"Reframing 911: Alternatives to Endless War"

WBAI Forum, Sept. 11-14, 2003

"OK, we all have anniversary fatigue. But if administration critics cede 9/11 to the right, Karl Rove wins."
-- Joan Walsh, VP and News Editor, Salon.com, September 2002

"Some criticize this war on terror as unilateral or pre-emptive. But didn't September 11 teach us that we cannot wait while threats gather? That we must connect the dots, even if other nations refuse to see the pattern? That pre- empting terrorists before they acquire weapons of mass destruction, before they come to our shores, before they can harm America is the goal?"
-- Ken Mehlman, Bush Reelection Campaign Manager, NYC, July 2003

REFRAMING 911: ALTERNATIVES TO ENDLESS WAR; WE MUST CONNECT THE DOTS

Schedule and Venues follow below.Thursday, September 11, The Riverside Church, South Hall, 91 Clermont Avenue Entrance.Take the 1 or 9 trains to 116th and Broadway, walk to Riverside Drive and look for the Clermont Avenue entrance.

Friday, September 12, The Riverside Church, Nave, 490 Riverside Drive (between 120 and 122 Streets). Take the 1 or 9 trains to 116 and Broadway, walk to Riverside Drive.

Saturday, September 13, The Riverside Church, Assembly Hall, 91 Clermont Avenue Entrance. On the weekend, make certain to take the train, 1 or 9, that will stop at 116th and Broadway. Walk to Riverside Drive and look for the Clermont Avenue entrance.

Sunday, September 14, 10 am-5.30 pm, The Synod House, Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, 110 Amsterdam Avenue. Take local 1 or 9 to 110 Street Stop.

Sunday, September 14, 5.30-9pm, The Riverside Church Nave, 490 Riverside Drive (between 120 and 122 Streets) Take the 1 or 9 trains to 116 and Broadway, walk to Riverside Drive.

PRE-REGISTRATION INFORMATION:

Students, Seniors, Low-Income: $15 for all three days.
All others: $25 for all three days.
$10 a day.

To PAY BY CREDIT CARD, call: 212-209-2842 , 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.

To PAY BY CHECK, make check payable to WBAI Pacifica Radio earmarked for REFRAMING 911 FORUM, Mail To: WBAI Radio, Attention: Indra Hardat, 120 Wall Street, 10th Floor, NY, NY 10005.

You can PAY IN CASH DIRECTLY AT WBAI - see Shirley Irons.

For all information, call WBAI at 212-209-2800.

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PROGRAM

Thurs., Sept. 11, 6:00-11:00 pm: Reframing 911 Kick-off - Film Exhibit and Speaking Panel. Showing "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 911" (confronting disturbing cover-up attempt); "The Great Deception" by Barrie Zwicker; Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death" (heartbreaking expose documenting the lawlessness of the USA "terrorist" hunters) produced by Jamie Doran; and "We Are Family" by Danny Schechter (featuring almost 200 famous rock and movie stars against the Bush plan), followed by open discussion with former Congressmember Cynthia McKinney, former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern, founder/member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity ( CIA analyst 1964 -1990 who regularly reported to the vice president and senior policy-makers on the President's Daily Brief from 1981-85), Former LAPD Narcotics Detective Mike Ruppert who has been exposing official corruption for years, John Judge of 911 Citizenswatch, and Dr. Faiz Kahn who served as a triage doctor at ground zero. Program sponsored by: Guerrilla News Network http://www.gnn.tv, 9-11 Citizens Watch http://www.911citizenswatch.org, and WBAI. At The Riverside Church http://www.riversidechurch.net, South Hall, enter at 91 Claremont Ave.

Special thanks to the WBAI program "Ain't That Good News" for co-sponsoring this event and helping make September 11th the kickoff date for a weekend long WBAI/Ain't That Good News Forum: Reframing 911: Alternatives to Endless War - We Must Connect the Dots.

September 12, 2003 Friday 6-10:30 pm: 9-11: Unleashing the New American Century of Endless War on the World; Response of The Peace Movement (framing the problem, how pre-9-11 policy became post 9-11 policy; how 9-11 hemorrhaged into the perfect defense for illegal, "preventive"-"pre-emptive" war on the world)

September 13, 2003 Saturday 10:00am - 10 pm. 9-11 "War On Terror" OR Corporate Globalization; Mobilizing Strategies to Build DEMOCRATIC ECONOMICS. (examining the moorings of empire in corporate mass media and the military- industrial-information-cultural complex and how to unravel corporate power and build an alternative political economy):

September 14, 2003 Sunday 10:00am-9pm: 9-11: Unleashing The Patriot Act Waging Homeland Insecurity; Building Resistance and Winning (examining the mal-effects of anti-terror legislation at home and abroad, the attack on civil rights, labor and immigrants, the growing resistance to such attacks and how we must work domestically and internationally to reinforce democracy and the rule of just law).

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In 1905, protesting the US invasion of the Philippines, Mark Twain wrote "The War Prayer," in which an "aged stranger" enters a church where the congregation has been listening to an heroic sermon about the glory to be won in battle by young patriots armed with the love of God. Motioning the startled minister to stand aside, the aged stranger improvises a bitter peroration that makes clear the true meaning of the prayer:

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

80 years of Americans have had the opportunity to read and understand the war prayer. Yet still our leaders get away with claiming God on our side as we declare preemptive war on the world. Where does the buck stop?

The Buck Stops Here: "Young people under the age of twenty-five represent over THREE BILLION of the world's 6,271,933,556 population. Many young people worldwide, representing all races, genders, colors, religions, denominations and faiths are already taking action and making their voices heard in favor of a peaceful outcome to the present United States Government's conflict with the Iraqi Government. More voices and actions are urgently needed! The momentum for peace must quickly increase, or hundreds-of-thousands of lives could be lost through yet another war in Iraq." www.Peaceinc.org - Gretchen Elder, 16, Co- founder

The Buck Stops Here: "We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government, then we lose our ability to dispense justice and human kindness. Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption that have come between us and our self- governance." Granny D (Doris Haddock)

PROGRAM DETAILS

September 12, FRIDAY 6.30PM-10.30PM - 9-11 UNLEASHING THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY PROJECT OF ENDLESS WAR ON THE WORLD; RESPONSE OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT

MODERATOR: AMY GOODMAN, host of Democracy Now!

ARJUN MAKHIJANI: Keynote Address: US Monetary Imperialism, The War On Iraq, the Structure of Global Apartheid and the Struggle for Democracy (25 Minutes)

Arjun Makhijani is President and Senior Engineer, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, (IEER) Takoma Park, Maryland. He is author and co-author of numerous books, articles, reports including: Manifesto For Global Democracy: Two Essays on the Imperialist War System and the Struggle for Freedom (2003); Rule of Power or Rule of Law (2003); Securing The Energy Future of the United States :Oil, Nuclear, and Electricity Vulnerabilities and a post-September 11 2001 Roadmap for Action (2001); Ecology and Genetics, exploring the connections between the genetic structures of living beings and the ecosystems they need to survive (2001); Containing The Cold War Mess (1997); The Nuclear Power Deception 1996; From Global Capitalism to Economic Justice 1992; Climate Change and Transnational Corporations: Analysis and Trends (1992). He is principal author of the first overall study of energy efficiency potential of the US economy (1971); the first global analysis of energy and agriculture in the Third World (1975); and the first independent re-assessment of radioactivity emissions from a nuclear weapons plant (1989). Principal editor and co-author of the first global assessment of the health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons production Nuclear Wastelands, (1995), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by MIT Press. Co-author of the first technical study to show that de-coupling of economic growth from energy use growth was possible (1974); (ii) the first complete audit of the cost of the US nuclear weapons program (1998). Recipient of several awards, including the Josephine Butler Nuclear Free Future Award 2001.He writes regularly for the IEER's Global Outreach Project newsletter Energy & Security, a newsletter of nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament and energy sustainability, available in Chinese, French, Japanese and Russian and for IEER's English-language newsletter Science for Democratic Action.

WILLIAM RIVERS PITT: How the Post 9-11 "War On Terror" mirrors the Pre-911 New American Century Bid For US Empire (25 Minutes)

William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq," Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," Context Books .

WAYNE MADSEN: Pre-911 and Post-911 USA Policy In Africa Different in Degree Only: Aggression, Covert Operations, Corporate Military Expansion, Genocide and Terror (25 Minutes)

Wayne Madsen is Senior Fellow of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a non-partisan public advocacy group in Washington, DC. He works with members of Congress and congressional committees on legislation and hearings of common interest. . He has worked with Bob Barr on privacy legislation in the past. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in May 2001. He is also a freelance investigative journalist, and has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, Counterpunch, and the Intelligence Newsletter.. Mr. Madsen is the author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (1999), The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (1992), an acclaimed reference book on international data protection law, and he wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

DAVID BOOKBINDER: How 911 Heightened the Bush Administration Attack On The Environment: More Secrecy, More Unaccountability, More Fuel for Climate Change (25 minutes)

David Bookbinder is Adjunct Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center. After several years of general corporate litigation at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, Professor Bookbinder began practicing public interest environmental litigation, first in Boston and then eventually in Washington, D.C. He has litigated cases under most of the federal environmental statutes and is currently Senior Attorney with the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, where his responsibilities include global warming litigation and judicial nominations. Professor Bookbinder lives in the woods with one spouse, two children, a cat, a rabbit, some fish and two goats, and responded to the 2000 Long-form Census query as to his "most important duties" at work with, "Suing the Federal Government." David Bookbinder is one of the lead attorneys in a Sierra Club lawsuit seeking to determine the role of private executives and lobbyists in developing the Administration's National Energy Policy

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: "9-11 Unanswered Questions," 25 minutes

Cynthia McKinney is the former Congresswoman from Georgia's Fourth Congressional district (one of the most ethnically diverse in the Southeast, home to Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, Indians, Africans and Native Islanders). She was one of the first and few courageous members of Congress to appeal for a thorough investigation into 9/11. Voted to serve in Congress in 1992, she became Georgia's first and only African-American woman to serve in Congress and the only female member of the state's congressional delegation. On the eve of ten years of service in 2002 when she was ousted, Ms. McKinney had gained international stature as a distinguished advocate for voting and human rights. Her service in Congress earned her a place on the powerful Armed Services Committee. She also served as a key member on the International Relations Committee and was Ranking Member of its International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee.

KELLY CAMPBELL: 911 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: War is Not The Answer (15 minutes)

MAX UHLENBECK: The Anti-war Movement's Response to 911 and the "War On Terror" (15 Minutes)

Max Uhlenbeck worked as the Youth Coordinator for United for Peace & Justice from January - May 2003, through all of the major anti-war mobilizations. He works nationally with the NYSPC - National Youth & Student Peace Coalition, the coalition that organized the March 5th student strikes. Locally he works with the Student & Youth Solidarity Network in New York, facilitating dialogue between young activists in the city, organizing youth-led activist skill shares and discussion groups, and building ties between campus and community groups. He was one of the initial members of the No Blood for Oil Coalition focused on direct action against the war on Iraq. He participated in and organized several direct actions including a sit-in in the United Nations General Assembly and in Senator Hillary Clinton's office on the night of the war resolution vote.

PERFORMANCE: I WILL BEAR WITNESS: THE DIARIES OF VICTOR KLEMPERER 1933-1938 By Obie Award winning actor GEORGE BARTENIEFF.

This one person play directed by Karen Malpede, has generated intense discussions and received standing ovations in Heidelberg, London, Berlin, Vienna, Washington DC and New York where the actor won an Obie for his performance (2001). The play is adapted from the diaries of Victor Klemperer member of a well known European Jewish family who remained in Hitler's Germany and bore witness to the terrible rise of Nazi power and the rapid erosion of civil liberties. Actor Bartenieff is himself a child refugee from Nazi Germany. (60 minutes)

September 13: 9-11 'WAR ON TERROR' OR CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION? MOBILIZING STRATEGIES TO BUILD DEMOCRATIC ECONOMICS

MORNING PANEL 10.00AM. - 1PM: NAMING THE CORPORATE-MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CULTURAL COMPLEX

MODERATOR: HIBAAQ OSMAN: At the root of corporate enterprise: a blind disregard for the human rights of human beings - by race, gender, class (25 Minutes)

Hibaaq Osman is the Founding Director, Center for Strategic Initiatives of Women a non-partisan, non-profit organization working with women's rights organizations around the world since 1993. With an office in Washington DC, CSIW works in partnership with Muslim women activists and women's organizations around the world and CSIW supports the long-term process of fostering leadership and self-sustaining institutions. Osman is currently working in partnership with diverse women's networks in Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine. She has been involved in women's rights issues in Africa for over 15 years. She has worked to bring women's rights issues to the forefront of the domestic and international agendas. Most recently she founded SIHA (Strategic Initiatives for the Horn of Africa) to promote women's rights, peace and human development. Ms. Osman has done extensive research on conflict resolution, FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), and women's rights in Islam, and was previously a Senior Fellow of the Academy for Political Leadership and Participation at the University of Maryland. Since January this year Hibaaq Osman is serving as V-Day's Special Representative to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

DANNY SCHECHTER: How the Corporate Mass Media Builds Terror for the Corporate State"War On Terror" (25 Minutes)

Danny Schechter is a television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes and speaks about media issues. The author of Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception; Media Wars: Dissecting Media Coverage After 9/11 (2002); The More You Watch, The Less You Know (Seven Stories Press); and News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics, (Electron Press), he is executive editor of MediaChannel.org, the world's largest online media issues network, and recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists, 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism. He has produced and directed many TV specials and documentary films, among them: Counting on Democracy, narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee; We Are Family (2002), Nkosi: A Voice of Africa, AIDS Orphans (2001) narrated by Danny Glover; A Hero for All: Nelson Mandela, Farewell (l999); Beyond Life: Timothy Leary Lives (1997); Sowing Seeds/Reaping Peace: The World of Seeds of Peace (1996); Countdown to Freedom: Ten Days that Changed South Africa (1994), narrated by James Earl Jones and Alfred Woodard; Sarajevo Ground Zero (1993); Mandela in America (1990); and Student Power(1968). Schechter has been on staff at CNN and worked as a producer of 20/20 for ABC News where he won two National News Emmys for his work. He is co-founder and executive producer of Globalvision, a New York-based TV and film production company specializing in producing programs on the interface between popular music and society. He has produced profiles of Bruce Springstein, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner and pioneering segments on hip-hop and heavy metal. Working with guitarist Little Steven Van Zandt he produced SUN CITY, the hit record and video featuring 54 top artists speaking out against apartheid. In l991, he worked with Lenny Kravitz and Yoko Lennon on a video remake of John Lennon's classic Give Peace a Chance. He was a producer on the Nelson Mandela concert in London in l990. He was a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard. He has a masters from the London School of Economics.

WALTER A. DAVIS: Living in Death's Dream Kingdom: Exposing the Aggressive Roots of Capitalist Ideology (25 Minutes)

Walter A. Davis is Professor Emeritus Department of English at Ohio State University. He is a cultural critic who has written a series of books developing what he terms a tragic theory of the psyche and of history. The most recent of those books, Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and The Tragic Imperative (2001) is an examination of the dark, psychotic side of the American character. As such it constitutes, before the fact, one of the frameworks of thought we need if we are to understand what has happened in American politics and society since 9-11. In an earlier essay, "Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche After 9-11" Professor Davis applied the framework constructed in Deracination to the immediate aftermath of 9-11. Professor Davis' other books include Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity In/And Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and Freud (1989), Get the Guests: Psychoanalysis, Modern American Drama, and the Audience (1994) and a play on Hiroshima titled The Holocaust Memorial (2000). Davis has also worked as an actor in regional theatre. His latest book, due out this month, combines playwrighting and cultural analysis in an attempt to create a discourse adequate to an understanding of contemporary American society: An Evening With JonBenét Ramsey: A Play and Two Essays (Xlibris, 2003). He is now at work on a book tentatively titled Psyche As Tragic Process.

SPEAKER TO BE IDENTIFIED: The Courts: Arbiters of Social Justice or Enforcers of Corporate Privilege and Power?

AFTERNOON 2.PM- 5.30 PM: EXAMINING THE CORPORATE ECONOMY

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Message to Congress in January 1941: "The fourth (freedom) is freedom from fear, which translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments, to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor, anywhere in the world." Nice words. Now let us DO something about the military-industrial-death machine.

Eduardo Galeano "One of the big paradoxes in this upside-down world is that the five countries empowered to take care of peace are also the five biggest producers of arms. Almost half of the total weapons in the world are made by the United States, followed by Great Britain, France, Russia, and China. These are the countries with the right of veto in the U.N. Security Council. The U.N. was born to bring peace to the world, but the five countries with this sacred, beautiful, poetic mission of peace are also the five conducting the business of war".

MODERATOR: DAVID KUBIAK, co-producer Aint That Good News, founder/director BIG MEDICINE, grass-roots organizer with years of experience in Japan, India, USA, now in Maine

SEYMOUR MELMAN: The Imperative to Build A Civilian Economy Before The War Economy Leads Us Into A Permanent State of War (30 Minutes)

Seymour Melman is Emeritus Professor, Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science. He has long- advocated the idea of "economic conversion": the ordered transition from military to civilian production by military industries and facilities. He has also co-authored proposed national legislation that would mandate "alternative use" planning in military industries, labs and bases in order to facilitate nation-wide economic conversion. He is author of After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001); The De-Militarized Society (Harvest House, 1990), Profits Without Production (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988); The Permanent War Economy (Simon and Schuster, 1984); Pentagon Capitalism (McGraw-Hill, 1970); The Peace Race (Ballantine Books, 1962). Seymour Melman is the former President of the Association for Evolutionary Economics; Vice President of the New York Academy of Sciences; co-chair of SANE, Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy; chair of The National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament; and a participant in the Reindustrialization of the United States Project.

RANIA MASRI: The Hidden Costs of War (30 Minutes)

Rania Masri is a human rights advocate and environmental scientist. She is the director of the Southern Peace Research and Education Center, at the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, North Carolina. Her recent publications include Assault on Iraq's Environment: Radioactive Waste and Disease - The effects of depleted uranium weaponry and blockade in the book Iraq: Its History, People and Politics ed. Shams Inati. 2003; The Al-Aqsa Intifada: A natural consequence of the military occupation, the Oslo accords, and the 'peace process.'in the book The Struggle for Palestine ed. Lance Selfa, 2002; and with authors Abunimah and Ali, The Media's Deadly Spin on Iraq in the book Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War.ed. Anthony Arnove 2000,second edition 2002. She is the Campaign Coordinator of the Stop the War Profiteers Campaign, initiated by the Institute and endorsed by several leading veteran, faith, labor, peace and other organizations, as well as prominent scholars and activists across the country, among them Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Jim Hightower, and Global Exchange, New York Labor Against War, and Public Citizen Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program She serves on the steering committee of the United For Peace with Justice coalition, she is a national board member of Peace Action, the coordinator of the Iraq Action Coalition and a member of three national speakers' bureaus the Iraq Speakers Bureau Foreign Policy In Focus, and Niya.. Rania has a doctorate from North Carolina State University. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, she moved to the U.S. in 1986.

MIKE FERNER: Dismantling The Mechanisms of Corporate Rule (30 Minutes)

Mike Ferner works as the Communications Coordinator for the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD).  He served two terms as an independent member of Toledo City Council and was an independent candidate for mayor of that city in 1993. Formerly, union organizer for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), communications director for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) AFL-CIO. Co-founder of the Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy. Served in US Navy Hospital Corps 1969-73. Member, Veterans for Peace, Labor Party. He spent the month of February in Baghdad and Basra with the Iraq Peace Team.

EVENING PLENARY 6.30 PM - 10.30 PM: Stages of Growth from the Agriculture and Industrial Revolutions to Building the Ecological Revolution: Peace, Justice and Sustainable Development

MODERATOR: ETHAN MILLER Grass-roots organizer, singer, songwriter making the road by walking, Jed Collective, ME

DAVID MORRIS: Policy Options for the Ecological Revolution: Why New Rules. (30 Minutes)

David Morris founded The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) a nonprofit research and educational organization with offices in Washington DC and Minneapolis that provide technical assistance and information on environmentally sound economic development strategies. Since 1974, ILSR has worked with citizen groups, governments and private businesses in developing policies that extract the maximum value from local resources. He is the author of numerous books, articles and monographs including Seeing The Light Regaining Control Of our Electricity System (2001); Don't Bribe Them Buy Them: A Strategic Proposal of How New Yorkers Can Create-and Control-A Minor Baseball League of Their Own, (1998); The Trade Papers (monograph) (1991) Be Your Own Power Company (1982); Self-Reliant Cities (1982). ILSR's Democratic Energy e-Bulletin Archives -DEMOCRATIC ENERGY reports on the emerging debate between energy centralists and energy decentralists, between those who favor absentee ownership and regulation and those who favor local ownership and control. The Home Town Advantage e-Bulletin is a free e-bulletin to learn about land use policies and other tools that can protect the character and vitality of your home town. It reports on how other communities are bucking the "big box" retail trend and encouraging small-scale, homegrown businesses.

CATHERINE AUSTIN FITZ: The Solaris Idea (30 Minutes)

Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari, Inc. She is a former managing director and member of the board of Dillon Read & Co. Inc and a former Assistant Secretary of Housing in the first Bush Administration. Ms. Fitts publishes with and is a member of the Advisory Board of Sanders Research Associates in London and publishes a column Mapping The Real Deal in Scoop Media, New Zealand. She was founder/president of The Hamilton Securities Group Inc. a 50-employee owned broker-dealer/investment bank with aggregate revenues of $50 million.

SUSAN WITT: Land Trusts and Local Currencies: How they Can Help YOUR Community (30 Minutes)

Susan Witt is the executive director of the E. F. Schumacher Society since its founding in 1980. The Society maintains a 7,000 volume computer-indexed library that may be searched over the Web (www.schumachersociety.org). Over the years Susan has spawned the Self Help Association for a Regional Economy (SHARE) developed with a locally owned and managed Berkshire bank providing micro-credit, often to women without credit histories starting new businesses. From SHARE emerged SHAREcroppers, a newsletter connecting Berkshire consumers and farmers. She helped Jan Vander Tuin and Robyn Van En start the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in the country and got Paul Glover started with Ithica Hours ,one of America's most successful local currencies. Today Witt and Glover edit Local Currency News, reporting the local currency movement nationwide. She is the administrator of her local Community Land Trust, managing seventeen units of affordable housing, and an advisory board member of a locally owned and managed bank; of Orion Magazine, a nature quarterly; and of Public Radio Station WAMC out of Albany. She is the author of "Printing Money, Making Change: The Promise of Local Currencies" in A Forest of Voices: Conversations in Ecology edited by Chris Anderson and Lex Runciman ( 2000), and "Local Currencies: Catalysts for Sustainable Regional Economies with Robert Swann in People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures edited by Hildegarde Hannum (1997)

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September 14: 9-11 UNLEASHING THE PATRIOT ACT WAGING HOMELAND INSECURITY; BUILDING RESISTANCE & WINNING

MORNING PANEL 10AM -1PM The Corporate State

MODERATOR: MARY LOU GREENBERG, Co-Founder of Not In Our Name, the grass-roots anti-war, social justice mobilization.

BOB FITRAKIS: War on Drugs, Prelude to the War On Terror (25 Minutes)

Bob Fitrakis is a Professor of Political Science at Columbus State Community College. He has also taught at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Wayne State University and Oakland Community College. . He is the Executive Director of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) and has served as editor/publisher of the Free Press since 1993. Since 1990, Dr. Fitrakis co-hosts a public access TV news/public affairs program, "From the Democratic Left". He also co-hosts the weekly public affairs call-in talk radio program, "Fight Back!" on WVKO AM Radio where he also produces The Fitrakis Files. He was a columnist and investigative reporter for Columbus Alive, a frequent writer for various national and local publication and recipient of several Best Coverage of Government and Best Investigative Reporting awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists (OSPJ), the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies the Central Ohio Chapter of SPJ and the Press Club of Cleveland for his articles, including "The V File" investigative Senator George Voinovich, "Spook Air" about Southern Air Transport's ties to the CIA and drug-running at Rickenbacker Air Base in central Ohio, "Money for Nothing" about corruption in the bail bond industry and for "The Shapiro Murder File" linking several of Columbus' prominent citizens to organized crime. Bob Fitrakis is a founding member of the Michigan Democratic Socialists Caucus (DSC), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio (DSCO) and served on the National Political Committee of DSA. He was a candidate for Congress in the 12th district in 1992, elected Democratic Ward committeeperson in the 55th ward from 1996-2000. In March 1994 he served as an international observer for the national elections in El Salvador and in 1993, he visited Reynosa and Matamoros, Mexico as part of a human rights delegation to investigate conditions in the maquilladoras. He recorded his maquilladoras experience co-producing "The Other Side of Free Trade" a video shown nationwide at colleges and on public access stations. Dr. Fitrakis is currently running for Columbus City Council. He is a frequent speaker on political, labor and social policy issues at national academic and political conferences. He is the author of The Idea of Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist Party (1993).

MICHAEL RATNER: Patriot Act & Executive Orders: Attack On Immigrants, Human Rights and International Law (25 Minutes)

Michael Ratner is an international human rights lawyer, President of the Center For Constitutional Rights. He is founder/ partner in the law firm Ratner, DeCapprio & Chomsky, dedicated to public international law and domestic and international human rights litigation.

MICHAEL LETWIN: Patriot Act Attack on Labor and the Growing Resistance (25 Minutes)

Michael Letwin is Co-Convener of New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW), and is on the national leadership bodies of US Labor Against the War (USLAW) and of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).  From 1989-2002, he was President of UAW Local 2325/Association of Legal Aid Attorneys; he lost office last November after coming under intense attack for his outspoken opposition to the war.  During that time, he was a leading opponent of the Giuliani administration's attack on Legal Aid Society funding and trade union rights, of the police murders of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, and of the Rockefeller Drug Laws.  He remains a Legal Aid Society criminal defense attorney, and has been a political activist for peace and justice since the 60's.

UDI OFER: Report From the Grass-roots Mobilizing for Peoples Rights Rejecting The Patriot Act and Unconstitutional Executive Usurpation of Power (25 Minutes)

Udi Ofer is an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, and director of the New York Bill of Rights Defense Campaign. Prior to joining the NYCLU, Udi Ofer was a Skadden Fellow at My Sisters' Place, a domestic violence organization in Westchester County. While there, he initiated the organization's immigration practice, and created a legal clinic to represent battered women on their immigration and public benefits matters. Mr. Ofer's past public interest experience includes working at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a human rights organization in Jerusalem, and Brooklyn Legal Services, where he represented tenant groups in Housing Court. He was a Stein Scholar in Public Interest Law and Ethics.

WILLIAM G SINKFORD or KATHLEEN CLEAVER (not confirmed): Civil Rights are BORN OF The People, WON BY The People, ASSERTED FOR The People's Inalienable Human Rights. Government Has No Right To Take What is Not Its To Grant (25 Minutes)

Reverend William G Sinkford is President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the first African American President of a majority 'white' congregation in the USA. A strong opponent of the militarism that has been sweeping over the country since 9/11, he and leaders of different faiths signed a joint letter to President Bush urging peace, patience and diplomacy in dealing with Iraq. In May 2003 Reverend Sinkford joined a delegation of 40 interfaith world leaders in Amman, Jordan to meet with representatives of Iraq's major religious groups. This was the first time representatives of all Iraqi religions - including Shiite, Sunni, and Christian leaders - met since Saddam Hussein took power. He represents a church with deep roots in the civil rights movements; its congregants were among the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920 (Roger Baldwin and John Haynes Holmes), and the NAACP.

STEVEN STAPLES: Post 911 Global Conflagration of "National Security" legislation; From Corporate Globalization to Global Corporate Militarization (25 Minutes)

Steven Staples is the Director of the Polaris Institute's Project on the Corporate-Security State. The Polaris Institute is a public interest research group based in Ottawa. He is also Chair of the International Network on Disarmament and Globalization a network of activists and researchers in more than thirty countries concerned about the new global economy and the need for peace, disarmament, and the funding of human needs. The network was established at the Hague Appeal for Peace in 1999. He is also the Issue Campaigns Coordinator for the Council of Canadians a citizens' organization dedicated to opposing corporate rule and promoting social justice and democracy. The Council of Canadians is the largest citizens' group in Canada, with 100,000 members. Steve is dedicated to exposing the links between globalization and militarism, and how globalization promotes war  - as well as the production of weapons to wage it. He speaks to audiences in the US, Canada, and Europe, most recently at the World meeting of Abolition 2000 in Tahiti, the Hague Appeal for Peace in the Netherlands, the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace founding meeting in Bangladesh, the civil society events in Seattle during the WTO, the Arms Trade Study Group of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C., and peace conferences in Canada, Russia, and Spain. He has produced two video documentaries, his articles are published in the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives' journal, the Monitor, and he makes regular appearances on Canada's national news media on issues of foreign policy and globalization.

AFTERNOON 2 PM -5 PM Lawless Government Making Lawlessness 'Law'

MODERATOR: REVEREND PETER LAARMAN : The Accountability Project 20 minutes

Rev. Peter Laarman has led New York City's Judson Memorial Church as its senior minister for ten years, during which time he has helped to nurture The Employment Project, New York Jobs with Justice, the Campaign for the Abolition of Sweatshop and Child Labor, and similar economic justice initiatives. He is a board member of Planned Parenthood NYC and leads that body's Religious Leadership Task Force. Following the 9/11 disaster , Rev. Laarman helped to create the NYC Forum of Concerned Religious Leaders, a network of 1000+ clergy and other religious persons committed to action and ethical reflection around the demonic kind of religion reflected in the "dominance" doctrine and other Bush Administration excrescences. Rev. Laarman has also served as the volunteer president of the HERE New York Assistance Fund, a special relief fund that raised and distributed over $3.5 million in cash assistance and training grants for the mainly "back of the house" workers who lost their jobs when Windows on the World was destroyed. Before training for the ministry at Yale Divinity School, Mr. Laarman served as communications director for the UAW International Union in Detroit. He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ (UCC).

ALICE SLATER: USA: Repressing Dissent At Home; Breaking International Law Abroad and Expanding the Nuclear Threat 20 Minutes

Alice Slater is President of GRACE, the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment,and coordinator of Abolition 2000, a global network of over 2000 organizations on every continent working for a treaty to ban the bomb. She directs the networks Sustainable Energy Working Group which produced a model statute for a Global Sustainable Energy Fund. GRACE also works to shut down factory farms, providing economic analysis and community organizers to help family farmers prevent transnational agricultural corporations from despoiling their communities and ruining their livelihoods. She serves on the New York City Bar Associations Committee on International Security and on the Board of the Lawyers Committee for Nuclear Policy. She is on the Executive Committee of the Middle Powers Initiative, working to create pressure on nuclear weapons states for swifter nuclear disarmament, is an Advisor to the Nuclear Policy Research Institute Board, and a volunteer in the Kucinich for President Campaign. Locally she is working with Code Pink and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition to shut down a nuclear reactor only 22 miles away from New York City. Prior to founding GRACE, she was Executive Director of Economists Allied for Arms Reductions.

SARAH ZAIDI : USA : Bringing Democracy and 'Civilization' or Global Lawlessness? Violating some International Law and Undermining Others 20 Minutes

Sarah Zaidi (M.Sc., Sc.D. Harvard School of Public Health) is Research Director and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, a New York-based organization that focuses on ending poverty as a matter of international human rights. She has conducted field research and led fact-finding missions in Iraq, Ecuador, Haiti, US-Mexico border, Afghanistan and her native Pakistan. Her background is in public health and women's rights, and her main interest has been in linking scientific research methods with human rights advocacy. Dr. Zaidi has traveled to Iraq five times since 1991, including several fact-finding missions with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization to assess the nutritional status of women and children. In the past year she has contributed to several new CESR reports on Iraq: "The Human Costs of War in Iraq", "Tearing Up the Rules: the Illegality of the Invasion of Iraq", and "Water Under Siege: Human Rights Violations by the US and UK". Currently, she is working on a report that analyzes the human rights and humanitarian obligations of the occupying forces in Iraq.

CLOSING EVENING PLENARY 6 PM - 9 PM

21st Century: AGE OF THE GLOBAL CORPORATE STATE or Triumph of The Inviolable Human Rights of Human Beings

MODERATOR: MEDEA BENJAMIN (confirmed) Co-founder of Global Exchange and Code Pink, advisory board member of Iraq Occupation Watch, trail-blazing, tireless, long-term activist for peace and justice.

C. WILLIAM MICHAELS: Patriot Act and Twelve Common Characteristics of a National Security State 30 Minutes

C. William Michaels is an attorney, activist, and writer living in Baltimore. He is the author of No Greater Threat: America After September 11 and the Rise of a National Security State. He is co-founder and coordinator of a local chapter of the national peace/justice organization Pax Christi, and has served formerly as the full-time coordinator of the Justice & Peace Office for the Baltimore Archdiocese. He has produced public affairs and peace and justice programming for radio and public access TV including New Earth Radio for (former) WCVT and World Views for the Baltimore Cable Access also shown in New York and Boston. He is a member of the Catholic Labor Committee and serves on the boards of several local peace and justice organizations.

GREG PALAST: Elections for the people of the people by the people. Mobilizing for what lies ahead. (30 Minutes)

Greg Palast is an award-winning reporter for BBC Television's Newsnight and The Observer of London, Greg Palast's extraordinary reports, front-page news in Europe, have been blocked out of America's mainstream media. His stories about Bush's election theft, documented in the book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002), and in the video Counting on Democracy, and his stories about intelligence agency cover - ups, and globalization - backed up with smoking gun documents, inside sources and on - the - record interviews -shock the most informed readers. Guerrilla News Network, named Palast 'Reporter of the Year.' Palast won Britain's highest journalism honors for his 1998 undercover investigation of influence peddling within Tony Blair's cabinet - by Enron and other US corporations. He turned his sleuthing skills on to the Bush money trail: uncovering for BBC and The Observer the uncomfortable truths of how the Bush Administration quashed investigations of Saudi financing of terror -- and Poppy Bush's extraordinary methods for stuffing his bank account and his son's campaign coffers. He was awarded the Financial Times David Thomas Prize and Nominated Business Journalist of the Year (UK) for exposing "Reverend" Pat Robertson's dodgy business scams. His writings have appeared in Salon.com, Harper's and The Washington Post ... yet he remains to most Americans, "The world's greatest investigative reporter you've never heard of." (Cleveland Free Times). Before writing for the Observer and Guardian newspapers, Palast traveled the globe as expert investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering. For the Chugach Natives of Alaska, he unearthed the doctored safety records that proved the Exxon Valdez disaster was an inevitability, not an accident. In Chicago, he bargained contracts for the United Steelworkers Union in Chicago, in Peru he helped found a consumer rights organization. Years ago, he guided the formation of an alliance linking Enron workers in Brazil and India. In 1988, Palast directed the government's investigation of a US nuclear plant builder in which the jury awarded the largest racketeering penalty in US history. Last summer, the United Nations International Labour Organisation (Geneva) issued his book, Democracy and Regulation, based on his lectures at Cambridge University and University of Sao Paulo. .

VANDANA SHIVA: Challenging The Patriarchy, Speaking from The World Court Of Women: Peace Justice & Sustainable Living For Our Children's Children's Children; Considering Security Council Resolution (30 Minutes)

Dr. Vandana Shiva is the founder/director of the Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology, New Delhi. She is also founder/director of a seed savers project in India. Dr. Shiva is a philosopher/activist with degrees in Physics and the Philosophy of Science. A prolific writer, she has authored over 11 books and numerous monographs, research papers and articles, among them: Globalization of Agriculture, Food Security and Sustainability (1998), co-author of The Enclosure and Recovery of the Commons (1997), The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics (1993), Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology and the Third World (1993). She has been a visiting professor on campuses worldwide and headlined at numerous global conferences including the Fourth World Conference on Women Beijing, the 1992 Earth Summit Rio, World Social Forum Puerto Allegre, the International Forum on Globalization. In 1993 she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for her inspirational work and boundless commitment to social justice. Dr. Shiva works with multiple international activist networks as advisor and colleague. She will be joining us directly following her address at Cancun at the anti-WTO gathering.

CORNELL WEST: (not confirmed) American Democracy After 9-11: Is There Hope for the World? - A People United Will Never Be Defeated (30 Minutes)