just a ploy by king abdullah to keep you here of spring at bay and a controversial race based bake sale at u.c. berkeley unfortunately highlights a growing trend among american republicans push on this case of white privilege and i still take. over the weekend when women witnessed what may be a very important step forward in equal rights and one of the most unlikely places in the world saudi arabia yesterday saudi arabia's king abdullah announced that for the first time in his nation's history women will be able to vote and run for office in local elections beginning in two thousand and fifteen is a huge leap forward in a nation that satori is for cracking down on the rights of women some say this is the latest effort by king ability to shield his wealthy and we'll rich nation from

the uprising of the arab spring that has toppled dictators next door back in march king abdullah announced a ninety three billion dollars aid package full of new jobs and services to quell unrest from disaffected saudis who may try to bring the arab spring to the kingdom of saudi arabia so far it appears to be working so what does this all mean is this really a giant step forward for women's rights or merely a gimmick for the monarchy to keep power increasingly volatile middle east or both here to offer her take as a new shade hussein author of a new she's point and columnist of forbes woman out in post and ms magazine and you say welcome home after having read tom paine here you for joining us can you describe how women are treated in saudi arabia today. point and what it's really interesting actually because we've seen a consistent theme throughout the middle east and throughout the arab spring of demanding more rights and at the forefront of every single one of these movements have really been. women and we've seen it from iran we've seen in tunisia we've

seen it in libya but what's unique about the uprising that's taking place in saudi arabia right now is that women really began it and this is a country where women are really treated like infants you know you can't travel you can't go to the doctor you can't drive without a written permission by either your father or your husband or a male guardianship so the arab spring has already arrived in saudi arabia it arrived in the form of an online campaign that started back in may to define the defy the country's notorious ban on women driving and it was an online campaign led by a young woman named al sharif and her detention and her arrest back in may but to an international outcry to really remove this ban and saudi arabia is actually the only country in the world where women are not allowed by law to drive out. or there are kuwait actually isn't that similar there is no other country in the

world where women are not allowed to drive but in kuwait women still don't have the vote yeah so that's the one similarity looks now in saudi arabia how the same is and given them how big a decision. let me ask that question to levels one just in terms of the practical how women can vote i mean be able actions in north korea you know vote as you know. so both those levels are pretty well so i really don't think it's a big deal in the media has kind of taken this up like it's this huge victory for women but women were demanding the right to vote and not just the right to sorry to drive not just to start the engine that their car and this is about and it is about political mobility it's about social mobility it's about being able to participate in your society and move in your society without meal guardianship so the fact that they've gotten this right to vote and that's how the king has responded you know it sounds like a really big deal and it sounds like you know a really big. news because saudi arabia is such an ultra conservative society in

such ultra conservative country but the bill is not even going to take place until twenty fifteen and he women's rights issues still remain unaddressed so this is such big news in the media and you know a lot of my friends were calling me and everybody was like to hear about this news and i was like it completely sounds like a handout it is a handout what about i mean are they going to be able to drive to the voting booth that's my question here in four years apparently but but on the other hand if if women have the vote and they have the right to run for office. how long after those women stir voting and running for elected office will they begin giving themselves the rights are we calling back or reclaiming those rights will we will this is my question i mean will there though will their presence in government in these you know local shura council is will it really mean anything is it more symbolic than other countries has in other countries meant anything in the middle east and that in areas that are culturally similar you know i really think that it's more

symbolic i think it's kind of i mean obviously a handout if it wasn't they would have addressed what the women's demands are i mean the reason that they started with the driving ban is because women were demanding an overhaul of the entire saudis system it wasn't just about driving their cars so the fact that this is how the king has responded with a vote it's like you haven't even addressed what we were talking about in the first place so do you think that they're going to the women of saudi arabia are going to come back to the driving ban and start beating the drum of you know i really hope so i hope they don't let this go and i don't think they will let this go and i really hope you know in four years i mean who knows that nobody in the middle east nobody in the arab world this movement that was in across this region across this continent is was really driven by young people i don't think they're going to let it go i mean they have been told for too long to wait to ask for it step by step to take it you know one step at a time and i think people have had it it's a youth movement and i think you know they're not going to let their demands go and

i think four years is for yours too. to which what extent do you think of of monarchy and patriarchy are limited not just in saudi arabia but in the entire region in the entire region i think it's it's outdated i mean i think i think all of these guys should have a big calendar you know in their study or in you know maybe in every room and in their kingdoms and in their pals there's just counting the days because we've got the internet now we've got social media now i mean look what happened in egypt look what's happening in iran and there's only so long that you can beat the youth up there you can beat your people down people are unemployed they're hungry i mean this man that started. uprising in yemen he was a college educated man who's who didn't have a job and he was selling fruit on the street and the police took away his permits to sell his fruit and he said himself on fire and that's how the movement started

everybody has moved his action resonated with an entire country and then it resonated with an entire region and it's even happening in america people are not able to feed themselves or their families and and the power balance is just so. close to be used for its own thanks so much rangers so much for having me time to see the priests here we'll see if this really is or is not a big step forward of women's rights in saudi arabia let's hope at least as a good incremental step because giving women more rights is one of the things in the abstract in general we can save our planet for example want to start eco sideline start the destruction of the environment. to stop the wars one of the big problems that we have is population which is seven billion people or less and want to and you know it's historically what we've said is that and by the way that human population that human footprint is using more than fifty percent of the total net

photosynthetic output of the planet in other words af of all of the sunlight captured by plants we're consume its leaves all every other species on earth to compete with us and well over half of the world's precious water we're one species is consuming so our population when jesus was around at that time two thousand years ago there's a quarter billion people in the magna carta was cited was a half a billion people when jefferson became president there was a billion people eight hundred by the time that population doubled in one hundred thirty years so that when f.d.r. was sworn in there were two billion people it took a third of the other fourteen years of leave it when j.f.k. was sworn in. as we know the thirty years when j.f.k. was sworn in one hundred sixty three billion people jury for four billion people one hundred seventy four thousand nine hundred eighty six five billion people george w. bush two thousand two thousand one six million people and now we're getting seven billion people the question has been a what's driving this relentless six lotion in the human population and arguments

have been put forward that it's a women need access to birth control or they need access to fully developed economies but there is birth control in those fully developed economies in the world where women are having six eight ten twelve kids what is it it's power we find out that when women have equal power population will stabilise in one single generation so when women women have equal power nations are less likely to go to war and are human footprint diminishes it's good for all of us let's hope this is a good first step in saudi arabia. it's the good the bad of the very very live there for a slightly ugly good john hopkins university scientists there think they may have discovered the key to curing aids at least in a test tube into research results published last week and you treat

a method that removes the cellular membrane around the virus disarms the virus heating it from infecting and into the individual's immune system works in humans this can be huge news for the entire world as just last year thirty three million people were infected by aids and one point eight million people die every year due to the virus in response to the discovery of molecular biologist at john hopkins university said that science has finally broken the code of apes the bell at the city of bateman at alabama the city has a secret weapon to fight crime cheesus beginning this week begun it is putting into place operation restore our community a program that will give criminals a choice between going to jail for their misdemeanor offenses are going to church on sunday for a year. besides the new program being flat out unconstitutional it's also discriminatory i suppose those who worship not wish not to worship jesus like someone who's jewish or muslim is forced to go to jail but the program is getting

a lot of support from both the police department and the local churches. pastor robert gates is just one of fifty six north baldwin county ministers participating in the rock initiative and you show me somebody who falls in love with jesus and i'll show you a person who won't be a problem to society but that will be an influence and a help to those around. the pastors never heard of george tiller eric rudolph or anders breivik. and the very very ugly. lindsey graham with america's still locked in two wars and another number of other covert wars neocons like lindsey graham are beating the drum for another full out war in pakistan after news came out of the pakistan's rogue intelligence agency may be responsible for attacks on americans in afghanistan graham went on fox news sunday to call for military action against pakistan but if they continue to embrace terrorism as part of their national

strategy we're going to have to put all options on the table including defending our troops but the experts believe that we need to elevate our response they will have a lot of bipartisan support on capitol hill the bessel right because with a nation struggling with a terrible economy in a debt problem but we really need is another war and won against a nuclear power at that maybe we should stop listening to the same guys who got us into these wars in the first place and yukon's like lindsey graham who are very very well. coming up there's a specific race privilege in america the most white people are oblivious to break it down to the eyes do it. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through get through it when it may who can you trust no one who is you view with the local machinery to see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is

called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question morning. folks. your take my take is your chance to have your questions opinions and criticisms heard here on the big picture our first comments and i came to us via twitter it's

hard to miss last week's headlines about the united states postal service being in dire straits the postal service would be fine profitable in fact if it weren't for a bit of poison pill legislation slipped into pay into place during the bush years the requires the u.s.p.s. to set aside over just a ten year period and have cash to pay the health benefits of retirees for the next seventy five years seriously post office has to pay billions a year into a fund to pay for retirement health care for employees who are not yet even or no other government or corporate group or agency has ever been asked to do this it was purely to create a crisis in the postal service so republicans could demand that it be broken up and privatized a gift to their campaign donors to the private delivery services and create a crisis that did according to the postmaster general of the postal service will be broke by next summer unless the federal government can step in and take action but

the action being proposed is darrell ises republican house plan it creates a special board that can lay off employees even if they're protected by collective bargaining agreements basically blowing up union rights so you could end up with a guy who works a second job delivering pizza delivering your bills personal mail and checks for pizza wages ironically their allies the california republican who's leading the charge to destroy the post office would probably himself not actually be able to be hired by the post office as a letter carrier because of his criminal past. any of it's what the republicans are up to democrats on the other hand are suggesting that the post office just pay for its roots benefits the same way every other government agency and most corporations do which would instantly solve problems the problem is republicans like paralyzed control the house of representatives which is where all taxing and spending legislation must originate huge obstacles still stand in the way of

a rescue package for the postal service which expects to lose more than eight billion dollars this year and while waiting for congress and the administration actually agree on a plan the postal service is desperately trying to cut costs on its own including plans to close thousands of post offices all across the country but at this point future is very much in the air so one of our viewers tweeted our wonderful vote by mail in oregon and washington will go away if the u.s.p.s. is allowed to die a bonus for cons who hate it that's very true and it's not the only ripple effect that the complete closure of the u.s.p.s. would have in the united states the post office is the second largest employer in the united states down wal-mart which makes it the largest unionized employer in the entire nation republicans are desperate to destroy that union which regularly goes for the democrats so you can see how important this battle is and why they put in that poison pill legislation in the first place our next comment is also from

twitter last week after the execution of troy davis i asked of psychopaths had taken over america take a look. are we have a vengeful nation of psychopaths a bloodthirsty people who can sleep just fine at night knowing that the united states may have just executed an innocent man. if you've watched the republican debates and seen the crowds applaud death and seen governor rick perry so that he has no trouble sleeping at night over the two hundred thirty four people he's killed in texas and it sure seems like we're. the your state has executed two hundred thirty four death row inmates more than any other governor in modern times have you please you struggled to sleep at night. with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent you know sort of never struggled with it at all it's just he's never struggled with that at all and imagine putting

two hundred thirty four people to death and never even thinking about it and this is a person that worth considering as president of the united states. is that who we are so brad responded to my my question and tweeted is water watch well brad as i mentioned in last week's daily take your blood analysis of the troubling state of affairs in the united states is unfortunately true and it goes far beyond our criminal justice system everywhere you look whether it be the endless wars in the middle east that are crimes carried out on wall street in the name of endless greed or the way that we consume energy without giving a second thought to the havoc that we're wreaking on the planet our behavior today is anything but logical there's always been a psychopathic strain in our culture in all of modern culture for that matter on that in the last century was suppressed in some places by a more compassionate approach to the environment a more compassionate criminal justice system and so social safety nets that have

allowed us to care for each other to create we societies like our ancient tribal ancestors lived in. but here in america these measures to root out psychopath here are being overturned lucking right by people whose behavior suggests they may well be psychopaths themselves so it's time for the united states to do some soul searching will we become a nation of people who genuinely care for each other and build institutions to respect and help each other or will be will we become a brutal libertarian nation where it's every man for himself and the country is run by psychopaths the choice is ours and they continue to call the upcoming election will have a lot to do with determining that future but in the meantime brad i think every good turn deserves another so your tweet inspired my producers to dig up this clip which happens to be one of my all time favorite movie moments. can we count on you . fellas.

frogs ass what type of. profit on. this it's. actually got to. tell. yes we believe it it's that said for your take by tape it if you like your comments and questions heard on the second of the big picture listen we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page but twittering at underscore apartment or in the champ room on the message boards or through the blog at tom hartman dot com you can also leave a message general rant line if you were to buy three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all wrong remember that your comments made news on the air .

republicans are added again stirring up a white people to think that they're the real victims of four hundred years of slavery on this continent and then implicitly redirecting that resentment against an african-american president in an upcoming election this time is the college republicans at the university of california at berkeley their host and bake sale to claim that white people are victimized by affirmative action there's other doing it nothin's of the bake sale will sell for two bucks for white people talking a half for asians a dollar for latinos seventy five cents for blacks and only twenty five cents for native americans oh and women get an additional twenty five cents off on each purchase u.c. berkeley's student government unanimously condemned the bake sale calling it correctly discriminatory but president of the college republicans thought about the

name is sean lewis responded saying we agree that the event is inherently racist but that's the point it is number raises than giving an individual an advantage in college admissions based solely on their race were gender. age protest policies that aim to give minorities who have been kept down for centuries a strap that pull them selves up by well bootstrap thing you know with a racist bake sale makes perfect sense. here's the problem which these kids are ignoring how do we create a more equal society a more just society when one particular race and gender has had a four hundred year economic head start on all the others this is called white privilege. and frankly most white people are unaware of it born into it it becomes like the air we breathe it's invisible to us unless it's pointed out

or and once were deprived of it like the fact that the average wealth of white households in america is twenty times greater than that of black households according to a pew research study in two thousand and nine white households own on average about one hundred thirteen thousand dollars worth of growth mostly in housing and savings blackhole households on the other hand on about five and a half thousand dollars that's twenty to one a staggering wealth inequality strictly along racial lines and for hispanics it's not much better their average household wealth is one eight hundred that of whites and this inequality has actually gotten worse over the last twenty five years not better not only that blacks still are in about fifty seven cents on every dollar

that whites are for hispanics and fifty nine cents and there's a variation on this called male privilege and most women in the workplace can tell you all about and again white men are generally unaware of or totally in denial based on this data at the college republicans really wanted to show reality instead of holding a bake sale with arbitrarily rigged prices they should sell muffins and pay their workers based on the same wealth visions in america as in higher whites blacks hispanics who are the same jobs but people i people only ten bucks an hour hispanics on that level bucks an hour and pay the white men twenty dollars an hour and white women seventeen dollars the unemployment rate for white people in america is eight percent for blacks it's a depression era level of sixteen point seven. as just over eleven percent for

hispanics the civil rights act of one nine hundred sixty four didn't suddenly make everything equal in america it just laid the groundwork so the minorities can at least compete on a level playing field in the economy something they were barred from doing for our nation's entire history and of course without affirmative action programs there's no way the playing field could be imagined to be level because even if the descendants of slaves jump into a field to compete against the descendants of twenty generations of slave owners they're not starting from the same place and if a group of college republicans in california or even members of congress here in washington d.c. think the civil rights act alone was enough to give minorities a fair shake in america when they really are naive or just plain ignorant or maybe bigoted according to the research done by richard wilkinson and kate pickett at the equality trust the united states ranks dead last in social mobility among the rest

of the o.e.c.d. nations as in it's more difficult in america for somebody to get out of poverty and join the middle class than it is anywhere else in the developed world when you add in institutional racism the fact that today when mit did a study having identically qualified applicants for real jobs submit resumes to big companies those with african-american sounding names were after as likely to get a call back as quick with white sounding names sixty to ninety percent of housing units showed that whites were not shown to blacks forty six percent of whites get help from their family to make a downpayment on their first house as opposed to twelve percent of african-americans who on average pay a half point higher interest on that mortgage. when it comes to education regardless of the school the studies are in as well minority students and students are less likely to be placed in honors classes even when justified by test scores

and according to the c.d.c. when rates of serious school violations are matched one for one by race nonetheless people who are visible minority students are more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled from school racism is alive and well in america particularly subtle forms of racism like i just pointed out combined with the reality of white privilege and when used for political purposes it can help win elections look back at herbert walker bush is willie horton ads for the fact that ronald reagan gave his first speech after being nominated for president in philadelphia mississippi a little town of six thousand people in the middle of nowhere that's famous for only one thing back in the one nine hundred sixty s. three civil rights workers were brutally tortured and murdered there that's why it's so important to call out resubmitting gimmicks like this one from the college republicans and u.c. berkeley for what they are someone should add to the required curriculum

a class on by privilege because until white people figure out what every person of color in this nation already knows things will continue to stay the same and during down economic downturns like this one actually get worse. that's the big picture first night for more information on the stories we covered this is our web site the thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org and archie dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links to thom hartmann dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a freestyle hartman i phone and i pad app at the app store even some of the feedback at twitter of tom underscore our one on facebook at time of the school. logs message boards and telephone comment on it. and don't forget to mark receive begins when you get out there and get active tag you're it.