Event: TOUR FOR A JUST FOREIGN POLICY IN IRAN AND IRAQ - 11/8

Please forward widely:

PERPETUAL WAR FOR PEACE?
TOUR FOR A JUST FOREIGN POLICY IN IRAN AND IRAQ
IS COMING TO BROOKLYN COLLEGE!

THIS IS THE TOUR'S ONLY NYC STOP!

The tour is crossing the Northeast, bringing critical
analysis and first hand accounts to communities ready
for a change in U.S. foreign policy. Join us to
discuss the current situation in Iraq and debunk
Washington's Iran policy. Come experience photos from
Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon that bring alive the urgency
of ending and avoiding war by award winning
photojournalists.
Visit: www.justforeignpolicy.org/tour

Wednesday, November 8th, 12pm
Brooklyn College Student Center (SUBO), Penthouse (top
floor)
Featuring:

RAED JARRAR, Iraq Project Director at Global Exchange,
architect, and blogger
http://www.globalexchange.org

ANTONIA JUHASZ, author of The Bush Agenda: Invading
the World, One Economy at a Time and scholar at the
Institute for Policy Studies
www.thebushagenda.net

ROSTAM POURZAL, President of the U.S. branch of the
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention
in Iran
www.campaigniran.org

Photo exhibit featuring:

LYNSEY ADDARIO, acclaimed photojournalist documenting
conflict, human interest stories, and people
throughout the Middle East and Africa.
www.lynseyaddario.com

ANDREW STERN, award winning photojournalist committed
to documenting critical social and political issues.
http://digitalrailroad.net/astern

RAMIN TALAIE, widely published photojournalist from
Iran.
http://ramintalaie.com/

MOHAMMAD KHEIRKHAH, photojournalist from Iran sharing
images of Iran.
http://documentiran.com/

For more information, please visit
www.justforeignpolicy.org/tour


Sponsored by:
United Students League at Brooklyn College (and others
TBA)
TRAVEL DIRECTIONS:
http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/info/aboutbc/index.php?link=travel
CAMPUS MAP (building 13 on the map):
http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/campmap/
contact: heather.squire@gmail.com/347.952.6786

and

Just Foreign Policy
tour@justforeignpolicy.org
202.448.2898

Event: History & Development of Islamic Law - 11/6

History & Development of Islamic Law

Monday, November 6, 2006 6:30-9 pm
House of the Association, 42 West 44th Street

Jurisprudence, usul al-fiqh, is a cornerstone of Islamic studies.
Starting with the Quran itself, law and theology are intrinsically
intertwined for both the Sunni and Shi'a schools of legal study. This
program presents what may be the most distinguished panel of academic
Islamic law scholars ever available to the public in the Western
Hemisphere. The topics will cover the background and fundamentals of
Islamic jurisprudence as well as the causes and basics of the Sunni-Shia
schism.

Moderator:

ROBERT E. MICHAEL
Chair, Committee on Foreign and Comparative Law

Speakers:

BERNARD K. FREAMON
Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School, Director of the Law School's
Summer Program for the Study of Law in the Middle East in Cairo --
Formation of the early precepts of Islamic Law, from the revelation of the
Quran through the defeat of the Rationalists

MARK D. WELTON (LT. COL., RET.)
Professor of International and Comparative Law, United States Military
Academy, West Point -- The development of Islamic Law from the end of the
Classical Period to the present

ROY P. MOTTAHEDEH
Gurney Professor of History, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard
University -- The origins of Shi'a Islam and the major differences from
Sunni jurisprudence

BERNARD HAYKEL
Associate Professor of Islamic Law and Middle Eastern History, Department
of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University -- Developments
and changes in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, with a particular emphasis on the
role of the Zaydi School of non-Twelver Shi'ites

Sponsored by:
Committee on Foreign and Comparative Law, Robert E. Michael, Chair

For more information, please contact Robert E. Michael, Robert E. Michael
& Associates PLLC, 950 Third Ave., Suite 2500, NY, NY 10022, Tel:
212-758-4606, rema@walrus.com. There is no fee but registration is
requested. Please click here
http://www.nycbar.org/EventsCalendar/show_event.php?eventid=541.

Carnegie Council event: Alberto J. Mora - 11/2

SPECIAL INVITATION:
Alberto J. Mora, November 2, 5:30 PM

October 26, 2006

The Carnegie Council presents: Dan Rather Introducing Alberto J. Mora speaking on Ethical Considerations: Law, Foreign Policy, and the War on Terror On Thursday, November 2, 2006 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM As U.S. Navy general counsel, Alberto Mora battled with military and civilian leaders over U.S. policy regarding the treatment of detainees held as part of the war on terror. Alerted by Navy investigators to reports that detainees at Guantanamo Bay were being subjected to cruel and unlawful interrogation practices, he tried to halt policies of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects. Mr. Mora challenges all Americans to consider the question: How can we maintain our national values as we fight this war on terror? Alberto Mora served as General Counsel to the Department of the Navy in Washington, DC from July 2001 until December 2005. Upon returning to the private sector, he joined Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in January 2006 as Vice President and General Counsel for the International Division. He currently resides in Bentonville, AR. Please RSVP to Melissa Semeniuk at msemeniuk@cceia.org or call 212-838-4120. Location: Carnegie Council, 170 East 64th Street, New York. This event is open to the public free of charge, made possible by your generous contributions. For more information visit our website at www.carnegiecouncil.org.

Article: A Nobel Peace Prize for Neoliberalism? The Myth of Microloans by Alexander Cockburn

I don't usually visit Counterpunch.Org very often, but like the articles they publish. This article by Alexander Cockburn really appealed to my logic as far as Dr. Yunus' recent Nobel Peace Prize victory goes. While the whole world celebrated and praised Dr. Yunus, as did I, it took a few days for me to realize that the whole idea of microcredit and microloans made a large group of people, further entrenched in debt. And debt is never a good thing. No matter how small or useful, debt can only make you worse off because it maes you dependant on some other person or entity for your needs and/or survival. This can never be good.

And it is now that I sit here thinking, "what was Dr. Yunus thinking?", that I present to you an article by Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch.org. Happy reading...

Some excerpts:

The trouble is that microloans don't make any sort of a macro-difference. They have helped some poor women, no doubt about it. But in their own way they're a register of defeat. Back in the early 1970s there were huge plans afoot to change the entire relationship of the Third to the First World, to speed Third World economies towards decent living standards for the many, not just the few. At the United Nations radical economists were hard at work drafting plans for a New World Economic Order. All that went out the window and here are the caring classes thirty years later, hailing microloans.

In the statistical tables of human development Bangladesh ranks 139th, worse than India, with 49.8 per cent of its population of 150 million below the official poverty line. In the homeland of the Grameen Bank, about 80 per cent of the people live on less than $2 a day. A UN Development Program study in the early 1990s showed that the total microcredits in Bangladesh constituted 0.6 per cent of total credit in the country. Hardly a transformation.

But today the World Bank and the IMF, along with state-owned and commercial banks are diving into microfinance. The microloan business is fast becoming a gigantic empire, bringing back into control the very banks and bureaucracies women have been trying to bypass. Microcredit is becoming a macro-racket.

Governments like microloans because they allow them to abdicate their most basic responsibilities to poor citizens. Microloans make the market a god.

The trouble with publicly-subsidized credit programs is that they're public and they're large and run contrary to the neoliberal creed. That's why Younus got his Nobel prize, whereas radical land reformers get a bullet in the back of the head.