Neve Gordon:  Keynote Lecture  Prospects for Peace in Israel/Palestine

Tom Nelson: Workshop The Goldstone Report: War Crimes and the U.S. Those places where international law has been violated are where civil society has broken down. Tom has investigated those places on the ground in the Gaza, and will look at the Goldstone Report on the basis of his own experience. US complicity in the crimes will be examined.

Naim Ateek:  Keynote Address Choose Life: Beyond Interfaith Dialogue: The Role of the American Church in Bringing Peace to the Holy Land.

Mark Braverman: Keynote Address Steve Niva: Keynote Address Shaping Hope into Action: Strategies to End Israel's Occupation

Richard Silverstein, Larry Johnson, Bruce Ramsey:

Workshop

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Media Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The panel examines the nature and quality of reporting on the conflict in both the U.S.:
1. How do we get more & better coverage into the media?
2. How do we make such coverage more accessible to the average American?
3. How does the collapse of print media alter the landscape for coverage?
4. Where do people get their coverage of the conflict?
5. Critique of media coverage of I-P conflict
6. What political issues should be covered that aren't being covered?
7. How to improve communications between Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. media and peace activist communities
8. Role of digital media, social networking in expanding access to news about the conflict
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Thom Hartmann: Unequal Protection
 
With the recent Supreme Court ruling opening the floodgates for unlimited corporate money influencing our elections, the corporate takeover or our democracy is now complete. This ruling by the very same 5 fascist Supreme Court justices who overturned the 2000 election ushering in 8 years of ‘W', not only overrules a hundred years of legal precedent but also destroys “ strong state constitutional provisions prohibiting corporate influence ”. Commentators have been comparing this ruling to the awful Dred Scott decision which declared people to be property and have asserted that this ruling now makes it clear that property is persons. Better informed people trace the root of the problem back to the Santa Clara Co. v Southern Pacific Railroad decision of 1886 whereby corporations first asserted their certificate of personhood.

In this video, Thom Hartmann lays it all out: How this Supreme Court decision in fact never found any such thing and how corporate usurpation of human rights was stolen. And why the time has never been better to get moving on the process of revoking the legal fiction of Corporate Personhood once and for all. I hear rumors that Thom will be coming out with an updated edition of Unequal Protection in the near future. We look forward to seeing him back here in Seattle to address this subject again. This talk was recorded at Elliott Bay Books October 5th 2002.

John Stauber: Poisoning the Grassroots

Giant Corporations not only use their unlimited resources to subvert the public will by buying our elected officials, but to corrupt and subvert activist movements and nongovernmental organizations as well. PR Watch founder John Stauber gave this talk to the Twentieth National Pesticide Forum on April 27th 2002 at Bastyr University in Kenmore Washington .

There exist Public Relations firms whose sole purpose is to “mine” activists. They infiltrate and spy on activists and activist organizations compiling dossiers and using the information to advise their clients how to undermine their efforts. Stauber illuminates by example how corporations use this information to devise divide and conquer strategies to effectively derail reform movements. With this information, they divide the actors into 3 categories: 

“Radicals” are the ones who usually have a personal or principled stake in the issues at hand and most generally are the instigators of the movement. This designation does not necessarily connote a political orientation. They are “radical” in the sense that they are attacking the root of the problem. The “radical” in question may be a Republican grandmother living in a trailer out in the countryside who is suffering the effects of aerial bombardment from 2-4D, now dying of cancer and whose children and grandchildren are all sick. They want an absolute end to the spraying of toxic chemicals and a genuine redress of their grievances. These people are unlikely to accept compromises that amount to non solution solutions. 

“Idealists” are the ones who come to the support of the people who have been victimized. They may include rank and file members of large non governmental or other organizations committed to social progress as opposed to personal gain for themselves or their organizations. 

“Rationalists” are the ones, usually leaders of large nongovernmental organizations whose main interest is organization building, PR, and or fundraising. They are most willing to sell out their principles by negotiating “win, win” compromises that make their organizations and the corporations in question look good. They gain lots of corporate funding in exchange for “solutions” that don't threaten the corporate bottom line or make fundamental changes that may actually get to the root of the problems at hand. 

This is essential knowledge for anyone attempting any kind of reform which in our day would necessarily involve challenging some sort of corporate privilege. For instance, a direct analogy could be applied to what would likely happen if a grassroots attempt were made to take over from corporate control of the Democratic Party. John Stauber outlines how most large main stream environmental organizations have been compromised in this way and calls for a return to grassroots organizing.

Ground Noise  and Static	Steven T. Wax:  Kafka Comes to  America	Paul Wright and  Silja Talvi: Who  Makes money from mass  Incarceration?	Cathy Wilkerson:  My Life and Times as a Weatherman
Jules Boykoff &  Kristian Williams:  New State Repression	Above the Law (1) Juanita Young; Nicholas Heyward Sr.	Above the Law (2) Ophelia Randall Ealy; Ivan Morgan	Edwidge Danticat: Brother, I'm Dying
Chris Finan:  Palmer Raids to  the Patriot Act	Amrit Singh:  Administration of  Torture	Sasha Abramsky: Age of Mass  Imprisonment	Matt Rothschild:  You Have No  Rights
Eric Alterman:  Why We're  Liberals	Jim Douglass:  JFK and the  Unspeakable	Jeremy Scahill:  Blackwater	Mordechi Vanunu:  Global Warning
NW Winter Soldier Hearings  1. GI Testimony	NW Winter Soldier Hearings  2. GI Testimony	NW Winter Soldier Hearings  3. Antonia Juhasz	NW Winter Soldier Hearings  4. Ann Wright
Loretta Napoleoni: Rogue Economics	David Sirota:  The Uprising	Cindy Sheehan:  Moving Toward a Peace Economy	Norm Finkelstein: The Fake  Controversy
Daoud Hari:  The Translator	Raj Patel: Hidden  Battle for World  Food System	Maude Barlow:  Blue Covenant	Roy Bourgeois: School of the  Americas & US policy Lat. Amer.
Jeffrey Toobin:  The Nine	West Coast  Shut Down!	E.J. Dionne, Jr:  Souled Out	Col Ann Wright:  Dissent: Voices  of Conscience
FCC Media  Consolidation  Hearing 11/9/07	John Ross:  Zapatistas!	Robert Henson:  Rough Guide to  Climate Change	Step it Up Seattle
Christine Harold: Our Space	John Perkins:  Secret History	Impeachment  Forum	Cullen Myrphy:  Are We Rome?
David Suzuki:  Sustainability  within a Generation	SPP:  A Nastier NAFTA	David Smith-Ferri:  Battlefield without  Borders	Oliver Sacks:  Musicophilia
Aidan Delgado:  The Sutras of  Abu Ghraib	Norman Solomon:  Made Love, Got  War	Alice Rothchild:  Broken Promises,  Broken Dreams	Michael Weinstein: With God on Our  Side
Helen Caldicott:  Nuclear Power is  Not the Answer	Charles Hardy:  Cowboy in  Caracas	Thom Hartmann:  Cracking the Code	Wall of Shame
Carl Bernstein:  A Woman in  Charge	Michael Parenti: Lies, Wars,  Empire 1:36	Frances Moore  Lappé: Getting a  Grip	Benjamin Barber: Consumed
Jonathan Kozol:  Letters to a Young  Teacher	Dahr Jamail:  Beyond the Green  Zone	Trita Parsi: Treacherous Alliance	Dr. Robert Morris: The Blue Death
Rev. Rich Lang:  The Emergency  Call	VA protest rally:  Fund the Wounded,  Not the War!	David Donnelly:  Clean Elections  Update	Catherine  Thomasson:  Eye Witness Iran
Peter Irons:  God on Trial	Laura Flanders:  Blue Grit	Voices from the  Frontlines	Hans Blix:  Cold War to Cold  Peace
Cynthia McKinney:  Free the Jena 6!	Clean Energy Expo