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Jesse Freeston on The 200k Challenge Live Webcast
Story Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. First Annual Real News Telethon–Telethon? Webathon. Next year will be a telethon. I think next year will be the TV version and the Web version, but this year it’s the Web version. Please join us now with Jesse Freeston. Jesse is a journalist that works with The Real News. He’s covered many stories for us. But one of the pieces of work of his that’s been most groundbreaking has been in Latin America. So we’re going to be talking about his work in Honduras, and maybe in El Salvador. But we’re going to start with what Jesse has been picking up from WikiLeaks about–mostly about Latin America. Thanks for joining us, Jesse.
JESSE FREESTON, PRODUCER, TRNN: My pleasure. I’ve been here for two years waiting to get in this seat and talk to you on camera. Finally.
JAY: So go ahead. Tell us what’s popping out for you for WikiLeaks in Latin America and other things.
FREESTON: Well, first of all, just in general, one thing that’s popping out for me is how openly there’s calls for assassinations of Julian Assange. And I thought, you know, this sort of extrajudicial killing, everywhere from the top advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister, Tom Flanagan; to Sarah Palin; an editorial in The Washington Times, you know, called “Assassinate Assange”–that was the title. You know. And so that sort of open talk of, you know, extrajudicial killing [inaudible] talk about the–you guys talked about the lack of due process in terms of how they’ve been taking Amazon out and Joe Lieberman going to Amazon and things like this. But open killing is just another step up, in that sense.
JAY: Well, you’d think on the face of it, it would be illegal to call–publicly say, “Let’s go kill somebody.”
FREESTON: You’d think so. And another thing that I’ve noticed is even in progressive circles there’s been a lot of commenting on the rape case, the sexual assault case. And, you know, I’m not the person to be speaking about this, I’m not an expert in this or in rape culture, but there’s been real–an ambience of targeting the women that are accusing Julian Assange of this, and I think it’s highly possible that this is all a setup to put him in jail, and it’s very likely. And as Ray pointed out yesterday on the program, that’s likely. And they actually have a name for it in the CIA, and they called it a honey trap or something.
JAY: Or a honey pot.
FREESTON: Honey, yeah, or something of that nature. But that doesn’t mean that it could not be true. And the way that there is–
JAY: Well, it could be true and someone’s taking advantage of something that’s true, too. We don’t know.
FREESTON: Exactly. And there’s been a lot of propagations of rape myths, you know, for example, saying that, oh, this woman was at a party three days later, as if a victim of rape couldn’t be at a party three days later, and a lot of propagation of some of the myths around rape.
JAY: Yeah. I mean, I think–I mean, I don’t want get into the details of the case, ’cause we’re going on such second-hand information. I think the point Ray was making, apparently at least one if not both of the women were with Assange the next day, and the issue was, if you’ve been raped, why are you out in supposedly Reuters reports, supposedly friendly–what–people observed them as a friendly thing. But, the point is, we don’t know.
FREESTON: [inaudible] complexities about violent sexual relationships that–you know.
JAY: We don’t know.
FREESTON: Anyways, yeah, and so I just–that’s been some of the stories on CounterPunch and other progressive sources. I just think a progressive future that doesn’t include progress on sexual violence fronts, especially in our society, where anywhere from a quarter to a third of women in our society report either being sexually assaulted or raped at some point in their life. So I think, you know, that’s something that we need to be taking on actively, and this was an opportunity to do that.
JAY: [inaudible] get into that [inaudible] but we don’t know. The point is it’s awfully weird circumstances. When a guy’s releasing WikiLeaks, this stuff comes out, the timing.
FREESTON: Of course. I’m merely talking about the way it was talked about, you know, in certain ways. But, you know, some of the other thing that’s coming out is a lot of people have been focusing on comments made by certain leaders about other leaders, or about Iran’s potential nuclear plant or their feelings about it, and these have been the things that have largely stolen the headlines. And what’s largely been not reported on–. And it’s people like Lawrence Wilkerson, people with a lot of experience have told us on The Real News, this is, you know, very–this is going out to 2.5 million people. There’s every likelihood that information like this is planted to begin with. And second of all, it’s just an opinion and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.
JAY: Shouldn’t say “likely”, but possible.
FREESTON: It’s possible, yeah.
JAY: Possible. Or one level official saying something back to Washington you know they want to hear.
FREESTON: There’s any number of possibilities that this information isn’t what it’s being played as being.
JAY: One thing I think you’ve been picking up on is I thought there’s very little in WikiLeaks that gets behind the real veil. Like, it’s all still out here, stuff you kind of know, it still plays into the narrative, the mainstream narrative, the official narrative, and within it, you know, somebody–as you said, there’s gossip. Somebody said this to that. But there’s a few things that seem to be–actually do break through that narrative that you’ve picked up on, especially about Latin America.
FREESTON: Yeah, absolutely. So what I’ve been trying to look for is what kind of real actual activities are being unveiled by these leaks. You know, what sort of are some of the day-to-day activities of these embassies that are being picked up on? And so one title of a lot of these cables is something called “reporting and collection needs”. And this comes from the State Department to various embassies. And in this list, it’s an unbelievably complete list of information about any number of figures within a country, always including presidents, presidential candidates, leaders, advisors, the most influential people in any political system. And in the lists on that list, you know, in-depth financial information, credit card numbers, etc.–some of the stuff we heard about the UN diplomats. Well, diplomats are one thing. They have a certain amount of influence. The president of the country has a lot of influence. So, for example, we’re led to believe by these embassy cables that the United States State Department is currently in possession of the fingerprints, of the iris scans, of the DNA, of various biometric information and credit card numbers of people like Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, you know, the first president elected that didn’t come from the Colorado Party, the party of the dictatorship that was supported by the United States, you know, the first, you know, legitimate leader that came out of this, you know, terror regime that lasted until 1989, the first opposition to that to ever be elected. And there’s really very few potential circumstances that that kind of information is used that doesn’t come out of a horrible action film, like a Steven Seagal thriller of some kind. You know, what do you–you know, I’ve been trying to talk to anybody with experience in this stuff to try to figure out how do you use the DNA of the president of Paraguay. You know, what sort of actual use is that for? And really, the real practical applications are scary stuff.
JAY: Other than the president of Paraguay, is there evidence of some other leaders, that they’ve trying to get the same kind of information on?
FREESTON: Absolutely. So far, this same kind of format request has gone out to places in Central Africa–Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi. It’s gone out to the embassies in Slovenia, Romania, Hungary, and other places in Eastern Europe. And we’re only at 1,000 cables released so far. And like I said, this appears to be a very common one. And so it’s appearing that this is a pretty-format mail letter that gets sent out to embassies at critical points.
JAY: Go get us the iris scans and the fingerprints of leaders.
FREESTON: Yeah. I mean, and so this is just one way that I’ve been looking into how the activities of these embassies–.
JAY: Now, you–I know you’ve been kind of following this story, too. How much has this piece of the WikiLeaks broken through in terms of mainstream news?
FREESTON: Very little. For example, that one I was talking about, about Paraguay, that was the first one to come out talking about this biometric information. The Guardian was the only one to publish it. And The Guardian published under the headline that the US believes that there are terrorists setting up shop in Paraguay, because at some point in there, they were asking for information on what’s called the tri-border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. I’m not an expert in that area, but it’s got its own interesting histories. But very little actual evidence of, you know, Hamas or Hezbollah, or some of these other names that they’re throwing out in this cable. The Guardian chose to fix on that and made no mention in their summary about this demand for biometric information and credit card information [inaudible]
JAY: I mean, it’s kind of something that’s happening is in terms of the way, certainly, The New York Times, and maybe Der Spiegel‘s a little better, Guardian a little better, but cherry-picking the kind of information to make a big deal out of that sort of fits in with the narrative you’ve been pursuing anyways, so starting with Iran, of course. The other one I thought was interesting as well, it did break into mainstream news to some extent, about the Saudi financing of Islamic extremism–you know, not necessarily the government. But on the other hand, the Saudi elite is essentially the aristocratic family with enormous interconnections. And that story hasn’t got legs the way the Iran story gets. And the Latin American story is very much like this stuff that you would have–like this biometric story you would have thought should have been front page, but it’s barely talked about.
FREESTON: Right. So even if terrorism is the trending topic of WikiLeaks, you’d think that, for example, the Brazilian story would have come out. I mean, this one is absolutely shocking. In Brazil, you have an elected leadership, the Lula government. The US had these cables show an immense amount of pressure coming from the US Embassy, almost a fixation, on trying to get Brazil to pass antiterrorism legislation. What they’re particularly interested in is Brazil’s, you know, very large Arab population sending money home to political parties in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories–Hamas and Hezbollah. Brazil, as a sovereign government, calls Hezbollah and Hamas political parties. They participate in elections, so, therefore, their citizens are allowed to send money to these political parties. The US doesn’t like that, so the US has been pushing them to pass this legislation. Lula and–.
JAY: Because the US has picked up, more or less, the Israeli position, which is Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organizations.
FREESTON: Are terrorist organizations.
JAY: And they put them on this terrorist list that you can’t fund.
FREESTON: Right. And the US has had a lot of success in getting that done in the US,–
JAY: So what did the cable tell us?
FREESTON: –and Canada, you know, and other right-wing governments in this hemisphere. So the cables tell us that. So, not giving up on this, Lula has flatly rejected this, along with his foreign minister. They flatly rejected. They said terrorism is not a problem in Brazil, and we have a history of a military dictatorship that used the terms of terrorism and antiterrorism laws to put people like Lula himself, when he was a union leader, in jail and torture them. So, no, no chance; we’re not playing that game. So what does the US do? These cables reveal to us that the US intelligence and policing–FBI and CIA–have been talking in direct communication, going under the government of Lula, talking with intelligence and police in Brazil. And in this report, they talk–the Embassy reports back, you know, glowing about how the fact–how responsive the Brazilian police are, that when they get a name from the US intelligence, they go and arrest that person. If they don’t have the ability to arrest them under existing Brazilian laws, that they trump up narcotics charges on them in order to put them in prison.
JAY: And to do an end run around what the Brazilian government had said.
FREESTON: Exactly. And this was happening without the knowledge of Brazil’s elected leadership, going through the authorities at Brazil’s police and intelligence levels that are unelected.
JAY: Well, this is probably in the old tradition, because so much of the police and military forces in Latin America have these direct connections to American police and military forces, many of whom actually get trained in the United States and then get sent back to Latin America. So they create all these agency-to-agency back channels–another thing that doesn’t get reported in mainstream media, except on a rare exception. What else did you find?
FREESTON: Yeah. And on that point, yeah, that does continue. The School of the Americas is still open in Georgia. And as well there’s various police training that’s staffed by the United States that happens, like, in places like El Salvador with the ILEA, an International Law Enforcement Academy that brings police chiefs from all over Latin America–.
JAY: Okay. But, let’s talk about–is there anything we should talk about before we get to Honduras? Or should we talk about Honduras?
FREESTON: Yeah. Just one more interesting point coming out of–well, there’s quite a few, but one more interesting point coming out of these cables is the US embassies in countries that are trying to pass participatory democracy laws actively run campaigns and support–financially support, according to these cables, the campaigns of people moving against those. So we’ve seen evidence of that in Venezuela, where these cables describe how US Embassy there was developing its own campaign. We see in the case of El Salvador how where they’re trying to make a certain–the FMLN Party, which is in power of the presidency right now and a large portion of the Legislative Assembly, is trying to move towards more participatory democracies, referendums, things of this nature, to give people more of an active participation than just elections every four or five years. And what we’re seeing is the US government talking actively about who they can find to support that will be going against that trend and talking about it. And one thing that comes through these cables is to what degree some of these ambassadors appear, from the way they write, to actually believe this stuff. So, you know, this guy says this participatory democracy is a real threat to democracy. That’s the wording in this cable that he sends back about El Salvador. So, I mean–and so that’s been–and I would say the general thing–.
JAY: Well, actually, it’s probably a good point, because that is how they envision democracy.
FREESTON: Right.
JAY: Democracy is supposed to be how the elites sort out differences amongst themselves and with other elites.
FREESTON: Right.
JAY: It’s not supposed to be–ordinary people aren’t quite supposed to get in the way of that, except maybe vote once in a while in small numbers.
FREESTON: Yeah. And I guess I would add the last thing that I’ve taken note of here in general across is if anybody has any doubt that this is an empire, you need to read any one of these things, just the language. I mean, things are opposed with one word: anti-American. This legislation was anti-American. In the case of Canada, they talk about how there’s publicly funded television programs that are anti-American because they have American villains in some of the episodes. So, I mean, if–I mean, this is clear. Just the language that these ambassadors are using shows a clear thing, that they evaluate what’s going on in the country they’re placed in not based on how it affects the interests of the people in that country but on whether or not it’s American.
JAY: Well, they say it’s all about American national interests, which they define very narrowly in terms of who Americans are.
FREESTON: I’ve never seen them actually define it. I just see it thrown out there, “national interest”.
JAY: Alright. Talk about Honduras. You broke an important story in Honduras at the time of the supposed elections–I guess they were elections, but they’re questionable elections. Tell us a little about what you found, and then give us some context of what’s happening there.
FREESTON: Right. So the story that went a little big here in North America–not big enough, and which really confirm the reasons why I work for The Real News, which was it was absolutely terrifying to be talking to somebody at The New York Times, for example, and to be telling them that I have video proof of electoral fraud in Honduras, and then to see them the next day come out with an unsigned editorial that says right in the first line–I can’t remember the exact wording, but that these were free and fair elections and that everybody understands that these were free and fair elections.
JAY: Okay. Tell us, very quickly, what did you find, so people know the facts.
FREESTON: Okay. So what I found on–two days after the elections, I got into the tabulating room, which had military (and well-armed military–M-16s) inside this room with people counting up the votes from the elections from the day earlier. And I guess, actually, I should bring this back a little bit and talk about what these elections were. There was a coup in Honduras in June 2009, a military coup, and from the beginning it was very clear to people in Honduras and people paying close attention that the plan was that they understood that the world was not going to accept the person that was put in after the coup, but that they would take the coup regime, get that to the elections, and then they would bring in somebody new through the elections. And we saw was the only real opposition candidate for the presidency repeatedly had his rallies attacked by the military, himself had his wrist broken, and thrown in jail for a while. You know, this was the sort of environment, it’s a month before the elections, just to give one more example of sort the environment that was going on, the military sent out a letter to all the mayors in Honduras asking for contact information of anybody identifying with the coup resistance, which was this broad-based resistance that came up to the coup. And I should add, too, when we were talking about participatory democracy, the precipitating event to this–and I think, you know, for something like coup, there’s lots of factors at play in order to get that kind of broad interests into play to do a military coup. There’s not just one reason for it. But the day of the coup was supposed to be the day that Hondurans were, for the first time in their history, going to be asked to weigh in on something through a ballot box that wasn’t an election. So they were going to be asked whether or not they wanted to have a referendum on the country’s constitution and to form a constitutional assembly whereby people from all sectors could come together and talk about what they would like to see in a constitution, as the existing one was written, essentially, under a US-backed dictatorship in the early 1980s and hasn’t served their interests at all, for the majority of Hondurans, which continues to be one of the most unequal places. So come to the election, the election comes, and, like I said, this gentleman had to drop out–.
JAY: Just one more step of context.
FREESTON: Yeah.
JAY: The reason all this is so important is because in this new American approach to Latin America, supposedly the US policy was going to be, as opposed to all Latin American countries now are, to overthrowing elected governments. And it doesn’t matter [if you] elect the government or you don’t elect the government, the Organization of American States and all the countries of South America have one thing they agreed on is we don’t want to go back to the days of generals and coups. And so when the coup takes place in Honduras, the initial reaction from the US is critical of sorts, and then we begin a period of coup-washing.
FREESTON: Yeah. Well, from the beginning there was red flags when the US State Department refused to call it a military coup. They said it was a coup, but they said that because the military itself hadn’t taking power, that it was members of Congress that had taken power, that this wasn’t a military coup, and that meant that under US law, under US law as it exists now, in order to join the Organization of American States when it reformed in the year 2000, the US had to create a domestic law that it would cut off aid to any military coup regime in order to join that. So to get around that, essentially, in this situation they said it wasn’t a military coup, despite the fact that the military was in the streets everywhere attacking anybody who came out against the coup.
JAY: Okay. So let me add one more thing before you tell your story. So the turnout, so they hold an election, which is going to coup-wash. And the idea here is if people vote in large numbers, it gives credibility that people have accepted the idea that, yeah, this is a real election we’re going to participate in. So the issue of number of people voting, the percentage, was significant.
FREESTON: It was the only thing that was significant. And if you were in Honduras–.
JAY: ‘Cause nobody else really had a chance of winning.
FREESTON: And this was just a show for foreigners. I mean, nobody in Honduras had any illusions about what was going on. The people that wanted to go out and vote were the people for whatever reason agreed with the coup. The people who didn’t go out and vote were the people for a number of reasons didn’t agree with the coup. This was a referendum on the coup. And so then that’s–and that’s how it was being viewed internationally, and that’s how the US and others were casting it, were saying, you know, we expect large turnout, and the Hondurans are going to come out and show that they’ve moved on, despite the fact that there’s no material change in what’s going on and there’s been absolutely no punishment for anybody that was involved in the coup. The general that executed it is now the head of the telephone company. And he was trained at the United States School of the Americas as well, I should add. You know, Romeo Vasquez, he’s the head of the telephone company now. This is the same guy that sent out the letter asking for the contact information of anybody involved in the coup resistance, as well as the guy who came to power afterwards, Micheletti, who became the dictator for four months–he’s been declared congressman for life.
JAY: Okay. So they announce this big turnout. So go on.
FREESTON: Yeah. They come out the day of the election and say, oh, anywhere from 65, 70, 80, 90 percent of Hondurans came out to vote today. You know, it’s–the truth is nobody knows how many people came out to vote that day. Nobody knows. But I’ll tell you what, from having been to elections in various other countries and other places (I hadn’t been to a Honduran election before), there was not a lot of people voting in the city. I was in San Pedro Sula, and on that day the military actually attacked people that came out to protest against the elections.
JAY: And this is in the story. If you want to see this story Jesse’s talking about–do you remember the title? Okay. Look up Jesse and Honduras on our site and you’ll find it. You’ll find–I think it’s a two-part story.
FREESTON: That’s right. And then so the election takes place. They declare that this has been a huge success and people have come out to vote in numbers never before seen in Honduras. I should add that in Honduras the elections are overseen by the military. They actually do the logistics. They actually move the votes from the voting location and run the security there and then move the votes to the thing. So the same military that overthrew the president four months earlier, and the president was actually at the time surrounded by the military and locked in the Brazilian Embassy, him himself not able to vote, just for an example. So, anyways, they come in. And so they’re declaring that anywhere from 60 to 65 percent of Hondurans went out to vote that day. So I go in to the tabulation center, and in their own tabulation center, there on the big wall, with nobody, you know, seeming to care, it says 49 percent turnout. And that’s–.
JAY: When they’re announcing high 60s, 70s, 80s.
FREESTON: When they’re announcing high 60s. I actually go and interview the representative of the electoral tribunal outside, and he says, oh, yeah, we’re up around 65 percent. I go back in and I double check again. This is crazy. And so I get a printout from the technician, and there it is again: 49 percent. I interview the guy who’s in–the engineer who’s in charge of this whole thing. He himself was somebody who had moved to Honduras to avoid the dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s under Pinochet. And he told me that, yeah, we’re around 50 percent or a little bit under 50 percent. And meanwhile they’re telling the world something else, and this is being widely reported and called the official data. This is–.
JAY: And both you and I think–I did, too. We called The New York Times, and we found the journalist who was covering it–from here, actually, one of the journalists–and we told them we had actual shots of the board that shows the mid-to-high 40s turnout, and they weren’t interested. And the next day they applaud the large turnout.
FREESTON: Right. Well, this was the problem with the way the mainstream media showed up to cover this whole thing was they went for a day or two, saw none of the context, you know, had no experience in the city. Some of them didn’t–.
JAY: Okay. Let’s jump ahead. You’re going to be going back to Honduras in the next few weeks.
FREESTON: That’s right. I just want to add to that and say most people in Honduras didn’t think that was a particularly interesting story. They knew fraud happened, and they didn’t really care about that. They wanted to know why I wasn’t reporting on the fact that they were getting beaten up, tear gassed, tortured, and sometimes killed for protesting against the regime.
JAY: So we’re going to have to wrap up soon. Talk about–a lot of people–this has now gone back to normalcy. The coup’s been washed. Now I think certain Latin American countries have still refused to recognize the government, but the United States certainly has, and most of, you know, Europe and Canada has. So they’ve now–it’s–they’ve brought–they’ve taken this coup and brought it back into the normal international relations. But life in Honduras is far from normal.
FREESTON: Absolutely. The Committee to Protect Journalists declared Honduras in 2010 the year of the return to normalcy as the new president came in at the beginning of January or the–near the end of January. The Committee to Protect Journalists has declared Honduras the most dangerous place to be a journalist in the world.
JAY: And that’s why you’re going there to be a journalist.
FREESTON: That’s exactly why I’m going there, to confirm that. But I don’t think I’m more at risk as a foreign journalist. I’m certainly more protected than a Honduran journalist. My murder would get reported internationally. There are ten Honduran journalists that have been killed that have been largely unreported, and most of those journalists have a clear line of reporting against the interests of those that have come to power in the coup. Another thing that’s happened is they recently passed–or are working–sorry, they haven’t passed this law. They’re working towards passing a law against yellow journalism, which the state can declare and censor any journalist or any publication that publishes anything that goes against the international interests of the country, particularly mentioning–the guy who’s putting this forward, the author of this law, particularly mentioning anything that affects tourism or investment. So anything scary about journalists being killed could be seen as affecting tourism.
JAY: Any criticism could be.
FREESTON: Any criticism. They just passed an antiterrorism law in Honduras, and Honduras doesn’t have a history of the attacking of civilian targets–which you would normally consider terrorism–by anybody other than military or the police. There’s no evidence of that, except for gang activity, which already has its own level of draconian laws. This is particularly targeted towards political actors. That’s understood. And this is happening at the same time–this is what I’m going to cover particularly, that there’s a large movement to regain land by campesinos (peasant farmers). The military has completely militarized these areas. And the media, along with the government, has a long-standing campaign of months now to try and call these poor farmers trying to get their land back from, you know, years and years ago terrorists. So they have been being labeled terrorists at the same time that a law is being passed against terrorism.
JAY: Okay, just to wrap up, we have a question from a viewer in Dublin. And he says, what can people do to support the Honduran people?
FREESTON: You know, there’s any number of things, but I’ll give one example right now. This is a story I recently covered. There’s a wonderful band in Honduras called Cafe Guancasco, and they had a concert attacked by the military and police in a joint operation at midday on Independence Day in Honduras, which has become a real rallying cry for the resistance to the coup which continues to this day. They call it “What Independence Day”, and they have counter-demonstrations that are much larger in this year and last year than anything put on by the official regime to celebrate the independence from Spain. And so this was attacked by the police. They destroyed about $30,000 worth of equipment for these musicians.
JAY: And you did a story about this, which you can also look up. Look up Jesse Honduras music.
FREESTON: Honduran regime targets musicians or something along that line. So they’re still trying to raise funds to replace this equipment that they’re on the line for and trying to continue with their music. I should add that they did one of the most courageous things. A month after that attack, on what is called National Armed Forces Day in Honduras, they went back to that same city and finished the concert that was so brutally broken up with tear gas and beatings, and they called it National Day of Artists in Resistance. And they put out an international call. People were trying to get artists around the world to join in and announce that they were in solidarity with this group of musicians in Honduras that had been so violently attacked. And, really, the response was lukewarm at best. You know, a lot of the artists that you would hope would come out and you would certainly expect to come up against Iran, for example, if that was to be journalists attacking Iran, were just absent. They just weren’t there. And so I think one thing that people could do is put pressure on their favorite musicians, for example, to give you one example, or your favorite journalists in the case of the journalists fighting against this yellow journalism law, or being killed, to put pressure on people to reach across their industries to their friends and their colleagues in Honduras that are being so brutally threatened by this regime.
JAY: Thanks very much. And if you want to see–again, Jesse’s done a lot of work in Honduras and Latin America, stories from El Salvador. We’re actually going to put up tomorrow a sort of a Best of Jesse Freeston, and you’ll be able to see all his stories in one episode. And if you want Jesse to do more of this and you’ll help him get back to Honduras and do more work in Latin America–and he’ll be doing more work in North America, too. In fact, when he’s done in Latin America, he’s heading to Canada. But if you want to help, we need you to click donate. And here somewhere on the website you’ll see a donate button. Or you can phone 1-888-449-6772, and one of our colleagues will help you there. And the other thing we’re going to start doing more is more of this sort of live shows. And we’ll let you know more. I’ll give you a bigger heads up. And so when Jesse does a story about something, then you’ll be able to have a direct interaction, ask him some questions about the story, if you want to critique it, or ask him what he should be doing next so you can know more. At any rate, this wraps up the second night of the first Real News Webathon. And I think we’re closing in on $170,000. So we’re getting closer and closer to $200,000, but we’ve got to get this $30,000 tomorrow night. So please join us for a stellar lineup. You’ll find on our website a place were you can click and find the schedule for tomorrow night, and we’ll be on eight o’clock tomorrow night, and we look forward to seeing you there. So thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
End of Transcript
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