Transcripts For ALJAZ Fatima Bhutto Marc Lamont Hill 20240713

Have heavy crime tape restrictions in place and heavy restrictions on any foreigners trying to enter china and this is simply chinas why of dealing with what they believe could be a 2nd wave of infections 180 cases its certainly not a Great Development but china would say its particularly in recovery mode at this stage compared to the rest of the world but there have been a number of questions about the accuracy of these figures coming out of china weve had last week a senior british minister Michael Goves questioning tried as transparency about the effectiveness of this particular virus and present donald trump has also said he questions the number of deaths he said the death toll is on the light side looking at the overall figures coming out of china the total number of deaths of 3343. 00 so thats certainly low in comparison to the rest of the world and 83134 cases of the crowd a virus infection so this is why the questions are appearing and increasing about chinas transparency and its the accuracy of its not just its figures but the accounting measures its using to calculate the number of infections in the country in the u. K. The number of reported deaths caused by the virus has gone above 10000 and there is growing concern about the lack of protective equipment for Health Workers also promised johnsons been released from hospital after spending 3 months in intensive care thanks doctors and Health Care Workers for saving his life in the last 7 days i have of course seen the pressure that the n. H. S. Is under ive seen the personal courage not just of the doctors the nurses but of everyone the cleaners the cooks the Health Care Workers with every description physios radio group was foremost this who kept coming to work kept putting themselves in harms way kept risky this deadly virus it is thanks to that courage that devotion that duty and that love. That are in the chess has been unbeatable in the us the Infectious Disease expert dr anthony felt she says he cant guarantee it will be safe for americans to vote in person during the vendors president ial election the u. S. Has more confirmed cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world and the number of fatalities in the worst affected state new york is rising some leaders are calling the trumpet ministration to provide more testing kits. The Worlds Largest Oil Producers have agreed to the biggest Production Cut in history the demand for oil has plummeted in the Coronavirus Crisis so a cut in production could help keep Petroleum Prices from dropping saudi arabia russia and several other Oil Producing nations have made a deal to reduce production by nearly 10000000 barrels a day in may and june turkeys president reject has rejected his interior ministers resignation so you tried to quit after he abruptly and forced a 48 hour curfew that sparked panic buying in major cities that curfew has since been lifted. To celebrations were disrupted by powerful tornadoes that carved a path of destruction through several southern u. S. States at least 6 people were killed when around 13 twisted whipped through mississippi where the governor has not declared a state of emergency start storms also destroyed hundreds of buildings and caused power blackouts in parts of louisiana texas and alabama and a priest in brazil is going to some extreme heights to carry out an easter blessing took a helicopter ride over at Rio De Janeiro to bless the city from the air many people in the deeply catholic country are staying home to stop the spread of coronavirus but here we have rios christ the redeemer statue lives up to honor the countrys front line Health Care Workers. Youre up to date with the headlines on aljazeera from london studio b. Unscripted is next. Theres no punchline to state violence sometimes stuff is just bad pop culture is not innocent its coated with all kinds of politics the white mainstream feels that the shift is happening then nervous didnt nervous i like my feminist sort of murder free. Market month i can help contribute to a conversation that will lead to an outcome that is freedom justice equality and selfdetermination for everyone im an academic a writer journalist. My name is father and im from pakistan i think some ideas are too dangerous to do except in novel form and the author of 6 books of fiction and nonfiction and i always knew i wanted to be right. When. We have an opportunity i remember seeing marks speech at the un in defense of the Palestinian People which got him fired from c. N. N. And shortly after a free palestine i asked myself look at i have in common with a member of the bhutto family a political dynasty in pakistan. From book one always is about pakistan but its about much more than that its about the universal psychology of oppression i read marks book nobody about the injustices faced by africanamericans and i was struck by how much it resonated with that spoke to me about my. So there was a lot of talk. I think you can do that a lot of things while i was writing the way writing always felt like the clearest way to think to talk about issues that i cared about and to explore things that the served me i think fiction is even more liberating in that sense because if you were to tell people ive written a book about radicalism they may not really want to read it or talk about it but when you put it in fiction. You can bring all kinds of dangerous ideas to people without them really knowing that youve done that why did you write same thing i like dangerous ideas that free dangerous ideas because there were people who see a brown body in a black body here danger and think that were writing about how to destroy stuff and in some ways we are but were trying to destroy oppressive systems that people yeah and so for me i thought as a writer i had an opportunity to use my mind in my spirit and marshal a whole tradition in the service of justice but i find that when you come from the places we come from when youre talking about the things that we talk about and theres a discomfort with dangerous ideas do you get told a lot of the times to be positive oh yes yes im like its incredibly frustrating yeah not because im without hope or optimism but sometimes you just got to bring bad news you know im telling a story at the beginning of nobody but a boy my brown who was left on the ground for a half hours after being killed by a Police Officer after being stopped for jaywalking yeah for crossing in the wrong part of the street. His schooling was was poor 80 percent of the people in the town have warrants against them now for murder or theft usually feel like jaywalking or parking tickets when i look at the store what it means to be young and vulnerable in america and black or brown muslim trans clear you know what immigrant what have you. Its sad its depressing yeah and editors say you know this is great stuff its powerful its informative but i want people to laugh at the end i need a punch line and theres no punch line to stay violence sometimes stuff is just bad you know and we have to wrestle within with the sit with it instead of being titillated in stimulated and excited by it or made to believe that the world is going to just be ok so just let people sit with this misery some would say though you are a fiction writer yeah in any way you want thats true it ends badly lets raise a bit of average other work and it often is already a very the book is great but the story. Yeah i mean you leave us in this place yeah but thats life do you think mike that life doesnt end in this tidy way where everything is sorted and theres conclusions and people have closure and so i think when youre writing fiction at least you you have plenty of moments that are joy and of beauty and of love but sometimes the endings are as they are in life painful yes i love though that while the ending is painful the journey there is not entirely so i want to travel around the world i see that as the resistance yeah and i see joy in the midst of pain your books do that your books do that one of the things i loved about your book and your writing is reading about you in ferguson. Protesting mike browns death and having palestinians tweet you how to do it tear gas yeah yeah you tell us about that we were there at midnight when they in ferguson a few days after the killing of my broom and the next night tear gas tear in before the curfew tear gas tear gas. And we started getting tweets because the world was watching this yeah and were getting tweets from ramallah and they were like run toward the wind. You know stand closer to the soldiers because if you stand close to the soldiers they want to or guess you can they get tear gas you know right this shirt or on your eyes the kind of makeshift gas mask and they have been protesting in the west bank against what was happening in gaza because in the same moment that we were protesting in ferguson august 24th teen there was thered been a 51 day war in gaza for july and august of that same year 2014 now were not just crying for the tear gas were also crying because were like oh my god palestinians who are catching hell in the west bank and in gaza watching and theyre taking the time of all the things they could be doing theyre taking the time to tell us how to be safer and were building those bonds of solidarity so theres joy in theres joy in the midst of that pain in the backdrop of that and i guess. That connects to another piece of this for me which is the question of activism yet because youre not just writing now im not just writing were also on the ground in a certain way do you identify as activists some people dont like that term i dont know i dont really know what its supposed to mean i can only write about the things i really care about so i can only put my voice and my time to something that means something to me and i think those are uncomfortable issues those are issues of powerlessness of injustice but i dont know i think writing when done well is activism i do think theres a difference between writing in the house writing in the ivory tower in yeah you know and being with being there you know i mean people who are literally killed for writing and for drawing yeah thats a whole different world so i dont i dont take writing off the table as a form of resistance i think activism is its own thing and its all kind of freedom fight. I guess what i wonder though is. With the respective values of each and my concern is that sometimes as academics we kind of pooh pooh what happens on the ground sometimes people on the ground and i go youre just in your tower right what good is that were good is it to write the runaways when theyre real people youre feeling well from american imperialism do people ever make you feel guilty for writing sure all the time. I get asked all the time why are you writing when you could be doing and i think writing for me is a form of doing i think exactly because of imperialism is oppressing and silencing so many people that is a valid form of fighting back to rights to have different stories and i think it means something for those of us who come from the global south for those of us who are asian or muslim to see our stories reflected in fiction in film. And not only in the news right you know were in also from an oriental is oriental aslans because we can watch home when we shouldnt. Care boy we shouldnt but we can and its there but i dont want to watch that anymore im tired of that for me pop culture is not innocent and its not entertaining its coated with all kinds of politics and and we go to it innocently you know but of course the people who are making and producing pop culture are not innocent exactly and then when you watch that from a 1000000 miles away that becomes your norm for who and what black people are who are what must i mean or how they live south asians and such or was born in 78 and i was growing up in the eightys and ninetys i was a complete professional wrestling nerd i mean the grand moment of wrestling the kind of turret modernised moment of wrestling with hogan becomes the champ yeah by being the iron sheik you come down the hours from tehran iran and he got his title by stealing it yeah right and he allied with with the russians wrestlers becomes them sergeant slaughter is as old boy you know so fitting in so hes a super jingoistic imperialist sort of figure whos defeating russians and iranians and so were justifying Foreign Policy by framing these people in a certain way and then im looking at all these africans and arabs in iranians who are barbaric and look at these White American superheroes yeah so by the time i find out that were going to go into the persian gulf were going to youre prepared im prepared for it makes sense because i just like those guys i watch every saturday. And i cant imagine how you feel watching that stuff im here is all the time actually at the scene that always. Really really upsets me is 0 dark 30 year where the cia officer i mean knows how theyre always really concerned careful thoughtful individuals in film so whenever someone torture theres always the cia officer to be like is he going to be ok. So theres a moment 0 dark 30 and this is like history according to hollywood where theres a man being water boarded and we know right that actually torture didnt yield any actionable intelligence right but this is man being tortured to within an inch of his life and the camera is not really looking at him its looking at jessica chasin the cia officer and shes like this. Whole the whole time you know youre going to kill him and shes like i could be sick and she walks to a corner for her poor her and i think thats the gays and thats the gays of power and so pop culture identifies our solidarity with the powerful and never the powerless and i think most people watch that and think its a great action film or theres drama and suspense but thats intense cruelty and theres intense dehumanization playing and its everywhere i mean its in the shows its in the t. V. Its in sports as you said and i think thats why people like. Mohammed are the. A so moving and powerful because they fought against that they brought some new form of politics and resistance and questioning in the sent to the field of at a time in pop culture you know we have come kaepernick in yes in the in the states you know who took that knee and is essentially lost his career because hes willing to stand up and fight state violence against black bodies and there are more figures like that im sure you know i just in theres never been an overabundance of them there always been a few here you people who over time we begin to love and romance but in the moment we hate them you know they suffer they suffer they suffer extraordinary cost and i think that we can never forget the costs but you know mark we i mean in south asia where cricket playing countries indian bison we had in february of 2019 tensions between these 2 countries in their Nuclear Armed nations so when you have tension between 2 Nuclear Nations thats i mean possible annihilation and one of the things that was really disturbing to see is how entertainment figures and sports figures rallied for war we have athletes who are wearing military camouflage hats to play a game a lot of Bollywood Actors tweeting for war pretty horrific stuff like cheerleading attacks jingoistic statements in the states thats the norm right yeah kaepernick does kneeling against the backdrop of air force and army commercials the entire sport which is all about war i mean the trenches and blitzing and doyle along bombs hes the outlier there any outliers where you are no no its all pretty its pretty depressing because weve got a lot of vulture hyper nationalism and i think im not sure its ever been that bad i guess thats why again your book for me is so. Necessary because when i hear the story of state repression when i see american imperialism when i see economic deprivation and i see how one could become desperate and one could become radicalized by this was the argument against american imperialism from some of us here was youre creating the very thing that youre afraid of. How do you get to that place of thinking about radicalization i think that if were looking at the 20 years of the war on terror almost its been such a shallow narrative and that narrative has been presented to us by by the west essentially and what theyve said is theyre these people theyre muslims theyre vulnerable to radicalism theyre dangerous they come from these places and thats it and they left themselves out of the frames there is no conversation about americas forever wars or about the thousands of of civilians killed in these secret drone campaigns. There is no conversation about inequality and poverty and i think for a lot of us living outside the west that was always false was always paid in the film you know and to me the question of radicalism doesnt come from religion at all but its a question of anger of powerlessness a fear of isolation. And if you have young people in society where they have no this isnt for their future they have a vision for a dignified life noble work safety then theyre going to be vulnerable to any vision that is offered to them and theyll take it and so on that level i think the world is is not helping and radicalism is only furthering its by cutting out space to me i would argue that many of us in the United States have a radical vision yeah but i would use the language of radicalization because of what it connotes sure and it seems that when people in the global south want to have a radical imagination and a radical reimagining of the world we think of violence within of destruction as you say we dont think about the forces they get them there is any way to have maybe throw it open a little bit to question you know i dont want to jump in at this moment how are we to get to sites that are unwilling to cooperate with one another such as opposing states or even sectarian actors in the middle east to come together and begin focusing on their similarities and contribute to cooperation and more constructive. Who the good question here 1st. I think it varies from context to context. And also i have to push a little bit ask who the we is in terms of who is the we that is doing the work restriction here so in the case of israel palestine we can pretend that theres been an enduring war thats going on since the beginning of time which is the kind of dishonest narrative or we could say this is a very material struggle over over land and resources that could in tomorrow if the United States took a different position thats the kind of thing and something less about the kind of politics of good relations in cordiality and im thinking more about the way that we particular when it comes to the middle east can radically reshape relations simply through our investment as a dominant global power global northern powers theres a moral thing here too now. The United States could not just say hey we have control over israel palestine or but to also say we want to different outcome we want to actual just equal fair outcome for everybody thats a different position to take we could look in yemen and say wait a minute we whats happening here is unjust and what the Saudi Arabian government is doing is unjust and because we have an economic stake in saudi arabia and vice versa we can exercise some power to prevent the humanitarian crisis to prevent war crimes from happening we we can do that we can do that right now so its partly about exercising our interest but its also about saying lets have a more humane and compassionate interest but thats not going to come from governments governments dont have feelings they only have interests but when its citizens have feelings and we can shape our feelings and interests to converse with the interest of the state so they can make different choices but i mean we have to vote with organized we have to resist we have to fight we have to tweet with dollars stuff. Fatima recently youve spoken about what youve called cool person celebrity feminism and mark in the past you challenge conventional views of masculinity to tell us more about us today the word feminism is used in a really weird really broad way so its given as an example of feminism the fact that out of 5 of americas Largest Defense Companies 4 of those are run by women. Now you know Northrop Grumman which is one of the largest arms traders in the world has a female c. E. O. And they make their the largest supplies of drones to the u. S. Military they make the be 2 bomber which can drop thermonuclear weapons why is this an example of feminism you know i like my feminist sort of murder free. And i think you know this is you know gina hospers the director of the cia im supposed to feel good as a woman that you know have a woman in charge of waterboarding people i dont feel good about that and i think you know we again we have also these ideas of of corporate feminism leaning in leaning in and you know the philosophy of lean in is lean and it only talk to women who are you know in the building on that ladder at the table but it doesnt talk to people who are not on that path. Feminism has to be about justice it has to be about inclusive ity about equity miti its not just about being a woman and i was mention order lord who is a great intersectional feminist who said you cannot dismantle the Masters House is in the last us tour and why corporate colonial feminism are the masters tools absolutely and so many of our imperial interventions in the middle east in particular to help employment is a good speaker said its about white men saving brown women from brown men yeah and so we end up oh my god we have to go there and save the what we have to go to afghanistan look at whats happening you know saudi arabia because as we you know egypt cause you dont worry about that you pull you know so so it becomes really arbitrary invocation of feminist sensibilities yeah but only for certain kinds of women under certain kinds of circumstances and so i dont want to live in a world where feminism means white women or with neo liberal feminism words the right to be yeah really really wealthy. Have it all and i think the other problem with this which goes to the piece about masculinity and manhood i think is that we also have to reimagine what counts as womens issues and mens issues in such a way that women have equal access equal justice and that we can look at the world not just to the lives of many men male identity but also to women with that we have to remember in all of this stuff in too often we dont or the reason i say that is because theres a hash tag going on. In the current moment that says min should not be deciding womens bodies mention that be making policy about womens bodies and i kind of agree with that yeah but if youre a room full of women who are making the same bad choices yeah i also wouldnt feel comfortable so i dont want patriarchy in drag i want a whole new world. Weve mentioned coming up in it come now mark you in a way kind of took. No need for the Palestinian People you lost your job at the c. N. N. When you made your speech at the u. N. Speaking for the Palestinian People i want to ask both of you what advice you have for people speaking up for those who cant speak against all kinds of attempts to silence and smear those words have a good savings account. I dont think we have the luxury of dividing our struggles the same systems of patriarchy that pressure you and the press and me more especially women in our country they dont stop at least they dont stop at the border they dont want the checkpoints capitalism isnt limited to a region its a global system picture it is a global system transform is a global system and so or at least ideology and so. We dont have the luxury of not standing up for each other. I dont think that i did anything special by standing up for Palestinian People i did what was right and so i encourage everyone to live at these intersections to think internationally to have a global critique of power and to operate in that fashion be wise be selective every moment in the moment. You know i dont wake up that morning knowing i was going lose a job i wish i could tell that random story maybe the novel right there but in real life i did what was right and i was open to the possibility that bad things could happen or unfortunate things could happen but i think at the core we have to be committed to that kind of intersection of work. Thats beautiful i think also the idea that of giving voice to the voiceless is sort of problematic because no one is voiceless everyone has voices and and what you said is so beautiful because actually its maybe just solidarity of being an ally or trying to do what we can to make sure other people have choices we do. Now. They only want to protect life for 9 months i was a baby is born youre old and thats i dont know for i cannot be assured of justice when i go to the police because the police are part of a deeply personal injustice in my life this is what has gone the whole time i very much thought i was going to look at a bad movie. I easily test treats and trace frank assessments why is italy struggling to cope with the number coronavirus push failure to take really aggressive action behind her informed opinion which is going to be much more challenging in a place like haiti where theres one ventilator very relieved people in depth analysis of the days global headlines india done enough to nip the spread of the coronavirus in the inside story on aljazeera understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the board so no matter how we take it well bring you the news and Current Affairs that matter to you a policy imposed decades ago pregnant woman part that she put selectively goods and one of the boards changing demographics across asia with far reaching consequences for creating a poor socially disadvantaged young men so you have the system where people at every level will be get being given money money to agree destro zation our money to get other people to be the services how does their examines the politics of population control. Well take it apart to a studio be unscripted in just a moment but 1st a quick check of the headlines and china has recorded more than 100 new corona virus infections the highest in 6 weeks most came from people arriving from overseas interestingly though no new infections reported in who were province where the outbreak was 1st detected globally although 114000 people have died from cope at 19 and more than 1800000 have been infected more from sarah clarke in hong kong. As of monday so these are the figures coming from the National Health commission its 108. 00 cases of the infection reported across china of course most of these Health Commission says are imported cases and this is the highest number of daily cases that weve seen in china in 6 weeks now we have 3 deaths new deaths as of monday now its a small increase as well from the day before we had 99 the day before and 100 night on monday but were saying its ongoing downward trend saying a number the city has reopened across china weve got the traverse frictions lifted for domestic travelers across the country but this is ongoing concern about a 2nd wave of infections in the u. K. The number of reported deaths caused by coronaviruses gone above 10000 there is also growing concern about the lack of protective equipment for britains Health Workers Prime Minister johnson has also been released from hospital after spending 3 nights in intensive care u. S. Infectious disease expert dr anthony felt she says he cant guarantee it will be safe for americans to vote in person during event his president ial election the us has more confirmed cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world the Worlds Largest Oil Producers have agreed to the biggest Production Cut in history and demand for oil is plummeted during the Coronavirus Crisis and so saudi arabia russia and several other Oil Producing nations have made a deal going to reduce production by nearly 10000000 barrels a day and hes to some Day Celebrations have been disrupted by powerful tornadoes that caused a path of destruction through several u. S. States Southern States at least 6 people were killed and around 13 twisters through mississippi and finally a priest in brazil has gone to extreme heights to carry out his easter blessing. Took a helicopter ride over Rio De Janeiro to bless the city from the air also rios christ the redeemer statue was listen up to on a Health Care Workers brazil has latin americas worst break thats been out for today youre up to date with the news back now to studio b. Unscripted from london. Played an important role. Youve written a lot about prisons in nobody youve spoken a lot about it and when i was reading your book i was so moved by those sections and i was thinking very much also about my country about pakistan. And. Has sentenced someone to death at the rate of one person a day who who for the last 15 years the government after a really brutal attack on a school the Army Public School in pakistan where over 130 children were killed just brought back the Death Penalty that had been a kind of unofficial moratorium and the people were being executed when the moratorium was lifted in fact were not terrorists or serial killers they were poor they were illiterate they were from minority communities in our case that would be there were some christian men who were put to death you know under things like the blasphemy law. There were people who had no power to protect themselves and they were always the victims and this is something from reading your work that i see not just in pakistan but in america too which of which we from outside see as a sort of infinitely powerful place but our prison systems are not that different other than i mean at the core. There is a rich a beauty of vision of justice that says that justice equals punishment and punishment equals confinement and extreme punishment equals dead. And we see that too often in the world the problem with whats happening in pakistan the problem that would have been United States in saudi arabia and other places is one the state doesnt have the moral authority to kill its citizens yeah you know one of the reasons in germany they dont have the Death Penalty is it after ugly vicious history of violence of antisemitism of ethnic cleansing of destructive genocide one of them are authorities to take life to take a life. In germany is right. But us think i dont think the track were going to either but its interesting that all this the people who are so viciously fighting abortion rights are really big proponents of the Death Penalty in america they only want to protect life here for for 9 months yeah ok i was a baby is more your year old and thats i dont know no health care no for those coal. Yeah you know your other thing is does it work because the argument that this will stop bad stuff from happening we just kill more people now will stop stuff from happening yeah you would think that if you impose a Death Penalty the crime would drop it doesnt. And then the other piece of information we get it wrong too much there are too many people who are wrongfully convicted wrongfully charged on the basis of race and the race of class on the basis of gender on the basis of gender presentation of the basis of Sexual Identity so all that together for me is dangerous and you have personal experiences with the reflexive racism of america as police. I was dropping a friend off after a night of i wish i could say i had wild crazy nights but were playing video games ok. I did that. I did that i have people say i want to do something fun you know something crazy. But no i dropped him home off the stops and asked him why he said im not telling you got me out of the car slam into the car before after ask me where my gun was you know if i had a gun he says where the gun was because apparently i just look like people person who carries a gun so i dont have one his hands or his gun the whole time as a partner i very much thought i was going to get shot because the whole look like a bad movie. I ask again why am i being pulled over its a legal discharge of a passenger you know 40 i threw him out of the window the way the way i was put i dont know any other way to discharge a passenger but the people were yeah the car park they got a lot to do or said by i could get a lot nicer maybe beat me in the game or you know whatever the net like there was nothing yeah. They went to my trunk they went through everything he was physically abusive slamming me back and forth into the car and ultimately didnt find anything but a checkbook that had dr Marc Lamont Hill on it. Me why i had a checkbook thats a doctor on it. He said would you get these. From the bank right i mean yeah but you know this is this is the ignorance of racism right it was more plausible to him that i had robbed a doctor with the same name. That i got out of a state yeah this is the absurdity of it yeah so at that point what do you do i said im a ph d. Im a professor and im also a Television Personality thats when the light goes off takes the handcuffs off. Put his arm around me. And says you know im going to do you a favor oh im going to go home but youre in the wrong neighborhood with that car he said i could lock you up for drunk driving but i want my driver had a drink. But there was a veiled threat. He thought the night was over yeah ive course sued him a turd i had a long history of violence he had shot a few people. Here corruption he actually thought it was a residence of as part of a drug and prostitution scam but if i had not had the power and the resources and the visibility to challenge him i would have been one of the many people who also had come forward and been ignored yeah because in the city that i live in just like in los angeles in new york in many other places the investigation of the police happens by whom the police go figure and they have a 98 percent clearance rate yeah unfortunately there are no mechanisms of accountability im sure you witnessed same kind of stuff in my case in particular my father who was a member of parliament was killed outside our home by the police and there were about 100 policeman there on the scene 7 men were killed and the police left them to bleed to death on the streets but. The really tragic thing is that my case was not unique who in fact at that period when my father was killed in the ninetys and bias then the police were engaged in what they called encounters it just means extra judicial killings there were Police Officers who encounter specialists who are known for their amazing ability to find criminals and you know accidentally shoot them in the back lets say. And those policemen were never punished they were never arrested they were never demoted in the case of my fathers murder the policemen were very senior and they are still employed today. And so that experience of Police Violence and not just the violence but having no recourse having no access to justice in the face of police is i think a very familiar one for a lot of people in i would even say south asia maybe not just by his then how do you engage that without feeling a profound sense of hopelessness. If im a problem mark i i i cannot be assured of justice when i go to the police because the police are part of a deeply personal injustice in my life as are the courts as is the state but i think thats an experience that in pakistan is applied pretty widely it doesnt matter if youre privileged if you have access to education or voice it doesnt matter that violence is democratically employed against anyone who questions or who can question which im imagining can even further contribute to radicalization in the state where we saw that with the taliban you know why was a taliban in in pakistan at least why were they able to move so quickly because the state was just absent but these sort of movements were not they were there on the ground they lived in these neighborhoods they knew what people needed we saw the same with education so by said we have a. History of things called ghost schools which means that governments will take millions and millions of dollars from norway or sweden or wherever to build girls schools lets say and they would just pocket that money and so you have. A huge amount of illiteracy bots people will come in and set up a mother says and these are not just ordinary seminaries but they teach kids how to read so if you are parents in a village in northern 5 percent are you going to let your kid say illiterate are you going to send him to a mother that will send him to mothers so thats how i mean radicalism grows in a vacuum i think in a lot of places like pakistan yeah that makes or egypt i mean we saw the Muslim Brotherhood in the twentys fame later g. M. s in more recent and their public work and investment whether its orphanages of the schools etc i think again the intuitive answer then to me than is if we wanted to stop radicalization we could invest in the things that the vulnerable need to give us in schools in housing we can invest in health care we dont and we can also bring people who live on the periphery of our society into our society i mean in the case of france which has suffered from radicalism theres not a lot of conversation about the fact that a lot of people of that same north african descent or middle eastern descent or muslims are not included in the core of the city of urban spaces but relegated to these bunny or the the slums and so they form this kind of outer ring of misery. You could bring the men know you could include them in life and i dont think it happens we have to figure out how to reimagine this relationship to margin and center and figure out how to make this shift and i think in some ways at least in the United States the white mainstream feels that the shift is happening theyre anxious about theyre nervous theyre nervous you know theyre nervous that more brown people theres going to be a brown black majority theyre nervous about the refugee crisis as they call it from the crisis that refugees are coming isnt that amazing its not that thousands of people have been dispossessed of their homes and their families that we have to deal with it and i also find it really interesting how language is you just by power by power. For racist means or or other and i know youve said that racism is when you define someone elses reality for them yes yes yes but make it think its their own thats exactly right and so we buy into these norms even though even the framework of being a minority right is itself a way of isolating and separating and dividing in school and we were taught that our history largely began with slavery if youre told that slaves are brought to america then your central identity is that of the slave whereas if youre told that people were brought to america and in slaves now you want to measure what their lives were like before that it was interrupted by slavery yeah language shapes how we understand ourselves how we how we shape the idea of whos a rebel the idea of whos and we here who the rebel in the west you think oh my god those who the rebels if they would just stop being yeah rebellious the world before i do you find out the whole thing the problem yeah right but its how you frame who gets to be the rebel who gets to be the radical who gets to be the Freedom Fighter yeah so can i say this is something that annoys me. To the extreme right is language thats defined by through western white world so the thing i really dont like is people of color because where brown people were black people were asian people were Indigenous People were Aboriginal People were latin x. People why are all of our people of color and theyre just one color because right there is why the usa should they be people of no color exactly and thats that i dont think im here for our vote for that thats not what your rival and i find it also says that like i as a brown person have the same experience as an asian person or that an africanamerican president of the same experience as i have but i mean its not true you know so i think its i think its both emmel on the one hand were all very different but theres a way that you did your life is critical in understanding how to resist imperialism so i think the moment we have to identify a difference in our sameness im not against people of color at certain moments were fighting White Supremacy sure but its still their language right its so yeah its their definition so there is another way to in visit a kind of community between us or solidarity between us that was our own language that would be preferable wouldnt record texas full circle thats what we wrote there we go so we can write impossible youre welcome everybody. Lots of questions i actually want to go back to the Death Penalty so. The case of the christian woman who was acquitted for blasphemy and didnt in the end get to Death Penalty and was allowed to leave pakistan in may 2 says 19 do you think that is a change full focused on a positive change and the real change would be if we were not still subjected to British Colonial laws or laws put in by dictators because general who is a cia backed dictator amended the blasphemy laws and visaged by the english but i dont see that changing that. I think in our case when the courts decreed that she should be free she should have been freed and she was continually caps in solitary confinement and then they let her out under cover of night the change would have been if the moment the courts gave their verdict she was let go and i didnt see that so i think we have a long way to go on that unfortunately back to the Council Estate would you agree that unless there is a significant structural change which seems unlikely in the current political configuration in the us in europe any kind of progressive partial changes like the close relation of low level drug offenders would be just kind of hiding the actual reality which is a casserole state which is brutalizing black americans but also other marginalized communities across across the globe so you know at the crux of it i think is a question of whether we can engage in reform of of prisons. In a way that doesnt undermine the actual goal of complete abolition of prison. And its something we struggle with you know i came up in the Prison Abolition Movement and we had to really wrestle with some tough philosophical questions we believed that reform normalizes the person that makes you think the prisons are reform a book. But these are real people in there so when you say oh no we dont need counselors oh no we dont need health care oh no not that Prison Library we dont want to add to any Education Programs because if we do that then people will think the prison can be fixed. But theres somebody in there right now who could use a counselor who could use drug treatment or who could use a condom to prevent hiv aids there are things that we could do right now to help and so theres always this tightrope of how to do real radical change but not become so academic in abstract that you lose sight of the fact that people are suffering on the ground and the other thing i think is i dont necessarily concede that the very idea of cars or our lady cant be unhinged from our consciousness i believe that there are moves that are happening not under the name of abolition but under the spirit of abolition that are doing just that and ill give you an example we had the most intense and youre calling drug laws anywhere in the world the war on drugs begins in the sixtys and seventys by the time you get to eightys when crack emerges in america were so were doubling down on it reagan is doubling down on it theyre saying just just say no but if you say yes youre going to have a really long time and if you say yes and if you say yes and youre black and youre brown and youre poor and youre doing crack rather than particle king then the punishment will be tenfold now why people. Get addicted. Opioid addictions. And suddenly a mark hoppus is shifted no longer point to the prisons point to rehab. Its pointing to medical treatment were not looking to the prison to solve the problem were saying wait theres another way to solve this problem theres a social contradiction and we got people who are addicted we dont want to be how can we fix it and president obama at the federal level got rid of cash bail and trump has you know you got the Party Started again but theres an idea here that says wait a minute maybe theres something fundamentally wrong with putting people in jail simply because they dont have enough money not to be in jail. Those ideas can to some extent along with getting rid of privatized prison at the federal level which obama also did these types of moves their reforms but they also get the radical change that we want to see so i say well lets find ways at the intersection 1st so the public begins to say wait a minute maybe to prove it was my steals my t. V. Its the put him in a cage maybe some was on crack the answer is to put him in a cage if we can begin to look to those types of examples i think we actually do get rid of the course or logic itself i just wanted to ask you like is there really hope for a global like to his mother a capitalist imperialist war into where nobody cares about whats happening now in the middle east because dope spring is gone and the high point is is over and whats happening now goes to lead hope for palestinians Still Available or were being too optimistic i think now more than ever their space for hope roll these things it doesnt mean that its being practiced in any way that we can get behind but your being here asking that question im heartened by that. I dont think we have to operate in a global capitalist neoliberal framework theres so much space outside yeah and theres so Much Movement activism happening outside that sphere isnt there i think so i think thats where the radical imagination comes in yeah we have to imagine new possibilities. That are outside of those frameworks the evidence is against us sure i was into here last year and a square in in egypt and im sitting there and im like wow so much awesome stuff was happening here just a while back and now the journalists are locked up and you know it has. Destroyed. Been successful in quelling the revolution. You could be depressed you could you could stand in jerusalem right now and say to. The embassy oh my god trump netanyahu another term. And you could be depressed hope for me isnt about the belief that everythings just going to be ok hope is about the belief that despite the extraordinary odds that are against us and the odds are against us us meaning those of us who believe in justice that despite those odds we can still fight we can still resist we might not make any any headway going this way we can stop it from going that way a little bit faster and that will save a life that will that will feed a child that will stop a war that will put a spotlight on misery there are things we can do at every moment to resist can that happen within a capital framework no let me speak you know. But thats my point radical hope doesnt pretend that everythings going to be ok its like your novels you dont you dont let us off the hook your let us think that we can spend our way to freedom that we can vote our way to freedom that we can 2 state solution our way to freedom. Youre tearing us to imagine that moves what about time i think also we always leave time out i think we want hope today and we want change tomorrow you know i remember after the war on terror when my son was a central part of fighting that war they used it as a cover to do their own dirty wars within the country and we started to hear about disappearances and the state would say our oh thats war on terror thats nothing to do with our own struggles listen but the families of the disappeared would stand on the road outside the courts in the capital one man with a picture of his father who hasnt come on and that man was alone for a long time he was alone for years and then there were more people and then there were more people and today theres an entire Political Movement happening in the northern part of the country its called the p. C. M. Movement and its a movement of largely young the thousands and thousands of them and theyre moving all over the country but i think if you were looking at that scene in 2006 it would have felt pretty hopeless and you would not have been able to imagine the possibility of that to grow and it has grown so i guess patience has to be which doesnt mean giving up or surrendering anything but enduring right its interesting because i think patients sure i think your 100 percent right or insurance may be paid i think in order more right patients is the wrong word i think about in palestine this idea of samoud steadfastness yeah i feel like theres Something Different about this and so we did it theres a distinction between hope and optimism want to sort of naive. Patients is just like just wait this thing out the occupier will leave it and gone away on a set of patients right into you but theres something about. Being able to say that im going to remain here and resist until until you go to happen thats right like you would you are revolution until victory its a process its time yeah like for going to west we say victories in the struggle thats it yeah its exactly interesting connection yeah i want to ask one question where did you learn arabic. When did you start there was a sleeper cell in. His day ok totally kidding guys. A little bit in school mostly just that being self taught. But it came from malcolm x. It all started back in may i love america i was a teenager and i read the autobiography of malcolm x. Yeah and ive been the same since i read as a teenager but i read it again in college that helped me be free of a lot of anger. And ive never been the same thing i mean i never considered that it was possible to read my way into a new sense of self yeah but the thing about malcolm that that i most admire is the sincerity yeah michael didnt have the war right all the time but he always wanted to yeah and he always was open to the possibility that he was wrong and most of the journey he had a deep faith and surrender to the process yeah thats hard that is especially in this era where you got to be right all the time. But to have a voice like malcolms at this time can you imagine so weve got to create a new channel. Well i tell you want to get our i know youre too well its been so much fun talking thank you. For being here for writing with beautiful book and for everything you say and in the same view that youve been a marvelous writer and a courageous voice in such dangerous trouble. Thank you all to. Hell are after 2 hot and dusty days in the Empty Quarter and of course in qatar and saudi arabia as temperatures approaching 40 degrees its time for a change in this represents a change that is a cold front behind it the air is cold but more importantly its less humid and also cleaner the dust is confined as the Empty Quarter of parts of about were still 36. 00 degrees in dubai you notice on monday but 29 in doha the blue represents the potential for thunderstorms in qatar parts of eastern saturday more frequent showers in iran seem likely well if you look to the northwest so its warming up in jerusalem and in beirut were about 24 hour time we get to choose into the middle twentys in fact they could be some thunderstorms developing in northwestern saudi and central neckers to 34 and this balloon brian message yes some potential for than storms here which will probably return to qatar on wednesday but the weather is changing anyway for the science and youve got a massive cloud here in tanzania and southern kenya represents fairly wet weather which extensors like victoria so boring the for example on rwanda and equally d. R. Congo and this is the case this time the year with the showers increasing their frequency in ethiopia and uganda. In a country beset by poverty and lack of infrastructure. Sometimes we risk our own lives in taking these roads. Saving lives is a dangerous job as a vaccine so its on a good 24 hours there are patients waiting for these mothers who must be in pain lifes worth risking their lives a week ago one of the gang stops some vehicles on the road at that can do it with weapons risking it all guinea on al jazeera. There are people in the world who want all forms of verification to just go away so we need people fighting against us we either trying to see if its a fake video may be in syria but in a different time they risk a great deal to find out the truth in very complex situations that include major global play as weve been targeted by Cyber Attacks from russia theyre all dangerous and through this conflict barely kept. Truth you know post truth work and on 00. We understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. So no matter where you call. Out to 0 bringing you the news and Current Affairs that matter to. Counties in your. China announces the highest number of new covert 19 cases in weeks most of which are from travelers. Hello im sam hes a dan this is out there live from coming up opec and other major Oil Producers make recalled cuts to output and then a price war