August 22, 2010

Broadcast Date: 
Aug 22 2010

The political firestorm surrounding Park51, the planned Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan; human rights attorneys take on the Obama administration's targeted assassination program; A Film Unfinished, a new documentary, reveals the backstory behind Nazi film footage of the Warsaw Ghetto; plus André Schiffrin on World War II political cartoons

Episode segments
  • Islamic Cultural Center sparks anti-Muslim firestorm
    New York Politics, National Politics, Electoral, Civil Rights
    Amy Spitalnick is a spokesperson for J Street, which has gathered thousands of signatures on a petition supporting Cordoba House.
    Esther Kaplan

    The decision by a New York City community board to approve the construction of an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan is facing a firestorm of anti-Muslim protest.  Beyond the Pale will be covering the story in detail in coming weeks, but with plans for a massive rally against the center in the works for 9/11, we talk with Amy Spitalnick of JStreet about efforts to support the community center project.

    A coalition supporting the construction of Cordoba House/Park51, New York Neighbors  for American Values, is organizing a September 10 Vigil for Equality, Diversity and Religious Freedom. For further information on their efforts, click here.

  • CCR and ACLU file legal challenge to targeted assassinations
    National Politics, Civil Rights
    Pardiss Kebriaei is a staff attorney with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).
    Esther Kaplan

    We talk with CCR's Pardiss Kebriaei about the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)  challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out extra-judicial killings of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.

    The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Nasser Al-Aulaqi (also spelled al-Awlaki), the father of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, an Islamic cleric whom the government believes is hiding in Yemen and is working with Al-Qaeda to plot attacks against the U.S.

    The lawsuit argues that “outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which names are added to CIA and military “kill lists” through a secret executive process and stay there for months at a time is plainly not limited to imminent threats.”

    According to The New York Times, Al-Aulaqi is the first American citizen to be designated for capture or killing by the CIA. In July, 2010, he was designated a terrorist, meaning that providing him legal or other services could be a crime. CCR and the ACLU, have been granted a license permitting them to pursue the Al-Aulaqi case, and have filed a separate lawsuit challenging Treasury regulations.

    For more information on the case, including fact sheets and legal papers, visit: www.aclu.org/targetedkillings and ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings.
     

  • A Film Unfinished
    Holocaust, Film, Arts & Culture, Anti-Semitism
    Yael Hersonski edits documentary and fictional drama programs for Israeli television.  A Film Unfinished is her first feature documentary film.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    In May 1942, three months before the Nazis liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto, a group of German soldiers were sent into the Ghetto to film Jewish life.  In the ensuing decades, filmmakers and others have used images from this apparent documentary.  Then in 1998 a long-missing reel of out-takes was discovered, that revealed that many of the scenes in the film were meticulously staged.

    A Film Unfinished presents the raw footage from the original film along with scenes from the out-takes, readings from diaries kept by Ghetto residents, testimony from one of the camermen, and commentary from five Ghetto survivors as they watch the film. 

  • Dr. Seuss & Co Go To War
    Arts & Culture, News media, Comics
    For nearly 30 years, André Schriffin was director of publishing at Pantheon Books until, in 1990, he established the nonprofit The New Press. His latest book, Words and Money, will be released by Verso Press in November 2010.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    We talk with André Schriffin about Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of America's Leading Comic Artists from the pages of the New York daily PM published during World War II.