federal Reserve.

 Payment, clearing, and settlement regulation. Provides a specific framework for promoting uniform risk-management standards for systemically important financial market utilities and systemically important payment, clearing, and settlement activities conducted by financial institutions.

 Funeral Plans: Requires large, complex financial companies to periodically submit plans for their rapid and orderly shutdown should the company go under. Companies will be hit with higher capital requirements and restrictions on growth and activity, as well as divestment, if they fail to submit acceptable plans. Plans will help regulators understand the structure of the companies they oversee and serve as a roadmap for shutting them down if the company fails. Significant costs for failing to produce a credible plan create incentives for firms to rationalize structures or operations that cannot be unwound easily.

 Liquidation: Creates an orderly liquidation mechanism for FDIC to unwind failing systemically significant financial companies. Shareholders 

and unsecured creditors bear losses and management and culpable

directors will be removed.

  Liquidation Procedure: Requires that Treasury, FDIC and the Federal

Reserve all agree to put a company into the orderly liquidation process to mitigate serious adverse effects on financial stability, with an up front judicial review.

 Costs to Financial Firms, Not Taxpayers: Taxpayers will bear no cost for liquidating large, interconnected financial companies. FDIC can borrow only the amount of funds to liquidate a company that it expects to be repaid from the assets of the company being liquidated. The government will be first in line for repayment. Funds not repaid from the sale of the company’s assets will be repaid first through the claw back of any payments to creditors that exceeded liquidation value and then assessments on large financial companies, with the riskiest paying more based on considerations included in a risk matrix

 Federal Reserve Emergency Lending: Significantly alters the Federal Reserve’s 13(3) emergency lending authority to prohibit bailing out an individual company. Secretary of the Treasury must approve any lending program, and such programs must be broad based and not aid a failing financial company. Collateral must be sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses.

 Bankruptcy: Most large financial companies that fail are expected to be resolved through the bankruptcy process.

 Limits on Debt Guarantees: To prevent bank runs, the FDIC can guarantee debt of solvent insured banks, but only after meeting serious requirements: 2/3 majority of the Board and the FDIC board must determine there is a threat to financial stability; the Treasury Secretary approves terms and conditions and sets a cap on overall guarantee amounts; the President activates an expedited process for Congressional approval.

REFORMING THE FEDERAL RESERVE

 Federal Reserve Emergency Lending: Limits the Federal Reserve’s 13(3) emergency lending authority by prohibiting emergency lending to an individual entity. Secretary of the Treasury must approve any lending program, programs must be broad based, and loans cannot be made to

insolvent firms. Collateral must be sufficient to protect taxpayers from

losses.

  Audit of the Federal Reserve: GAO will conduct a one-time audit of all

Federal Reserve 13(3) emergency lending that took place during the financial crisis. Details on all lending will be published on the Federal Reserve website by December 1, 2010. In the future GAO will have on- going authority to audit 13(3), emergency lending , and discount window lending, and open market transactions.

 Transparency - Disclosure: Requires the Federal Reserve to disclose counterparties and information about amounts, terms and conditions of 13(3) emergency lending and discount window lending, and open market transactions on an on-going basis, with specified time delays.

 Supervisory Accountability: Creates a Vice Chairman for Supervision, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve designated by the President, who will develop policy recommendations regarding supervision and regulation for the Board, and will report to Congress semi-annually on Board supervision and regulation efforts.

 Federal Reserve Bank Governance: GAO will conduct a study of the current system for appointing Federal Reserve Bank directors, to examine whether the current system effectively represents the public, and whether there are actual or potential conflicts of interest. It will also examine the establishment and operation of emergency lending facilities during the crisis and the Federal Reserve banks involved therein. The GAO will identify measures that would improve reserve bank governance.

 Election of Federal Reserve Bank Presidents: Presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks will be elected by class B directors - elected by district member banks to represent the public - and class C directors - appointed by the Board of Governors to represent the public. Class A directors - elected by member banks to represent member banks – will no longer vote for presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks.

 Limits on Debt Guarantees: To prevent bank runs, the FDIC can guarantee debt of solvent insured banks, but only after meeting serious requirements: 2/3 majority of the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC board determine there is a threat to financial stability; the Treasury Secretary approves terms and conditions and sets a cap on overall guarantee amounts; the President initiates an expedited process for Congressional approval.

CREATING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR DERIVATIVES

Bringing Transparency and Accountability to the Derivatives Market 

 Closes Regulatory Gaps: Provides the SEC and CFTC with authority to regulate over-the-counter derivatives so that irresponsible practices and

excessive risk-taking can no longer escape regulatory oversight.

  Central Clearing and Exchange Trading: Requires central clearing and exchange trading for derivatives that can be cleared and provides a role

for both regulators and clearing houses to determine which contracts

should be cleared. 

 Market Transparency: Requires data collection and publication

through clearing houses or swap repositories to improve market transparency and provide regulators important tools for monitoring and responding to risks.

 Financial safeguards: Adds safeguards to system by ensuring dealers and major swap participants have adequate financial resources to meet responsibilities. Provides regulators the authority to impose capital and margin requirements on swap dealers and major swap participants, not end users.

 Higher standard of conduct: Establishes a code of conduct for all registered swap dealers and major swap participants when advising a swap entity. When acting as counterparties to a pension fund, endowment fund, or state or local government, dealers are to have a reasonable basis to believe that the fund or governmental entity has an independent representative advising them.

NEW OFFICES OF MINORITY AND WOMEN INCLUSION

 At federal banking and securities regulatory agencies, the bill establishes an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion that will, among other things, address employment and contracting diversity matters. The offices will coordinate technical assistance to minority-owned and women-owned businesses and seek diversity in the workforce of the regulators.

MORTGAGE REFORM

 Require Lenders Ensure a Borrower's Ability to Repay: Establishes a simple federal standard for all home loans: institutions must ensure that borrowers can repay the loans they are sold.

 Prohibit Unfair Lending Practices: Prohibits the financial incentives for subprime loans that encourage lenders to steer borrowers into more costly loans, including the bonuses known as "yield spread premiums" that lenders pay to brokers to inflate the cost of loans. Prohibits pre-payment penalties that trapped so many borrowers into unaffordable loans.

 Establishes Penalties for Irresponsible Lending: Lenders and mortgage brokers who don’t comply with new standards will be held accountable by consumers for as high as three-years of interest payments and damages plus attorney’s fees (if any). Protects borrowers against foreclosure for violations of these standards.

 Expands Consumer Protections for High-Cost Mortgages: Expands the protections available under federal rules on high-cost loans -- lowering the interest rate and the points and fee triggers that define high cost loans.

 Requires Additional Disclosures for Consumers on Mortgages: Lenders must disclose the maximum a consumer could pay on a variable rate mortgage, with a warning that payments will vary based on interest rate changes.

 Housing Counseling: Establishes an Office of Housing Counseling within HUD to boost homeownership and rental housing counseling.

HEDGE FUNDS

Raising Standards and Regulating Hedge Funds

  Fills Regulatory Gaps: Ends the “shadow” financial system by requiring

hedge funds and private equity advisors to register with the SEC as investment advisers and provide information about their trades and portfolios necessary to assess systemic risk. This data will be shared with the systemic risk regulator and the SEC will report to Congress annually on how it uses this data to protect investors and market integrity.

 Greater State Supervision: Raises the assets threshold for federal regulation of investment advisers from $30 million to $100 million, a move expected to significantly increase the number of advisors under state supervision. States have proven to be strong regulators in this area and

subjecting more entities to state supervision will allow the SEC to focus its resources on newly registered hedge funds.

CREDIT RATING AGENCIES

New Requirements and Oversight of Credit Rating Agencies

  New Office, New Focus at SEC: Creates an Office of Credit Ratings at the

SEC with expertise and its own compliance staff and the authority to fine agencies. The SEC is required to examine Nationally Recognized Statistical Ratings Organizations at least once a year and make key findings public.

 Disclosure: Requires Nationally Recognized Statistical Ratings Organizations to disclose their methodologies, their use of third parties for due diligence efforts, and their ratings track record.

 Independent Information: Requires agencies to consider information in their ratings that comes to their attention from a source other than the organizations being rated if they find it credible.

 Conflicts of Interest: Prohibits compliance officers from working on ratings, methodologies, or sales; installs a new requirement for NRSROs to conduct a one-year look-back review when an NRSRO employee goes to work for an obligor or underwriter of a security or money market instrument subject to a rating by that NRSRO; and mandates that a report to the SEC when certain employees of the NRSRO go to work for an entity that the NRSRO has rated in the previous twelve months.

 Liability: Investors can bring private rights of action against ratings agencies for a knowing or reckless failure to conduct a reasonable investigation of the facts or to obtain analysis from an independent source. NRSROs will now be subject to “expert liability” with the nullification of Rule 436(g) which provides an exemption for credit ratings provided by NRSROs from being considered a part of the registration statement.

 Right to Deregister: Gives the SEC the authority to deregister an agency for providing bad ratings over time.

 Education: Requires ratings analysts to pass qualifying exams and have continuing education.

 Eliminates Many Statutory and Regulatory Requirements to Use NRSRO Ratings: Reduces over-reliance on ratings and encourages investors to conduct their own analysis.

 Independent Boards: Requires at least half the members of NRSRO boards to be independent, with no financial stake in credit ratings.

 Ends Shopping for Ratings: The SEC shall create a new mechanism to prevent issuers of asset backed-securities from picking the agency they think will give the highest rating, after conducting a study and after submission of the report to Congress.

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Gives Shareholders a Say on Pay and Creating Greater Accountability

 Vote on Executive Pay and Golden Parachutes: Gives shareholders a say

on pay with the right to a non-binding vote on executive pay and golden parachutes. This gives shareholders a powerful opportunity to hold accountable executives of the companies they own, and a chance to disapprove where they see the kind of misguided incentive schemes that threatened individual companies and in turn the broader economy.

 Nominating Directors: Gives the SEC authority to grant shareholders proxy access to nominate directors. These requirements can help shift management’s focus from short-term profits to long-term growth and stability .

 Independent Compensation Committees: Standards for listing on an exchange will require that compensation committees include only independent directors and have authority to hire compensation consultants in order to strengthen their independence from the executives they are rewarding or punishing.

 No Compensation for Lies: Requires that public companies set policies to take back executive compensation if it was based on inaccurate financial statements that don’t comply with accounting standards.

 SEC Review: Directs the SEC to clarify disclosures relating to compensation, including requiring companies to provide charts that compare their executive compensation with stock performance over a five- year period.

 Enhanced Compensation Oversight for Financial Industry: Requires Federal financial regulators to issue and enforce joint compensation rules specifically applicable to financial institutions with a Federal regulator.

IMPROVEMENTS TO BANK AND THRIFT REGULATIONS

 Volcker Rule Implements a strengthened version of the Volcker rule by not allowing a study of the issue to undermine the prohibition on proprietary trading and investing a banking entity’s own money in hedge funds, with a de minimis exception for funds where the investors require some “skin in the game” by the investment advisor--up to 3% of tier 1 capital in the aggregate.

 Abolishes the Office of Thrift Supervision: Shuts down this dysfunctional regulator and transfers authorities mainly to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, but preserves the thrift charter.

 Stronger lending limits: Adds credit exposure from derivative transactions to banks’ lending limits.

 Improves supervision of holding company subsidiaries: Requires the Federal Reserve to examine non-bank subsidiaries that are engaged in activities that the subsidiary bank can do (e.g. mortgage lending) on the same schedule and in the same manner as bank exams, Provides the primary federal bank regulator backup authority if that does not occur.

 Intermediate Holding Companies: Allows use of intermediate holding companies by commercial firms that control grandfathered unitary thrift holding companies to better regulate the financial activities, but not the commercial activities.

 Interest on business checking: Repeals the prohibition on banks paying interest on demand deposits.

 Charter Conversions: Removes a regulatory arbitrage opportunity by prohibiting a bank from converting its charter (unless both the old regulator and new regulator do not object) in order to get out from under an enforcement action.

 Establishes New Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion at the federal financial agencies

INSURANCE

  Federal Insurance Office: Creates the first ever office in the Federal

government focused on insurance. The Office, as established in the Treasury, will gather information about the insurance industry, including access to affordable insurance products by minorities, low- and moderate- income persons and underserved communities. The Office will also monitor the insurance industry for systemic risk purposes.

 International Presence: The Office will serve as a uniform, national voice on insurance matters for the United States on the international stage.

 Streamlines regulation of surplus lines insurance and reinsurance through state-based reforms.

INTERCHANGE FEES

 Protects Small Businesses from Unreasonable Fees: Requires Federal Reserve to issue rules to ensure that fees charged to merchants by credit card companies debit card transactions are reasonable and proportional to the cost of processing those transactions.

CREDIT SCORE PROTECTION

 Monitor Personal Financial Rating: Allows consumers free access to their credit score if their score negatively affects them in a financial transaction or a hiring decision. Gives consumers access to credit score disclosures as part of an adverse action and risk-based pricing notice.

SEC AND IMPROVING INVESTOR PROTECTIONS

SEC and Improving Investor Protections

  Fiduciary Duty: Gives SEC the authority to impose a fiduciary duty on

brokers who give investment advice --the advice must be in the best

interest of their customers.

  Encouraging Whistleblowers: Creates a program within the SEC to

encourage people to report securities violations, creating rewards of up to 30% of funds recovered for information provided.

 SEC Management Reform: Mandates a comprehensive outside consultant study of the SEC, an annual assessment of the SEC’s internal supervisory controls and GAO review of SEC management.

 New Advocates for Investors: Creates the Investment Advisory Committee, a committee of investors to advise the SEC on its regulatory priorities and practices; the Office of Investor Advocate in the SEC, to identify areas where investors have significant problems dealing with the SEC and provide them assistance; and an ombudsman to handle investor complaints.

 SEC Funding: Provides more resources to the chronically underfunded agency to carry out its new duties.

SECURITIZATION

Reducing Risks Posed by Securities  Skin in the Game: Requires companies that sell products like mortgage-

backed securities to retain at least 5% of the credit risk, unless the underlying loans meet standards that reduce riskiness. That way if the investment doesn’t pan out, the company that packaged and sold the investment would lose out right along with the people they sold it to.

 Better Disclosure: Requires issuers to disclose more information about the underlying assets and to analyze the quality of the underlying assets.

MUNICIPAL SECURITIES

Better Oversight of Municipal Securities Industry

  Registers Municipal Advisors: Requires registration of municipal

advisors and subjects them rules written by the MSRB and enforced by the

SEC.

  Puts Investors First on the MSRB Board: Ensures that at all times, the

MSRB must have a majority of independent members, to ensure that the

public interest is better protected in the regulation of municipal securities.

  Fiduciary Duty: Imposes a fiduciary duty on advisors to ensure that they

adhere to the highest standard of care when advising municipal issuers.

TACKLING THE EFFECTS OF THE MORTGAGE CRISIS

 Neighborhood Stabilization Program: Provides $1 billion to States and localities to combat the ugly impact on neighborhood of the foreclosure crisis -- such as falling property values and increased crime - by rehabilitating, redeveloping, and reusing abandoned and foreclosed properties.

 Emergency Mortgage Relief: Building on a successful Pennsylvania program, provides $1 billion for bridge loans to qualified unemployed homeowners with reasonable prospects for reemployment to help cover mortgage payments until they are reemployed.

 Foreclosure Legal Assistance. Authorizes a HUD administered program for making grants to provide foreclosure legal assistance to low- and moderate-income homeowners and tenants related to home ownership preservation, home foreclosure prevention, and tenancy associated with home foreclosure.

TRANSPARENCY FOR EXTRACTION INDUSTRY

 Public Disclosure: Requires public disclosure to the SEC of payments made to the U.S. and foreign governments relating to the commercial development of oil, natural gas, and minerals.

 SEC Filing Disclosure: The SEC must require those engaged in the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals to include information about payments they or their subsidiaries, partners or affiliates have made to the U.S. or a foreign government for such development in an annual report and post this information online.

Congo Conflict Minerals: Manufacturers Disclosure: Requires those who file with the SEC and use

minerals originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo in manufacturing to disclose measures taken to exercise due diligence on the source and chain of custody of the materials and the products manufactured.

 Illicit Minerals Trade Strategy: Requires the State Department to submit a strategy to address the illicit minerals trade in the region and a map to address links between conflict minerals and armed groups and establish a baseline against which to judge effectiveness.

 Deposit Insurance Reforms: Permanent increase in deposit insurance for banks, thrifts and credit unions to $250,000, retroactive to January 1, 2008.

 Restricts US Funds for Foreign Governments: Requires the Administration to evaluate proposed loans by the IMF to a middle-income country if that country's public debt exceeds its annual Gross Domestic Product, and oppose loans unlikely to be repaid.

"Whether Birmingham or Jerusalem: Separate is not equal" - Jewish Voice for Peace

Please join us for "Whether Birmingham or Jerusalem: 

Separate is not equal"

When: November 15, 5:30 PM
 
Where: 96th Street and Broadway in Manhattan

Why: to show our solidarity with the Freedom Riders of Palestine
 
On the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides that helped de-segregate the Jim Crow South, activists in Palestine are planning to board segregated buses that serve only Jewish settlers in the Occupied West Bank. From Mississippi to Ramallah, join us in saying “Separate will never be equal!”

Our demonstration of solidarity will be part of Jews Say No!'s monthly street action, and we will be joined by our allies from Jewish Voice for Peace-NY, CODEPINK NYC, and WESPAC. 
 
This is part of a nationwide day of solidarity with the Freedom Riders coordinated by Jewish Voice for Peace.

The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline - George Packer

Iraq was one of those wars where people actually put on pounds. A few years ago, I was eating lunch with another reporter at an American-style greasy spoon in Baghdad's Green Zone. At a nearby table, a couple of American contractors were finishing off their burgers and fries. They were wearing the contractor's uniform: khakis, polo shirts, baseball caps, and Department of Defense identity badges in plastic pouches hanging from nylon lanyards around their necks. The man who had served their food might have been the only Iraqi they spoke with all day. The Green Zone was set up to make you feel that Iraq was a hallucination and you were actually in Normal, Illinois. This narcotizing effect seeped into the consciousness of every American who hunkered down and worked and partied behind its blast walls -- the soldier and the civilian, the diplomat and the journalist, the important and the obscure. Hardly anyone stayed longer than a year; almost everyone went home with a collection of exaggerated war stories, making an effort to forget that they were leaving behind shoddy, unfinished projects and a country spiraling downward into civil war. As the two contractors got up and ambled out of the restaurant, my friend looked at me and said, "We're just not that good anymore."

The Iraq war was a kind of stress test applied to the American body politic. And every major system and organ failed the test: the executive and legislative branches, the military, the intelligence world, the for-profits, the nonprofits, the media. It turned out that we were not in good shape at all -- without even realizing it. Americans just hadn't tried anything this hard in around half a century. It is easy, and completely justified, to blame certain individuals for the Iraq tragedy. But over the years, I've become more concerned with failures that went beyond individuals, and beyond Iraq -- concerned with the growing arteriosclerosis of American institutions. Iraq was not an exceptional case. It was a vivid symptom of a long-term trend, one that worsens year by year. The same ailments that led to the disastrous occupation were on full display in Washington this past summer, during the debt-ceiling debacle: ideological rigidity bordering on fanaticism, an indifference to facts, an inability to think beyond the short term, the dissolution of national interest into partisan advantage.

Was it ever any different? Is it really true that we're just not that good anymore? As a thought experiment, compare your life today with that of someone like you in 1978. Think of an educated, reasonably comfortable couple perched somewhere within the vast American middle class of that year. And think how much less pleasant their lives are than yours. The man is wearing a brown and gold polyester print shirt with a flared collar and oversize tortoiseshell glasses; she's got on a high-waisted, V-neck rayon dress and platform clogs. Their morning coffee is Maxwell House filter drip. They drive an AMC Pacer hatchback, with a nonfunctioning air conditioner and a tape deck that keeps eating their eight-tracks. When she wants to make something a little daring for dinner, she puts together a pasta primavera. They type their letters on an IBM Selectric, the new model with the corrective ribbon. There is only antenna television, and the biggest thing on is Laverne and Shirley. Long-distance phone calls cost a dollar a minute on weekends; air travel is prohibitively expensive. The city they live near is no longer a place where they spend much time: trash on the sidewalks, junkies on the corner, vandalized pay phones, half-deserted subway cars covered in graffiti.

By contemporary standards, life in 1978 was inconvenient, constrained, and ugly. Things were badly made and didn't work very well. Highly regulated industries, such as telecommunications and airlines, were costly and offered few choices. The industrial landscape was decaying, but the sleek information revolution had not yet emerged to take its place. Life before the Android, the Apple Store, FedEx, HBO, Twitter feeds, Whole Foods, Lipitor, air bags, the Emerging Markets Index Fund, and the pre-K Gifted and Talented Program prep course is not a world to which many of us would willingly return.

The surface of life has greatly improved, at least for educated, reasonably comfortable people -- say, the top 20 percent, socioeconomically. Yet the deeper structures, the institutions that underpin a healthy democratic society, have fallen into a state of decadence. We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year: climate change, income inequality, wage stagnation, national debt, immigration, falling educational achievement, deteriorating infrastructure, declining news standards. All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress. Last year, a Wall Street company that few people have ever heard of dug an 800-mile trench under farms, rivers, and mountains between Chicago and New York and laid fiber-optic cable connecting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. This feat of infrastructure building, which cost $300 million, shaves three milliseconds off high-speed, high-volume automated trades -- a big competitive advantage. But passenger trains between Chicago and New York run barely faster than they did in 1950, and the country no longer seems capable, at least politically, of building faster ones. Just ask people in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, whose governors recently refused federal money for high-speed rail projects.

We can upgrade our iPhones, but we can't fix our roads and bridges. We invented broadband, but we can't extend it to 35 percent of the public. We can get 300 television channels on the iPad, but in the past decade 20 newspapers closed down all their foreign bureaus. We have touch-screen voting machines, but last year just 40 percent of registered voters turned out, and our political system is more polarized, more choked with its own bile, than at any time since the Civil War. There is nothing today like the personal destruction of the McCarthy era or the street fights of the 1960s. But in those periods, institutional forces still existed in politics, business, and the media that could hold the center together. It used to be called the establishment, and it no longer exists. Solving fundamental problems with a can-do practicality -- the very thing the world used to associate with America, and that redeemed us from our vulgarity and arrogance -- now seems beyond our reach.

THE UNWRITTEN CONTRACT

Why and how did this happen? Those are hard questions. A roundabout way of answering them is to first ask, when did this start to happen? Any time frame has an element of arbitrariness, and also contains the beginning of a theory. Mine goes back to that shabby, forgettable year of 1978. It is surprising to say that in or around 1978, American life changed -- and changed dramatically. It was, like this moment, a time of widespread pessimism -- high inflation, high unemployment, high gas prices. And the country reacted to its sense of decline by moving away from the social arrangement that had been in place since the 1930s and 1940s.

What was that arrangement? It is sometimes called "the mixed economy"; the term I prefer is "middle-class democracy." It was an unwritten social contract among labor, business, and government -- between the elites and the masses. It guaranteed that the benefits of the economic growth following World War II were distributed more widely, and with more shared prosperity, than at any time in human history. In the 1970s, corporate executives earned 40 times as much as their lowest-paid employees. (By 2007, the ratio was over 400 to 1.) Labor law and government policy kept the balance of power between workers and owners on an even keel, leading to a virtuous circle of higher wages and more economic stimulus. The tax code restricted the amount of wealth that could be accumulated in private hands and passed on from one generation to the next, thereby preventing the formation of an inherited plutocracy. The regulatory agencies were strong enough to prevent the kind of speculative bubbles that now occur every five years or so: between the Great Depression and the Reagan era there was not a single systemwide financial crisis, which is why recessions during those decades were far milder than they have since become. Commercial banking was a stable, boring business. (In movies from the 1940s and 1950s, bankers are dull, solid pillars of the community.) Investment banking, cordoned off by the iron wall of the Glass-Steagall Act, was a closed world of private partnerships in which rich men carefully weighed their risks because they were playing with their own money. Partly as a result of this shared prosperity, political participation reached an all-time high during the postwar years (with the exception of those, such as black Americans in the South, who were still denied access to the ballot box).

At the same time, the country's elites were playing a role that today is almost unrecognizable. They actually saw themselves as custodians of national institutions and interests. The heads of banks, corporations, universities, law firms, foundations, and media companies were neither more nor less venal, meretricious, and greedy than their counterparts today. But they rose to the top in a culture that put a brake on these traits and certainly did not glorify them. Organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee for Economic Development, and the Ford Foundation did not act on behalf of a single, highly privileged point of view -- that of the rich. Rather, they rose above the country's conflicting interests and tried to unite them into an overarching idea of the national interest. Business leaders who had fought the New Deal as vehemently as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now fighting health-care and financial reform later came to accept Social Security and labor unions, did not stand in the way of Medicare, and supported other pieces of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. They saw this legislation as contributing to the social peace that ensured a productive economy. In 1964, Johnson created the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress to study the effects of these coming changes on the work force. The commission included two labor leaders, two corporate leaders, the civil rights activist Whitney Young, and the sociologist Daniel Bell. Two years later, they came out with their recommendations: a guaranteed annual income and a massive job-training program. This is how elites once behaved: as if they had actual responsibilities.

Of course, the consensus of the postwar years contained plenty of injustice. If you were black or female, it made very little room for you. It could be stifling and conformist, authoritarian and intrusive. Yet those years also offered the means of redressing the very wrongs they contained: for example, strong government, enlightened business, and activist labor were important bulwarks of the civil rights movement. Nostalgia is a useless emotion. Like any era, the postwar years had their costs. But from where we stand in 2011, they look pretty good.

THE RISE OF ORGANIZED MONEY

Two things happened to this social arrangement. The first was the 1960s. The story is familiar: youth rebellion and revolution, a ferocious backlash now known as the culture wars, and a permanent change in American manners and morals. Far more than political utopia, the legacy of the 1960s was personal liberation. Some conservatives argue that the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s prepared the way for the economic revolution of the 1980s, that Abbie Hoffman and Ronald Reagan were both about freedom. But Woodstock was not enough to blow apart the middle-class democracy that had benefited tens of millions of Americans. The Nixon and Ford presidencies actually extended it. In his 2001 book,The Paradox of American Democracy, John Judis notes that in the three decades between 1933 and 1966, the federal government created 11 regulatory agencies to protect consumers, workers, and investors. In the five years between 1970 and 1975, it established another 12, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Richard Nixon was a closet liberal, and today he would be to the left of Senator Olympia Snowe, the moderate Republican.

The second thing that happened was the economic slowdown of the 1970s, brought on by "stagflation" and the oil shock. It eroded Americans' paychecks and what was left of their confidence in the federal government after Vietnam, Watergate, and the disorder of the 1960s. It also alarmed the country's business leaders, and they turned their alarm into action. They became convinced that capitalism itself was under attack by the likes of Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, and they organized themselves into lobbying groups and think tanks that quickly became familiar and powerful players in U.S. politics: the Business Roundtable, the Heritage Foundation, and others. Their budgets and influence soon rivaled those of the older, consensus-minded groups, such as the Brookings Institution. By the mid-1970s, chief executives had stopped believing that they had an obligation to act as disinterested stewards of the national economy. They became a special interest; the interest they represented was their own. The neoconservative writer Irving Kristol played a key role in focusing executives' minds on this narrower and more urgent agenda. He told them, "Corporate philanthropy should not be, and cannot be, disinterested."

Among the non-disinterested spending that corporations began to engage in, none was more interested than lobbying. Lobbying has existed since the beginning of the republic, but it was a sleepy, bourbon-and-cigars practice until the mid- to late 1970s. In 1971, there were only 145 businesses represented by registered lobbyists in Washington; by 1982, there were 2,445. In 1974, there were just over 600 registered political action committees, which raised $12.5 million that year; in 1982, there were 3,371, which raised $83 million. In 1974, a total of $77 million was spent on the midterm elections; in 1982, it was $343 million. Not all this lobbying and campaign spending was done by corporations, but they did more and did it better than anyone else. And they got results.

These changes were wrought not only by conservative thinkers and their allies in the business class. Among those responsible were the high-minded liberals, the McGovernites and Watergate reformers, who created the open primary, clean election laws, and "outsider" political campaigns that relied heavily on television advertising. In theory, those reforms opened up the political system to previously disenfranchised voters by getting rid of the smoke-filled room, the party caucus, and the urban boss -- exchanging Richard Daley for Jesse Jackson. In practice, what replaced the old politics was not a more egalitarian new politics. Instead, as the parties lost their coherence and authority, they were overtaken by grass-roots politics of a new type, driven by direct mail, beholden to special interest groups, and funded by lobbyists. The electorate was transformed from coalitions of different blocs -- labor, small business, the farm vote -- to an atomized nation of television watchers. Politicians began to focus their energies on big dollars for big ad buys. As things turned out, this did not set them free to do the people's work: as Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, once told me, he and his colleagues spend half their free time raising money.

This is a story about the perverse effects of democratization. Getting rid of elites, or watching them surrender their moral authority, did not necessarily empower ordinary people. Once Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers and Walter Wriston of Citicorp stopped sitting together on Commissions to Make the World a Better Place and started paying lobbyists to fight for their separate interests in Congress, the balance of power tilted heavily toward business. Thirty years later, who has done better by the government -- the United Auto Workers or Citicorp?

In 1978, all these trends came to a head. That year, three reform bills were brought up for a vote in Congress. One of the bills was to establish a new office of consumer representation, giving the public a consumer advocate in the federal bureaucracy. A second bill proposed modestly increasing the capital gains tax and getting rid of the three-Martini-lunch deduction. A third sought to make it harder for employers to circumvent labor laws and block union organizing. These bills had bipartisan backing in Congress; they were introduced at the very end of the era when bipartisanship was routine, when necessary and important legislation had support from both parties. The Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, and the bills were popular with the public. And yet, one by one, each bill went down in defeat. (Eventually, the tax bill passed, but only after it was changed; instead of raising the capital gains tax rate, the final bill cut it nearly in half.)

How and why this happened are explored in Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics. Their explanation, in two words, is organized money. Business groups launched a lobbying assault the likes of which Washington had never seen, and when it was all over, the next era in American life had begun. At the end of the year, the midterm elections saw the Republicans gain 15 seats in the House and three in the Senate. The numbers were less impressive than the character of the new members who came to Washington. They were not politicians looking to get along with colleagues and solve problems by passing legislation. Rather, they were movement conservatives who were hostile to the very idea of government. Among them was a history professor from Georgia named Newt Gingrich. The Reagan revolution began in 1978.

Organized money did not foist these far-reaching changes on an unsuspecting public. In the late 1970s, popular anger at government was running high, and President Jimmy Carter was a perfect target. This was not a case of false consciousness; it was a case of a fed-up public. Two years later, Reagan came to power in a landslide. The public wanted him.

But that archetypal 1978 couple with the AMC Pacer was not voting to see its share of the economic pie drastically reduced over the next 30 years. They were not fed up with how little of the national income went to the top one percent or how unfairly progressive the tax code was. They did not want to dismantle government programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which had brought economic security to the middle class. They were not voting to weaken government itself, as long as it defended their interests. But for the next three decades, the dominant political faction pursued these goals as though they were what most Americans wanted. Organized money and the conservative movement seized that moment back in 1978 to begin a massive, generation-long transfer of wealth to the richest Americans. The transfer continued in good economic times and bad, under Democratic presidents and Republican, when Democrats controlled Congress and when Republicans did. For the Democrats, too, went begging to Wall Street and corporate America, because that's where the money was. They accepted the perfectly legal bribes just as eagerly as Republicans, and when the moment came, some of them voted almost as obediently. In 2007, when Congress was considering closing a loophole in the law that allowed hedge fund managers to pay a tax rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings -- considerably less than their secretaries -- it was New York's Democratic senator Charles Schumer who rushed to their defense and made sure it did not happen. As Bob Dole, then a Republican senator, said back in 1982, "Poor people don't make campaign contributions."

MOCKING THE AMERICAN PROMISE

This inequality is the ill that underlies all the others. Like an odorless gas, it pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of the country's democracy. But it seems impossible to find the source and shut it off. For years, certain politicians and pundits denied that it even existed. But the evidence became overwhelming. Between 1979 and 2006, middle-class Americans saw their annual incomes after taxes increase by 21 percent (adjusted for inflation). The poorest Americans saw their incomes rise by only 11 percent. The top one percent, meanwhile, saw their incomes increase by 256 percent. This almost tripled their share of the national income, up to 23 percent, the highest level since 1928. The graph that shows their share over time looks almost flat under Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, followed by continual spikes under Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton, and the younger Bush.

Some argue that this inequality was an unavoidable result of deeper shifts: global competition, cheap goods made in China, technological changes. Although those factors played a part, they have not been decisive. In Europe, where the same changes took place, inequality has remained much lower than in the United States. The decisive factor has been politics and public policy: tax rates, spending choices, labor laws, regulations, campaign finance rules. Book after book by economists and other scholars over the past few years has presented an airtight case: over the past three decades, the government has consistently favored the rich. This is the source of the problem: our leaders, our institutions.

But even more fundamental than public policy is the long-term transformation of the manners and morals of American elites -- what they became willing to do that they would not have done, or even thought about doing, before. Political changes precipitated, and in turn were aided by, deeper changes in norms of responsibility and self-restraint. In 1978, it might have been economically feasible and perfectly legal for an executive to award himself a multimillion-dollar bonus while shedding 40 percent of his work force and requiring the survivors to take annual furloughs without pay. But no executive would have wanted the shame and outrage that would have followed -- any more than an executive today would want to be quoted using a racial slur or photographed with a paid escort. These days, it is hard to open a newspaper without reading stories about grotesque overcompensation at the top and widespread hardship below. Getting rid of a taboo is easier than establishing one, and once a prohibition erodes, it can never be restored in quite the same way. As Leo Tolstoy wrote, "There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him."

The persistence of this trend toward greater inequality over the past 30 years suggests a kind of feedback loop that cannot be broken by the usual political means. The more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the well-connected rich acquire, which makes it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price. That, in turn, frees them up to amass more money, until cause and effect become impossible to distinguish. Nothing seems to slow this process down -- not wars, not technology, not a recession, not a historic election. Perhaps, out of a well-founded fear that the country is coming apart at the seams, the wealthy and their political allies will finally have to rein themselves in, and, for example, start thinking about their taxes less like Stephen Schwarzman and more like Warren Buffett.

In the meantime, inequality will continue to mock the American promise of opportunity for all. Inequality creates a lopsided economy, which leaves the rich with so much money that they can binge on speculation, and leaves the middle class without enough money to buy the things they think they deserve, which leads them to borrow and go into debt. These were among the long-term causes of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Inequality hardens society into a class system, imprisoning people in the circumstances of their birth -- a rebuke to the very idea of the American dream. Inequality divides us from one another in schools, in neighborhoods, at work, on airplanes, in hospitals, in what we eat, in the condition of our bodies, in what we think, in our children's futures, in how we die. Inequality makes it harder to imagine the lives of others -- which is one reason why the fate of over 14 million more or less permanently unemployed Americans leaves so little impression in the country's political and media capitals. Inequality corrodes trust among fellow citizens, making it seem as if the game is rigged. Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can -- immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms -- and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers. Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective. Inequality undermines democracy.

GEORGE PACKER is a staff writer at The New Yorker. This essay is adapted from a Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Lecture on American Civilization and Government that he delivered earlier this year at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers.

Palestinian youth join boats set to challenge Israel's siege of Gaza - from Marilyn Jerry

Two civilian boats, the Canadian Tahrir (Liberation), and the Irish Saoirse (Freedom), carrying 27 people from nine countries, are currently in international waters making their way to the beleaguered Gaza Strip to challenge Israel’s ongoing criminal blockade of the territory. A Palestinian youth activist from Haifa has joined this renewed international mission to challenge Israel's unrelenting stranglehold on Gaza via the sea. The message they carry is one of unity, defiance, and hope, in spite of Israel's policies that have physically separated Palestinians from each other. The "Freedom Waves to Gaza" organizers chose not to publicize the effort in advance given Israel's efforts to block and sabotage Freedom Flotilla II last July. The boats, which set sail from Fethiye, Turkey, are expected to arrive in Gaza on Friday afternoon, sailing from international waters straight into Gaza's territorial waters without entering Israel's waters. The boats carry symbolic cargo - $30,000 in medicines, along with a diverse group of passengers, all committed to nonviolent defense of the flotilla and Palestinian human rights. 

"Israel has caged Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, prohibiting physical contact between us. We want to break the siege Israel has imposed on our people," said Majd Kayyal, a Palestinian philosophy student from Haifa on board the Tahrir. Kayyal added, "The fact that we're in international waters is already a victory for the movement. Israel's siege of Gaza is untenable and it's a moral responsibility to put an end to this injustice.”

Meanwhile, a statement signed by Palestinian youth urged the international community and the U.N. in particular "to take urgent action to protect this mission as well as to end its compliance with Israel’s criminal blockade of Gaza.” They condemned the U.N. Secretary General's previous declarations calling for aid to Gaza to go through "legitimate crossings and established channels," despite the U.N.'s own admission that Israel's failure to own up to its responsibilities has created an unprecedented crisis of human dignity.

Throughout the week Palestinian activists in the West Bank and inside Israel are organizing solidarity actions with the Freedom Waves mission, including a presence outside the UN compound (Tokyo Street, Ramallah) and rallies across West Bank towns.

This is the 11th attempt to break the siege of Gaza via the sea, with five missions arriving safely in Gaza between August and December 2008 and the remaining violently intercepted by Israel. On May 2010, Israel attacked passengers of the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, killing nine civilians and injuring over 50. Israel's actions were widely condemned and led to protests around the world. Efforts to bring a second flotilla to Gaza were foiled by the government of Greece last July following pressure by Israel and Western governments, as well as by acts of Israeli sabotage.

Israel has intensified in the past days its aerial bombardments on Gaza, underlining the need for international initiatives of deterrence similar to this one.

U.S. May Be Defunding UNESCO—But Individual Americans Can Step Up

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ACTION ALERT November 1, 2011

Contact: news_editor@wrmea.com

 

Washington is cutting off all U.S. funding for the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because its members voted 107 to 14 (with 52 abstentions) to approve the Palestinian Authority’s full membership in the organization. That means a cutoff of $60 million in U.S. funds due this month.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who has accepted a career total of $203,240 in pro-Israel PAC contributions, called yesterday’s UNESCO vote “reckless” and “anti-peace” and demanded the U.S. defund UNESCO over the Palestinian vote. She and other members of Congress who care more about Israel than America are citing two laws (Public Law 101-246, passed in 1990, and 103-236 Title IV, passed in 1994) to prohibit U.S. funding to any U.N. agency that accepts the PLO (the Palestinian Liberation Organization) or Palestinians as full members.

These laws are archaic and should have been repealed long ago, especially after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat exchanged letters (the Declaration of Principles) in 1993 recognizing each other’s right to exist.

By defunding UNESCO Washington will likely jeopardize:

Educational Programs

Including press freedom around the world, art, creative writing and music programs, literacy programs for women in Afghanistan and children in Iraq. Other programs include peace building in Somalia, illiteracy in India, education and housing for blind street children in Vietnam. UNESCO’s educational programs seek to prevent culture and religion from being used as tools to incite hatred. Don’t Americans want to support these efforts?

Scientific Programs

UNESCO programs help build sustainable, green societies, and the agency recently launched a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. Don’t Americans support these efforts?

Cultural Programs

UNESCO safeguards historic world heritage sites. It helped protect Libyan sites, such as Leptis Magna, from being destroyed in the recent NATO aerial attacks in Libya. UNESCO is trying desperately to prevent illicit trafficking of historic treasures, which is what occurred in Iraq during the U.S. invasion. If these treasures are lost, like so many Iraqi artifacts, it will be because UNESCO couldn’t pay its bills.

The U.S. defunded UNESCO once before, 18 years ago, but in 2002 Republican President George W. Bush rejoined UNESCO and praised its mission to advance human rights, tolerance and learning. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), at the time the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs (and a Holocaust survivor), said, “In promoting education, and scientific collaboration worldwide, UNESCO addresses new threats to America’s security... UNESCO’s programs to promote understanding across cultures are a critical asset in our global effort to defeat the hatred that breeds terrorism.”

Individuals around the world do not have to stand by helplessly as these vital programs are threatened. We can step up and open our own wallets to donate to UNESCO. Visit its Web site, <http://whc.unesco.org/en/donation>, and use your credit card to show UNESCO that we support the brave step its members took on Oct. 31, 2011 to support Palestinians and help protect Palestinian culture.

For more information watch a five-minute video of the grilling Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee gave State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on the Obama administration's reaction to the UNESCO vote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEGuvuSe0q4&feature=youtu.be

Saudi Arabia: Poverty Video Vloggers Released - Mona Kareem

Tweeted picture of Firas with his little brothers after getting released

Around two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia arrested three young video bloggers Firas Buqna, Hussam Al-Darwish and Khaled Al-Rasheed for producing an episode of their show Malub Alena about poverty in one of Riyadh's areas. The name of the show can be translated into We Are Being Fooled and this episode was actually their fourth episode after previous shows on youth and police corruption. Before the arrests, the show was having a good number of views but in few days after their arrests, it was viewed for more than 600,000 times.

Here's a copy of the video, with English subtitles, from YouTube:

The show's title also turned into a Twitter hashtag #Mal3ob3lena, where Saudis condemned the arrests of those three young men and also expressed their sorrow against the oppression of free speech in the kingdom. This came hand in hand with the use of another hashtag that has been alive for months #e3teqal (translated to: Arrest) where people post updates and discuss the issue of thousands of Saudi detainees, many of whom arrested for no valid reasons and are being denied the right to fair trials.

Saudi blogger Haneen wrote a post [ar] about what those three young vloggers have done:

السابع عشر من اكتوبر الذي يرتبط بيوم مكافحة الفقر عالمياً هو اليوم! و في هذا اليوم أيضاً يُعتقل و في رواية يُستدعى الشابان السعوديان حسام و فراس بقنه المنتجان لبرنامج (ملعوب علينا) الذي يُبث عن طريق اليوتيوب و بالصدفة كانت آخر حلقة له عرضت في العاشر من اكتوبر 2011 بعنوان الفقر تجوّل فراس في حي الجرادية بالرياض و دخل نفس الأماكن التي زارها الملك عبد الله عام 2002 الجدير بالذكر هو أن الفقر مازال مؤلم لم يتغير منذ 10 سنوات

Today is the 17th of October which is the international day to fight poverty. At the same day, Hossam and Firas, producers of Malub Alena show, were called for interrogation because of their YouTube show which coincidentally discussed the issue of poverty. Firas walked around Jaradiya neighborhood in Riyadh and visited the same places that King Abdullah went to in 2002 only to find that poverty there is still painful and the status didn't change over the past 10 years.

Twitter surely carried most of the Saudi reactions towards the news of releasing the three vloggers. Firas' mother (@omm_feras) joined Twitter after his arrest only to post her prayers and thus gain attention, support, and sympathy for her son's case. After his release she tweeted for her 6000+ followers, whom she gained over two weeks, saying:

شكرا لكل من ساهم وسعى في هذه القضيه

@omm_feras: Thanks to all those who contributed and worked for this cause.

Saudi blogger Khaled Al-Nasser (@Mashi9a7) found the arrests helpful for the cause:

خبر الإعتقال دفعني لمشاهدة الفيلم لأول مرة، اعتقالهم سيزيد من شهرة الفيلم ويكسبه مزيد من المصداقية

@Mashi9a7: The arrests made me watch the episode for the first time, the arrests will make the episode more famous and give it more credit.

Saudi blogger Abdullah Al-Suwaiyan wrote a post after the arrests entitled Firas.. the prophet of new media:

في غضون ثلاثة أيام ينضمّ ما يزيد على 10000 متابِع لحساب فراس على تويتر والرقم في تزايد للمنضمين لحملة رفع عدد متابعي فراس لمساندة قضيته. وذلك دليل على أن الأثر العكسي سيكون إيجابيًا لمن يرفع شعار قضية إنسانية/إجتماعية

In three days [after the arrests], more than 10,000 users followed Firas's Twitter account and the number of those supporting his cause is increasing which means that the negative action of arresting him is being positive for a human and social cause.

Saad Al-Najdi (@SNajdi) used the opportunity to compare between mainstream media and citizen media:

إن الزخم الذي اكتسبه عمل فريق (ملعوب علينا) يبرهن موت الإعلام التمجيدي

@SNajdi: The reactions that the Malub Alena group has received proves the death of the [hailing obedient] media.

Lahem Alnasser (@lahem88) made the connection between the vloggers and political detainees in Saudi Arabia:

كان اعتقال فراس بقنة وبقية فريق ملعوب علينا اعلان لسقوط ورقة التوت التي كانت تغطي القبضة الامنية فهم ليسوا ارهابيين ولا سياسيين

@lahem88: The arrests of Firas and the rest of his team came as a proof that detainees are not necessarily politicians or terrorists, as security forces try to justify.

Another Saudi user (@SaudiLibral) saw releasing the vloggers as a victory:

اطلاق فريق ملعوب علينا هو انتصار لحرية الرأي والتعبير التي تؤمن بها العلمانية والليبرالية دون سواها من الافكار الرجعية

@SaudiLibral: Releasing the Malub Alena team is a victory for free speech that liberalism and secularism believe in, unlike the backward thoughts.

Ali Al-Nuaim (@nuaim2), Firas' friend, tweeted the Firas' words after his release:

اتصلت بفراس قبل قليل ، سعييييد بسماع صوته والحمد لله نفسيته ممتازة جدا ويشكر كل من وقف معه .. يارب لك الحمد

@nuaim2: I just called Firas, I'm really happy to have heard his voice again and thank god his morale is high and he thanks all of those who stood on his side. Oh thank You God.

Saudi (@eyad94Z) expressed his happiness with the release:

فليعيش شباب الديموقراطيه و الأعلآم الجديد

@eyad94Z: Long live the youth of democracy and new media.

Dhary Al-Sahbibi (@iDharoooy212) asked a question which was repeated by others:

هل سيكمل فراس برنامجه ؟ لا أظن .. الذي أظنه أن أفكاره تغيرت حالياً

Written by Mona Kareem 

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/10/31/saudi-arabia-poverty-video-vloggers-released/