Previously Aired On: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - Archive Available Shortly
Richard Gage, AIA is the founding member of ae911Truth.org. He has been a practicing Architect for 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings. He most recently performed Construction Administration services for a new $120M High School campus including a $10M steel-framed Gymnasium, and he worked on the Design Development for a very large mixed use urban project with 1.2M sq.ft. of retail and 320K sq.ft. of mid-rise office space — altogether about 1,200 tons of steel framing.
Richard became interested in the 9/11 WTC high-rise “collapses” after hearing the startling conclusions of a reluctant 9/11 researcher, David Ray Griffin, on the radio in 2006, which launched his own unyielding quest for 9/11 Truth.
Twenty nine year old Rick Reyes was born to immigrants from Mexico, and grew up in Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles. He joined the Marine Corps and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Now, based on his experience in Afghanistan and given President Obama’s promised troop surge, he thinks the US should at minimum rethink the Afghanistan war. In April Reyes testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee alongside other veterans of the Afghan war.
Video of Rick Reyes testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown developed an interest in the developing world and its problems while living abroad for eleven years in Kenya, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She returned to practicing law when she was asked to join the legal team of a popular Tijuana healer with an innovative cancer therapy, who was targeted by the chemotherapy industry in the 1990s. That experience produced her book Forbidden Medicine, which traces the suppression of natural health treatments to the same corrupting influences that have captured the money system. Brown’s eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.
About “WEB OF DEBT”
This book exposes important, often obscured truths about our money system and our economic past and future. Our money is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been “privatized,” or taken over by a private money cartel. It is all done by sleight of hand, concealed by economic double-speak. “Web of Debt” unravels the deception and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading, pointing out all the signposts. Then it explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation’s, you should read this book.
Ellen Brown has applied her training as a litigating attorney, researcher and writer to the monetary field, unearthing facts that even the majority of banking and financial experts ignore: ranging from the privatization of money creation, to the Plunge Protection Team, to the Federal Reserve’s `Helicopter Money.
Recently in an article by Ms. Brown (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3394), Revive Lincoln’s Monetary Policy: an Open Letter to President Obama, she reminds us of President Abraham Lincoln’s solution and that of the early American colonists, who printed their own money and bypassed the problems caused by the privately owned system such as our Federal Reserve.
Ellen’s article also draws on examples of other countries such as 1930’s Australia and New Zealand that avoided horrendous Depression conditions by drawing on a national credit card issued by publicly-owned central banks. Another country, China, has also funded impressive internal development through a system of state-owned banks.
In fact, Ellen Brown points to examples within our own country presently showing the way:
“Here in the United States, the state of North Dakota has a wholly state-owned bank that creates credit on its books just as private banks do. This credit is used to serve the needs of the community, and the interest on loans is returned to the government. Not coincidentally, North Dakota has a $1.2 billion budget surplus at a time when 46 of 50 states are insolvent, an impressive achievement for a state of isolated farmers battling challenging weather. The North Dakota prototype could be copied not only in every U.S. state but at the federal level.”
Come listen and talk to Ellen Brown - The People Speak’s resident Economic Expert!
Anna Baltzer is a 28-year-old Jewish American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. She is a three-time volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service, where she documented human rights abuses in the West Bank and supported the nonviolent movement against the Occupation. She has spent most of the past few years in Palestine or on tour with her book, Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. Anna Baltzer presents: LIFE IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE: EYEWITNESS STORIES & PHOTOS
Anna Baltzer is touring the United States with a presentation and book describing her experiences documenting human rights abuses in Palestine and supporting nonviolent resistance to the Occupation.
Providing photographic documentation and critical information often misrepresented or ignored in the Western media, Baltzer’s presentation covers checkpoints, settlements, demonstrations, Israeli activism, the 1948 war & refugees, censorship, the Separation Wall, and more.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb was one of the first ten women to become a rabbi in Jewish history, Lynn Gottlieb has served as a rabbi for the past 32 years.
Lynn is also a professional storyteller, puppeteer, author and percussionist with the Rebbe’s Orkestra as well as one of the few trained Klezmer dancers in the United States. She has performed original work at the Public Theatre in NYC, The Mark Taper Forum and in hundreds of venues throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and Israel for the past thirty years. Her work has been hailed as breathtaking and visionary. Her most recent work: Play With Borders: voices Reflecting Israel and Palestine opens the door to heart felt dialogue.
Lynn began her rabbinic career in 1973-1979 as rabbi to Temple Beth Or of the Deaf in NYC, while she pursued rabbinic training. Lynn’s vision and creativity helped create the Jewish Renewal Movement, and she was the first woman ordained through that movement (1981). From 1979-82, Lynn staffed the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 1983 she co-founded Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, a Jewish community with an open heart devoted to education, the arts and peacemaking. Lynn has worked with people of all ages and faiths to create meaningful ritual that celebrates and mourns the passages of life: from birth to death.
Lynn is also a life long pursuer of social justice, reconciliation and peace. She has received numerous human rights awards, including recognition from the City of Albuquerque and the UN Chapter of Albuquerque. In 2002 in response to September 11th, Lynn co-founded the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk for Interfaith Solidarity with Abdul Rauf Campos Marquetti. Together they organized peace pilgrimages between local synagogues, mosques and churches in 16 cities throughout Canada bringing thousands of people together. Programs resulting from those walks continue to thrive. Rabbi Gottlieb has extensive experience in Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation as well, and leads frequent delegations to the Middle East to meet with people involved in coexistence work through the auspice of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Rabbi Gottlieb is a founder of the Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Nonviolence. Shomer Shalom is an organization of Jews who follow a path of nonviolence based on Jewish principles of religious engagement. Shomer Shalom is committed to cultivating an intergenerational, multi-cultural and interfaith global community of peace, justice, loving kindness, and solidarity.
Gottlieb led a Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation to Iran in 2008, thus becoming the first U.S. Rabbi and the first female Rabbi to visit Iran in a public delegation since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
On September 25, 2008 she participated in an interfaith gathering in New York at which President Ahmaninajed of Iran spoke. Her presence at the event was widely criticized as bolstering President Ahmaninajed’s position after a UN speech in which he expressed relatively crude anti-Jewish stereotypes and reiterated his oft-repeated wish for Israel’s swift demise. In response to President Ahmaninajed’s remarks, Rabbi Goittleib told Reuters “Our world views are rather different. But unless we … dialogue face to face, how will we create any kind of understanding?” adding that she chose to attend because “peace is better than war.”
Lynn is also a frequently published author of poems, essays and the book She Who Dwells Within (Harper San Francisco, 1995), an avid naturalist, a perpetual student of Sephardic culture, and a frequent participant with Buddhist, Native American, Muslim, Ba’hai, Hindu, Sikh and Christian communities in the work of interfaith understanding and reconciliation in national and international settings.
Susan Boyle - Britain’s Got Talent singing sensation contestant will speak live from Scotland with host Basima Farhat on The People Speak. Come join us as Susan talks about the newly acquired fame, prospects and how she is dealing with it.
Susan’s Youtube of her performance has received over 45 million hits:
Other videos of her performance bring the total to well over 100 million.
With deals in the making with Sony, a trip to America next week, The People Speak on BBS Radio is proud to bring you a glimpse of things to come from this remarkable woman.
Susan Boyle is a Scottish singer and church volunteer who came to public attention on 11 April 2009, when she appeared as a contestant on the third series of Britain’s Got Talent. Boyle found fame when she sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables in the competition’s first round.
Before she sang, both the audience and the judges appeared to express scepticism based on her unpolished appearance. In contrast, her vocal performance was so well received that she has been dubbed “The Woman Who Shut Up Simon Cowell.” She received a standing ovation from the live audience, garnering yes-votes from Cowell and Amanda Holden, and the “biggest yes I have ever given anybody” from Piers Morgan. The audition was recorded in January 2009 at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, Scotland, and was first broadcast on Saturday, 11 April 2009 in Britain.
The juxtaposition of the reception to her voice with the audience’s first impression of her triggered global interest. Articles about her appeared in newspapers all over the world, while the numbers who watched videos of her audition set an online record. By 20 April 2009, a mere 9 days after her televised debut, viral videos of her audition, subsequent interviews of her, and her 1999 rendition of “Cry Me a River” had been viewed over 100 million times on the Internet. Cowell is reported to be setting up a contract with Boyle with his Syco Music company label, a subsidiary of Sony Music.
Cindy Sheehan, is the internationally known anti-war activist whose son Casey died in Iraq. Sheehan gained national attention in early August 2005 when she traveled to President Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch just outside Crawford, Texas, during his five-week vacation retreat there. Demanding a meeting with the President and an explanation of the “noble cause” for which her son died, she created a peace camp called Camp Casey by pitching a tent by the side of the road and announced her intention to stay, day and night, for the full five weeks, or until such a meeting was granted. She has also promised that, if she was not granted a second meeting, she will return to Crawford each time Bush visits there in the future.
Since the first Camp Casey, Cindy has established or inspired similar camps and protests all over the USA. Her journeys on behalf of the Peace Movement have taken her all over the world - Australia, South America, Europe. In all her travels and talks, she touches on how the president has betrayed the American people and exploited the brave men and women in uniform to bring more profit to his friends. “My goal is to bring our troops home to try and save another mother from going through what I am going through.”
Cindy’s latest book is Myth America 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution! In this exciting Internet Booklet, Cindy, with her characteristic open honesty not only exposes the myths of the Robber Class, but gives us tangible and doable solutions and alternatives to buying in to the Robber Class myths!
Glenn S. Anderson was elected to the Michigan State Senate in November 2006 to represent the people of the 6th Senate district, which includes the communities of Garden City, Livonia, Redford Township, and Westland. Anderson serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the four related sub committees of economic development, transportation, higher education and general government. In addition, Senator Anderson serves his caucus as Assistant Democratic Floor Leader.
Prior to his election to the Senate, Anderson represented Michigan’s 18th District in the Michigan House of Representatives for six years. Before beginning his tenure in the legislature, Anderson served as Councilman for the City of Westland for nine years.
Throughout his tenure in public service, Anderson has been committed to fiscally responsible government, insuring the continuation of vital services while maintaining a balanced budget. His legislative priorities include consumer protection, election reform, protecting our children, quality healthcare, and insurance accountability and affordability.
Senator Anderson believes that building strong communities is important to building a stronger Michigan. Over the years Senator Anderson has been active in a number of local organizations including the Churchill High School PTA, Western Wayne NAACP, Westland Jaycees, Goodfellows, Rouge River Rescue, and Westland Hockey Association. Anderson was chosen as “Legislator of the Year” by the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police and has been recognized by numerous organizations for his legislative work including the Michigan Association of School Psychologists, and the Michigan Municipal League. Anderson is also an alumnus of the National Conference of State Legislator’s BILLD and Toll Fellowships.
Before entering public service, Anderson was employed by Ford Motor Company, and has been a member of the UAW since 1972. He has also been a licensed Realtor since 1979. He and his wife Gail have made Westland their home for almost 30 years. They have two adult children, Melissa and Kyle, and two grandchildren, Mackenzie and Logan.
George Galloway is the Respect Member of Parliament for the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. He was first elected to Parliament for the City of Glasgow in Scotland in 1987. He has been elected five times to the House of Commons and is now one of the more senior members. For fourteen out of fifteen years he was the elected Senior Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Foreign Affairs Committee. The exception was the year 1991 during the Gulf War when he was narrowly defeated.
George Galloway was born in the Scottish city Dundee. He left school at sixteen to become a factory worker with Michelin Tyres, where he joined the Transport and General Workers Union and remains a member to this day.
He was the youngest ever elected chairman of the Labour party in Scotland at the age of twenty–six, having become a full-time party organiser three years earlier.
In 1983, he moved to London as the General Secretary of War on Want, the international development agency, leaving the post upon his election to parliament in 1987.
He first became involved in the Palestinian cause in the early 1970’s, regularly visiting Lebanon and becoming an activist in support of the PLO.
In 1980, he arranged the twinning of his city, Dundee with the Palestinian town Nablus. Thus, Dundee’s city hall became the first public building in any western country to fly the Palestinian flag. Also, in 1980 he formed the British Trades Union Friends of Palestine and became its first General Secretary.
In 1982, he founded the Emergency Committee against the invasion of Lebanon.
In 1990, he was one of the leading opponents of the war in the Gulf although he had never visited Iraq [the only Arab country he had never visited] and would not have been welcomed there as he was a known opponent of the Iraqi government, not least over the Iran -Iraq War.
In 1991 he formed the Emergency Committee on Iraq and remains its chairman. The Committee renamed itself the Emergency Committee on Iraq and Palestine [ECIP] in the year 2000.
In 1990, he was awarded Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Hilal-i-Quaid-i- Azam, for services to the restoration of Democracy in Pakistan. In 1996, he was awarded Pakistan’s second highest civil award, the Hilal-i-Pakistan, for services to the cause of the Kashmiri people.
In 1998, he founded the Mariam Appeal named after the Iraqi child Mariam Hamza, who was brought to Britain amidst great controversy for cancer treatment. The Appeal campaigned around the issue of cancers caused by allied use of Depleted Uranium weapons in the Gulf.
In the year 2000, he founded and is the chairman of the Great Britain - Iraq Society. He is a former Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Iran. He is also a founder member of the Cairo Conference bringing together Islamist, Nationalist and Socialist trends from around the world to work against globalization, occupation and war.
He is a founder of the Stop the War Coalition UK and is currently its Vice-President. The Stop The War Coalition mobilized two million people to protest against the war on Iraq (the largest demonstration of people in British history).
In 2003, George Galloway was expelled by Tony Blair from the Labour Party for his opposition to the illegal war on Iraq. In 2004 George Galloway founded RESPECT–The Unity Coalition, the anti-war party. Within weeks RESPECT had won the elections of June 10th in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. In 2005, he became Respect’s first MP, for Bethnal Greenal & Bow.
George currently has a show on “Talk Sport” every Saturday and Sunday.
George Galloway is the author of “Downfall: The Ceausescus and the Romanian Revolution” 1990, “I’m Not the Only One” 2004. And he is the author of a forthcoming biography of Fidel Castro.
He is a frequent broadcaster, author, and public speaker. He was awarded “Parliamentary Debater” of the year in 2003, by the Parliamentary Press Corps.
Angela Yvonne Davis is an activist, primarily working for racial and gender equality and for prison reform.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and a graduate of Brandeis University, Davis worked as a philosophy lecturer at the UCLA during the 1960s, during which time she also was a feminist and activist, a member of both the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party. In a controversial decision, the University of California fired her from her job in 1969 because of her membership in the Communist Party. Davis ran for Vice President on the Communist ticket in 1980 and 1984 along with Gus Hall.
In 1970 Davis became the third woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted List when she was charged with conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide, due to her alleged participation in an escape attempt from Marin County Hall of Justice. She was acquitted of all charges.
She has continued a career of activism, and has written several books. A principal focus of her current activism is the state of prisons within the United States. She is currently Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a research focus on Feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, philosophy of punishment (women’s jails and prisons).
Quote from ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE by Angela Davis:
“It is my hope that this book will encourage readers to question their own assumptions about the prison. Many people have already reached the conclusion that the death penalty is an outmoded form of punishment that violates basic principles of human rights. It is time, I believe, to encourage similar conversations about the prison. During my own career as an antiprison activist I have seen the population of U.S. prisons increase with such rapidity that many people in black, Latino, and Native American communities now have a far greater chance of going to prison than of getting a decent education. When many young people decide to join the military service in order to avoid the inevitability of a stint in prison, it should cause us to wonder whether we should not try to introduce better alternatives.”
Selected Published Works:
Are Prisons Obsolete?, New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and
Billie Holiday, New York: Vintage Books, 1999.
The Angela Y. Davis Reader, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Angela Davis: An Autobiography, New York: International Publishers, 1989 (original published in 1974 by Random House).
Women, Race, and Class, New York: Vintage Books, 1983.
Dr. Rob Ivker is a physician healer, health educator, and best-selling author. He is a board-certified holistic physician (ABIHM), a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, healing touch certified practitioner (HTCP), and certified laughter yoga leader (Dr. Kataria’s School of Laughter Yoga). He has been practicing medicine since 1972. For the past 20 years his holistic medical practice has focused on the treatment of respiratory disease – chronic sinusitis, asthma, and allergies – and the creation of optimal health.
Dr. Ivker is the Co-Founder and Past-President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine (ABIHM); co-creator of the Annual ABIHM Review Course, ABIHM certification examination, and the ABIHM evidence-based curriculum. He is also a Past-President of the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA). Dr. Ivker is a former Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and is currently a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
He is the author of four editions of the best-selling SINUS SURVIVAL: The Holistic Medical Treatment for Sinusitis, Allergies, and Colds. Dr. Ivker has also written six other books including ASTHMA SURVIVAL, and in November 2008 he published a new e-book, LOVE YOUR NOSE NATURALLY: Integrative Holistic Medicine for Sinus Infections, Chronic & Fungal Sinusitis, Allergies, and Colds. The e-book is currently available on his website: www.physicianhealer.com; and will soon be followed by LOVE YOUR LUNGS NATURALLY: Integrative Holistic Medicine for Asthma & Fungal Asthma.
Married for 40 years to Harriet, a psychiatric social worker, they have two daughters and sons-in-law and three grandchildren. They live in Littleton, CO.
Patient advocate and writer Mary Shomon transformed her own 1995 thyroid diagnosis into a mission to educate and empower other patients who struggle with thyroid, autoimmune, and weight loss challenges.
Mary is author of a number of best-selling books on thyroid disease and weight loss, and a nationally-known patient advocate. In addition to her work with About.com, Mary founded and runs the Thyroid-Info Website, and since 1997 has published Sticking Out Our Necks, the only independent, bimonthly print newsletter on thyroid disease for patients.
Experience:
Mary is the author of numerous patient-oriented health books and educational materials. Her 2004 book “The Thyroid Diet: Manage Your Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss,” was a New York Times best-seller, an Amazon.com Top 10 Health book of 2004, and a semi-finalist for the Quills Awards.
Mary is also author of Thyroid Hormone Breakthrough: Overcoming Sexual and Hormonal Problems at Every Age, The Thyroid Diet: Manage Your Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss, Living Well With Hypothyroidism: What Your doctor Doesn’t Tell you…That You Need to Know, Living Well With Graves’ Disease and Hyperthyroidism, Living Well With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia and Living Well With Autoimmune Disease, all published by HarperCollins. She co-authored What Your Dr May Not Tell You About Parkinson’s Disease, published by Time Warner.
Mary also serves on the faculty of the New York Open Center, a leading holistic health educational center located in New York City.
Education:
Mary belongs to the Endocrine Society, the world’s largest professional organization of endocrinologists in the world, known as the leading source of research and advancements in endocrinology and metabolism.
She is also one of the first patient members of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare, a professional society dedicated to research and education in patient-doctor communications.
Mary holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University in Washington DC.
Mary Shomon in the Media:
In her work as a patient advocate, Mary has been featured in the media, including ABC World News Tonight, CBS Radio, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, Woman’s World, First for Women, Alternative Medicine Magazine, the CBC, and hundreds of TV, radio, magazine, and news outlets in the U.S. and abroad.
From Mary Shomon:
As many as 60 million Americans have thyroid conditions, and the majority aren’t even diagnosed. Among those who know they have thyroid problems, the majority don’t even feel well. Clearly, something needs to be done to help patients get diagnosed accurately and quickly, and once diagnosed, receive effective treatment.
Unfortunately, doctors tend to think of thyroid disease as a mundane, easy to diagnose, easy to treat, one-size-fits-all problem. Patients, however, recognize that the truth is far more complex, and that effective treatment requires innovation, and often includes not only conventional approaches, but nutritional and lifestyle changes.
Information, empowerment, and support is essential. Providing these necessary components is my focus for this site, my Thyroid-Info.com site, and my patient-oriented books and resources for patients.
My motto and battle cry is clear: “We’re patients. . . not lab values!” We deserve to feel well!
Carol Cain is Editorial Director for WWJ-TV/CW50 in Detroit and is also host of “Michigan Matters” the weekly TV show that features politics, business and more. She is helping the station with its “Eye on the Future” focus in the community to help address critical issues important to the region.
As part of that initiative, Ms. Cain produced and appeared in WWJ-TV’s breakthrough TV series that ran in December called: “Building Bridges: From the Great Lakes to the Great Wall.” It talked of the growing business, educational and cultural connections between Michigan and China and included exclusive interviews with three Michigan governors, the CEOs of the auto makers and other major firms in Michigan and China, as well as leaders of Michigan’s universities and China’s Ambassador to the U.S.
She hosts and is executive producer of “Michigan Matters,” a 30-minute weekly TV show airing Saturdays on WWJ-TVÂ at 11 a.m. and on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. on CW50.
Ms. Cain also appears on local and national radio and television shows offering her political and business commentary.
Ms. Cain also writes about business and politics in her weekly column that appears in the Detroit Free Press each Sunday. She previously served as the paper’s Assistant Business Editor and Assistant National Editor where she coordinated the paper’s coverage of presidential elections as well as international and national issues.
She previously was Business Editor of the Toledo Blade, worked as a business reporter and columnist at The Detroit News, and was a reporter and editor at United Press International’s Detroit bureau, where she covered business, politics, automotive and sports.
A native of Detroit, Ms. Cain is actively involved in the community and is invited by numerous business, political and community organizations to be involved with their events. She is also sought after as a speaker by numerous  community groups.  She is again moderating the Michigan Chronicle’s lauded “Pancakes and Politics” breakfast series, now in its third year which features business and community leaders. And she will again serve as moderator of the Michigan Political Leadership Program’s annual dinner event.
She received a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Michigan State University and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Michigan in 1999.
Hasan Nawash was six years old when his family fled their home in the Palestinian village of Ein Karem in 1947, when it was overrun by a right-wing Jewish militia ahead of the establishment of Israel.
Nawash returned to visit his childhood home in 1990, more than 40 years later, and found the house his father built still intact, now inhabited by Israelis, with Arabic script still carved above the front the door reading “He who enters this home is safe.”
The village was incorporated into West Jerusalem and has become high-end real estate property.
Now in Michigan, Hasan fought for justice, freedom and independence for the Palestinian people. As he approached his retirement years he thought he would be spending his days writing his beloved poetry and traveling the world. However, his outrage and disgust over the current Intifada amplified his activism, and soon he and a few core activists mapped out a clear organizational mission that would become the building blocks of the Palestine Office-Michigan.
The Palestine Office-Michigan coalesced in 2004, serving as a voice for Palestinian aspirations in the heart of Southeastern Michigan’s Arab American community. The office asks for an end to Israeli occupation and promotes greater awareness and understanding of issues concerning Palestinian rights here and abroad.
At a recent demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan, Hasan told Arab American News that such demonstrations serve to bring the community together in a way that encourages prolonged, continued activism for long-term impact.
He said communities can create change over time when each person, one at a time, takes on the attitude that “it’s important for me to do my part.” That’s how South African apartheid fell.
He said large, loud demonstrations also facilitate the influence of community leaders on government leadership.
Ali Abunimah, a writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs, lives in Chicago. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Financial Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Jordan Times, Lebanon’s Daily Star and Ha’aretz, among others.
In 1996, when Israel attacked Lebanon, Abunimah began writing Chicago’s NPR station about their lack of objective coverage. Months later, NPR asked him to appear on one of their shows to comment on Clinton’s bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan. Since then, Abunimah has steadily become a common voice as an expert commentator and debater offering insight into a range of topics regarding the Middle East. He is frequent guest on local, national and international radio and television, including public radio and television, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the BBC and many others.
Abunimah lectures frequently at colleges in the United States. He was born in the United States and grew up in Europe. Both of his parents are originally from Palestine. He received his BA from Princeton University and MA from the University of Chicago. Abunimah travels often to the Middle East and is a full-time researcher in social policy at the University of Chicago.
In October 2006, Abunimah’s book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, was released by Metropolitan Books. “I realized this idea of partition is an illusion; it’s the problem. The reality is that it [Palestine-Israel] is one country.” said Abunimah. “We don’t have to agree how and why everyone came into the country. We just have to agree it is indeed one country and everyone gets to have a dignified life. Debates about how it came to be are important but they don’t deal with the reality that there are 10 million people who live there. And they aren’t going to go away,” he added.
“My parents taught me the importance of standing up for your rights but doing so in a way that is not tribal. The Palestinian issue is about universal rights and about equality for everyone.”
Abunimah was born in Washington, DC in 1971. His mother is from Lifta, near Jerusalem, and became a refugee when Israel was established in 1948. His father, a former Jordanian diplomat and ambassador to the United Nations, hails from the West Bank village of Batir.
Other recent book contributions include “No Justice, No Peace,” in “The Anti-Capitalism Reader,” edited by Joel Schalit. New York: Akashic Books, 2002; “The US Media and the New Intifada” (with Hussein Ibish) in “The New Intifada,” edited by Roane Carey. New York: Verso Books, 2001; “The Palestinian Right of Return” (with Hussein Ibish), Washington, DC: ADC, 2001; “The Media’s Deadly Spin on Iraq” (with Rania Masri) in “Iraq Under Siege” edited by Anthony Arnove. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002 (Updated Edition).
Richard Gage, AIA is the founding member of ae911Truth.org. He has been a practicing Architect for 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings. He most recently performed Construction Administration services for a new $120M High School campus including a $10M steel-framed Gymnasium, and he worked on the Design Development for a very large mixed use urban project with 1.2M sq.ft. of retail and 320K sq.ft. of mid-rise office space — altogether about 1,200 tons of steel framing. 
Twenty nine year old Rick Reyes was born to immigrants from Mexico, and grew up in Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles. He joined the Marine Corps and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Now, based on his experience in Afghanistan and given President Obama’s promised troop surge, he thinks the US should at minimum rethink the Afghanistan war. In April Reyes testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee alongside other veterans of the Afghan war.
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown developed an interest in the developing world and its problems while living abroad for eleven years in Kenya, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She returned to practicing law when she was asked to join the legal team of a popular Tijuana healer with an innovative cancer therapy, who was targeted by the chemotherapy industry in the 1990s. That experience produced her book Forbidden Medicine, which traces the suppression of natural health treatments to the same corrupting influences that have captured the money system. Brown’s eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies. 
This book exposes important, often obscured truths about our money system and our economic past and future. Our money is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been “privatized,” or taken over by a private money cartel. It is all done by sleight of hand, concealed by economic double-speak. “Web of Debt” unravels the deception and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading, pointing out all the signposts. Then it explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation’s, you should read this book.
Anna Baltzer is a 28-year-old Jewish American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. She is a three-time volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service, where she documented human rights abuses in the West Bank and supported the nonviolent movement against the Occupation. She has spent most of the past few years in Palestine or on tour with her book, Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. Anna Baltzer presents: LIFE IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE: EYEWITNESS STORIES & PHOTOS
Anna Baltzer is touring the United States with a presentation and book describing her experiences documenting human rights abuses in Palestine and supporting nonviolent resistance to the Occupation. 
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb was one of the first ten women to become a rabbi in Jewish history, Lynn Gottlieb has served as a rabbi for the past 32 years. 
Susan Boyle - Britain’s Got Talent singing sensation contestant will speak live from Scotland with host Basima Farhat on The People Speak. Come join us as Susan talks about the newly acquired fame, prospects and how she is dealing with it.
Cindy Sheehan, is the internationally known anti-war activist whose son Casey died in Iraq. Sheehan gained national attention in early August 2005 when she traveled to President Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch just outside Crawford, Texas, during his five-week vacation retreat there. Demanding a meeting with the President and an explanation of the “noble cause” for which her son died, she created a peace camp called Camp Casey by pitching a tent by the side of the road and announced her intention to stay, day and night, for the full five weeks, or until such a meeting was granted. She has also promised that, if she was not granted a second meeting, she will return to Crawford each time Bush visits there in the future. 
Since the first Camp Casey, Cindy has established or inspired similar camps and protests all over the USA. Her journeys on behalf of the Peace Movement have taken her all over the world - Australia, South America, Europe. In all her travels and talks, she touches on how the president has betrayed the American people and exploited the brave men and women in uniform to bring more profit to his friends. “My goal is to bring our troops home to try and save another mother from going through what I am going through.”
Glenn S. Anderson was elected to the Michigan State Senate in November 2006 to represent the people of the 6th Senate district, which includes the communities of Garden City, Livonia, Redford Township, and Westland. Anderson serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the four related sub committees of economic development, transportation, higher education and general government. In addition, Senator Anderson serves his caucus as Assistant Democratic Floor Leader.
George Galloway is the Respect Member of Parliament for the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. He was first elected to Parliament for the City of Glasgow in Scotland in 1987. He has been elected five times to the House of Commons and is now one of the more senior members. For fourteen out of fifteen years he was the elected Senior Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Foreign Affairs Committee. The exception was the year 1991 during the Gulf War when he was narrowly defeated. 
Angela Yvonne Davis is an activist, primarily working for racial and gender equality and for prison reform. 
She has continued a career of activism, and has written several books. A principal focus of her current activism is the state of prisons within the United States. She is currently Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a research focus on Feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, philosophy of punishment (women’s jails and prisons).
Dr. Rob Ivker is a physician healer, health educator, and best-selling author. He is a board-certified holistic physician (ABIHM), a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, healing touch certified practitioner (HTCP), and certified laughter yoga leader (Dr. Kataria’s School of Laughter Yoga). He has been practicing medicine since 1972. For the past 20 years his holistic medical practice has focused on the treatment of respiratory disease – chronic sinusitis, asthma, and allergies – and the creation of optimal health. 
He is the author of four editions of the best-selling SINUS SURVIVAL: The Holistic Medical Treatment for Sinusitis, Allergies, and Colds. Dr. Ivker has also written six other books including ASTHMA SURVIVAL, and in November 2008 he published a new e-book, LOVE YOUR NOSE NATURALLY: Integrative Holistic Medicine for Sinus Infections, Chronic & Fungal Sinusitis, Allergies, and Colds. The e-book is currently available on his website: www.physicianhealer.com; and will soon be followed by LOVE YOUR LUNGS NATURALLY: Integrative Holistic Medicine for Asthma & Fungal Asthma.
Patient advocate and writer Mary Shomon transformed her own 1995 thyroid diagnosis into a mission to educate and empower other patients who struggle with thyroid, autoimmune, and weight loss challenges.
As many as 60 million Americans have thyroid conditions, and the majority aren’t even diagnosed. Among those who know they have thyroid problems, the majority don’t even feel well. Clearly, something needs to be done to help patients get diagnosed accurately and quickly, and once diagnosed, receive effective treatment.
Carol Cain is Editorial Director for WWJ-TV/CW50 in Detroit and is also host of “Michigan Matters” the weekly TV show that features politics, business and more. She is helping the station with its “Eye on the Future” focus in the community to help address critical issues important to the region. 
Hasan Nawash was six years old when his family fled their home in the Palestinian village of Ein Karem in 1947, when it was overrun by a right-wing Jewish militia ahead of the establishment of Israel. 
Ali Abunimah, a writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs, lives in Chicago. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Financial Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Jordan Times, Lebanon’s Daily Star and Ha’aretz, among others. 
