FAIR Action Alert - USA Today, AP Mislead on Honduran Coup

This week, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa--though not to office. Unfortunately, press accounts are still misreporting the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to supply the explanation for their actions.

Some of the most misleading coverage has appeared in the Associated Press dispatches that have run in USA Today. The paper's September 22 edition ran this from the AP:

The legislature ousted Zelaya after he formed an alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and tried to alter the nation's constitution. Zelaya was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum to extend his term. The Honduran Constitution forbids a president from trying to obtain another term in office.

Besides being confusing (is an "alliance" with Hugo Chávez illegal?), this formulation repeats the unsupported case that pro-coup forces in Honduras have made: that President Zelaya was seeking to extend his term in office. While his critics may have accused him of this, there is no reason why AP should treat their charges as fact.

Indeed, the referendum that Zelaya was seeking in late June was a non-binding poll about whether to revise the constitution. Zelaya hoped that a "yes" vote on that referendum would have led to a binding vote on the November ballot--at the same time voters would be choosing Zelaya's successor--about whether to hold a constitutional convention. In other words, there was no plausible way that this process could have resulted in Zelaya extending his time in office. As Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic & Policy Research (7/8/09) pointed out:

The belief that Zelaya was fighting to extend his term in office has no factual basis--although most people who follow this story in the press seem to believe it. The most that could be said is that if a new constitution were eventually approved, Zelaya might have been able to run for a second term at some future date.

On September 23, USA Today ran another AP report (appearing on the "print edition" section of its website) making the same claim: "Zelaya was put on a plane by the military in June for trying to force a referendum to change the constitution's limit of one term for presidents." This is simply not what the referendum called for. In fact, before the coup took place, the Associated Press seemed to know this. On June 26, the wire service noted that "Sunday's referendum has no legal effect: it merely asks people if they want to have a later vote on whether to convoke an assembly to rewrite the constitution."

So when did the AP's understanding of the referendum change, and why? And is USA Today comfortable with publishing such material?

ACTION:
Contact the Associated Press and USA Today and ask them why their reporting on Honduras this week has advanced falsehoods about the removal of President Manuel Zelaya.

CONTACT:

Associated Press
Tom Kent, Standards Editor
tkent@ap.org

USA Today
Brent Jones, Reader Editor
accuracy@usatoday.com

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Just Say Yes Men

I’ve long been a fan for years of the zany duo of performance artists/political activists known as the Yes Men, ever since their turn-of-the-century stunt of creating their own “corrected” World Trade Organization website at GATT.org (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Soon their fake site began to receive real email queries from confused visitors, including invitations to address various elite groups on behalf of the WTO. Naturally, and hysterically, the Men responded as if they actually represented the WTO – all of which is documented in their very funny and very pointed 2004 film “The Yes Men.”

Now the Men have a new, almost as amusing documentary about to hit movie screens across America – “The Yes Men Fix the World,” which they accurately describe as “a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks. “

But it is in their actual stunts - and not just in their documentation of them – that the Yes Men truly excel. Of late they have taken to targeting the media directly, such as last fall’s fake New York Times… which declared the Iraq War over, Universities to be free, Bike paths expanded – and even announced the much-anticipated resignation of NYT Op-Ed apologist – oops, I mean, columnist — Thomas Friedman.

Now comes their latest effort — this week’s stunning “SPECIAL EDITION” New York Post, trumpeting the headline “WE’RE SCREWED” in large point type.

“SPECIAL EDITION” NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo.

The Yes Men’s latest elaborate media hoax/heist blanketed Manhattan early Monday morning with a fake “truth-telling tabloid” about climate change and how it will soon affect New York City – and the rest of the world…

New Yorkers were met with the appearance of a “special edition” of the Post highlighting warnings that the city could face “deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades.” The most alarming thing about the spoofy newspaper was that the news within it came from a spooky — but official — City report.

Distributed by thousands of volunteers throughout New York City, the paper was created “as a wake-up call to action on climate change” by a coalition of activists. It appeared just a day before a United Nations summit in which Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will attempt to persuade world leaders to reduce carbon emissions in the lead-up to December’s upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen. (Ban has called the Copenhagen gathering a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to halt the global rise in greenhouse gas emissions “if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and the planet.”)

Although the 32-page Post is a fake, everything in it is true. “This could be, and should be, a real New York Post,” said Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. “Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem.”

The fake Post’s cover story reports the real conclusions of a scientific panel commissioned by the mayor’s office to determine the potential effects of climate change on New York City. (The report, released in February, received little attention in the real media.) Other articles described the Pentagon’s warnings about global warming; the government’s inadequate response to the crisis (”Congress Cops Out on Climate”); China’s alternative energy program (”China’s Green Leap Forward Overtakes U.S.”); and how, if the US doesn’t quickly pass a strong climate bill, the crucial Copenhagen climate talks this December could turn out instead to be a “Flopenhagen.”

The paper includes original investigative reporting, such as an article revealing that Deutsche Bank - which erected a seven-story “carbon counter” in central Manhattan - not only invests heavily in coal-mining companies worldwide, but recently entered the business of coal trading itself. It also displays the world’s gloomiest weather page, covering the next 70 years–rather than just the next 7 days – and an “Around the World” section that describes the disproportionate effects of climate change — such as droughts, floods, famines, water shortages, mass migrations and conflicts — on the poor. Although they have done little to cause the problem, developing countries will bear the brunt of its effects.

But all the news in the faux Post isn’t bad – one article (”New York Fights Back”) reports that the Big Apple’s carbon emissions are only one third the national average. There’s also a lot of Yes Men-style humor, including a page of cartoons and a number of pointed but funny ads – for sex (”Awesome. No carbon emissions.”), tote bags, and even tap water (”Literally comes right out of your faucet!”). A more serious ad promotes civil disobedience and encourages readers to risk arrest in a planned global action November 30, just before the conference in Copenhagen.

Scared of the future effects of climate change? Angry at the media’s failures to highlight the problem?? Anxious to do something about it???

Just Say Yes Men!

(Editor’s Note: The fake New York Post paper is one of 2500 initiatives taking place in more than 130 countries, part of the “Global Wake-up Call” on climate change. For more information, visit www.tcktcktck.org/wakeup or contact The Yes Men at tabloid@theyesmen.org. To see the New York City report on climate change click here. Link to video news release: http://nypost-se.com/video/)

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Background Briefing: Australian Muslim youth

Listen Now - 06092009 |Download Audio - 06092009

Searching for their own identity in a changing world, young Muslims in Australia face a plethora of backyard imams and internet sheikhs. Many are turning to simplistic and conservative interpretations. The emphasis can be on small rituals rather than the complex and subtle spirituality of Islam. It's a phenomenon known in many religions. Reporter: Hagar Cohen.

Hagar Cohen: There are more than 340,000 people in Australia who are Muslim. Of these, a staggering 70% are under the age of 35, and almost half were born here

It's Ramadan now; for Muslims, the most holy month of the year, and all over the country, young Muslims are fasting during the day and observing the rituals, sometimes with greater rigour than their parents.

Hello, I'm Hagar Cohen, this is Background Briefing on ABC Radio National.

These young people are searching for their own Muslim identity as young Australians, and as part of a fast-changing modern world. They're confronted by a baffling array of strands of Islam, of ethnic politics and traditions from foreign countries. Kuranda Seyit.

Kuranda Seyit: There is no real unity within the Muslim community, if we want to call it a community. Basically what we've got is different ethnic groups, and then within the ethnic groups you've got different schools of thought, and different political alliances and factions. I can say for example the second-largest community, which is the Turkish community, more or less alienated itself from anything that was remotely Lebanese.

Hagar Cohen: Kuranda Seyit migrated here from Turkey with his family when he was a baby. He's been following the many political disputes of the older migrant generation, for his community newspaper called FAIR. The ways of the older generations, and some of the organisations run by them, can be factionalised, irrelevant and even embarrassing, he says. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, or AFIC, is one example, says Kuranda Seyit, and the youth are keeping their distance.

Kuranda Seyit: They feel disenfranchised, they believe that organisations like AFIC have no meaning in their lives, they have no sense of satisfaction or pride in the Muslim community. They actually feel a sense of embarrassment and shame that their leaders are behaving so badly.

Hagar Cohen: Interestingly, a few years ago, Kuranda Seyit was AFIC's media advisor. These issues he talks about are debated intensely among young Muslims. They are not rejecting Islam, but rather looking for their own versions. And often turning to what have become known as 'backyard imams', or 'internet sheikhs'. Some Muslims have little time for any of it. Irfan Yusuf.

Irfan Yusuf: My dad always used to say to me 'Keep away from the Islamic industry'. He always called it the Islamic industry. It's all these people who otherwise can't get jobs anywhere else, and so they hang out in these organisations and dominate them, and dominate them, and dominate them, because it pays their bills.

Hagar Cohen: Irfan Yusuf is a second generation Australian Muslim. His parents are from Pakistan. He is now a well-known writer, author and commentator on Islamic Affairs. Irfan says the many conflicts mean everything is a subject for argument, including on which day Ramadan starts, and this baffles young people.

Irfan Yusuf: What they find is that their religious leaders let them down, because you've got for example, Ramadan, when does it begin? Often we have like three - it begins on three different days, depending upon which imam you talk to.

Hagar Cohen: So you think a lot of the Muslim community is disillusioned with their religious leaders?

Irfan Yusuf: Yes, well they're not very happy with them, because when it comes to basic things, they can't seem to get it right. The whole thing needs a good shake-up, because it's becoming redundant. People are just ignoring it. You ask them, 'Have you heard of AFIC?' they probably wouldn't know what you're talking about. They'd probably think AFIC? What's that? Is it like a kind of chocolate bar, a Cadbury AFIC full of nuts? What is it?

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing decides to put Irfan Yusuf's Cadbury theory to the test.

The Sydney University Muslim Student Association is having a barbecue as part of their Islamic Awareness Week. Several people at the barbecue do seem to fit Irfan Yusuf's theory that organisations like AFIC are not important to them.

Student: I don't really know much about what they do, but in terms of the effect they've had on my life, they've been kind of redundant.

Hagar Cohen: And why do you think you don't connect with them?

Student: Because the older generation have come here with their preconceived ideas about this society, they've come with their own ideas about their home countries, and how Islam should be, and how we should be doing things. And it doesn't relate with our views on life.

Hagar Cohen: Does that frustrate you?

Student: Yes.

Hagar Cohen: Why?

Student: I guess because they're seen as being the representatives of the Muslim community. And I feel they only represent a certain part of the community, as opposed to, for example, the younger generation who make up quite a large percentage of the community. They don't really speak on behalf of me, of my friends, of our views, our perspectives on life.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing had put these claims to the President of AFIC, Ikebal Patel. He says he knows AFIC needs to change and learn more about what young people want.

Ikebal Patel: I think that's a very fair comment. I myself am quite perturbed with the name Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, it's too long, it's too cumbersome to say, to understand. AFIC has to re-brand itself, if you want to really reach out to the community.

Hagar Cohen: Do you think that largely that youth's perspective on AFIC is a public relations problem?

Ikebal Patel: I think the youth issues for any organisation is a public relations problem I think generally, because the youth are so dynamic, they have their own ways of communicating with each other.

Hagar Cohen: There are many schools of thought in Islam. Most of them will have a centre, a website, and will hold religious meetings. Young Muslims are shopping for one of these doctrines on offer, either through the internet or prayer evenings, or even doing barbecues and sporting events. Older generations of Muslims are more fixed in their ideas. From Monash University, Waleed Ali.

Waleed Ali: For migrants, for the first generation migrants, they are coming from Muslim majority countries, where a lot of these movements have been around for a long time, and they're kind of known a bit more, and there's a kind of inculcated sense of religiosity that you get in these communities because it's just embedded in the majority culture of that country. Here, if you've been born in Australia and you've grown up here, it's a very different situation. You're not growing up in a Muslim majority country, Islam is not something that's inculcated in the dominant culture, and so Islam is something that you actually have to search for, and where it's something that you have to search for, it really depends very much on what's on offer.

Hagar Cohen: The factions and politics of Islam in Australia are impenetrable, even to insiders. So one way through the haze is the phenomenon of internet sheikhs or backyard imams. In Australia, the words 'imam' and 'sheikh' are interchangeable and have no formal status. That's as opposed to places like Turkey, where being an imam is a profession, much like being a doctor.

Background Briefing visits the Bukhari Bookshop in Sydney's Auburn.

The phenomenon of what's known as backyard imams, is where a self-appointed religious leader will organise a group of youth around him, and deliver lectures and other events about what he says is true Islam. He usually records these lectures and posts them on You Tube or other websites, for maximum effect. And in the evenings, usually once a week, these gatherings will be in a community prayer hall, a town centre, a bookstore, and sometimes literally in backyards.

Here at the Bukhari Bookshop, Sheikh Omar will deliver a lecture with a Ramadan theme in the downstairs part of the shop. This sheikh has Islamic qualifications from Egypt, and he also teaches at a community college.

We join the women upstairs, where around 30 young Muslim women gather every Thursday night. It's at the back of the store, behind a curtain and up the stairs. One of the participants, Maya, says Sheikh Omar helps her become more religious.

Maya: It is very motivating and I learnt a lot. Yes, it's very interesting.

Hagar Cohen: So, motivating you to do what?

Maya: Towards like become more stronger in my religion, and like go ahead, like one step further to my religion. Got excited to like to do better and do more and achieve more in our religion.

Hagar Cohen: Also in the room is 24-year-old Amal.

Amal: It is more targeted as youth lecture, so I think it's for everyone really, whether you're Pakistani background, Lebanese, Egyptian, it doesn't really matter. I think with lots of people, because they were born and raised in Australia, it's harder for them to understand when we have lectures in Arabic. So these are great, because it's very easy to understand, so I think they run so much more now.

Hagar Cohen: On the other side of the room 18-year-old Sahar says Sheikh Omar is a good guide on religious thinking. But only one of the many on offer.

Sahar: I think most lectures now are targeted at youth because we are going to be the future of Islam in Australia and Western cultures. And like if we don't learn and gain knowledge, how are we going to present ourselves and represent the true Islam within the Western society like if we don't learn our religion, and we believe our religion itself is perfect, but like it's usually the imperfections of the Muslims is usually what is shown through media.

Hagar Cohen: But why did you decide to come particularly here? Because there are thousands of lectures just like that around Australia, in Sydney?

Sahar: Yes, no I don't just attend these. We attend whatever is on, like I go to uni, and there's lectures hosted there too, and there's another one in Auburn, sometimes they have it in Bankstown, wherever it is, like wherever we can go to, whatever is in the area and we are able to access, we go to it. Because if we don't know, then how are we supposed to teach people, and how we're supposed to be proper examples through society. Like it's important that we have to learn.

Hagar Cohen: Halfway through our conversation, there is a knocking sound coming from the speaker. Sheikh Omar is about to start.

Are we going to hear him through that speaker?

Sahar: Yes, you're going to hear the lecture through that.

Hagar Cohen: Downstairs there are around 200 young men. But many of the girls have never met any of them, nor have they met the sheikh.

In this lecture he addresses the confusion about when Ramadan actually starts.

Sheikh Omar: What's happening people are fasting on Friday, others on Saturday, others on Sunday. People have announced one week ago should we follow the calendar. People are confused again. No matter how much we explain, no matter how much we talk, people are still confused about the matter. And we understand. There's a lot of difference in the Ulama, different groups are saying different things. It's my job, as student of elem to explain what we know as the truth.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing is told many of the young men in the audience come from problematic backgrounds, and Sheikh Omar has talked them off the streets. His lectures are popular because he speaks their plain street language.

Here Sheikh Omar warns the young people not to be tempted by Satan. Satan, he says, will try to convince the youth not to take Ramadan seriously.

Sheikh Omar: Satan comes to you in the same cloth, in the same image. He says, 'You know what the man in the first week of Ramadan take it easy. You just started, you're coming back from a big change, you're repenting to Allah, take the first week easy'.

Hagar Cohen: But don't take your religion easy, says Sheikh Omar.

At the end of the lecture, the girls are in a hurry to leave. Background Briefing is told they have to disappear quickly, otherwise they might bump into the boys downstairs on the way out between the shelves of the bookstore.

But the sheikh's wife, Maimounah Abdullah, and her three kids, stay back. Maimounah is friendly and outgoing, but says her traditional black garment and black head cover, which forms a tight oval around her face, is misinterpreted by strangers on the streets.

Maimounah Abdullah: I find people on the street are more wary of a Muslim. So it just takes more ice-breaking. You have to start the conversation, I don't mind doing, but you have the start the conversation, 'How are you going? Good morning. I am normal, I'm not fundamentalist in that sense.' So it's just you have to take that extra step.

Hagar Cohen: Maimouna comes to these lectures regularly.

Maimounah Abdullah: They organise these talks just to help get youth more focused on their religion, sort of get them out of the street life, out of the culture and the gangs, and just the mentality that's going on amongst the Muslim youth, and get them back to their religion, back to their relationship with God, and that way, it sort of fixes up the community a bit.

Hagar Cohen: Sheikhs like Omar have a good reputation in the community, and he's considered a good and moderate influence on the youth. But he's only one of the many preachers, and they're a mixed bag.

Many of the Islamic centres in the big cities are led by young preachers who have trained overseas, or have an academic background. Just as many rely purely on the power of their energy or charisma.

Kuranda Seyit.

Kuranda Seyit: We refer to them as backyard imams. I mean they're respectable people, they have obviously trained and thoroughly read Koranic studies and so forth, but their credibility is always dubious because they don't come from a recognised institution. Now they pop up all over the place. And in Sydney they could be in bookshops, they could be in local town halls or some of the local community centres. Now they're everywhere, and I can't say that we can stop those people, because they have people going to and listening to them and talking. Anyway, they have a large audience base. But at the same time I don't believe that sometimes some of these groups are teaching the right things, in a style which I believe is antithetical or antagonistic towards living in a country like Australia.

Hagar Cohen: Kuranda says to attract the youth, backyard imams tend to preach a very simplistic Islam. In a religion with so many interpretations and schools of thought, a black and white understanding, says Kuranda, can be dangerous.

Kuranda Seyit: Some of the things that I hear are very much about literal interpretations of the Koran, and black-and-white sort of approaches to teaching. And I think that to me, Islam is a much more complex, and much more rich and vibrant, and has so much more to offer than the do's and don'ts and who is evil and who we should hate.

Hagar Cohen: and that is a concern of yours that the youth of today are attracted to this kind of teaching?

Kuranda Seyit: Yes, I think it's very simplistic and easy for people to sit there and hear somebody tell them that these people are bad, and this is why the world is such-and-such, and it's all their fault. It's easy to tell people that you must dress in such a way, or you must have a beard, or you mustn't wear make-up. You know, don't listen to music. These types of things that you'll hear. I think it's more complex, and I think that we need a richer, more subtle nuanced approach to Islam.

Hagar Cohen: One internet sheikh who's going strong is Shady el Suleiman. He can be heard not only through the many online videos, but also through his bi-weekly youth lectures at the Lakemba mosque, and the organisation he founded called United Muslim Association.

Imam Shady was embroiled in controversy in 2007 when The Australian newspaper obtained one of his online lectures where he says it is 'obligatory' for all Muslims to engage in jihad if an Islamic country is under attack, even if it means killing the enemy's children. The sheikh later said this quote was taken out of context and that killing of children is allowed only as means of self-defence.

But Imam Shady is still controversial. And this is part of a lecture posted on YouTube earlier this year.

Imam Shady: I testify there is no God except Allah Almighty, and I testify that Muhamad is the Prophet, the Messenger of Allah. And we ask Allah Almighty at this moment from this blessed gathering, to give victory to all Muslims brothers and sisters in Gaza, and to destroy the Zionist Israelis and the enemies of Islam. Amen, amen, amen.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing asked Imam Shady to explain the ambiguity of the words 'to destroy the Zionist Israelis' and 'the enemies of Islam'. His email response in part reads:

Reader: As for my lesson at that time, it was about Gaza and Jerusalem, and I did make a supplication to God to make things easy on the innocent people in Gaza, and I made the supplication to God against any tyrant, oppressive government or regime who fight against Muslims and mankind in general without justification. As what the Israeli government did towards Gaza and the Palestinians is in no doubt (in my view) an oppressive, unjust and unjustified attack, and I don't accept that to any human being or nation regardless of their faith, and I also don't accept it coming from any person or regime regardless of their faith even though they are Muslims.

Imam Shady: Beit el Makdas, Jerusalem, Masjid el Aqsa, it's part of our creed, it's part of our creed, it's part of our Aqida, it's part of our faith.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing is not suggesting that lectures like this will lead the young people to violence. The issue today is that the older leadership is weak, and not appealing to youth. Instead, they turn to the growing numbers of young charismatic imams, who sometimes preach a simplistic version of Islam.

Imam Shady is popular. Hundreds of young people follow him at the mosque, and on the internet. That video we just heard from was received enthusiastically with supportive comments online. Here's one example:

Reader: Mashallah, it's not fair. I wish Sheikh Shady could come down to Melbourne, wallah we'll give him the best accommodation and respect. This is a fantastic vid, another of Sheikh Shady's beautiful motivational, enlightening lectures. By Allah we here in Melbourne love you for Allah's sake Sheikh Shady.

Hagar Cohen: Imam Shady wears a traditional white galabyia, the Arabic robe, but he is a truly Aussie sheikh. He was born here, to a Palestinian family, and grew up in the suburbs. He speaks Arabic, and while on a 7-year journey overseas, he studied Islamic jurisprudence.

During an early interview from his home in Sydney's west, he says the older migrant generation has often let the rigor demanded by Islam slip, and they take the tenets of their religion less seriously than they should.

Imam Shady: You find them much more flexible than the ones who are probably born here. A lot of the Muslims in Australia who especially grew up in Australia, when they want to become religious, they learn Islam not as a tradition, as a religion. And they practice Islam as a religion. So they look where the teachings of the Prophet Muhamad peace be upon him, they look at the Koran and whatever is in the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhamad, they take. They don't take and bring along with them, traditions. And this is a big problem.

Hagar Cohen: The Imam is a dominant, almost imposing figure in today's Muslim community. You'll find him walking the streets of Lakemba, talking to troubled youth about finding God and learning to be more pious in their daily life.

Imam Shady: We do hit the streets, and speak to those young Muslims who are maybe misguided in some way, and we remind them that that's not your place, that's not where you should be, you know, you're much bigger than that, much better than that, and your place should be a better place than you know, maybe taking drugs or selling drugs, or acting like a gangster. You should be a good member of society.

Hagar Cohen: Why would they listen to you?

Imam Shady: When someone is lost and you come and guide them, they really appreciate that. It's like someone's drowning and you are the one that's there to save them, they will never forget you for that. So this is one of the things that we do, we're trying to save them from the drowning of darkness, from the drowning of evilness, from the drowning into a miserable life.

Hagar Cohen: The internet sheikhs come in a plethora of colours, shapes and sizes. They could be preaching anything from a very conservative Islam, to a rather moderate interpretation.

On one site, they say they can teach everything you might want to know about Islam through online learning. It's free and in English, and doesn't require much work. Here's a reading.

Reader: Do you want to seek knowledge of Islam, but just don't know where to go or who to trust? Would you like to study under many renowned scholars without leaving the comfort, convenience and privacy of your own home?

Hagar Cohen: One of the teachers in this online Islamic university is the Australian Sheikh Omran. He's fundamentalist in his teachings, and his following in Sydney and Melbourne is growing. Here's another reading.

Reader: Are you looking for a free alternative to expensive online Islamic classes? If so, you have come to the right place. We are proud to present the internet's first and number one Islamic cyber community.

Hagar Cohen: Among this constellation of internet sheikhs and schools of thought, the most charismatic preachers are from the conservative end of Islamic practice, sometimes known as Salafism.

Man: The end of music. This is a message for our bleeding brothers and sisters in Iman who are afflicted with listening to music, or are confused by statements of scholars who said that it was permissible.

Hagar Cohen: From Monash University, Waleed Ali says the Salafi group is well organised. Importantly, says Waleed Ali, their take on Islam is very easy to digest.

Waleed Ali: What Salafi groups are very good at doing is giving you a template for certainty, a template for righteous action and righteous conduct and righteous belief. And if you're coming from a place where you haven't been that religious, perhaps you feel a kind of guilty conscience over that, or perhaps you're just unfamiliar with a lot of the religious teachings; this is something that people will often do, they will often embrace something that seems to impose the most restrictions on them, because it gives them a feeling of having been more committed, more authentic, submitting themselves more wholly to the rigours of the religious life that they're now moving in to. So it's quite common among those sorts of people, and in second and third generation Australian Muslims, that's quite a common experience.

Hagar Cohen: But the Salafis are at the centre of some heated debates. The wider Muslim community often argues with them about things like whether praying beads are permissible in Islam.

Waleed Ali: One of the things that Salafism is very good at, is casting doubt on practices that people have been engaged in for a long period of time without necessarily thinking about them. So for example, a lot of Muslims use what look a little bit like rosary beads that Catholics may use. You know, these beads, and they use them to count particular meditations that they're doing. Salafis, for example, some of them, have come out very strongly against this practice and said, 'Look, this is a deviation; the Prophet never did this, anything else, it's an innovation, it's a deviation from the purity of Islamic practice, and they're very keen on emphasising purity. So that causes friction, because you have some people for example who've been using these beads their whole life, and suddenly they're being told what they're doing is actually wrong, and perhaps even sinful.

Hagar Cohen: But sectarian arguments isn't the only source for conflict. Waleed Ali says the rivalry is very often to do with political power struggles in the community.

Waleed Ali: Within communities you get community politics. That is expressed often through sectarian difference, but the sectarian difference is not necessarily always the root of that disagreement. Sometimes it's just matters of political difference that then get expressed in that way. So it could be who gets to run the mosque board, and run the mosque accordingly, so who is in power within a particular organisation. Or who is getting the most people attending their lectures. Or who is running a particular civic organisation. Or whatever it is.

Hagar Cohen: Although many people are conservative in all religions, labelling someone a conservative Muslim is sometimes misinterpreted as being a radical or extremist. A few weeks ago in Melbourne, a group of Somali youth were arrested for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on Sydney's Holsworthy army barracks. It was also reported that a particularly conservative strand of Islam is very powerful at their mosque in Preston. That group is known as Salafism. Their influence at Preston came as a surprise to many because the mufti of Australia, Sheikh Fehmi, who's known as a moderate, was also preaching at the mosque. Waleed Ali.

Waleed Ali: It's very hard to explain what's going on in Preston. There was in the last decade or two, a bit of a shift in the way that the mosque is being run, and you had more influence from the salafi groups and they'd started to exert more influence at Preston. Now Sheikh Fehmi is not of that school and certainly hasn't said anything in my presence that indicates that he is. Yet he's managed to remain a fixture at that mosque. But it looks from the outside almost as some kind of power sharing type arrangement.

Hagar Cohen: But Waleed Ali says being very conservative is a long way away from being a terrorist. The case of the Somali youths from Preston is still very unusual.

Waleed Ali: They just feel that this particular group, or this particular leader, is not strong enough when it comes to defending the Muslim community or something like that. And so they move to a space that's a little bit more radicalised, and then within that group, there'll be another group who are disillusioned because not enough action's been taken, and then they'll splinter off. And so on and so on. And so what you tend to get, particularly if you look at those who have been arrested, usually what they are is a splinter group, off a splinter group, off another splinter group, of an organisation.

Hagar Cohen: From the suburb of Lakemba, which is also home to one of the largest Muslim communities in Australia, Muslim student Taiba (not her real name) is also noticing the growing conservatism.

Taiba: I guess the shift is more towards the ritualistic aspect of Islam rather than the spiritual aspect, or the integration of both, which is how it should be. So by conservatism, I suppose what I mean by that is there is a focus on the outward part of faith. So performing the rituals, doing the things the way they were done 1400 years ago, to the T, and forgetting about the fact that isn't a spiritual dimension that is equally, if not more, important. You know, make sure you, for example, pray this way or you have to fast this way, you have to say this before you do this.

Hagar Cohen: But if you're not praying in this very particular way, then does that mean that your Islam is...

Taiba: like, incomplete, or it won't be accepted by God, or things like that.

Hagar Cohen: Taiba says she thinks the rising popularity of backyard imams is contributing to this shift.

Taiba: Definitely. And I think that's one of the major problems. At the moment that there are a lot of those backyard imams. What they would do, for example, is they'd go online, go to some website that has different rulings and be like OK, this is how it should be, and then they go and say This is how you should follow, this is how you should react in this particular circumstance. They're neglecting the fact that Islam allows for context. There are many different interpretations, there are many different ways that you can actually practice Islam and still be within the confines of your faith. That will naturally affect your identity as a Muslim Australian because you won't really know how to integrate your Islam if you're Australian identity, and make them fit comfortably.

Hagar Cohen: In this changing environment, it's often the women who find it the hardest. Joumanah el Matrah is the Director of the Islamic Women's Welfare Council in Melbourne. Among other things, her organisation helps women to figure out what is their place in the future of Australian Islam. She says conservatism is especially appealing to the youth, and she gives an example.

Joumanah el Matrah: Modesty. A conservative approach to modesty focuses far more on sexual modesty than the more existential, psychological and emotional approaches to modesty. So modesty becomes about covering your body, and keeping your gaze down, rather than actually looking at as a human being, what does it mean to be modest in Islam. And it means participating in your society and finding your place in society, and it means not taking a narcissistic authoritarian approach to the religion and demanding that everybody else follows your approach to the religion, and that you and only you have the correct view to Islam.

Hagar Cohen: So is this kind of approach to Islam a concern to you?

Joumanah el Matrah: It is. It limits Islam, it narrows it down to the views of Muslims 3 or 4 centuries ago. It supposes that what Islam is and therefore what God is, has already been defined, and there's nothing more that these current generations can do, and that the experiences of these generations of Muslims. My experience today, it means that it doesn't count, and that I have nothing to say about religion because it's already all been defined.

Hagar Cohen: Joumanah el Matrah.

There are several umbrella organisations across Australia, each attempting to put forward spokespeople for the Muslims living here, to span all of the small groups and different interpretations of Islam. This is controversial territory because Islam is not a hierarchical religion, though of course there are individuals who have the power or drive to create leadership positions. The newly formed Australian National Imams Council is one that decides who will be the Mufti in Australia. There was a changeover in 2007 from Sheikh Hilaly in Sydney to the new Mufti, Sheikh Fehmi from Melbourne. There are many speculations about how this actually happened, and a lot of discontent. Lawyer and author Irfan Yusuf.

Irfan Yusuf: These things are never clear. This is the thing, you know, like a lot of these organisations, they don't keep minutes, they don't open their proceedings to the people whose lives are affected by their decisions. So we don't really know, we can only guess. There are some really good people in the Imam's council, but a lot of the other people have left, largely out of disillusion, and quite a few people left because the position of Mufti wasn't abolished. Which is what the demand was in a lot of people, as a result of the whole Hilaly cat meat affair and the ongoing post cat meat scandals.

Hagar Cohen: The Australian National Imams' Council, ANIC, has its own version about how things happened. It issued a press release, and says all members are united and happy with the decision of Sheikh Fehmi as the Mufti. But behind the scenes, disputes and clashes were rife.

Background Briefing obtained a copy of a letter that was signed by three Queensland imams complaining about corruption in the changeover. Here's a reading of part of it.

Reader: In Melbourne, during the selection of Mufti, very many irregularities and unspeakable corruption took place. When we repeatedly asked him to elaborate those irregularities and unspeakable corruption, he refused to inform us those procedures, which violated the very constitution of the Australian National Imams' Council. He further informed us that 'I do not want to even talk about this, mention about this, or think about this.'

Hagar Cohen: What exactly is the role of the mufti is a contested subject. But usually he is an Islamic scholar who gives out fatwas, or religious rulings to his community. While many in Australia don't really care who is their mufti, says Irfan Yusuf, they are also keeping their distance from the political disputes involved. He also says this is not an exclusively Muslim problem. It happens in all religions.

Irfan Yusuf: And I'm sure it happens in other communities as well. I look at different ethno religious communities, and I see the same names popping up day after day. Every time there's an op.ed. about an issue to do with that community, it's like the same person, oh my God, not him again. And usually it's a him. Very rarely do the hers ever get a listen-in. I don't think that Muslims are the only ones that have this trouble.

Hagar Cohen: A prime example for the kind of people Irfan Yusuf is talking about is the previous Mufti, Sheik Taj al din al Hilaly in Sydney. One of Hilaly's most infamous public comments was about Western women looking like meat for the cat.

Today, still going strong in his Lakemba mosque office, Sheikh Hilaly has regrets.

Sheikh Hilaly: I'm a human being, not angel. I respect all womans, especially Australian - very intelligent ladies in the world, and beautiful, too. And sometime you know, please don't judge me for my little words.

Hagar Cohen: Hilaly recently found himself at the centre of another community scandal. The changeover of the mufti.

We've voiced over some of his comments for clarity.

Reader: The delegates who came to represent the different states, they were not all officially endorsed. There were some tricks in relation to the appointment of these delegates.

A fish and chip shop operator in Brisbane was nominated as a representative of Imams, and he wasn't the imam of any mosque, he wasn't an imam, he was a fish and chip shop operator.

Another person on welfare in Melbourne, he's not an imam, he was also appointed a delegate.

I reject all of that. I don't accept that process.

Hagar Cohen: Sheikh Hilaly knows about how these turf wars are affecting the young people, and the growth of the backyard Imam phenomenon. He says it's obvious the older establishments need to include the youth, because the alternative at the moment is what he calls the Rambo-style Taliban gangs.

Sheikh Hilaly: Big, big, big problem, dangerous for our society, he like Rambo, Rambo way. I need new blood for our community, our society. I need a new committee the guiding Lakemba, AFIC, Islamic Council, everywhere. But I don't like the Taliban, another Mafia Taliban in Lakemba or anywhere.

Hagar Cohen: But do you think these new young Muslim leaders have this kind of inclinations, extremist inclinations?

Sheikh Hilaly: Yes. We want jihad. We support Afghanistan, mujahideen, Palestine.

Translation: Some of the young people who are teaching other young people about Islam, some of them are teaching them the wrong way.

Hagar Cohen: The young people today don't need the Mufti or his delegates to practise their Islam. For example, the story of one man, Diaa Kara Ali, a businessman. He used to work for a company in North Sydney, and once when h e went to a nearby praying hall for his Friday prayer, it became apparent to him that the person leading the prayer was from the political group Hizb ut Tahrir. That groups advocates for the establishment of a caliphate, or the Islamic state, and many in the Muslim community, including Diaa Kara Ali, are strongly against this ideology. But he says, on that instance, Hizb ut Tahrir had the only active praying hall in the area.

Diaa Kara Ali: As a Muslim I want to pray Friday, and unfortunately all I get an opportunity is to be there. So I look at him as a Muslim and I pray.

Hagar Cohen: But Diaa Kara Ali isn't impressed.

Diaa Kara Ali: And in many cases I experienced where I come out of these sermons depressed, very angry.

Hagar Cohen: What were you depressed about though?

Diaa Kara Ali: Well I was depressed because I'm affected by a speaker that was speaking for 40 minutes about how much we're being fought and how much there is no hope for us.

Hagar Cohen: But they'll talk a lot about global politics and the situation of Muslims around the world?

Diaa Kara Ali: Of course, that's all they focus on. They'll say that we're being fought, we're being targeted, we're being discriminated against in a way that we cannot trust anyone. They would say No, we are not violent because we are about freeing the Muslim lands from the tyrannical governments that rule them. If I had a tyrannical government that rules me in the Middle East, why do I get someone, a Muslim Westerner in the West, so angry at the West that I'll teach him to retaliate against Western regimes that are the reason behind the tyrannical governments that we have in the Middle East. I mean what have I left?

Hagar Cohen: One of the Muslim groups that have repeatedly denounced the Hizb ut Tahrir ideology is called the Habashis. Their mosque is in Bankstown and their congregation young.

They are politically moderate and have constantly spoken out against extremism, and the dangerous influences of the fundamentalist Saudi strand, Wahabism.

But they themselves are rigorous in their fervent belief in their own school of thought. Their fierce criticism of others means they are disliked by many Muslims in Australia.

One of the active members in this congregation is Rafic.

Rafic: The ideals of leadership are those who are moderate, those who denounce extremism and those who serve the community as they should, based on the Prophet's teachings and who are actually in line with the scholarly consensus of Muslims around the world.

Hagar Cohen: Rafic says extremism is rife in Australia, and a way to defeat its influences is to deny the extremists' right to call themselves Muslim.

Rafic: These acts unfortunately are occurring by people who are representing themselves as being under the banner of Islam. But unfortunately they do not represent Muslims. And this is where the media needs to understand, is that we need to stop labelling these extremists as Muslim, because in their mind that is actually giving them the strength of power. So if we can isolate them, by not referring to them as Muslims any more, OK, that will be to our advantage.

Hagar Cohen: The Habashi religious leaders are different. They're known here as Darulfatwa, which is their council of imams, a parallel organisation to the Australian National Imams Council. The Habashi is one of the groups that say Ramadan begins when the moon is sighted with someone's bare eyes. With Ahmad, a youth leader at this centre, we are there the night before Ramadan begins.

Ahmad: Darulfatwa here, our Islamic Council of Australia, has sighted the moon, and they have announced to Muslims that the moon has been sighted, and tomorrow will be the first day of Ramadan.

Hagar Cohen: So the Darulfatwa belongs only to this organisation?

Ahmad: No, Darulfatwa is actually for all the Muslims around the world. In Australia, it's Darulfatwa, High Islamic Council of Australia, and here's the Chairman of Darulfatwa right there. And yes, he actually went out to sight the moon. We can speak to him.

Hagar Cohen: The Darulfatwa sighted the moon, and announced that Ramadan starts the next morning. Their mufti, Sheikh Salim Alwan, explains the process.

Sheik Salim Alwan: We stay after the sunset and look to the west, and from sunset until 40 minutes, sometimes we see the crescent.

Hagar Cohen: During Ramadan, many of the 340,000 Australian Muslims go to their local mosque for the first evening prayer of the month.

At the Lakemba mosque, thousands of Muslims gather during the evening and there are hundreds of them standing out on the street, because there's not enough space inside.

Outside, the prayer hall, Diha is sitting on the stairs nearby.

Are you going to fast during the...?

Diha: Of course, yes.

Hagar Cohen: Is it hard?

Diha: No, it's very easy. It's normal. The fasting is not just about eating, it's about everything. It's about listening, reading the Koran, praying atthe right time, not talking about people, not stealing. It's everything. Always clean. Ramadan is very good.

Hagar Cohen: Do you like it?

Diha: Of course I like it.

Hagar Cohen: A bit like Christmas do you think?

Diha: No, it's better than Christmas because in Ramadan our month of Ramadan, all the devils are locked up in hell. So whatever we do, that's our real selves. There's no-one playing round in our heads. Yes.

Hagar Cohen: Diha is one of the many students of Imam Shady whom we've heard from before.

Imam Shady is very popular among the youth in Lakemba. Some claim he will have a seminal role in shaping the future of Australian Islam. While the old generation establishments like the mufti and AFIC are busy trying to sort out their leadership struggles, the young people are breaking off, and finding their own answers. From Monash University, Waleed Ali says it's hard to predict the consequences of this phenomenon.

Waleed Ali: Long term it's going to be very hard to know now, we're going to have to wait and see how this all evolves, and whether or not they ultimately have a lasting impact and a lasting presence, or they're something of a more transient phenomenon. But in the short term, it's clear that what they do is they're great motivators, they can allow people to get involved in the religious aspects of their community with a lot more energy. And in some ways that gets used very, very well. I know of people who are charismatic in this way, that have been able to get people off drugs for example, or get people becoming productive contributors to their society, and so on. I mean you also get the opposite where you get the more isolationist type attitudes and so on. We are in a world that is becoming increasingly chaotic in this way.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing's Coordinating producer is Linda McGinniss. Research, Anna Whitfeld. Technical operator this week is Steven Tilley. Our executive producer is Kirsten Garrett. I'm Hagar Cohen and this is ABC Radio National.

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Will technophobia crash the ICT party?

The promise of ICTs benefiting human development is great. Mobile phones, some say, facilitate and expand markets where they previously weren’t. These mobiles have jumped into the domains of banking (mobile ATMs in some countries), medicine (allowing rural inhabitants to receive needed information from specialists) and public services.

Internet connections allow students in the most rural areas to augment learning through research. Academics can keep up with colleagues across the world. Social media may make it easier for people to organize themselves and facilitate the way immigrants send remittances.

The role ICTs plays in human development is being debated and discussed at a Sept. 23- 24 Harvard University forum, ICTs, Human Development, Growth and Poverty Reduction.

What about the backlash against computers and the fear of technological devices? If the promise of ICTs will lead to poverty reduction, how will technophobia affect this mission? Technophobia certainly remains a global issue. With the influence of ICTs role in development, however, does the fear of technology and misunderstanding of its uses disproportionally affect the developing world? If so, what are people doing about it?

Here are a few examples of fighting and understanding technophobia in Africa. (If you’ve got more, we’d love to hear them. We’ll also be trying to write this issue in other parts of the world, so please pass those ideas along, too.)

Technophobia in Africa, like elsewhere, takes many forms. Resistance to technology by teachers has been cited (.pdf) as a problem of computer expansion in Kenyan classrooms. Both hospital staff and patients in Uganda list “cultural adaptability” as a constraint in implementing ICTs in health centers. Girls around the world view cybercafés – in many places, the only gateway to the internet – as strictly boys’ territory.

James Kariuki, an E-learning specialist from Cape Town, South Africa relates a story of a well educated friend having difficulty with adapting to new technologies. This is from his blog Elearning in Africa:

I engaged with a friend today and he was lamenting about the speed at which the technology is moving. I could see the agony in his face when he told me that he was scheduled to do a presentation in a hall, and the only thing in that lecture hall as a visual aid is a computer and a projector. The old-fashioned overhead projectors have been replaced by these new technologies. The pain of having to redo his presentation, and scanning his images so that they can be used on the computer was profound. I asked him whether he has considered attending any of training sessions:

Most of us have a phobia for technology and most of the jargon used in the training leaves us more confused than we were before training. I know of a number of professors in my department who have the same feelings about the technology and they cannot attend training.

I asked him, is this reasons that some lecturers never use the technology in the lecture theatres? He said:

Yes, and more to that there is a cultural bearing. They should have involved an anthropologist to study the culture of the prospective users of the technology so that they can advice them about what need to change first [in terms of culture] for the technology to be successfully used.

Here I see a problem where the technology is being provided but the constituency that should benefit from it is not. I am not sure of the best approach to dealing with technophobia, especially in situations where the individuals [with the phobia] have all the resources and support and training but they cannot still use the resources available. If you have a clue, feel free to let me know.

In a comment, Neil J says we should all be expanding our definition of technophobia — because each of us have a bit of it.

I suppose, as you said training is the best way to deal with this. I am currently doing a university assignment into technophobia. I think we all have elements of technophobia:
- the anger we display when a computer crashes
- fearing that computers will replace our jobs
- fear that we are being watched!

The digital divide is not just rural versus urban or rich countries versus poor. Gender remains an important factor, says Ore Somolu, writing in The Networking Success Project from Nigeria.

Women face a number of limitations to be able to freely use technology, Ore continues, including lower disposable incomes, limited time for technology use, average lower literacy levels. One solution includes starting technology lessons for girls at an early age.

Young women need to become more involved in science and technology from an early age. This could be formally (primary or secondary school, computer school, after-school program) or informally (learning from family or friends, summer camps with computer classes). The Gender Team at KnowledgeHouseAfrica organises the FOSS Women Bootcamp Workshop, which equips young women with the skills necessary to train other women to use FOSS* (Free and Open Source Software). Fantsuam Foundation offers scholarships to qualified and interested women for ICT training.

Mothers are a big influence on their daughters and if they display feelings of technophobia, some girls may unconsciously adopt similar feelings. It is important that encouragement comes from the home, through introduction from a young age to incrementally more complex forms of technology.

Lauren Clifford-Holmes, a student at Rhodes University in South Africa, at one time felt that ICTs were not living up to their promise because few projects created tangible results. She lists a few examples of best practices when using ICTs to augment development. From her blog, The Soap Box:

What struck me about this story were two key nuances: firstly that dumping technology in a community is useless unless the skills are taught for the consumption of and production using this technology. Secondly, this case study emphasised the importance of focusing on schools and introducing students to technology which can aid their learning experience, and teach them the skills they need to thrive in the knowledge economy/ information society.

She reports on an example that promotes the right kind of appropriate technology, the Intel Teach Program.

Mthebula High School was donated computers by Telkom a few years ago, but none of the teachers were incorporating the technology into their instruction. School language teacher, Mercy Ntlemo, attributed this to most of the teachers lacking “the specific knowledge and training to integrate technology in any substantive way”. This meant the computers were gathering dust, barely used beyond basic information retrieval and simple word processing.

This example speaks to the larger debate within ICTs and development: development needs to happen on a multitude of different levels. It makes no sense to think you are aiding development by donating free technology like computers to those who lack the skills to utilise this technology effectively.

In this particular case, Ntlemo underwent the Intel Teach Program, a professional development program designed to help teachers integrate technology effectively in the classroom with the objective of helping students build 21st century skills. Ntlemo felt she really benefited from the training and following her success, many other teachers did the program, to help “conquer their technophobia”.
This training program exposed the teachers to new approaches for creating assessment tools and aligning lessons with educational learning goals and standards. Additionally, they discover new ways to incorporate the use of the Internet, Web page design, and student projects as vehicles for powerful learning.

As a result of the Intel Teach Program, Ntlemo says that technology is now an integral part of the curriculum at DZJ Mthebula High School, and project based learning is the norm. The training program revolutionised the way the teachers used the computers – a wonderful resource which until then were being completely underused. Ntlemo says the program “has revolutionised the way we teach.”

So what does a story such as this one teach us? It teaches us that we need to have a wholistic approach to development, and that development occurs within a particular context – such as lack of digital literacy. We need to understand the contexts of the communities needing developments in ICTs so that development does not become a worthless endeavour but rather a meaningful process of change.

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With Copenhagen Summit Approaching, Leading Polluters US and China Undercut Hopes of Substantial Pollution Cuts

World leaders gathered at the United Nations on Tuesday for a one-day global summit on climate change. But with little on specifics and emerging signs the world’s biggest polluters will try to determine their own emissions reductions, poorer nations most threatened by global warming are warning they’re being left behind. We speak with award-winning New York Times reporter Andy Revkin, environmental activist Ted Glick, and Anna Pinto, an indigenous rights activist from India who’s traveled to Pittsburgh to call on G-20 leaders to tackle global warming.

Guests:

Andrew Revkin, award-winning science reporter with the New York Times. He also writes the Dot Earth blog on the New York Times website. His most recent book is The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World.

Anna Pinto, indigenous rights activist from India. She represents the Meitei from northeastern India and is the co-founder of CORE.

Ted Glick, policy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

ANJALI KAMAT: World leaders gathered at the United Nations on Tuesday for a one-day global summit on climate change. The conference drew nearly 100 heads of state and came seventy days before the major climate summit in Copenhagen in December to update the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the talks, saying the failure to reach a new treaty this year on fighting global warming would be, quote, “morally inexcusable.”

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: A successful deal must strengthen the world’s ability to cope with inevitable changes. In particular, it must provide comprehensive support to the most vulnerable. They have contributed least to this crisis and are suffering first—and worst.


Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically shortsighted and politically unwise. We cannot go down this road.

ANJALI KAMAT: President Barack Obama, in his first speech at the United Nations, said the United States was “determined” to act on global warming but offered no specific proposals to jumpstart talks on a UN climate pact.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It is true that for too many years mankind has been slow to respond or even recognize the magnitude of the climate threat. It is true of my own country, as well. We recognize that. But this is a new day. It is a new era. And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history.

ANJALI KAMAT: All eyes were also on China’s president, Hu Jintao. China and the United States account for more than 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. In his address, Hu Jintao spoke of reducing emissions by a “notable” margin, but did not give a specific target.

PRESIDENT HU JINTAO: [translated] First, we will intensify our efforts to conserve energy and improve energy efficiency. We will endeavor to cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 levels. Second, we will vigorously develop renewable energy and nuclear energy. We will endeavor to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in prime energy consumption to around 15 percent by 2020.

ANJALI KAMAT: Hu Jintao and Obama are scheduled to meet for one-on-one talks after the summit. Both leaders will then head to Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit, where climate change is a top agenda item.

AMY GOODMAN: Scientists and activists are warning the international community is at a crossroads and must take decisive steps to tackle global warming. Earlier this week, Nobel Peace laureate Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that current emissions trajectories will be speeding the world towards the panel’s worst-case possibilities, including heat waves, droughts, melting glaciers, loss of the Greenland ice sheet and other dangers.

For more, we’re joined by three guests.

Andrew Revkin is with us, award-winning science reporter with the New York Times, writes the “Dot Earth” blog for the Times website. He was at the UN covering the climate summit yesterday. He joins us in our firehouse studio here in New York.

In DC, we’re joined by Ted Glick, policy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

And joining us from Pittsburgh is Anna Pinto. She is an indigenous rights activist from India who’s there as part of the New Voices on Climate Change program, representing the Meitei from northeastern India. And she’s co-founder of CORE.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Andrew Revkin, let’s begin with you. The significance of the climate change UN summit that took place yesterday, and then how it fits into the progression from there to G-20 to Copenhagen?

ANDREW REVKIN: Well, Ban Ki-moon knew he wasn’t going to get some magical deal here, but the idea is to increase pressure on world leaders, putting them on a global stage and on, you know, webcasts around the world to stake some positions.

As you heard, there was a lot of vague positions staked. India is proposing a more specific menu. They could triple their emissions in the next thirty years, according to their own forecasts, of CO2, the main greenhouse gas. So India, in some ways, almost matters more for the future than China, because China’s population is going to stabilize while India is still growing. But India’s plan is also kind of touchy-feely. They want to put forward legislation; they would need Parliament to approve. It’s all still kind of—what you’ll see toward December is more specifics being kind of squeezed out of people as the deadline emerges.

AMY GOODMAN: China and US, basically equal on global warming, on being the number one emitters?

ANDREW REVKIN: And when you tally up gross emissions, yeah, we’re about the same now. China has pulled into the lead recently by some estimates. But, of course, they have three times or more the population that we do, and they make that point repeatedly, that they’re—the countries that have generated the greenhouse gases that have already accumulated in the atmosphere, us rich folks, for a century, basically we’ve had a fossil fuel party for a century, gotten very wealthy, and they’re saying, “Hey, you know, if we’re going to divert from that same benefit, you guys have to pay for it.”

And that’s—the big issue here will be who pays for change. China and India both are saying, you know, “We’re going to do what we can, as long as we can keep our economies growing. And if you want us to divert more than that, the wealthy countries have to chip in.” And Ban Ki-moon was basically saying the same thing, that the established powers owe a climate debt, in essence. You heard that from other—the Bolivian, I think it was, spokesman earlier.

And that’s a tough sell, because—and one reason Obama can’t come out with specifics is because he has this huge chain and shackle on his—on him, on the presidency, which is, to sign onto any treaty, he knows he has to get two-thirds approval of the Senate, under our Constitution. So that’s sixty-seven votes. That’s more than just passing a health bill with sixty. So it’s—he knows that from the get-go. His administration has been very sober and kind of real world in the statements they’ve made all this year about what they can and can’t do. And all this is playing out in a way that’s pretty—making a lot of environmental groups unhappy, because they would like to see some more specifics already.

ANJALI KAMAT: And yet, Andrew Revkin, the countries that are most affected by climate change, they are the ones calling for mandatory limits. The president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, he’s—I mean, his country, the Maldives, an Indian Ocean island, they are threatened with extinction if—

ANDREW REVKIN: I’ve been there twice. I know. You feel the waves. You can kind of feel the vibrations.

AMY GOODMAN: And what can be achieved for these millions of people who aren’t the ones with the most emissions?

ANDREW REVKIN: In 2007, we did a long series called “The Climate Divide,” which basically articulated clearly that the countries with the least history of emitting are the ones that have a fundamentally greater vulnerability to climate risk now. This is—to garden variety drought and flood, let alone what may come down the line. So, how that obligation, that ethical obligation, is played out is part of this, as well.

There’s really three parties coming to Copenhagen: the poorest countries; the large, fast-advancing, once poor countries; and the wealthy, established countries. And there’s three different issues or more that kind of drive wedges between them. That’s why no one who really has followed this process for a long time is confident that Copenhagen will produce some kind of grand, new, comprehensive deal.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this conversation after break. Andrew Revkin, award-winning science reporter for the New York Times, just came from the climate change summit at the United Nations held yesterday. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking climate change, from the UN climate change summit to G-20 this week and on to Copenhagen. We’re joined by the New York Times reporter, science reporter, Andrew Revkin, here in New York. Ted Glick is with us from Washington, DC, Chesapeake Climate Action Network. And Anna Pinto is joining us from Pittsburgh, indigenous rights activist from northeastern India. Anjali?

ANJALI KAMAT: Anna Pinto, I wanted to ask you—you’re from a region that’s directly affected by climate change. Can you talk about what it’s like where you are, how climate change impacts the communities where you’re living, and why you’re in Pittsburgh?

ANNA PINTO: Well, we are in the sub-Himalayan region and in the lower slopes of the Himalayas. We’re impacted primarily by two major phenomena. One is the glacial melt in the Himalayas, which exacerbates flooding. And the other is the erratic character that has developed in the monsoon rain, which also causes both drought and flash floods simultaneously. These are the two major climate events that impact us, and they augment each other to escalate the problem even more over the last ten years.

ANJALI KAMAT: And what is India planning to do to combat climate change? Can you talk about the proposal by the Indian minister yesterday at the UN? He spoke quite a bit about this.

ANNA PINTO: Well, as far as I understand it, when you strip away a lot of the goodwill language, India plans to address climate change by continuing its current development trajectory. And that is not a solution. Very often, I think development is posited against climate change action, and that is a fallacy. Climate change action, effective climate change action, whether mitigation or adaptation, would go along healthy development paths, which means cutting out and reducing fossil fuel use. It means reducing high energy and high fossil fuel and high—highly invasive kinds of development practices. And I don’t think India is going along that path at all.

What India is trying to do, basically, if it’s analyzed right down up to the ground, is to, in fact, expand its industrial base, to take over holistic, low-energy, self-sustaining and highly sustainable forms of livelihoods from indigenous peoples, from local communities, and convert all these into a high productivity profile, which conforms to the international idea of what development is. And that is probably the biggest mistake India can make for the welfare of its own people, including—and, of course, most of all, the most vulnerable people, indigenous and local communities, as well as the worst things that can be done in the context of climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Anna Pinto, about how climate change effects migration of large populations?

ANNA PINTO: Well, when your land has dried out, years in succession, due to drought and to annual droughts, when your land is flooded during seasons of harvest or when the waters should actually be receding from the paddy fields, you don’t have anything in terms of options, except to move away, hopefully to a place where you might get a short-term or a longer-term option for livelihood. That is what is driving massive migrations throughout sub-continental—not just India, but the whole South Asia region. It’s driving migration from Bangladesh into India. It’s driving migration from Nepal when there are floods. It’s driving migration within India all around the country.

And most of the people end up in slums. They end up at the mercy of all kinds of criminal activities, including traffickers, including sex traffickers. The list of problems that is generated by bad policy and shortsighted policy and policy that really supports the entrenchment of rich people and their interests in the global economy is massive, and it’s vicious.

ANJALI KAMAT: Anna Pinto, very quickly, you’re in Pittsburgh for the G-20. Do you have any hope that the G-20 is going to address the issues you’re here for?

ANNA PINTO: I believe that they will attempt to address some of the questions as they see them. I do not think that their perspectives will coincide with the kind of approach I’m talking about.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Ted Glick into the conversation, policy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Ted, the global picture right now around climate change, and what you think needs to happen, as we move from the UN climate change summit to the G-20 meeting—and there are also mass protests outside in Pittsburgh—to Copenhagen?

TED GLICK: Well, I thought, in terms of what happened at the United Nations, one of the underreported presentations was one made by the President, Mohamed Nasheed, of the Maldives, where he said something to the effect that we come to these conferences, we rail against the injustices, we go back home, things cool off, and the world continues as before. And he’s right.

It’s not that there isn’t some change; there certainly are. There’s more renewable energy being built and developed in various places around the world, even in the United States. There are changes that are happening. But by and large, given the seriousness and the severity of this crisis and the fact that it’s here—this is not something off in the future—the response just is not sufficient.

And I have to say, I include, when I say that, those who see themselves as progressive activists, as people who care about justice, as people who believe that we need to organize and mobilize to bring about change. Fortunately, there are opportunities this fall for all of us who get it, who are getting it, on the severity of this and the immediacy and the urgency of it, to take action.

Most immediately, October 24th is an international day of action being organized by 350.org. There are literally 115 countries, 1,500 actions all around the world happening on that day. That’s a very important action, a very important way to keep building momentum towards Copenhagen.

There’s civil disobedience, nonviolent civil disobedience, happening on November 30th around the world, being organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice.

And then, during the Copenhagen talks themselves, in the middle of it, on Saturday, December 12th, is a global day of action being organized by the Global Climate Campaign, the Global Campaign for Climate Action, and many other groups.

So there are major opportunities for the—from the grassroots, from below, to bring the kind of pressure that absolutely needs to be brought. There is movement. There has been movement on this issue for years, including in the United States, but it’s absolutely time to step it up and to magnify it and intensify it. That’s what we need.

AMY GOODMAN: And the position of the US Congress and the Obama administration, Ted Glick?

TED GLICK: The Obama administration certainly gets the issue in a way that the Bush administration did not. There’s no question that some things are happening that are positive.

The problem is that the US Congress continues to be a stronghold of the coal interests and oil interests. You know, coal and oil has a major stranglehold over Capitol Hill. And again, that’s why mobilization is critical. We’re not going to solve this problem, unless we can break that stranglehold, unless we can get the kind of legislation that really begins to move us seriously off of coal, ends the building of any new coal plants, gets us onto a clean energy trajectory. Again, that won’t happen without significant mobilization on a broad scale.

ANJALI KAMAT: Andrew Revkin from the New York Times, I want to bring you back into the conversation. Can you talk about also why is Copenhagen so important?

ANDREW REVKIN: Well, if I could briefly just resonate on this point on the blog lately, I’ve moved, over twenty years, from covering just the pure science—you know, how much CO2 gives you how much warming, all that stuff—to what causes change or not. And there’s been this phrase that’s repeated. It’s on the blog right now, my piece out of the summit. It’s called “blah, blah, blah, bang.” We have this tendency in human nature, with a looming, slow-drip problem like global warming, even in the face of these incremental changes, most of which are in places we don’t pay a lot of attention to, while we’re insulated ourselves, to let things slide until we get hammered. And the hammer has not fallen yet in any way that has been that kind of wake-up call.

Robert Brulle, who’s this sociologist, on the blog, sort of deconstructing us, shrinking us, you know, he says we’re really—and he points to the activist community, too, and said, you know, this isn’t just about lobbying within the Beltway. If you don’t have this kind of social awakening, in the absence of the big slam from nature, we’re not really going to do stuff. And so, what I’ve said, I asked on the blog again, are we still in this “blah, blah, blah, bang” kind of situation? Can we grow out of that? And it’s not clear yet.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, Copenhagen having no carbon emissions standards, no requirements, no—that it’s all dropped, the mandates?

ANDREW REVKIN: Well, India—the reality is, it was really articulated, interestingly enough, by the Bush administration, that, you know, what we’ve got to deal with here is an incredibly variegated set of nearly 200 countries, with these entrenched blocs—the have-nots, the haves, the have-too-muches, the getting-enough folks—and you’re never going to have an agreement.

In fact, this has been articulated very clearly lately by Tim Wirth of the UN Foundation and others, that in Copenhagen, the most likely scenario is for sort of a package of fairly modest agreements on specific things like forests or technology sharing, but the big, heavy lift of having a global cap and sort of a Kyoto-style system after—

AMY GOODMAN: Because Kyoto is expiring.

ANDREW REVKIN: Kyoto is expiring, and the next thing won’t be like Kyoto. It’ll be something different. That seems to be what everyone is forecasting, meaning not a mandatory ceiling for the globe under which everybody plays nice and trades, and people make money and cut emissions. It’s not going to—the chances of that coming out within even a few years beyond Kyoto are mixed.

ANJALI KAMAT: And where does that leave the billions of climate refugees?

ANDREW REVKIN: Well, one of the issues that there’s some hope for an actual concrete commitment in Copenhagen is for actual money to flow to countries with climate vulnerability. It’s, as you see, Africa—the African Union, Ethiopia, they said they’re going to walk out if there isn’t sign of that. And if you look back at—for twenty years, I’ve been covering this since the ’80s, the first climate treaty in 1992, there were commitments to give poor countries adaptation money. And it never happened in any meaningful way. So if that doesn’t happen—that’s a starting point, I think—something along the—for that will likely come.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Andrew Revkin, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning science reporter for the New York Times, writes the blog “Dot Earth” over at the Times website. His recent book, The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World. Ted Glick, policy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and Anna Pinto in Pittsburgh, indigenous rights activist from India. And we’re going to stay right now in Pittsburgh around the issue of the protest there.

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The Great Recession: It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over

The world economy is growing; stock markets are up; talk of recovery, not world depression, fills the business pages. As the leaders of the 20 leading economies gather in Pittsburgh this week, they might well feel the euphoria of someone who has survived a near-death experience. (For an insightful report on Pittsburgh and the G-20, go here)

Well, hold the champagne. Don't declare victory while the enemy is still advancing. Bush's calamitous folly in Afghanistan—celebrating victory and invading Iraq while the Taliban and al-Qaeda were regrouping in the mountains—should have taught us that much. Let's not go Bush on the economy.

The question is one of jobs. The reality is companies are still shedding workers; unemployment is still rising. There is no recovery until jobs are being generated. Before the leaders deal with what comes after the recovery, they better secure it. Pittsburgh should be first and foremost a summit on jobs.

The leaders of the labor union federations from the 20 countries, led by the AFL-CIO, call the leaders to sober up in their "Pittsburgh Declaration." Unemployment is high and rising. It is slated, they report, to almost double over the next 18 months in the industrial countries, and continue rising with rates over 10 percent well into 2011. Over 200 million workers worldwide could be pushed into extreme poverty.

In the U.S., one in six workers is unemployed or underemployed. Companies are shedding jobs, not hiring. Young workers are hurt the most. Even recent college graduates struggle, with 80 percent of new college graduates—the boomerang generation—moving back in with their parents. Long-term unemployment is at record rates. Unemployment is the worst in a quarter century and rising.

High unemployment is accompanied by stagnant wages and benefits, and cutbacks in hours. This comes after a lost decade in which most families lost ground. Hard-pressed families have no choice but to tighten belts. Declining consumption means more layoffs. Declining incomes mean falling revenues for governments. State and local governments, having burned through their rainy day funds, are now laying off teachers and police.

The unprecedented intervention of the Federal Reserve to bail out the banks—interest rates near zero, purchasing over a trillion in mortgage backed securities, and much more—and the Obama recovery plan—providing aid to states and localities, bolstering low-wage workers, and beginning to generate jobs from public works programs—have managed to staunch the hemorrhaging, at least temporarily. Unprecedented in scope, they aren't yet enough to generate a recovery.

The union leaders get it right. The recovery plans to date "are inadequate in size" and "do not sufficiently focus on employment." They urge the leaders of the G-20 not to exit from their stimulus measures prematurely. Instead they argue for another round of job-focused spending, targeted on putting people to work, and sustained until the recovery is clear.

This is heresy in this country. Our know-nothing right dismisses the recovery plan as a failure, when it is in fact what is holding up the economy. The business community and conservative economists are railing about debt, calling for cutting back the current spending plans. They fret more about the potential of future inflation than the reality of right-now misery, and the clear and present danger of continued stagnation. The big banks are gamboling back into leveraged speculation and million-dollar bonuses, and fending off efforts to shut down their casino.

Obama must stand firm against this tide. The president should make it clear to the leaders in Pittsburgh that the measure of a recovery is that people are back at work, and that wages are rising once more. He should challenge them to focus on jobs, pushing for another round of coordinated recovery plans to put people to work. Hold off on the party. There is no recovery without jobs. And no victory while unemployment is rising.

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Ralph Nader on the G-20, Healthcare Reform, Mideast Talks and His First Work of Fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

As the United States prepares to host the Group of Twenty nations summit in Pittsburgh later this week, we speak with longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, author and presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Nader discusses Congress’s failure to pass any meaningful financial reform on Wall Street over the past year and critiques Obama’s healthcare reform proposal. Ralph Nader also talks about his first work of fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” Nader describes the book in terms of a practical utopia, a fictional vision that could become a new reality.

Guest:

Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate. He’s the author of several books and his latest work is his first work of fiction. It’s called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, and it’s out this Tuesday from Seven Stories Press.

AMY GOODMAN: As the United States prepares to host the Group of Twenty nations summit in Pittsburgh later this week, President Obama vowed Saturday to prevent a repeat of last year’s Wall Street collapse. In his weekly radio and internet address, the President promised to work with G20 leaders to take on the, quote, “reckless risk-taking and irresponsibility” that led to the crisis.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The first meeting of the G-20 nations in April came at the height of the global financial crisis, a crisis that required unprecedented international cooperation to jumpstart the world’s economies and help break the downward spiral that enveloped all our nations. At next week’s summit, we’ll have, in effect, a five-month checkup to review the steps each nation has taken, separately and together, to break the back of this economic crisis. And the good news is that we’ve made real progress since the last time we met, here at home and around the world.


Because of the steps taken by our nations and all nations, we can now say that we’ve stopped our economic freefall. But we also know that stopping the bleeding isn’t nearly enough. Our work is far from over.


We can’t allow the thirst for reckless schemes that produce quick profits and fat executive bonuses to override the security of our entire financial system and leave taxpayers on the hook for cleaning up the mess. And as the world’s largest economy, we must lead, not just by word, but by example, understanding that in the twenty-first century financial crises know no borders.


Not surprisingly, lobbyists for big Wall Street banks are hard at work trying to stop reforms that would hold them accountable, and they want to keep things just the way they are. But we can’t let politics as usual triumph, so business as usual can reign.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd is expected to propose a new plan to oversee banks that would merge the four banking agencies into a single regulator. His suggestion would combine the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into a single agency. The plan is expected to run into opposition from House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank, as well as President Obama.

Well, for more on the ongoing fallout of the economic crisis, a look at healthcare, as well as his new book, I’m joined now by a leading critic of the existing financial system. Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, corporate critic, attorney, author, activist, former presidential candidate a number of times over. For four decades he has helped us drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, work in safer environments.

He’s the author of several books, including In Pursuit of Justice and The Good Fight. This time, Ralph Nader is out with a work—well, it’s not exactly fiction or nonfiction. He calls it a practical utopia. It’s called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

We welcome you to Democracy Now!

RALPH NADER: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us, Ralph.

Well, let’s start on the economy, on this year anniversary of the collapse, and where you think we have come to in this year.

RALPH NADER: Well, President Obama is engaging in political progressive talk, but one year later, nothing has happened in Congress. There hasn’t even been a bill to financially regulate, bring under the rule of law and accountability Wall Street and the financial industry, hasn’t even gone to a committee yet. They’re just going to begin hearings in the Senate Banking Committee. There’s a massive attack on the consumer regulatory agency to protect people who have mortgages and credit cards and other financial instruments by the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbies. So you see the corporate lobbies swarming over Congress, political action committee money, but no legislative action whatsoever.

I don’t think this has a precedent in American history. There’s never been a criminal, speculative, massive collapse, such as occurred on Wall Street, affecting trillions of dollars of worker pension money, mutual funds, savings, jobs, affecting communities all over the country, and no action in Congress. That’s the test. It’s not the rhetoric. It’s whether these bills are moving through, by 535 men and women who put their shoes on every day like you and I do. And that’s not happening. And that’s the way you want to analyze it.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen? What is that legislation that needs to be passed?

RALPH NADER: Well, there’s a proposal crafted in part by Elizabeth Warren, who’s head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, to make sure that the Wall Street firms behave themselves. And she’s a professor of law at Harvard Law School. That’s a very well-drafted bill. There are some proposals to strengthen the organization of financial consumers, bank depositors, insurance policy holders, etc., that needs to be put in there. But the overall bill to repeal the Clinton-era repeal of Glass-Steagall, to repeal the Franklin Delano Roosevelt reforms—you have to repeal the repeal of those reforms, which set the stage in 1999 and 2000 for the rampant, wild speculation with other people’s money by investment banks and banks—Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and others, Goldman Sachs, of course.

AMY GOODMAN: The poverty rate, the number of people who are losing their homes, foreclosure, where do we stand?

RALPH NADER: Well, again, the administration cannot level with the American people, because whether it’s Obama or Bernanke or Secretary Treasurer Geithner, they cannot say anything negative, because they’re afraid of the markets. And so, all they say is mild positives. And so, they can’t level with the American people. So they use indicators that favor the corporate balance sheet, but not the worker balance sheet or the pensioneer balance sheet.

And so, poverty is going up, unemployment is shooting up, underemployment is massive. There’s probably 17 percent of the American people are unemployed or underemployed. Wages are stagnant or declining. And, of course, consumer debt is increasing. Home foreclosures are increasing. Those are the indicators you’ve got to put front and center. They’re the people indicators, not the corporate, business, economist indicators.

Hey, the banks are starting to make more profit. Yeah, but they’re being bailed out by Washington, and they can be technically insolvent and still make more profit, because they’re charging such high interest rates, fees and penalties.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, you talk about legislation saving us. A new report by the watchdog group Common Cause reveals the financial industry spent $42 million lobbying Congress during the first six months of the year and that nine of the top recipients of securities money so far this year are Democrats, like Senator Schumer of New York, topping the list, taking in something like $680,000 in campaign contributions.

RALPH NADER: It’s the same old rut. And that’s why I really wrote this work of fiction, because we are not imagining, Amy, what is necessary by way of money, organizers in the field, strategy, smarts, determination to break this massive corporate-state gridlock that’s put our country into a paralysis. Our country is stuck in traffic. It is being prevented from solving many problems or diminishing them—public transit, housing, consumer protection, living wage, universal health insurance, single payer, all these corporate crime crackdowns. All of these are problems that can be addressed and solved, but not when there’s too much power in too few hands, who make the decisions for the many to the many’s disadvantage.

So we have to—we have to ask ourselves the question: What will it take to break through? What will it take to put the people back into their sovereignty? What will it take to make sure that we enforce the Constitution and we don’t get in these foreign military adventures that are unconstitutional, violate statutes and violate international treaties, not just under Bush-Cheney, but there’s an unseemly continuity in this area under the Obama administration.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ve been talking about Congress. What about the G-20? I mean, you have world leaders gathering in Pittsburgh later this week. Also, many thousands of protesters are expected. But where does this story, whether we’re talking about the economy or healthcare, fit into the global picture and G-20? What can be accomplished there?

RALPH NADER: G-20 is a talk fest. It’s good for the Pittsburgh economy for about a week. The rallies are good, indicates that people are still trying to fight back. Nothing’s going to happen. We’ve seen this again and again with the G-20 and whatever G-number has had these meetings, whether in Canada or Europe or United States.

The issue again is, are we going to get the leadership from the enlightened super-rich to put the field organizers on the ground and to put the money into progressive campaigns and citizen action? For example, $1 billion will get us single payer in a year—that’s my sense—if we had field organizers and mobilization in every congressional district. I mean, if there was a private vote right now in Congress, about a third of them would support a single-payer system. But they are surrounded by these drug industry and health insurance lobbies and the money that’s dangled before them.

So we have to break through, and the only way we can break through is the majesty of our mind generating a higher level of imaginative “what if.” What if we have this kind of resource or these kinds of film organizers or these kinds of mass media attentions? Which is why I wrote this book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” And that’s in quotes. And it comes from a very interesting story at the beginning of the book that I can tell you, if you’re interested.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to hear that story after break. We’re talking to Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, ran for president of this country time and time again, raising issues like those he’s raising like right now. And he has a new book out. It’s not his typical book, not that any of them are, but this one is a—well, a kind of work of fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Ralph Nader. He has a new book out. It’s called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” The title may surprise you, and we’ll find out why that title in a minute.

But we want to talk about healthcare first. President Obama was on five networks on Sunday: on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Univision. He skipped Fox, because they skipped his healthcare joint address to Congress. I want to play a clip from his appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As I’ve said, about two-thirds of what we’ve proposed would be from money that’s already in the healthcare system but just being spent badly. And as I’ve said before, this is not me making wild assertions. You know, you always hear about waste and abuse in Washington, and usually it doesn’t mean much, because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is. This is money that has been directly identified, that the Congressional Budget Office, that Republican and Democratic experts agree is there, that is not improving the quality of our health. So the lion’s share of money to pay for this will come from money that’s already in the system.


Now, we are going to have to find some additional sources of revenue for the other third or so of the healthcare plan. And what I—and I’ve provided a long list of approaches that would not have an impact on middle-class Americans. They’re not going to be forced to pay for this. Insurance companies, drug companies are going to have to be ponying up, partly because right now they’re receiving huge subsidies from folks.


BOB SCHIEFFER: But aren’t they going to then pass that on to consumers? I mean, that’s what, you know, the Chamber of Commerce is saying. They’re starting a big ad campaign—


PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Right.


BOB SCHIEFFER: —right now. They say you’re going to put these taxes on these insurance companies, on people that make things like x-rays and lab tests and all of that, and they’re just going to turn right around and pass it right on to the consumer.


PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem. They’re passing on those costs to the consumer anyway. The only difference is—


BOB SCHIEFFER: But this will be more.


PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: No, the difference is, is that they’re making huge profits on it, Bob. Look, bringing about change in this town is always hard. When you’ve got special interests that are making billions of dollars, absolutely they’re going to want to keep as much of the profits that they’re making as possible. And by the way, those insurance companies, even during these down years, have been making terrific profits. We don’t mind them making profits; we just want them to be accountable to their customers.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. Ralph Nader, your response?

RALPH NADER: Well, it just shows is—he’s saying the right things, but the proposals he has are riddled with verbal indecision, like he won’t say if he doesn’t get a public choice or a Medicare alternative for people who are unable to afford private insurance, he won’t sign the bill. Now, in Congress, if you don’t draw the line the way LBJ used to, for example, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they eat you alive. They sense weakness. They sense excessive concessions. And that’s what he’s doing with all the media coverage he’s getting. He’s not putting forth a straightforward “this is what has to be done if we’re going to reduce the gouging and the waste and the fraud.”

The only approach that can do that is full Medicare for all, full government health insurance with private delivery, free choice of hospital and doctor. You’ve heard it a hundred times. That’s the only way, in western Europe and Canada, they’ve been able to control costs. So, in western Europe and Canada, they cover everybody for less than $4,000 per capita a year. In this country, it’ll be $7,500 per capita this year. And there won’t be—the tens of millions, 50 million people, won’t be covered, and tens of millions will be underinsured. I mean, to see all this data, it’s on this website, singlepayeraction.org.

But the point is that he keeps saying we’ve got to squeeze the waste and fraud, etc., and there’s enormous fraud. There’s $250 billion of billing fraud and abuse. And you can check the—Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard University has got the information on that. There are $400 billion out of $2.5 trillion, which is the health expenditure bill—$400 billion in administrative waste, all these people in Aetna and CIGNA and other companies denying people’s benefits and all the bureaucracy that these corporations generate, and not to mention their executive compensation.

So we really got—we have documented these problems. This country’s progressive movement has documented these abuses from A to Z—books, articles, documents, congressional reports. It’s time to ask the question: What is it going to take in terms of money, organizers, resources, creativity, to turn this country around in the reflection of what most people would like to see the United States of America become?

AMY GOODMAN: Your book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, it’s just out. Kind of fiction, not really nonfiction, you call it a practical utopia. Where did you get the title?

RALPH NADER: The title came from—Warren Buffett was watching post-Katrina in his living room in Omaha, and he saw these streams of poor people fleeing the floods and the winds, and no food, no water, no shelter, on the highways north of New Orleans. And no one was helping them. And so, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he got a whole convoy of supplies, and he took them down to the New Orleans area. He went down himself and distributed all the food and the tents and the medicine to these desperate families and came across an African American family, who was helping, and the grandmother grabbed his hands, looked up at him and said, “Only the super-rich can save us.”

And that haunted him all the way back to Omaha, where he developed a plan to get seventeen older super-rich enlightened Americans at a hotel on a mountaintop in Maui, Hawaii, and basically asked themselves, what is it going to take to turn this country around? It’s going to take mass media. One of the seventeen is Barry Diller. And it’s going to take a reversal of the insurance industry. It’s Peter Lewis. It’s going to take dealing with deficits and subsidies and organizing the veteran and veteran groups and the women’s clubs around the country. Ross Perot. It’s going to take a real coordination and putting in a lot of money. That’s what they all represented. Bill Cosby is one of them. Phil Donahue is one of them. Yoko Ono is one of them. William Gates, Sr., Leonard Riggio, Bernard Rapoport. These and others get together, and it all happens in one year, 2006.

When you read this book, you’ll not only get a lift in terms of the feasibility of change, if we only change the predicates and stop trying to go after trillion-dollar industries with a few million dollars of citizen group budgets, and you not only get a lift, but you can see, step by step, the strategy, the tactics—how they set up a People’s Chamber of Commerce with tens of thousands of progressive small businesses around the country; how they set up a sub-economy, where they bought all kinds of businesses and got inside the corporate beast, because they own these companies; how they developed mass media; how they got people’s attention through the use of, for example, this parrot, Patriotic Polly, which got on TV early in 2000 and got millions of emails when it kept saying, “Get up! Don’t let America down! Get up! Don’t let America down!”

You know, in the early part of the twentieth century, Amy, and the latter part of the nineteenth, there were practical utopias, or there were just plain utopias, like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, that really infused and raised the horizons of the progressive movement and people like Eugene Debs. In fact, that book sold a million copies, Looking Backward. We’ve stopped doing that in the last two generations. Our imaginations have been stifled by the grim reality of concentrated corporate power.

But when you see how these Meliorists, which is what these seventeen super-rich elderly progressive Americans called themselves, when you see how Sol Price, who started the Price Club, took on Wal-Mart to unionize Wal-Mart, you will see what happens when there’s smarts, determination and adequate money to take on a behemoth like Wal-Mart. You’ll also see how entrenched right-wing politicians, when they’re surrounded with mass movements back in their congressional district, and they’re basically confronted with ultimatum in this climactic scene in Congress at the end of the book, how they react.

And it’s important, I think, for all of us to stop just documenting and documenting and diagnosing and proposing these things, when there’s no power behind, there’s no juggernaut, there’s no pressure to organize the mass of the citizenry in the directions that really reflects their public sentiment, to use Abraham Lincoln’s phrase.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, why fiction?

RALPH NADER: Because nonfiction prevents you from imagining. You have to, in effect, document Blackwater. You have to document the atrocities in Iraq, the military-industrial complex. All of these books, wonderful books, are coming out, more than ever in American history. You’ve had many of the authors on your program. But they are bound by nonfiction. They’re bound by the realities of concentrated power, which they are exposing in terms of their abuses. So you have to have fiction to raise the imaginative capability, what is feasible to fulfill life’s possibilities for people in this country and abroad. And that’s why fiction is so important.

I didn’t take the novel approach, because that’s very restrictive. That’s why it’s called a practical utopia. A professor in California, Russell Jacoby, wrote a book in 1999 called The End of Utopia, and I picked it up. I said, “What’s this all about?” because, you know, utopia, in most people’s minds, is like off-the-chart science fiction. It turns out he documented how, even in the academic world, the capacity and ability to imagine has been frozen. It’s been stuck, just like the society is stuck in traffic. So that’s why the fictional approach was used.

And also, look, you have a mega-billionaire. His name is Jerome Kohlberg. He was a big acquisition, merger person on Wall Street. His passion is election reform, which is part of this book. And while he started it a little bit, and then nobody, you know, rallied to his cause, but the key is, was he willing to spend a half-a-billion dollars getting it underway? That’s the key here. This entire redirection of our country embodied in this fiction of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” was pulled off not just by smart strategies, legions of organizers, legions of grassroot lecturers, but the whole thing cost less than $15 billion.

And you know there are people—Bloomberg is worth more than that. Carl Icahn is worth more than that. One multibillionaire. We have to imagine, step by step. So there are no magic wands in this book. This is a very realistic, month-by-month strategy for a titanic power collision with the entrenched CEOs and their political allies.

Leslie Stahl read this on her vacation in August, and she wrote me a very nice letter. You know, she’s the correspondent for 60 Minutes. And she thought the book was engrossing, creative and funny. And I said, “I’ll take all three, Leslie.”

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, why do you call these people “Meliorists”?

RALPH NADER: Because they were trying to figure out what they were going to call themselves to avoid a Bush Bimbaugh-type smear. One of the characters in the book is Bush Bimbaugh, who we all know is a takeoff on Rush Limbaugh. And a wonderful scene there when he invited Ted Turner into his studio, because he was losing ratings because of the growth of the progressive movement. They were saying, “What do we call ourselves so we’re not smeared, you know, by the editorialists of the Wall Street Journal or others?” And they came up with this word Meliorist, which means betterment. These are retired, progressive, enlightened billionaires and mega-millionaires who want to better the country. That’s what they called themselves.

But they didn’t go public until the mid-year, as they—that they were a coordinated effort. And as a result, they were able to engage in a strategy of coordinated surprise when they took on the CEOs.

And the Darth Vader in the book, who’s called Lobo, retained by the CEO Goliaths, represents every conceivable effort to stop the Meliorists. This is a titanic power collision. It’s not philanthropy. It’s not soft charity. It’s shifting power from the few to the many, top down, bottom up. That is, top down from the mega-rich, enlightened older people who are the Meliorists, down to the low [inaudible].

There’s a very good section in the book on how they did it in southwest Oklahoma to take on a thirty-eight-year-old veteran, House Rules Committee veteran, Republican—remember, the scene takes place in 2006—how they mobilized it in very practical ways. It eliminates all the stereotypes that we’ve learned to swallow as progressives about red state, blue state. It gets down to the concrete lives and the concrete hopes and the concrete capacities of our country.

AMY GOODMAN: So, have you lost faith in grassroots movements making that difference, making that change?

RALPH NADER: No, they can’t make it without very significant resources. If you want to set up 2,000 people organized in each congressional district, as the Meliorists do, you’re going to need tens of millions of dollars to get the staff, the offices, to find those 2,000 people, to root them so they go beyond the first year and they institutionalize themselves.

And this book, I hope, will be read by mega-billionaires. I hope they’ll say, “You know, all this time we wanted to do something about the crazy war on drugs or the prison reform or tax reform”—it’s inside their heads, but they’re very discouraged. I’ve talked to a lot of these super-rich, enlightened people over the years. I’ve never seen them so demoralized about the state of their beloved country. And in their advanced years, they don’t want to just watch it decay. But they’re all very egocentric, in a way. I mean, they’re entrepreneurs. They’ve done it, you know, without great help. And they don’t collaborate. And that’s the key, that the seventeen Meliorists are far more powerful than the sum of their parts, in terms of what they bring to this gigantic battle with the corporate and political power structure.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you gotten reaction from any of them, since this is a fictional account, but you’re using real people, real descriptions, real super-rich in the book?

RALPH NADER: I think they’re starting to read it now. They’ve had it for a couple weeks. It’s going to—you know, it’s a pretty hefty book, and the whole reason is because it’s all in the details. And the details are not dull. The idea here is to make apathy boring and to make civic action exciting. There are parades and bands, and the activity is in the rhythm of people’s cultural habits as they’re eased out into the public arena from the desperation of their private lives, economically and otherwise.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, as we go back to the issue of healthcare and what needs to be done, one of your key issues over the decades, Max Baucus, after months of negotiation, comes out with a bill, which now has no Republican support. Many Democrats are saying they will not support it. What do you think of Baucus and his plan and where really this is going to go and what you think needs to happen? Would you support a plan without a public option, though you are a single-payer advocate?

RALPH NADER: No, the public option, or what they should have called it, “public choice,” if they knew language, it’s not going to work. It will always be strapped by all kinds of restrictions. Even if it passes, they’ll have it straightjacketed. Only a certain number of people can even buy insurance from this proposed public option.

Senator Baucus is a typical Democrat in Republican clothing. He’s a crypto-Republican. Now, would he get away with this if there were several million dollars in grassroot mobilization in his home state of Montana? I mean, Montana has sent some pretty progressive senators in the past. The people haven’t changed. They just are not being brought together by field organizers in the kind of effort that’s described in this book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” But there’s very little going on in Montana. There’s a few rallies. There are a few demonstrations. But there’s a critical mass that’s needed there.

It looks like Baucus’s version is going to prevail with some tweaks in the Senate. Then you’re going to have the Waxman version in the House in the various committees. And then what are they going to do when they come into conference with the swarms of drug and health insurance lobbies? The drug companies have 450 full-time lobbyists on Capitol Hill, almost one to every senator and representative, not to mention their nationwide support network.

Now, the single-payer people, I don’t even know if they have one full-time lobbyist. So we have to ask ourselves, are we serious here? And if you are a super mega-rich, enlightened elderly person, or not elderly person, are you going to get serious, in terms of where you, without anybody persuading you, where you already want this country to go? That’s what we have to confront here.

The single payer is a majoritarian issue. It’s supported by 59 percent of physicians in a poll last year. A larger number of nurses, a lot of health economists support it. Why isn’t it moving? Because the people are not in charge of the Congress, even though they’re the only ones that have the vote; corporations are in charge, even though they have no vote.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, last question, and we only have less than a minute, but the White House has announced that President Obama is going to be meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Palestinian President Abbas in New York on Tuesday. That’s tomorrow. This, after US special envoy George Mitchell left Israel with no deal on a resumption of peace talks in the region. What do you think needs to happen there?

RALPH NADER: For a minute, I thought you said President Obama was going to meet with progressives in the White House on healthcare, which he’s never done. He’s met with CEOs.

I don’t think President Obama has any cards with the Israeli military approach to the Palestinians. He’s not going to cut off economic aid, which Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996 in a joint address to Congress said he was going to phase out, because Israel is a modern economy, which has universal health insurance, by the way. He’s not going to cut off military aid. What are his cards? Poor George Mitchell is shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Ramallah. He has no cards either.

The only way to begin changing this is to bring the Israeli peace movement to the US Congress for widely publicized hearings. These are ex-generals, ex-security chiefs, former mayors, members of the Knesset, former ministers. They’ve been pummeled by the recent events of the militarists. But once they’re given a national exposure here in this country, they will connect with about 50 percent or more of the Israeli people who want a two-state solution.

You know, it’s just like anything else. The majority of the people were against the Iraq invasion, yet the neocons and people in the White House, a minority among public opinion, plunged us into this war. Similarly, in Israel. Once the Israeli peace movement, with all those credentialed and accomplished people, connect with the Palestinian peace movement, with whom they have worked out in intricate ways in the Geneva meetings years ago a two-state solution, then you’ll see Israeli society begin turning around. And that’s about the only political lever the Congress and Obama would have. Put them up before the Senate and the House. In sixty years, they have—Israeli peace movement leaders have never been invited for one hour of congressional testimony.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. Ralph Nader, thanks so much for being with us, longtime consumer advocate, presidential candidate, his latest book called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

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