Join us for tonight’s encore presentation of The Monitor
Original air dates: January 4 and 25, 2009
We’re back next week with an all-new, live broadcast program!
Tonight’s encore guests:
– Katherine Austin Fitts on the markets, the financial crisis, and the bailout.
– Ali Abunimah on the conflict in Gaza.
– Robert Dreyfuss on his latest book, Devil’s Game.
Intro music:
- George W. Bush singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”
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CATHERINE AUSTIN FITTS
Catherine Austin Fitts offers a unique perspective on the global financial system and on the political economy. Her background includes Managing Director and member of the Board of Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read & Co. Inc., Assistant Secretary of Housing – Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration and President of Hamilton Securities Group, a Washington DC investment bank.
Catherine has designed and closed over $25 billion of transactions and investments to-date, has led portfolio strategy for $300 billion of financial assets and liabilities and has participated in the private and public workout and turn around of billions in mortgage, real estate and banking fraud.
Catherine serves on the board of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, a non-profit civil rights and educational organization which advocates and undertakes litigation against illegal collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial securities. Catherine publishes a column “Mapping the Real Deal” in Scoop Media in New Zealand.
WEBSITE:
Catherine Austin Fitts’ Blog: Mapping the Real Deal
SELECTED BOOKS:
The Washington-Wall Street Game: An Insider’s Story of How Dirty Money Rules Our Lives… and What You Can Do About It!
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
QUOTE:
When I served as Assistant Secretary of Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the first Bush Administration, I discovered that the government was paying billions of dollars to large banks, defense contractors and universities to collect and manage data on the people and resources of the United States.
The lead defense contractor at HUD was paid approximately $150 billion to run the systems. (That was later to increase by even greater amounts.) No matter how much we paid to create and maintain rich databases, it was almost impossible for me to get any data that I needed to do my job. What I did get required a extraordinary effort on my part.
My efforts to get basic management and financial information was met with fear, lies and endless passive aggressive behavior. I soon learned that data about money in government was like cigarettes in prison. It was a currency, traded for power and position. Data that was supposed to be public was not easily available to government officials and it was certainly not available to the average person. Data that was supposed to be private appeared easily accessible to a variety of financial interests.
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ALI ABUNIMAH
Ali Abunimah is a Fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, an expert on Palestine and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, and author of the book, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
ARTICLES:
“Obama’s deady silence”
January 2, 2009
by Ali Abunimah
“Gaza massacres must spur us to action”
December 27, 2008
by Ali Abunimah
WEBSITE:
Electronic Intifada
Co-founder
SELECTED BOOKS:
One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
QUOTE:
But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.
What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.
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ROBERT DREYFUSS
Robert Dreyfuss has worked as an independent journalist who specializes in magazine features, profiles, and investigative stories in the areas of politics and national security. In 2001, he was profiled as a leading investigative journalist by the Columbia Journalism Review. In 2003, he was awarded Project Censored’s first prize for a story on the role of oil in U.S. policy toward Iraq. He has appeared on scores of radio and television talk shows, including MSNBC, National Public Radio, and Pacifica’s Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.
Based in Alexandria, Dreyfuss has been writing for Rolling Stone for at least a decade, and currently covers national security for Rolling Stone’s National Affairs section. Dreyfuss is also a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect.
He is best known for ground-breaking stories about the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy. In 2002, he wrote the first significant profile of Ahmed Chalabi by a journalist, for The American Prospect. Also in 2002, he also wrote the first analysis of the war between the Pentagon and the CIA over policy toward Iraq, which included the first important account of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.
ARTICLES:
“Bush’s Last War Crime?”
January 4, 2009
by Robert Dreyfuss
WEBSITE:
Robert Dreyfuss Official Website
The Dreyfuss Report at The Nation
BOOK:
Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam
QUOTE:
The Israeli invasion of Gaza, launched Saturday, might very well be George W. Bush’s last and final war crime. For eight years, Bush has coupled unparalled ignorance of the Middle East with supreme arrogance. It is precisely that deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance that is on display now, as a politically motivated Israeli invasion of Gaza unfolds with the full support of the Bush administration.