By Marwa Rashad and Praveen Menon

RIYADH/DUBAI, July 30 (Reuters) – A $22.5 billion plan to build Riyadh’s first metro rail system aims to achieve more than improving the quality of life in the congested Saudi capital: it is part of an ambitious effort to shift the country’s economy beyond oil.

The government awarded contracts for the system to three foreign-led consortia on Sunday. Six rail lines carrying electric, driverless trains and extending 176 kilometres (110 miles) are to be completed by 2019.

Similar projects are underway in other top Saudi cities; last August the government approved a $16.5 billion plan to modernise the transport system in Mecca, including construction of a metro, and Jeddah is preparing plans to build a metro that would cost around $9.3 billion.

The projects are part of an effort to improve social welfare for millions of poorer Saudis in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in the region. Saudi Arabia escaped serious unrest, but it aims to ensure social peace by ramping up spending on hospitals, schools and other infrastructure.

In the longer term, the world’s top oil exporter is trying to diversify its economy away from oil, to reduce its vulnerability to the next big drop in global energy prices.

The metro systems could aid that drive by changing the way Saudi cities operate, helping them develop easily accessible commercial and light industrial districts which house companies outside the oil sector, while stimulating real estate projects and other investment along the rail lines.

“I think the metro will transform Riyadh. With 170 km of rail, people will always be close to the metro. It’ll not just solve the traffic problem but also connect the financial hub, airport, malls and other parts of the city,” said Miguel Jurado, head of Spanish firm FCC Construction, which will help to build the project.

Ibrahim al-Sultan, head of the government body which supervises the project, estimated that each riyal spent on it would generate an indirect economic return of 3 riyals.

Concern about the country’s extreme dependence on oil was underlined this week when Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, in an open letter to the government, called for immediate steps to diversify the economy.

The metro systems may also help Saudi Arabia manage its oil resources more efficiently; only about 2 percent of Riyadh’s 6 million population currently use public transport, leaving most of the rest dependent on gasoline-guzzling cars.

Growth in domestic oil consumption, as the country’s young population expands, has been outpacing rises in oil production capacity. So over the next decade or two, Saudi Arabia could be forced to cut back its oil exports; the metro systems buy it time before it faces such a crunch.

“The metro will drive down energy requirements for the transport sector, if the metro is incentivised by the government as a replacement to motor vehicles, and reduce environmental pollution,” said John Sfakianakis, chief strategist at investment firm MASIC.

The Riyadh metro is projected to carry 1.16 million passengers daily when launched, increasing to nearly 3.6 million within 10 years – a significant fraction of all trips in the country, which currently has a population of about 28 million.

Saudi Arabia now consumes about 500,000 barrels per day of oil in the form of gasoline, and exports under 8 million bpd.

TRAFFIC

While the metros are unlikely to persuade some Saudis to abandon their love for the automobile, others may welcome the chance to escape severe traffic congestion in the big cities.

Despite the country’s oil wealth, analysts estimate millions of people live near the poverty line, and they will have a financial incentive to use the systems.

The metros may also have a social impact by making it easier for women to move around, in a country where they are not allowed to drive for religious reasons. The Riyadh metro carriages will have special “family sections” giving women privacy.

“For sure I will use the metro – it will be a major solution for the women problem in our society, since we don’t drive,” said Alaa Hassan, a female university student in Riyadh.

“I go to my university by minibus and I pay 2,000 riyals ($535) per month; other classmates who live nearer pay 800 to 1,000. For sure the metro will be cheaper.”

The government has not said exactly how it will fund the Riyadh metro project, although bankers have been speculating about possible issues of sukuk (Islamic bonds) which could help to deepen the country’s market in state-backed debt.

After more than two years of high oil prices, financing is not expected to be a problem; the government’s budget surplus in 2012 alone was 386.5 billion riyals ($103 billion).

But assembling the labour force to complete the project on time may be a challenge, because the country has been tightening controls on its large population of foreign workers in an effort to reduce unemployment among Saudi citizens.

A crackdown on illegal foreign workers caused tens of thousands of people to be deported or decide to leave the country this year. Fees designed to encourage companies to limit their use of foreigners, who are cheaper to hire than Saudis, have hurt profits at some Saudi construction firms.

“The workforce will be a challenge…We will need about 15,000 people during the whole period of work,” FCC’s Jurado said. “We have a period of eight to ten months to arrange for all these workers.” (Additional reporting by Reem Shamseddin and Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by Andrew Torchia)

15-32

By Laura Fawaz, Contributing Reporter

The upcoming issue of The Rolling Stones magazine hasn’t event hit the newsstands yet, but is already starting controversy.

The Rolling Stones magazine has been an international icon for over the last four decades, with coverage from news and politics, to social taboos, but mostly for music legends and up in comers.  And for the August 1st, 2013 issue, they’ve decided to put a picture of Dzhokhar (Jahar) Tsarnaev, titled “Jahar’s World.”  It followed with this caption “He was a charming kid with a bright future. But no one saw the pain he was hiding or the monster he would become.”

Most politicians are outraged by this.  Boston city Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said “Your August 3 cover rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment. It is ill-conceived, at best, and re-affirms a terrible message that destruction gains fame for killers and their ’causes.’ There may be valuable journalism behind your sensational treatment, though we can’t know because almost all you released is the cover.”

In response, the magazine referred to its earlier statement, which read, in part, “The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.”

Currently, there are two places that you won’t be able to buy this issue: CVS and Walgreens.  They vowed not to sell the magazine via social media sites.  CVS did first on Facebook where it has been “liked” 32,00 times and shared more than 14,000 within the first day.  Walgreens followed with this tweet: “Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.  Walgreens will not be selling this issue of Rolling Stone magazine.”

So how about the average person?  After casually speaking with a people of all ages, gender, and religion throughout Metro-Detroit, Michigan, the results were surprising.  Most people thought that the media was making a big deal out of nothing.  Kiki Davis said “Don’t judge a book by its cover.  First I believe the Tsarnaev brothers are innocent, they’ve been set up to take the fall.  I believe this because information given by the BPD [Boston Police Department] & FBI are either inconsistent or outright lies.  No matter how you look at it their stories just don’t add up.”

And even on the comments section on The Rolling Stones magazine article website, the majority of the comments revolve around the theme that the Tsarnaev brothers have been set up.  With readers posting photos and videos, raising questions such as “There were a bunch of Tamerlans that night.  Who knows which one is real?  This guy also doesn’t look like he’s been run over by a car and dragged.  Wouldn’t more of his body be crushed and twisted?  Wouldn’t there be more abrasions on his skin?”  This was from reader Hoegarten Alexandria when discussing a recently posted photo of Tamerlan’s dead body from the waist up.

All these emotions and actions are taken without the piece even being read yet.  So what does this pot-stirring article have to say?  Well The Rolling Stones foreseeing some type of dismay began the article with the following from their editorial staff.

“Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, and our thoughts are always with them and their families. The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day. The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens. –THE EDITORS”

Then the piece itself begins with someone named Peter Payack, a wrestling coach at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.  He woke up early on the morning of April 19th, 2013 to news coverage of an identified male suspect in the Boston bombing.  People in Cambridge thought of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – “Jahar” to his friends – as a handsome, tousle-haired boy with a tender character, soulful brown eyes and the kind of shy, laid-back manner.  He had been a captain of the high school wrestling team for two years and a promising student.  It had been the coach who’d helped Jahar come up with his nickname, replacing the difficult-to-decipher Dzhokhar with a simpler one.  “If he had a hint of radical thoughts, then why would he change the spelling of his name so that more Americans in school could pronounce it?” asks one longtime friend, echoing many others. 

At the precise moment of Jahar’s friends trying to reconcile him from the news, just west of Cambridge, in suburban Watertown, Jahar Tsarnaev laid on the floor of a 22-foot motorboat.  Just after midnight, he’d supposedly been in a violent confrontation with police, who killed his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan.  After the capture of the “suspect,” still an uneasy panic settled over Boston when it was revealed that the Tsarnaev brothers were not, as many assumed, connected to any terrorist group.  Rather, they were young men affiliated with no one but themselves.  Russian émigrés, they had lived in America for a decade – and in Cambridge, a city so progressive it had its own “peace commission” to promote social justice and diversity. 

Tamerlan, known to his non-Russian friends as “Tim,” was a talented boxer who’d aspired to represent the United States in the Olympics.  His little brother, Jahar, had earned a scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and was thinking about becoming an engineer.  Since the bombing FBI and other law-enforcement officials, have tried to piece together a storyline of the brothers, most of which has focused on Tamerlan.  This because as we later found out was on multiple watch lists, in the U.S. and in Russia, though no one had any reason to investigate him further.  Though Jahar was on no one’s watch list of any kind.  Actually it’s the opposite because after a few months worth of interviews with friends, teachers, coaches, and really anyone who knew Jahar, what emerges is a portrait of a boy who glided through life, showing virtually no signs of anger, let alone radical political ideology or even any kind of deeply felt religious beliefs.  “Listen,” says Payack, “there are kids we don’t catch who just fall through the cracks, but this guy was seamless, like a billiard ball.  No cracks at all.” 

Though as the FBI tried to find and put together any kind of motive, they say that they see a boy who had a front row seat to all of his family’s hopes and attempts of a safer and wealthier life, as well as the deep disappointments after these attempts failed.  His father, who is from Chechnya, grew up in exile in the republic of Kyrgyzstan.  Jahar’s mother is from Dagestan, which has been fighting its own struggle for independence against the Russians since the late 1700s.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, Chechen nationalists declared their independence, which resulted in two brutal wars where the Russian army slaughtered tens of thousands of Chechens.  By 1999, the violence had spread throughout the region, including Dagestan.  The Tsarnaevs then fled to Zubeidat’s native Dage­stan, but war followed close behind.

This abuse would be the premise of the Tsarnaevs’ claim for asylum.  So in the spring of 2002, Anzor, Zubeidat and Jahar, then eight, arrived in America on a tourist visa and quickly applied for political asylum, which they were granted a year later.  In July 2003, the rest of the family joined them in Cambridge, where they’d moved into a small, three-bedroom­ apartment at Norfolk St.; a weathered building with peeling paint on a block that otherwise screams gentrification.  The family was happy to be in America, but in Cambridge specifically, as Jahar was known to say several times.  Cambridge is known as one of the most liberal and intellectually sophisticated cities in the U.S., and is also one of the most ethnically and economically diverse.  There are at least 50 nationalities represented at the city’s one public high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, whose motto is “Opportunity, Diversity, Respect.”

A diligent student, Jahar was nominated to the National Honor Society in his sophomore year, which was also when he joined the wrestling team.  And in his junior year, the team made him a captain.  All his friends agreed that Jahar had morals unlike any other classmate.  “He never picked on anybody,” recalls a friend wanting anonymity, so we’ll call Sam.  “He was better at boxing than wrestling – he was a beast.  But while he could probably knock out anyone he wanted, he never did. “He wasn’t violent, though – that’s the crazy thing. He was never violent,” says Sam.

Jahar never denied he was a Muslim.  He fasted during Ramadan, which included giving up smoking weed – an immense act of self-control, this according to his friends.  Most Cambridge students and staff all agree that Jahar’s perspective on U.S. foreign policy wasn’t all that dissimilar from a lot of other people they knew.  “In terms of politics, I’d say he’s just as anti-American as the next guy in Cambridge,” says his friend Theo.

Tamerlan’s experience in Cambridge did not go as well as Jahar’s.  He was a already a teenager when he arrived in America, and spoke with a thick Russian accent.  After graduating in 2006, he enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College, studing accounting, but after just three semesters, he dropped out.  A talented pianist and composer, he harbored a desire to become a musician, but his ultimate dream was to become an Olympic boxer, after which he’d turn pro.  But his arrogance undermined his ambitions.  In 2010, a rival trainer, claiming Tamerlan had broken boxing etiquette by taunting his fighter before a match, lodged a complaint with the national boxing authority that Tamerlan should be disqualified from nationwide competition.  His reasoning: he was not an American citizen.  The authorities, coincidentally, were just in the process of changing their policy to ban all non-U.S. citizens from competing for a national title.  This dashed any Olympic hopes, as Tamerlan was not yet eligible to become a U.S. citizen. 

Tamerlan had discovered religion, a passion that had begun in 2009.  Before long, he quit drinking and smoking pot, and started to pray five times a day, even taking his prayer rug to the boxing gym.  At home, he spent long hours on the Internet reading Islamic websites, as well as U.S. conspiracy sites, like Alex Jones’ InfoWars.  He told a photographer he met that he didn’t understand Americans and complained about a lack of values.  He stopped listening to music.  “It is not supported by Islam,” Tamerlan said.  Then, in 2011, he decided to quit boxing, claiming it was not permitted for a Muslim to hit another man.

As for the rest of the family: Zubeidat, too, had become increasingly religious – something that would get in the way of her marriage.  Anzor, who’d been at first baffled, later moved back to Russia in 2011, and that summer was granted a divorce.  Zubeidat was later arrested for attempting to shoplift $1,600 worth of clothes.  Rather than face prosecution, she supposedly skipped bail and also returned to Russia, where she ultimately reconciled with her ex-husband. Jahar’s sisters, both of whom seemed to have escaped their early marriages, were living in New Jersey and hadn’t seen their family in some time.

And Tamerlan was now married.  His new wife, Katherine Russell, who was a Protestant from a family in Rhode Island who thought about joining the Peace Corps after high school.  But instead decided on college at Boston’s Suffolk University where she’d met Tamerlan in 2007 at a club during her freshman year.  She found him to be “tall and handsome and having some measure of worldliness,” one friend would recall.  Russell has never spoken to the press, what is known is that she did convert to Islam, adopting the name “Karima,” and soon got pregnant and dropped out of college.  In June 2010, she and Tamerlan were married; not long afterward, she gave birth to their daughter, Zahira.

Jahar, meanwhile, was preparing for college.  He had won a $2,500 city scholarship, and planning for his future, not plotting a terror theme.  But much of what is known about the two years of Jahar’s life leading up to the bombing comes from random press interviews with students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.  None of who seemed to have been particularly close with him.  As for Tamerlan, his journey the past two years is far easier to trace.  Though no more Chechen than his brother, Tamerlan was also – as his resident green card reminded him – not really an American.  Tamerlan’s interpretation of Islam had become his identity.  But Brian Glyn Williams, a professor of Islamic studies at UMass Dartmouth and an expert on terrorism and the politics of Chechnya, believes that Tamerlan’s journey was less a young man’s quest to join Al Qaeda than to discover his own identity.  “To me, this is classic diasporic reconstruction of identity: ‘I’m a Chechen, and we’re fighting for jihad, and what am I doing?  Nothing.’ It’s not unlike the way some Irish-Americans used to link Ireland and the IRA – they’d never been to Northern Ireland in their lives, but you’d go to certain parts of Southie in Boston, and all you see are donation cans for the IRA.”

In January 2012, Tamerlan traveled to Dagestan, where he spent six months.  Dagestan has been embroiled in a years-long civil war between Muslim guerrillas and the (also Muslim) police, as well as Russian forces.  There, he, along with most of the local young men, lured by the romance of the fight, seemed to have wanted to join the rebellion, but he was dissuaded from this pursuit.  Tamerlan was seen as an outsider who came to Dagestan dressed in fancy American clothes and bragging of being a champion boxer, and had no place in their country’s civil war.  It was an internal struggle and had only resulted in Muslims killing other Muslims.  Tamerlan was urged by relatives to embrace nonviolence and forget about Dagestan’s troubles. 

Jahar, who was in America for a decade now, spent the summer lifeguarding at a Harvard pool.  “I didn’t become a lifeguard to just chill and get paid,” Jahar tweeted.  “I do it for the people, saving lives brings me joy.”  He was living with Tamerlan and his sister-in-law, who were going through their own financial troubles.  The family was on welfare, Tamerlan was now a stay-at-home dad; his wife worked night and day as a home-health aide to support the family.  They were apart of an increasing number of Cambridge’s young adults who were being priced out due to skyrocketing real-estate prices.  In August, Jahar, intensely aware of the troubles around him, commented on the $15 billion that was spent on the Summer Olympics in a tweet he wrote, “Imagine if that money was used to feed those in need all over the world.”  The value of human life ain’t shit nowadays that’s #tragic.”  In the fall, he returned to college at North Dartmouth, where, without Tamerlan around, he picked up his life, partying in his dorm and letting his schoolwork slide.

“Idk why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean I guess f— the facts y’all are some real #patriots #gethip,” Jahar tweeted.  This is not an uncommon belief.  Payack, who also teaches writing at the Berklee College of Music, says that a fair amount of his college students, notably those born in other countries, believe 9/11 was an “inside job.”  And Larry Aaronson, a retired Rindge history teacher, says that he’s shocked by the number of kids he knows who believe the Jews were behind 9/11.

Jahar returned home for spring break in March and spent time hanging out with his regular crew.  “People come into your life to help you, hurt you, love you and leave you and that shapes your character and the person you were meant to be,” Jahar tweeted on March 18th.  Two days later: “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”  Similar tweets followed in the days before the bombs went off on Monday, April 15th.  Jahar’s Twitter account is what the FBI used the most to track the mindset of the accused bomber, using tweets such as this one posted on April 11th: “Most of you are conditioned by the media.”

On the afternoon of April 18th, a friend of Jahar’s from Cambridge as well as from UMass Dartmouth, was watching the news, along with the rest of America.  He and another friend were discussing that one of the bombers looked like Jahar.  Like most of their friends, they thought it was a coincidence and even texted Jahar telling him that he looked like one of the suspects on television.  “Lol,” Jahar wrote back, casually, and told his friend not to text him anymore, saying, “I’m about to leave, If you need something in my room, take it.”

A month or so after the bombing, a group of Jahar’s friends are sitting together, talking to the reporter from The Rolling Stones.  It’s a lazy spring Sunday, and the media ambush has died down, but the FBI is still searching for what they call “the source of the brothers’ radicalization.  To add to their ammo, Al Qaeda added the well-known photo of Tamerlan, taken the day of the bombing, to their most recent issue of their online publication Inspire. The photo of him dressed in his crisp, white Saturday Night Fever shirt and aviator shades, as his lasting, and to some, only memory.

Surprisingly, Jahar has a fan club, and even more surprising, it keeps growing – #FreeJahar – and tens of thousands of new Twitter followers, despite the fact that he hasn’t tweeted since before his arrest.  Like so many of his fans, some of Jahar’s friends have latched onto conspiracy theories about the bombing, if only because “there are too many unanswered questions,” says Cara, a former friend of Jahar, who points out that the backpack identified by the FBI was not the same color as Jahar’s backpack.  There’s also a photo on the Internet of Jahar walking away from the scene, no pack, though if you look closely, you can see the outline of a black strap.  “Photoshopped!” the caption reads.

One of the friends mentions one of the surveillance videos of Jahar, which shows him impassively watching as people begin to run in response to the blast.  “I mean, that’s just the face I’d always see chilling, talking, smoking,” says Jackson.  He wishes­ Jahar had looked panicked. “At least then I’d be able to say, ‘OK, something happened.’ But . . . nothing.”

15-32

By Dr. Ismail Mehr, IMANA President, IMANA Medical Relief Chair

Allah has most definitely appointed a special place for women in Islam. He has blessed women with the special attributes of compassion, caring and nurturing.

We all know the Hadith of our beloved Prophet (s);

“Verily, Heaven lies under the feet of our mother.”

Nothing more can attest to the fact that you our sisters in Islam carry a special place in our hearts. It’s because of these attributes Allah has given you, that IMANA is reaching out to you during these last ten days of Ramadan. These last ten days hold such significance and the rewards are multiplied multiple times over.

“The night of Al-Qadr (Decree) is better than a thousand months (i.e. worshipping Allâh in that night is better than worshipping Him a thousand months, i.e. 83 years and 4 months).”

Giving charity in itself is an act of worship, in reference to the above Hadith if given on the day of Al-Qadr it will equate being better than a thousand months of worshiping the All-Mighty.

In reference to the above IMANA is reaching out to you as sisters, mothers, aunties, and grandmothers to come forth during these last ten days and help us make a difference in Haiti.

• SaveHaiti remains our most important of projects
• Unfortunately it is also our least supported
• Our H.O.P.E clinic touches the lives of thousands each and every year
• We need your compassion to help
• If every IMANA female member were to give $100 during the last ten days of Ramadan we can continue helping those who have been forgotten.
•    20% of Haitian children die before age 5
•    60% of children are severely anemic
•    300,000 children live as slaves and are abused in Haiti
•    80% of Haitians live below the poverty line
•    75% of Haitians lack access to healthcare
•    Over 76% of pregnant women deliver at home do to lack of hospitals
•    More than 60% of Haitians lack clean drinking water
•    Cholera remains an epidemic claiming lives annually
•    Life expectancy is less than 50 years of age for a Haitian adult
•    Haiti ranks 155/196 in the world for number of Doctors in the country

IMANA is asking every one of you to share your love and compassion with the children, the sick and elderly of Haiti and donate only $100 these last ten days towards SaveHaiti. That’s only $10 a day and the opportunity to reap the rewards greater than a thousand months. Imagine if these were your children. Together you our sisters, mothers, aunties and grandmothers of IMANA can help SaveHaiti.

www.imana.org

15-32

By Barbara Lubin and Danny Muller

When the news spread through Washington this weekend that the unwavering, pioneering journalist Helen Thomas had died, there must have been a collective sigh of relief throughout the halls of Washington.

News articles and obituaries are obligatorily mentioning her retirement over political remarks about Palestine and Israel.  They all will and should celebrate her trail -blazing career as a journalist and author.   And now that she has died, it has become politically correct to re-embrace her, because now Helen is safe.  She will not be asking the uncomfortable questions anymore, questions that made lying politicians squirm, as they stared dumbfounded back at her, always surprised at freedom of the press in action, at a woman who did not know her place.

But in Helen’s final years, there was little celebration of her career and her courage, as former friends, coworkers and many in Washington jumped on the bandwagon resolutely condemning her for comments made in a hit piece that took brief comments out of context.  Perhaps most appallingly, President Obama took time from spying on one half of the world and bombing the other half to state that her resignation was “the right decision.”

In a world where politicians like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Rahm Emmanuel are celebrated for their reputations for expletive laden tirades, can we really pretend that Helen’s comments were so shocking or offensive that they were worthy of forced retirement?  In a world where we hear the daily drivel from presidents promoting wars of madness with lies and straight faces, how did we let such vitriol rain down on her?

Helen Thomas did more to challenge the war from the back row of the White House press corps (where she was relegated for three years after criticizing George Bush in 2003) than any embedded journalist did on the front lines who lay in bed with the military in Iraq.  She stood for a journalistic integrity that was not welcome in an all- encompassing corporate- media-congressional complex.   

n the beginning of her career, she was fired for going on strike with her colleagues at the Washington Daily News.  She faced decades of abuse because she was opinionated, she would not back down, and she was a woman.  In later years, it was shocking to see how George Bush and Barrack Obama addressed her, ageism in presidential clothing, as if she was a child to be tolerated but dismissed and chuckled at, a minor nuisance who did not know her place, a relic that they just needed to pander to for a minute, so they could get back to the Big Lie.

Helen Thomas was ambushed for being Anti Zionist, and as Ralph Nader wrote, “the evisceration was launched by two pro-Israeli war hawks, Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis. Fleischer was George W. Bush’s press secretary who bridled under Helen Thomas’ questioning regarding the horrors of the Bush-Cheney war crimes and illegal torture. His job was not to answer this uppity woman but to deflect, avoid and cover up for his bosses. Davis was the designated defender whenever Clinton got into hot water. As journalist Paul Jay pointed out, he is now a Washington lobbyist whose clients include the cruel corporate junta that overthrew the elected president of Honduras.”  If one followed her career, especially in the last decade, she had upset the status quo repeatedly by asking about the deaths of civilians in America’s wars, the unholy alliance with Israel, their unspoken of nuclear arsenal, and the way we hide the face of war.  Powerful people wanted her silenced and used a 30 second video snippet to try and erase 7 decades of integrity and public service.

So you can imagine how honored we were when in the fall of 2010, we were invited to meet at length with Helen.  Mutual friends had put us in touch and she welcomed us to join her at her home.  She graciously received us, and spoke for hours about a dizzying array of topics.  Her mind was incredibly sharp, having absorbed a number of daily papers that day, and numerous books on current events were neatly stacked, bookmarked and referenced throughout our conversation.  Incredibly open to any question, ( Who was the best president? “It would have been Lyndon Johnson, if it wasn’t for the Vietnam War.  His War on Poverty was an incredible achievement.  But the Vietnam war haunted him.”)  Helen was the consummate journalist even in her own living room, peppering us both with questions, unflinchingly taking it all in.  She moved seamlessly from talking about her Detroit childhood to her trip to China on Air Force One with Richard Nixon, always seeing the interconnectedness of the past and how it influences the present.  When asked about our work in the Middle East, we hesitated at first to answer fully about what we witnessed during the ongoing Israeli occupation, and the Iraq wars. She appeared so very concerned about the experiences of children in these places, and was visibly troubled by what she knew.  Helen was so clearly empathetic to the plight of children, those living in refugee camps, those incarcerated, those who are suffering, that it seemed unfair to burden her further with eyewitness accounts after all she had recently been through.  But her curiosity and questions were no match for us, and like always, Helen asked the questions she wanted.

A few nights later, over tea-then apple martinis and a full-course dinner, Helen continued her line of questioning.  She was very interested in the work of the organization we work with, The Middle East Children’s Alliance, and pledged to speak in San Francisco at a benefit for humanitarian aid for children in Palestine.  Unfortunately, Helen’s physical health soon deteriorated further, preventing her from making the 3000-mile flight.  But the time we spent with Helen Thomas stayed with us, and we were troubled that she was never able to come speak at an event, because we wanted to see her celebrated by the thousands of people we knew who respected her, loved her and were horrified by how she had been treated and forced into exile; even by some close friends and MECA supporters.

Two years later, immediately after the “Operation Pillar of Defense” the 8 -day bombing of Gaza by Israel where 158 Palestinians were killed, 30 of them children, we crossed the Erez crossing from Israel into Gaza City.  A week after we had arrived, we were out late in the early morning hours conversing with journalists and other internationals.  The topic of the Arab Spring and the role of social media were hot topics of discussion.   A young Palestinian journalist, who had recently completed her studies in London, returned to Gaza months earlier to cover human rights issues for an online news website written in English, and stated to us that she wanted to be the next Helen Thomas.

Another journalist responded to her by saying, “Oh, you mean because of her comments on Palestine.”

“No, that is not why.  There are two things that will change the world,” she said,  “Media and women: and I am both. “

This is Helen Thomas’ legacy.  This is proof that the uncomfortable questions will continue to be asked.  That is what Helen wanted.   Accountability of the powerful, a fearless press in search of the truth.

That is why we think August 4th should be declared Helen Thomas Day, a birth date she shares with Barack Obama.  But August 4th should be a day we celebrate only Helen Thomas, not Barack Obama, for weak hearted men who launch distant wars should be relegated to the dustbins of history, and fearless women who challenge empire and live a life unintimidated should be honored.

Sign Our Petition to Ask the White House to Declare August 4th  “Helen Thomas Day.”

Barbara Lubin is a lifelong peace, justice and disability rights activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), a non-profit organization which since 1988, has been working for the rights and the well being of children in the Middle East.

Danny Muller has worked with the Middle East Children’s Alliance since they were jointly breaking the economic sanctions against Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness in the 1990’s.  He has worked with MECA in Iraq & Palestine.  He is a war tax resister and war abolitionist.

They can be reached at meca@mecaforpeace.org

15-32

Ayesha Ibrahim, a graduating nursing major , was selected to address the 200 graduates from Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies in Washington, D.C.,  at a special schoolwide awards ceremony known as Tropaia.

An accomplished student Ibrahim had won several scholarships and awards. Last month she received the School of Nursing & Health Studies’ Landegger Community Service Award. At the university she was  a member of the Minority Health Initiative Group, NHS Academic Council, Muslim Student Association, and GU Women of Color.

“Whatever it is that makes you tick don’t lose sight of that,” she told her classmates from all four majors, according to the release. “Use that passion that you possess to move forth in your career, reach new heights and leave your mark on this Earth. … I would like to leave you all with one last message, carry the Jesuit principles of cura personalis and being men and women for others with you always.”