Law and Disorder January 2, 2012: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Smith: Obama Balance Sheet 2011

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Year End Look Back 2011 – Jim Lafferty

Looking back on 2011, amid the colossal economic failure and compounded erosion of civil liberties, there were slivers of bright light to note, such as the wonderful activism and momentum of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The subsequent pulling together of activists, unions and lawyers marked this year in launching the foundation of a vital movement. Will this emerging movement continue to build and hold together to counter and restructure a corrupt and crumbling edifice of democracy?

Attorney Jim Lafferty:

• I’m now 73, I’ve not been as excited and optimistic about a movement since the sixties as I am around the occupation movement.
• It’s very exciting, it’s very broad and a lot deeper than the 1 percent would like to acknowledge.
• We don’t have a great sense of history in this country, we certainly don’t learn it in our high schools.
• Many of the young people that are at the heart and soul of this new movement are not the beneficiaries of a historical context of which to organize ourselves.
• It’s proven that you don’t need that to make a splash.
• When you go to the heart of capitalism itself which is what this movement does, its not surprising that they were met with fierce and brutal police reaction.
• They were ignored by the press in the first week or two, much of the press has been a distortion of it since.
• Reading the picket signs alone would tell you damn well what they want.
• This is an economic injustice movement. Capitalism can’t produce the type of economic justice that these tens of thousands are demanding.
• When Bonnie and I were arrested in New York at OWS, we even had cops saying to us, we’re part of the 99 percent.
• People aren’t making it and can’t make it in this country given the skewed and unjust economic system that capitalism represents.
• The US Census Bureau acknowledges that 100 million people are living in poverty or are in danger of slipping into poverty.
• When a presidential election cycle comes up, anti-war movements, civil rights movements, womens’ rights movements, tend to leave the streets.
• Don’t fall for the trap of electoral politics.
• Phase 2: I don’t know if that (encampments) are a sustainable way of operating a movement in this country.
• Here in L.A., one of the unions SIEU offered an indoor space to the movement where they can organize.
• Last week we shut down a number of home foreclosure auction sales.

Guest – Jim Lafferty, Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica’s KPFK 90. 7 FM to reflect back on 2011 and a look ahead.

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Occupy Wall St and the Brecht Forum

Kazembe Balagun,  an activist and cultural organizer from the Bronx discusses the activism within the Occupy Wall Street movement through the Education and Empowerment Committee.  Kazembe is also the program director at the Brecht Forum.

 Kazembe Balagun:

• When I went down to Zuccotti, what I found was a vibrant community that had already started.
• It did really speak to the frustration of the current economic and political climate.
• As a public educator at the Brecht Forum you want to provide a context for these demonstrations.
• You want to have a conversation with them, in that this is not the first time this happened.
• We brought our comrade, Rick Wolff down there, and had a talk with almost 300 people.  All great movements have great literacies.
• We have a movement where people are not only learning to speak in public but we’re all listening to each other.
• Wall Street has been the site of oppression for all people. Primarily because the wall that was built outside Wall Street was built to keep the Native Americans outside the business district.
• Black and brown communities have been the hardest hit in terms of foreclosure rates, stop and frisk. So what we have now is Occupy the Bronx, Occupy Sunset Park.
• We can occupy ourselves, that we can step into a new way of public life.

Guest – Kazembe Balagun, program director at the Brecht Forum.

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Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012

Continuing the look back and now ahead to 2012, we’re glad to have back with us, Jim Petras,  author and former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York to discuss his latest article published on Global Research   Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012.  In this article Petras enumerates key events that will inevitably shape the next 12 months. He starts with – The Collapse of the European Union, then the recession deepens in United States, new wars erupt in the midst of this crisis.

These events, will lead to coming wars that will end America as we know it, meanwhile Europe sinks deep into austerity and class warfare intensifies.  Petras says, that in response mass movements will continue to build, recede and re-emerge. Protests and rebellions, social revolutions and political power across the globe will be important catalysts.

Jim Petras:

• The economy has never really recovered from the recession. All the trends from the early Spring have been on the negative side. Instead of take off in 2012, we see the opposite taking place, slow down in investment, slow down in overall exports, slow down in financing the employment.
• What we do see is a big profit for the speculators. The speculators are back with a vengence. Carlyle has reported over 12 billion dollars in profits for the first 11 months.
• The speculators are working, the housing market is terrible.
• The debt has skyrocketed so much, so much was thrown at the bank bailouts, that there arent’ enough resources to pull us out of this recession.
• The Democrats are making deals with the Republicans to actually cut back on federal spending because of the deficit. I see us moving into recession by the end of Spring and heading toward worse a depression by the end of the year.
• This is all going to be exacerbated by a move toward a war with Iran, which will push oil prices up over 150 USD/barrel. The powers that are moving toward that war particularly, the Zionist power configuration.
• The consequences will be very very catastrophic for the economy of the United States.
• Speculators are back in power, the housing market is negative, the job employment is negative, 2011 trends are moving down toward recession, I don’t see any counter moves.
• Cumulative debt payments are negative, I don’t see any possibility of a injection of major public spending of which would turn this around or at least ameliorate it. Keep it at zero growth.
• Keep us at stagnation, rather then negative territory.
• Obama did nothing to stimulate a new structure in America which could take government support and move forward. What he did is pour the money into the people who caused the crisis on Wall Street.
• After Obama gets elected you’re going to see the most horrendous attack on the social security programs, medicaid, medicare. He’s holding back because he wants to get elected.
• He’s looking to slash and burn the only social programs that sustain American living standards for millions of workers who paid into this fund.
• This isn’t an entitlement program, this social insurance that has been paid for by American workers.
• He’s going to go into Iran, because he told the reformed Jews, all options are on the table, and he stationed an armada of Air Force smack facing Tehran. That’s a move toward war.
• Read Netanyahu and Barack, the defense minister of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel, then the message gets transmitted to the New York Times, then it gets transmitted to Washington, you get a third hand.
• Why not look at the press releases coming out of Tel Aviv, if you want to know what tomorrow’s news is going to be.
• I think we’re going to see something new coming out of this great discontent.

Guest – James Petras, author and former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.

 Law and Disorder September 19, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 Updates:

• From Attica To Pelican Bay – By Michael Ratner
• Inmates_of_Attica_Correctional_Facility_v_Rockefeller_(PDF)
• Clergy Sex Victims Demand Justice – CCR Lawsuit
  
• People Living In Poverty At All Time High
• Law and Disorder Show - Troy Davis – July 2, 2007

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Medical Professionals Complicit In US Torture Policy

As many listeners know, health professionals were front and center and complicit in the US policy of torture. The torturers relied heavily on medical opinion. Medical professionals provided sanitizing and rationalization for the infamous torture memos. During water boarding procedures, a doctor would be present.  Psychologists were directly involved in the supervision, design and execution of torture at US military and intelligence facilities. This is a violation of state laws and professional ethics. These “health professionals” that were involved with torture still hold their professional licenses to practice.  Meanwhile a legal battle continues against the Louisiana Psychology Board for refusing to investigate professional misconduct allegations against Dr. Larry James.  He’s a retired US Army Colonel and high ranking adviser on interrogations for the US military in Guantanamo Bay.

We talk more about this case and the breach of ethics in the medical profession since 9/11 with Dr. Stephen Soldz, former president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. Stephen is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and public health researcher in Boston, he is also co-author of PHR’s report in Experiments in Torture.

Stephen Soldz :

• Psychologists played a central role, there were 2 professions, one was lawyers, the other less well known was psychologists.  It turns out that it was psychologists that designed and implemented, the enhanced interrogation torture program, who monitored it, who trained others in it and who researched it and provided all the legal protection.
• It’s believed that it was psychologist James Mitchell who was present there, who was in charge.
• There’s the CIA program that was for so called high value detainees in CIA custody in various secret prisons called black sites.  This is where the psychologists were central, they designed the whole thing.
• There was a black site at Guantanamo where a few people were held at various points.
• Guantanamo was technically under the military control, not CIA control.
• The CIA: like I said the psychologists designed this stuff, it was quite brutal. Forcing people to stand, shackling them up, with their arms out, naked in cold air. For 7 days at a time.
• Being forced to stand day after day is extraordinarily painful. Think about having to do that without using the toilet, with liquid food being forced into you. They at times used small boxes where a person could neither stand or sit.
• The boxes were banged on at times, they would throw people against walls, with special devices around their neck supposedly to protect them from permanent damage.  There were various slaps that were authorized.
• The American Psychology Association has an ethics code and its binding on all members.  Not all psychologists are members, but all the states base their own ethics code for licensed psychologists upon that of the APA, some mandate it exactly some adopt their own.
• The CIA and military insist that the psychologists that do this stuff be licensed by the state.
• Many of them are APA, so the APA ethics are intimately involved here.
• The APA equivocated and formed a task force. They said that psychologists had an obligation to keep interrogations, safe legal and effective. This language it turns out was taken from the Bush torture memos at the Justice Department. The task force was dominated by the military.
• They claim to be resolutely against torture, they make statement after statement. Psychologists shouldn’t be safety officers.
• In all 3 states, lawyers have joined my colleagues to force the APA board to do their job. The board doesn’t have the leeway to dismiss claims of torture without clearly investigating them.
• Larry James was a Biscuit 1 and later served at Abu Ghraib after the scandals there, he claims to have been the person who cleaned it up.
• He admits that he observed abuse by other people and didn’t report it to the commanders.
• He’s now out of the military and the Dean of the School of Psychology at Wright State University in Ohio.
• It’s rather sad, instead investigating what did or did not happen, they attack those who raise issues about Colonel James.
•  Physicians For Human Rights / When Healers Harm

Guest – former President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Stephen Soldz is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and public health researcher in Boston, and was a co-author of PHR’s report Experiments in Torture. He is the Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School, and has taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston College, and Boston University.

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Guantanamo Bay and Offshore Prisons

The Obama Administration has allowed the Bush policy to continue allowing for the practice of torture, rendition and secret prisons to continue.  We talk about the ongoing practice of torture, secret sites and Guantanamo Bay. There are 3 groups at Guantanamo, the first is 2 dozen that are genuinely Al Qaeda. The second group shouldn’t have been there in first place, around 200 of them will be sent home. The third group are refugees who are from countries with horrible human rights records.

Attorney Vince Warren:

• What role do the people play in order to stop this? (wars) We are at war to make war is what the public has bought into. By using the war paradigm, the president seized power that belonged to Congress, seized power that belonged to the Courts and seized power that belonged to the people.
• You can’t be at war with the “concept” of terror.
• Prior to 9-11 when terrorism would happen. There was an investigation, an indictment, prosecution and if there was a case, they were to be convicted.
• As of 2011, more people in Guantanamo have died than have been referred for criminal charges.
• We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that this was a genuine reaction to a tragic event.
• This aggressive war(s) that are based on lies, without any legitimate security threat, is a crime.
• The other piece since 9-11 is the interesting double speak.  Torture and aggressive war become justifications since 9-11.
• The Bush Justice Department said that the law simply does not just apply to the President, when he’s acting as Commander In Chief.  It doesn’t matter if Congress passed a law that we expect the President to be bound, the Justice Department said he could ignore it if it didn’t fit in to what he wanted to do.
• That led to the Bush lawyers counseling him that he could ignore a law that said torture was illegal or could ignore a law that says the government can’t wiretap without a warrant.
• President Obama talked very big about ending torture and about ending these policies.
• What is happening now in the United States is that local police forces, immigration forces, private contractors are colluding and conspiring to infiltrate political movements and largely peaceful political movements.
• - in order to “uproot the terrorist.”
• Course there are no terrorists there, what there are are people who have a very vibrant and credible claim.
• Myself and a number of other human rights people went to a meeting with President Obama in May 2009.  I was shocked at how President Obama completely understood the legal issues we were raising.
• The very next day he essentially came out with a preventive detention scheme. An indefinite detention scheme in Guantanamo.
• What really troubled me is that he knows. He knows precisely what the right thing to do is.
• This thing is not going to fix itself. CCR Facebook – Twitter @theCCR

Guest – Attorney Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights,  a national legal and educational organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Vince oversees CCR’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work which includes using international and domestic law to hold corporations and government officials accountable for human rights abuses; challenging racial, gender and LGBT injustice; and combating the illegal expansion of U.S. presidential power and policies such as illegal detention at Guantanamo, rendition and torture.

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 Law and Disorder September 12, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Ratner: The Other 9-11s
• NEW – From Attica To Pelican Bay – By Michael Ratner
• Inmates_of_Attica_Correctional_Facility_v_Rockefeller_(PDF)
  

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The State of Perpetual War

Since September 11, 2001 the US global war on terror has reached beyond Afghanistan and Iraq.  The US constructed the largest embassy ever in Baghdad to control the resources of Iraq.  Meanwhile strikes against Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, led an air war against Libya without any Congressional authorization continue as pointed out by author Anthony Arnove.  In his article titled  The 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Arnove describes US foreign policy of preventive war and how the US continues to  use drone strikes against Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.  Now other countries are adopting the preventive war idea to fight (quote) terrorism. Today, the Obama Adminstration has gone beyond the Bush policies as trillions are spent on perpetual war while schools, health care and social needs crumble.

Anthony Arnove:

• 911 was seized upon by the Bush Administration as an opportunity.  Condoleezza Rice specifically used the word opportunity to describe the geo-political shifts that she saw occurring in the wake of 9-11.
• We’ve seen the invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, covert operations and Arab bombardment of dozens of countries. There’s an estimate now that this year the US will be operating in 120 countries in some capacity through use of commandos.
• You’ve seen increased troop levels in Afghanistan so that even with the current so called draw down of the troops in Afghanistan, even with the reductions that are currently being undertaken, we’re still going to be ahead of the number of troops that were in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush Administration.
• Withdrawal, the word no longer has any meaning. It actually means slight reduction of troops after they’ve been increased.
• There are 46 thousand active duty troops in Iraq. The claim is that those 46 thousand will leave at the end of 2011 after an agreement reached under pressure from social movements in Iraq.
• Then you look at the military installations that scatter the country, they’re not going to walk away from that easily.
• In Afghanistan, they’re literally talking about dates as far as 2024 in terms of troops on the ground involved in a number of capacities.
• I think Libya is truly an opportunistic action by the United States concerned its losing control in the middle east. You’ve had uprisings and revolutions that have toppled governments aligned with the United States.
• The US has been so contemptuous of the freedoms of people around the world. So contemptuous of democracy, so contemptuous of people fighting for self determination.
• So contemptuous of nationalist movements that would have put resources into the control of the people.
• The actions of the Bush Administration and now Obama have only made us more hated, and made the world more dangerous.
• They claim they’re making the world more safe, and protecting us. The reality is the opposite.
• At least Barack Obama will be more responsive to social movements, we’ll be able to pressure him. It is clear that is not the case, there has been a demobilizing of sections of the anti-war movement who define the political horizons as the debate between the Republicans and Democrats.
• The anti-war movement has been silenced.
• The people who most vociferously supported invading Iraq, claimed there would be weapons of mass destruction, all of those things we now know to be lies, those people are regularly asked to be commentators on Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Yet the people who got it right, saying this is what will happen if we invade, those people are never heard from.
• The gap between what the elite are doing and what they are saying, and what is in their interest and the interest of ordinary people has never been wider.
• On October 6, 2011, a number organizations have called for demonstrations in Washington DC and solidarity actions in other cities.  On October 15 actions have been called for by the United National Anti-War Coalition.  NationalPeaceConference.org

Guest – Editor and writer Anthony Arnove. He is best known for his books on Iraq and the Iraq War. Arnove is the author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, published in hardcover by the New Press and in paperback by Haymarket Books. Arnove toured the country promoting the book in spring 2006 as part of the New Press’ “End the War Tour”.

Arnove is also the editor of Iraq Under Siege, published by South End Press, the co-editor with Howard Zinn of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press, and the editor of The Essential Noam Chomsky, published by the New Press. He writes frequently for left-wing publications; he is a featured author at ZNet, a columnist for Socialist Worker, and on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review.

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The Guantanamo Syndrome

Attorney Michael Ratner:

• Pinochet’s Operation Condor was to round up opponents all over the world to torture and imprison them. This is now an American Operation Condor.
• AUMF and Military Order #1 allow the administration to use drones around the world. This is the key piece of legislation. Out of the AUMF came military order # 1, November 13, 2001. The president can arrest anybody, they can be kept anywhere, American citizen or not.
• From there flows the Guantanamo Syndrome. Habeas Corpus, a person who’s the prisoner of the executive can go to court and say put the executive on the defensive. Why am I being held? You have to have a legal basis.
• After many years of litigation representing this incommunicado people at Guantanamo, we ended up representing their parents or relatives, because we couldn’t represent them, the Supreme Court finally said, it’s a Constitutional right to go to court to test your detention. They said that about the people in Guantanamo in particular, they didn’t say that about the people in Baghram or other places.
• Once we won that right, the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration went into court and completely opposed that right having any meaning.  It is really an unrecognizable world from what we had ten years ago.

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Audio Collage

• Surveillance State: The 51st State
• Targeting Muslims Since 9-11

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 Law and Disorder August 8, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution

Egypt’s revolution didn’t suddenly happen overnight, there was long important history. Beginning with Egypt and Israel signing the Camp David Accords in 1979 Egypt was rewarded with billions in US military aid that paved the way for neo-liberal style policies under Hosni Mubarak.  By 2000, the first signs of widespread opposition started in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada. The protests centered around poverty, corruption and need for democracy.  A second wave of mass opposition ignited in 2003 in response to the US invasion of Iraq and Egypt’s support for the war.  Then the April 6 movement rose in 2008, protesting against rising food costs and low wages. By 2010 social media and blogs were outlets for organizing and dissent.

Guest – Co-writer of the article and founder of Left Turn Magazine Rami El-Amine.
Guest – Activist Mostafa Henaway who also contributed to the article A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution.

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Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on War of Aggression in Libya

As many listeners know, the military operation in Libya is not a humanitarian intervention, it is part of the global war and effort to militarize North Africa.  The Chinese have sizable interests in Libya in the battle for oil. Meanwhile, the Gaddafi leadership has continued to function despite the NATO bombing campaign in the last four months and the loss of significant parts of the the country. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney had recently returned from a fact finding mission in Tripoli during a time of intense bombing.  She has organized speakers to discuss how billions are spent in this military operation while we’re being told there are no funds available for jobs, health care and education. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was among the speakers, he’s been following the US and NATO involvement in brutal attempts to overthrow the Gaddafi government.

Attorney Ramsey Clark:

• The reality is that its a war of aggression, which the Nuremberg charter and judgement defined as a supreme international crime.
• What we’ve done is used the appearance of a civil war, people rising up against their own government, to wage a massive assault. – really unrelated to their activities, the first place we hit was Tripoli, they were no where near Tripoli and we bombed the daylights out of it.
• The bombing is spreading away from the compound, its hitting areas outside of the city.  Interesting to note, people are still fleeing from Iraq to Syria. It’s safer in Syria, we read in our newspapers it’s violent in Syria.
• If you go back to Rwanda, and remember how everybody was outraged afterward but nobody intervened.
• A clearer illustration is what’s happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have died and are dying by armed troops. Nobody bothers to intervene.
• What you do is, you want to go in anyway, you use humanitarian intervention as justification.
• The poor Congress is defaulting on its responsibility. The military budget exceeds all of the civilian budget. They can gloss over it but until we address the issue of US military expenditures, our country will be a threat to peace in the world.
• We spend more on the military then the rest of the world combined.  It’s almost impossible to think that the United States will curtail its foreign aggressions, while the military expenditures are at what they are.
• We’ve got in the Pacific Ocean today, 8 Trident nuclear submarines, the cost is enormous each one carries 140-145 nuclear warheads, anyone of which can destroy the biggest city in the country and go beyond it, their largest warhead will leave a crater with a 25 mile diameter.
• Hard to sleep in Tripoli and other places that are under direct attack by us.
• We tolerated him for 40 years while he created the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Highest per capita income, highest levels of education.  Health care and more public housing then they can use for their own citizens. – almost enough for their foreign labor. He doesn’t submit to the will of the United States.
• Sub-Sahara Africa primarily, all the places on Earth are dying.  It’s not just the conditions of weather in East Africa, but everyplace you go, structure’s crumbling. The chaos seems to be spreading and we seem to prefer it.
• Rebel Forces: It’s a group that doesn’t always know each other and doesn’t always like each other.
• We took out all of Gaddafi’s planes which was easy to do. It’s easy to hit his armor.
• They’ve held their own against the might of West Europe and the United States for months and months.
• We (U.S.Government) agreed to pay without admitting liability 300 million dollars for the people killed in 1986 by our bombing.
• People have to organize and rise up. I don’t think we’re going to get anything accomplished as far as peace and reduction of US militarization except by an enormous demand by the people.
• We can cut 90 percent of the military spending in my opinion and be safer, and not be engages in all these interventions – which we can’t handle anymore.

Guest – Attorney Ramsey Clark was the former Attorney General of the United States, under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the first Attorney General at the Justice Department to call for the elimination of the death penalty and all electronic surveillance. After he left the Johnson administration, he became a important critic of the Vietnam War and continued defending the rights of people worldwide, from Palestinians to Iraqis, to anyone who found themselves at the repressive end of government action.

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National Lawyers Guild Lawyers Victorious in Internet Free Speech Case

At a 2008, Sunday Service at the Mount Hope Baptist Church in Lansing, Michigan, members of the queer rights group Bash Back! disrupted the service to protest anti-gay policies. Months later, the church and the Alliance Defense Fund, a reactionary Christian nonprofit organization, sued Bash Back! and 15 named activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The church and Defense Fund subpoenaed identifying information in an attempt to find out the protesters’ identities; Risup.net, a provider of online communication tools for individuals and groups working for social change, was the only email provider to challenge the subpoenas. Federal judge Richard A. Jones ruled that Riseup.net did not have to turn over the records, finding that “the Users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously online outweighs Mount Hope’s right to discovery.” National Lawyers Guild members Larry Hildes of Bellingham, Washington, Devin Theriot-Orr of Seattle, and Mark Sniderman of Indiana successfully defended several activists who received subpoenas from Mt. Hope Baptist Church demanding they turn over their internet account records.  Once again, this shows how readily corporations share private personal data on activists with the government or other private entities.

Attorney Larry Hildes:

• This church is particularly virulent with their ministry aimed at turning gay people straight.
• The group picketed outside and tried to pass out leaflets inside.  Two women ran to the front of the sanctuary and kissed each other at the alter.
• Mount Hope Baptist Church called the police. The police showed up and said there’s no criminal activity here.
• The Alliance Defense Fund, a huge fundamentalist law firm and fund raising empire in Scottsdale, Arizona contacted the church and said we’ll take on your case.
• They sued the Bash Back folks under the “Faith Act”  – Freedom To Access To Clinics Act. They sued them and settled for 2500.00 and a consent decree that they would never disrupt a religious service in the United States again.
• In the meantime they went to look for anyone connected with Bash Back in any way. They went to Yahoo and subpoenaed records from list-serves and Yahoo without telling anybody gave them what they wanted.
• Then they went after RiseUp and RiseUp prides themselves on two things, the internet voice of the left and privacy for their subscribers.
• Riseup attorney Devin Theriot-Orr outlined the internet case law, there is some good law.
• In order to engage in free speech you need to have some degree of security and safety that your privacy is going to be protected otherwise, it chills the climate so that very few people are going to be able to take that risk.
• The victory is that there is a first amendment right to be on a list-serve of a group, even a group whose actions can be seen as civil disobedience or illegal. Your information is still protected and private and the Freedom of Association Privilege goes to that.
• We were awarded by the court 28 thousand dollars in fees.

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Attorney Devin Theriot-Orr:

• I’m the pro-bono lawyer for RiseUp.net. The identity information of subscribers is protected by a longstanding precedent going back to 2001.
• Obviously the first amendment has its limits, you can’t speak anonymously about threatening to kill people.
• One of the caveats of the first amendment is that if you have a bona fide law suit and you’re  trying to uncover the identity of the defendants there’s a whole balancing test to go through before you should be able to identify the defendants.
• They also provided identical subpoenas to Yahoo and Google, and even though these companies are located in silicon valley with very good federal benches, and they’re in the ninth circuit, its kind of amazing to me that other companies don’t take a stronger stance to protect their users privacy.
• We’re hoping this is a warning to overly zealous attorneys who are abusing discovery process.

Guest – Attorney Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild attorney in the case, Bellingham Washington.

Guest – Attorney Devin Theriot-Orr,  National Lawyers Guild attorney in Seattle and pro-bono attorney for RiseUp.net.

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 Law and Disorder July 25, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope

We  hear a talk from our own Michael Ratner who spoke at the James A Little Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was also in conversation with radio host Mary Charlotte Domandi. The event was titled -  Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope.” Michael is introduced by Mary-Charlotte Domandi producer and host of the Santa Fe Radio Cafe on KSFR 101.1 FM (Santa Fe, NM, Public Radio)

Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. Both are non-profit human rights litigation organizations. He was part of the small group of lawyers that first took on representation of the Guantánamo detainees in January 2001, a case that resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court in 2004. CCR established a network of over 600 pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantánamo detainees and continues that work.

He has filed criminal complaints in the courts of Germany, France and Spain against former US officials including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seeking the initiation of criminal prosecutions against them for the Abu Ghraib abuse and torture as well as for their actions at Guantánamo. Recently, CCR and ECCHR prepared papers to file in Switzerland against George W. Bush for torture. As a result Bush canceled his trip. A major area of Mr. Ratner’s litigation and writing is the enforcement of the prohibition on torture and murder against various dictators and generals who travel to the United States. He has sued on behalf of victims in Guatemala, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, among other countries. He has also litigated numerous suits to prevent or stop illegal US wars ranging from Central America to Iraq. A constant in his work has been litigation against government spying and surveillance of activists.

Michael Ratner’s books, authored or coauthored, include the soon to be published, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (2011) and Killing Che: How the CIA Got Away with Murder (2011). Other books include International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, Second Edition (2008); Against War with Iraq (2003); Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (2004); and The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book (2008). Ratner has taught human rights litigation at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Ratner has received many awards including Trial Lawyer of the Year, the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor (2005), the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award, Honorary Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2005), and The Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2007). In 2006, the National Law Journal named Ratner one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.

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Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats

There is a sprawling hidden world of counter-terrorism organizations growing beyond control in the United States. Twenty-four of them were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. The next year, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction and collect threat tips. By 2009, nearly 260 organizations were created as 854 thousand civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances monitor national security concerns. However, according to a report from the Public Research Associates, those same  concerns have bolstered a class of self-proclaimed terrorism experts who decry Islam as an evil religion of terrorists and routinely brand Muslims as primitive, vengeful, duplicitous, and belligerent people who oppress women and gays, and have values irreconcilable with “western Judeo-Christian civilization.”

In fact, when PRA discovered earlier this year that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) had contracted with Security Solutions International to con­duct a training on radical Islam, they noti­fied the Muslim American Society, ACLU, and our other advocacy partners, who used PRA’s research to compel the MBTA to cancel the agency’s training.

Chip Berlet :

• As part of the Homeland Security Initiatives and working with the FBI in other aspects of the national security apparatus, there was a need to train thousands as part of a local state and federal counter-terrorism “experts.”
• Some of these trainings are quite good. The problem is that there are a handful of groups that train hundreds and hundreds of local, state and federal counter-terrorism experts, with rhetoric that is basically Islamophobic.
• In the late 1970s there was an attempt to restrain this illegal surveillance. I’d have to say right now it’s worse.
• What used to be done illegally and covertly is now done ostensibly legally and openly and in fact proudly by both Democrats and Republicans who should be ashamed.
• The whole strategic suspicious reporting initiative which basically is a pipeline for unverified rumor and innuendo through local police departments up through a chain of information agencies to the federal government.  We know in Europe this kind of reporting is unconstitutional and bad for society.
• Now, everyone that was considered illegal and unconstitutional for which there were Congressional hearings and reforms under Jimmy Carter, now we do it.
• In proper training that is actually looking for criminal activity, not people of color who wear garb that we’re scared of.  What’s going on here is untrained, badly trained officers are reporting the names of people up into a huge infrastructure of information data storage, based on bias they’ve not been trained to resist or confront within themselves.
• We described this whole process as a platform for prejudice in a report by Tom Cincotta
• Tom has on his wall a wall chart of all the agencies of this information reporting system and it has 150 dots so inter-connected, no one can control this.
• I’m urging people to form broad coalitions across the political spectrum.

Guest – Chip Berlet, (senior analyst) is a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and the St. Louis Journalism Review.

 Law and Disorder June 27, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Obama Administration War Powers Resolution - Click Here For Partial Transcript
• Read Michael Ratner’s Article Permanent Gitmo & Permanent War: New Nat’l “Defense”Bill
• Congress Didn’t Fund This War = Unconstitutional
  
• Juan Cole War Critic?
• Sugar Law Center: Lawsuit Targets Emergency Manager Law
  
• New FBI Guidelines: Planting INFORMANTS With No Criminal Predicate
• Hell No, Your Right to Dissent in Twenty-First-Century America
• Anthing Goes: The FBI Guidelines  -  Heidi and Michael Ratner Read Excerpts
  

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Blair Mountain March

In protest to stop mountain top removal mining, hundreds of activists finished a five day fifty mile march earlier this month from Marmet, West Virginia to Blair Mountain in West Virginia. The massive under publicized march also marked the historic Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed conflict in US labor history. In 1921, thousands of miners near the area marched to organize non-union coal mines. This demonstration ended in a rally of speakers, musicians, celebrities, union workers and picketing at the top of Blair mountain. The demonstration drew attention to the demand of sustainable job creation in all Appalachian communities, abolish mountaintop removal, strengthen labor rights and preserve Blair Mountain. As many listeners know, mountain top removal is a highly destructive extraction coal mining process with usually no environmental remediation.

Attorney Dan Gregor:

• It is not an exaggeration to say that big coal owns southern Virginia.
• Logan and Boone Counties where we walked through, big coal has more or less owned the politics, the citizenry, the economy for a century.
• The Congressional Delegation is very sympathetic to what they perceive as coal jobs.
• During the marches we had 200-250 people at any given time.
• Putting myself in the best way that I can do legal support, and one of the core logistics organizer of the event, best do organizing support, it put myself in a position where I was knowingly arrestable.
• It was alternately exciting and freeing and terrifying. It’s a very activist lawyer, resistance approach.
• There are locals who don’t understand this doesn’t mean more jobs or it means a fraction of unionized jobs for organized coal workers.
• The Boone County Sheriff department was somewhat less then helpful. For the most part, the West Virginia State Police were professional and did their jobs carefully. We didn’t see police misconduct, or police brutality as you would see in most mass protest situations.
• The broader strategy is calling for an end to mountain top removal coal mining, transitioning to a cleaner economy with wind and solar.
• One of the reasons you don’t see mountain tops blown up in Tennessee for example, is that the Congressional Delegation there, has been resistant to it, in West Virginia, historically it hasn’t.
• Mountain top removal coal mining produces very high quality, pure Anthracite Coal, this is part of Obama’s “Clean Coal” strategy.
• A great deal of my practice is resistance law, and is assisting resisting communities.
• I’ve been able to make this a significant focus of my life as an attorney.
• Ilovemountains.org / allianceforapplachia.org
• We can always use more people, more attorneys. It took six months to organize this March on Blair Mountain, no ordinary task for volunteers.

Guest – Dan Gregor, activist attorney whose practice includes protest defense, criminal defense, immigration, and human and civil rights law. This has included assisting and representing activists involved with the annual School of the Americas Watch vigil, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, people being harassed by Green Scare grand juries, and many other activist causes. Dan is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Hampshire College. He is an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, and former National Vice President of the Guild.

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National Lawyers Guild Report: Human Rights In Tunisia

A wave civil resistance continues throughout the country of Tunisia, Africa sparked from high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, and lack of freedom of speech.  During the country’s civil unrest, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted as president, fleeing to Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power.  Now,  human rights violations are being investigated.  A group of lawyers from the U.S., U.K. and Turkey have been investigating U.S. and European complicity in human rights abuses committed by the Ben Ali regime.  The group has recently issued a warning that the U.S. and other Western governments must respect Tunisian sovereignty and not interfere in that country’s path to democracy. Atlanta attorney and National Lawyers Guild Executive Vice President Azadeh Shahshahani, was a member of the delegation and is on a speaking tour.

Azadeh Shahshahani:

• The Tunisian government passed this law, the 2003 anti-terror act. US State Department very supportive.
• If you go back to look at the US State Department Human Rights report on this, you can see the human rights violations are documented in the reports.
• It’s not like the US government didn’t know what was happening in those jails. Particularly the Islamists, after the legislation went into effect, a lot of people were picked up, for being a Muslim, for being a devout, perhaps engaging in religious discussions with your friends,
• A lot of youth were arrested and subjected to torture. Torture seemed to be really systematic, you’re arrested, detained, then tortured and confession is obtained.
• One family of a young man arrested, the father asked authorities why his son was arrested, he hasn’t done anything? They said, well, he does pray, doesn’t he?
• That was the sole basis of having been picked up. Arrests: one per day under the auspices of the Tunisian 2003 anti-terror act.
• Revolution in Saudi Arabia? Michael Ratner: That could the greatest thing that could happen.
• This “war on terror” provided the Ben Ali regime,  was an enabling mechanism and justification to continue his repressive tactics.

Guest – Azadeh Shahshahhani, the Director of the National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia. The project is aimed at bringing Georgia and its localities into compliance with international human rights and constitutional standards in treatment of refugee and immigrant communities, including immigrant detainees. To that end, a variety of strategies are employed, including the development of impact litigation, legislative advocacy, providing training to attorneys, human rights documentation and the publishing of reports, public education, and coalition and movement building. The current focus areas of the project include: immigration detention, racial profiling and local enforcement of immigration laws, governmental surveillance, discrimination faced by Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities, immigrant access to higher education, and language access in the court setting.

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 Law and Disorder March 28, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Cigar Arsonist
• Lawsuit Against U.S. Federal Reserve Seeks Armenian Gold Looted by Turkey
• IDF Monitors BDS Movements Around the World

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“Operation Libya” and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa

The US and allied air strikes on Libya will have far reaching geopolitical and economic implications. Libya is the among the world’s largest oil economies with near 3.5 percent of global oil reserves, twice that of the United States. What’s going here? As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes in his article “Operation Libya” and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa.” there is no such thing as a just war. This is part of US imperialism as drafted in the 2000 Report of the Project of the New American Century entitled “Rebuilding Americas’ Defenses.” One of the main components of this military agenda is: to “Fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars”. Libya counts as the fourth theater of war along with Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq. In all of this the mainstream media has used a massive disinformation in justifying this military agenda.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky:

• This is not a humanitarian intervention. It is a carefully planned military operation.  This was on the drawing board of the Pentagon, well before the protest movements in Egypt.
• It is a war theater, and should be viewed in the broader context of the war theater, namely Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.  It opens up a new area of militarization in North Africa. It has devastating consequences and is part of a global war.
• The object of coming to the rescue of civilians by bombing with cruise missiles is an absurd proposition. They’re bombing civilian infrastructure. The same agenda as the previous war theaters, they have a list of targets and go ahead and bomb.  This whole notion of responsibility to protect is nonsense.
• They’re getting away with it because the media is lying through their teeth.
• Clearly there are Al-Qaeda elements that are supported by the CIA. Two years ago, the Gaddafi government made a deal with the CIA. We know that Al-Qaeda is an intelligence asset. It can be used precisely to create these conditions of insurrection as occurred in Bosnia and in Kosovo. We have to investigate a little more, who is behind the insurgency.  The insurgency is not there to win a civil war, the insurgency is there to create a pretext for an intervention.
• I suspect this opposition is heavily divided in any event. Obama has ordered drone attacks in Pakistan.
• The Chinese have sizable interests in Libya. This is also directed against France and Italy, its France and Belgium that are being shoved out of Central Africa.
• Libya borders on Niger, its the entry into central Africa. Niger is important because it has large reserves of Uranium, which is in the hands of a French conglomerate.
• The conquest of Libya is the battle for oil, the same logic as Iraq.
• I estimated that Muslim countries have about 65-75 percent of global oil reserves. That is why we’re demonizing Muslims, they happen to inhabit.
• Bahrain and Yemen peaceful protesters getting hit with nerve gas.

Guest – Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of Global Research.ca , Center for Research on Globalization. An independent research and media organization based in Montreal,  Quebec, Canada.

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Community Service Society Report: Black Youth Unemployment

Unemployment in a jobless economic recovery has hit young African American men the hardest according to a recent report by the Community Service Society. PDF The highest unemployment rate in 2009 was among men 16-24 years of age—their overall unemployment rate hit 24.6 percent during the recession. Breaking it down by race, young black men had the highest unemployment rate in this group at 33.5 percent.  While only one in four black men ages 16-24 have a job in the city, that figure drops to an astounding one in ten for young black men without a high school diploma.

“The recession has created a landscape of the unemployed and underemployed with particular catastrophic consequences for young African American men,” said David R. Jones, president and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York. “We have long known the struggles of the more than 200,000 youth in New York City who are out of work and out of school. Now young black men between 16 and 24 years have become the banner of hopelessness, particularly here in New York City.”

David R. Jones:

• Those who’ve never made the connection to work or those who’ve ceased trying. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of people involved here. African Americans constitute about a third of New Yorkers.
• I think people have to recognize we’re in something totally new.
• At least anecdotally, the Great Depression didn’t have this kind of impact on the black community that this recession is having on them.
• New York in the Great Depression was a segregated city, were working exclusively in black communities or trades that were circumscribed.
• You get pullman porters and restaurant work which were the reserves for African Americans before the civil rights movement hit. The homeless of New York were white on Bowery.
• While we’re seeing a better recovery, the number of long term unemployed is actually greater than New York than other municipalities.
• The trouble is you start to lose job skills, you lose hope, all sorts of with friends and employment start to disintegrate.
• We did a report on security guards and I went back to look at it. There are 63 thousand security guards in the city of New York and virtually none of them are unionized, their average wage was $10 an hour, no health insurance, no paid sick leave.
• New York has an usually high concentration of the working poor.
• We’ve been focusing all our efforts, in terms of how we deal with poverty on the issue of on this nexus between work and getting to a position where they can support themselves and their families.
• This is not limited to the South Bronx or Crown Heights, this is a national phenomenon.
• We know when we did our report on disconnected youth, we had 200 thousand disconnected youth in New York, there were nearly 5 million disconnected youth scattered across the country before the recession.
• We’re never going to go back, to the unemployment levels that we found unacceptable in New York of 5% again. That we’re going to back down from the 9.5 %.
• It was always the expectation, if you worked really hard, there’s was going to be a way, sort of a seat at the table here. New York has one of the highest recidivism rates, we’re doing a couple of things, we’re making it impossible to get work,  once you’ve been incarcerated.
• We are going to get a group of young people who feel betrayed.
• I think this scapegoating that has taken on a really powerful voice, is partially because people want to blame someone for why they can’t get employment.

Guest – David Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Community Service Society of New York , a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that promotes economic advancement and full civic participation for low-income New Yorkers.

Mr. Jones, an outspoken advocate for low-income New Yorkers, writes bi-weekly newspaper columns in the New York Amsterdam News and El Diario/La Prensa and a weekly blog on the Huffington Post website that serve to educate the public and government officials on issues of importance to minority and poor communities.

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 Law and Disorder February 21, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Justice Clarence Thomas’ Strange Silence
• Justice Clarence Thomas Amends 1997-2009 Financial Forms
• Wisconsin Anti-Union Plan Spark Huge Demonstrations

Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the U.S War on Iraq – Dr. Scott Bonn

The attacks of 9/11 led to a war on Iraq, although there was neither tangible evidence that the nation’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was linked to Osama bin Laden nor proof of weapons of mass destruction. How then was propaganda and distortion used to garner support for the invasion of Iraq?  Dr. Scott Bonn has a few theories, in his new book, Mass Deception: Moral Panic and US War on Iraq.  Bonn introduces a unique, integrated and interdisciplinary theory called “critical communication.”  We talk more with Scott A. Bonn, assistant professor of sociology at Drew University.  Dr Bonn teaches courses in criminology, deviance and research methods.

Professor Scott Bonn:

• Moral Panic: a criminological concept established by Stan Cohen. An exaggerated public response and policy initiative,  the media go along for the ride.
• The crux of it is that the people become almost dependent on the elites.
• I was listening to the war drums pounding in 2001, 2002 and early 2003.  “Timing is everything, from a marketing view you don’t introduce new products over the summer.” – President Bush, White House Chief of Staff
• Terminology entered the public airwaves, mad men, mad dog, evil doers, tied to imagery of 9/11.
• I looked at the rhetoric of the Bush Administration, and then I looked at public opinion polls. Public opinion mirrored the rhetoric.
• “Critical communication” has its foundation in Chomsky’s notion of manufacturing consent, and looking at the research of during the dawn of the Nazi party.
• In the modern world, oppression can seem subtle, attractive and entertaining. Music, film and poetry actually can be forms of oppression if there are lies being disseminated.
• Part of my book is that we don’t get fooled again. Let’s be critical consumers.
• Let’s not drink the tainted kool-aid of hatred and fear without questioning what the motives of the server are.
• 90 percent of the world’s media outlets are controlled by six conglomerates.
• There’s ample evidence that “they” knew there were no stockpiles of mass destruction.
• I worked in advertising, I worked at NBC, I was actually vice president at NBC. It was exactly that experience that gave me a first hand view of exactly how news is created.  It’s only news because some who has the power decides that it is.
• As a society were not critical, scrutinizing and intellectual. There’s a tendency to passively accept what we’re told. Axis of Evil was reducing something that was highly complex, making it a lie.
• The next time we’re told we must respond to an iminent threat and we must act on it, we must ask why?
• Is there any objective indication that there is a threat?

Guest – Dr. Scott Bonn, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.  He combines the knowledge and skills of an academic scholar with more than twenty years of senior-level corporate experience as an advertising and media executive.  Bonn has developed a unique, integrated, and interdisciplinary theory called “critical communication” to explain how and why political elites and the news media periodically create public panics that benefit both parties.  Facebook link

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A Strange Stirring:  The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the l960s

A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the l960s” is the title of Stephanie Coontz’s new book.  It’s based on postwar gender roles and nearly 200 interviews with women and men who read Betty Friendan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963.  The Feminine Mystique is a passionate account of “the problem with no name” the malaise, emptiness and frustration afflicting white middle class wives and mothers in a time of post war abundance.

Stephanie Coontz:

• There were so many myths of who Betty Friedan was and she contributed to it herself.
• Daniel Horowitz did a book her own political history. She was a star psychology student at Smith.
• She has already developed her critique of Freudiasim which was so prevalent those days.
• She didn’t invent the “feminine mystique.” Physicians had a name for it, the housewives syndrome.
• You have been denied access of any sort of meaning in your own life.
• The Feminine Mystique sold 3 million copies.
• I have 188 interviews with men and women who read the book. I had to winnow it down to 188 because I kept getting calls and emails from people who swore that they read the book.
• When you went to college in the 1920s you were already defined in your role as a woman.
• What’s wrong with me that I don’t feel more grateful for my priviledges?
• Telling yourself that you don’t have the right to be unhappy, doesn’t solve it, it turns it in to that kind of depression. Incredible discrimination against working women. You could get fired if you got married, turned 30 or were in the airline industry.
• Stay at home housewives didn’t have rights either, there were only 8 states that recognized a wife’s interest in the property or earnings that her husband accumulated.
• One of the big triumphs of feminism is that much of Friedan’s book is so dated.
• Today, young women in their twenties in metropolitan areas out earn men because they have more education.
• Young men as you know are falling behind. Cross cutting currents of inequality that are much more complex.
• The women that are having the most difficult time are the women that would prefer to be homemakers but have had to take a low quality job and whose husbands do not help out at home.
• The happiest women are the ones that prefer to work, have a high quality job and a husband that helps out at home.
• There are things in Betty Friedan’s book I find repellent. I find her failure to deal with her own elitism very disconcerting, but she is not a me-first individualist.

Guest - Stephanie Coontz, teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She also serves as Co-Chair and Director of Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-profit, nonpartisan association of family researchers and practitioners based at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has been featured in many newspapers such as The New York Times, as well as scholarly journals such as Journal of Marriage and Family.

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 Law and Disorder November 29, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Bolivian Army Declares Itself Anti-Imperialist, Socialist, Anti-Capitalist
  

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Afghanistan Invasion/Occupation To End Beyond 2014

Thousands took to the streets of London last week to protest against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, as Nato leaders agreed a strategy to withdraw their troops from the country. US President Barack Obama was expected to announce an exit strategy from Afghanistan at the NATO summit in Lisbon, instead he postponed troop withdrawal beyond 2014. Vice President Joe Biden told one media source “Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off in October — I mean in next July, so you’d better practice riding.”

Jerry Gordon:

• End date 2014, there’s nothing firm about it. “2014 is a goal not a guarantee.”
• Everything is tentative, nothing is concrete. They are pursuing what has been called an “endless war.”
• what is less known is the US Government supported the Taliban, because their priority was a stable government in Kabul, that would permit the construction of a pipeline.
• They needed a pipeline to transfer these giant hydro-carbon reserves, we’re talking about 206 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 60 to 200 billion gallons of oil reserves.
• This was all before 2001, it was planned. There’s plenty of evidence. There’s a long speech in the Congressional Record in 1998 about the critical importance of building a new pipeline in Afghanistan.
• This is all geo-political and economic, it’s empire building.
• It became converted into a war on terror, after 9/11.
• At the same time there’s no money to pay unemployment compensation and all the urgent social needs at home to put people back to work
• The anti-war movement needs to reiterate the origins of the war and the rationale.
• There’s no draft, only a small percent of the population has placed Afghanistan at the top of the priority list.
• Past anti-war movements: We had a mass base among the students. We need to tie the war to the economic crisis, bring the war dollars home.
• Rethink Afghanistan: Destroys Failed Logic of War by Jeremy Scahill
• When they kill leaders, they get replaced, and it generates recruiting among the insurgents.
• US Law Labor Against the War was able to get the AFL-CIO to take a position of rapid withdrawal from Iraq.
• Our biggest problem in terms of constituencies, we do not have a mass base. It’s the students the labor movement and the religious community. Everything is imploding in this country.
• Contact Jerry Gordon – natassembly(at)aol.com

Guest – Jerry Gordon,  the main organizer of the well attended anti-war conference in Albany last summer.  He was the leader in the anti-Vietnam movement and recently retired from the SEIU.

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CAIR Files Suit Against Oklahoma Vote Opposing Sharia Law

In November, 70 percent of Oklahoma approved ballot initiative “Question 755? — or the “Save Our State” constitutional amendment — which bans Sharia from being considered in Oklahoma courts. The ballot states that Oklahoma courts must “rely on federal and state law when deciding cases” and forbids them from “considering or using international law” and “from considering or using Sharia Law.”

Recently, Muneer Awad, executive director of CAIR-OKC filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of State Question 755, and an Oklahoma City judge extended a temporary ban on implementation of a constitutional amendment.  U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange said she will rule after weighing the issues. Muneer Awad, who is Muslim says the amendment demonizes his faith.
Muneer Awad:

• Labeling Islam as a unique threat to Oklahoma courts. It was a clear message that Islam is a threat to Oklahoma.
• I think what happened is a handful of politicians realized that Islamophobia is politically popular.
• I can count on one hand how many politicians didn’t vote to put this on the ballot.
• Those politicians were attacked during the campaign as being people that wanted to bring Sharia to Oklahoma so terrorists can use Islamic law in our courts
• If we don’t act now our state will be in peril. There are politicians that deliberately misinform people, that deliberately lie to people in order to gain political popularity in the polls.
• There are a number of non-Muslim Oklahomans that are concerned by State Question 755 and the perception and effect it has on Oklahoma.
• We’re trying to remind people that this isn’t a reasonable conclusion people made after a lot of thought and reasonable research. These were people that were misled by politicians that have lied to us.

Guest – Muneer Awad, executive director of CAIR-OKC

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The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism.

In a scathing attack from the left, former editor in chief of Harper’s magazine, Roger Hodge offers a powerful critique of President Barack Obama in his new book, The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism. Hodge articulates what many of listeners may already know. President Obama has served the corporate masters. Hodge draws a list of examples, such as cheerleading globalization, designing a health care plan where insurance companies make a killing, extrajudicial assassination of American citizens, boundless state secrecy, and unlimited corporate bailouts, to name a few.
In explaining the book, Hodge told Harper’s magazine in an interview, he used 18th century reflections to James Madison, whose philosophy aligned with republicans such as Machiavelli and James Harrington in the argument that a moderate balance of wealth must be maintained, that too great a distinction between the rich and poor would naturally lead to the decay of republican governance.

Roger Hodge:

• Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters have really been lying to themselves.
• Part of the book is an argument against this tendency for people to deny what’s going on right in front of them.
• We ran a piece in Harper’s by Ken Silverstein, a great investigative reporter who argued, this guy is a conventional machine Democrat.
• He set up shop. Come to me corporate America with your problems and I will try to solve them.
• You listen to this inspiring rhetoric, if you look at it on paper, there wasn’t a lot of content there.
• When it comes to an Obama / McCain-Palin – there’s an arguement to be made constitutionally we might be better off with the Republicans.
• Corporate backers: FIRE sector. Finance/Insurance/Real Estate.
• The number one corporate backer was Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs collectively gave Obama, almost 1 million dollars but invested only 230 thousand dollars for McCain.
• Obama’s backers also included, Morgan Stanley, Citi-Group is up there with 750 thousand, JP Morgan Chase . . they don’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts.
• They expect to get something, and as we saw in the rolling bailouts, the financial sector got tremendous return on investments.
• Democratic think tanks set the stage for the financial crisis that we’re still living through, by deregulating finance, by breaking down the New Deal protection, repealing the Glass-Steagal Act, and deregulating derivatives with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act.
• The old idea, that unfortunately is still with us, that the democrats are the liberal party, the party of the common man who are fighting the big business bad guys in the Republican party is really a myth, and it’s a pernicious myth.
• Health Care was a bailout for the insurance companies, Obama and his team always saw that as a bargaining chip, they never really planned on pushing that through. Having health insurance does not guarantee health care.
• Rahm Emanuel, this is a guy without principles, he’s all about winning and raising money.
• You can say, at least he’s tough, but he didn’t fight for anything worth fighting for.
• A president surrounds himself with people who are ill-liberal, who are completely compromised by their connections with Wall Street.
• We have to gain some leverage over our representatives.  It’s a real double bind. People don’t want to reckon with the sheer awfulness of the our political culture.

Guest – Roger Hodge, former editor of Harper’s Magazine from March 2006 through January 2010. Hodge attended the University of the South, where he majored in comparative literature. He began graduate work at the New School for Social Research and completed a master’s degree in philosophy, but joined Harper’s before finishing his dissertation. Hodge first came to Harper’s as an intern in 1996 and was subsequently hired as a fact checker. Hodge edited the Harper’s Reading section from 1999 until 2003.

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 Law and Disorder October 25, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Abdullah al-Kid V. Ashcroft Justifying Innocent Arrests
  
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Update
• Rick Wolff Prediction Hit on France Austerity Demonstration

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Rachel Corrie Lawsuit In Israel

Rachel Corrie, an American student activist and human rights defender from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003, by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer while nonviolently protesting Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement.

The first phase of the trail began in March 2010, when the Corrie family presented its witnesses, including several of Rachel’s colleagues from ISM who witnessed her killing. During the second phase of the trial, which began last month, the government presented several witnesses, including the Israeli military police investigator who headed the investigation into Rachel’s death, and the bulldozer operators who struck and killed her.

The lawsuit charges that Rachel’s killing was intentional. It also charges that the Israeli government was negligent for allowing Israeli soldiers and military commanders to act recklessly using an armored military bulldozer without regard to the presence of unarmed, nonviolent civilians in Rafah, Gaza Strip.  Lastly the lawsuit alleges that the Israeli military failed to take appropriate and necessary measures to protect Rachel’s life, in violation of obligations under Israeli and international law.

Katherine Gallagher:

• Rachel had been serving as a peace activist with the Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.
• The case is unfortunately taking quite a while, it was filed back in 2005, then the evidentiary phase opened in 2010.  At that point the Corrie’s were able to call their own witnesses. They also called an expert who could speak about how to conduct a proper investigation.
• The investigator testimony revealed huge errors in the way the investigation was carried out.
• Errors include: The bulldozer was removed from the scene of the killing. There were investigators in the case who never went to the scene of the crime.
• On October 7, right before testimony, it was permitted that soldiers involved in the incident be allowed to testify behind a screen.
• This is an extraordinary step, the family if unable to see those soldiers who are able to provide some answers even through their body language as they testify.
• For the Corries who have waited 7 and a half years for some answers, that they won’t be able to assess the credibility by his body language is a significant blow.
• When you say the name Rachel Corrie in Israel, people know who she is.
• CCR Lawsuit: Caterpillar had aided and abetted war crimes and other serious violations of international law.
• It struck how Jerusalem has changed. There’s been a massive amount of construction in the old city and particularly around East Jerusalem.

Guest – Katherine Gallagher,  Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she focuses on holding individuals, including US and foreign government officials, and corporations, including private military contractors, accountable for serious human rights violations. Among the cases she is working on are Arar v. Ashcroft, Matar v. Dichter, Saleh v. Titan and Estate of Atban v. Blackwater.

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You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America

John Rick MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. He’s an award winning journalist and author. We want to talk with Rick about his third book titled You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America and explore the topic of who finances the Republican and Democratic parties. A recent book review states, that it (quote) advances a familiar argument: that moneyed and privileged interests, rather than the needs and opinions of ordinary citizens, dominate contemporary American politics. MacArthur, begins by lamenting the lack of basic comprehension of the Constitution and American government on the part of the political and media elite. The book also criticizes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Rick MacArthur:

• There are two balance sheets, there’s one with regard to the people of the United States and the other which I talk about in You Can’t Be President is the internal party structure.
• The balance sheet for the people is bad, we are now enmeshed even more in a self destructive war if possible than Iraq was.  Afghanistan is a disaster and you don’t have to ask a peacenik.
• You have a fake health care reform which really reinforced the power of the insurance companies.
• You have a very feeble reform of Wall Street. You have a continuation of anti-labor,orthodox “free trade” policies.  You have the continued corruption of the lobby system in Washington.
• Coming from Chicago, if Obama attacked the lobby system it would be like committing political suicide.
• Obama broke every record in corporate fund raising, PAC fund raising. He raised money from Jack Abramoff’s old law firm.
• In sum, he’s (Obama) has been an anti-reformer, anti-progressive.
• On civil liberties, if you criticize Bush it’s great, if you criticize Obama, you can hear a pin drop.
• I met someone who did a tour of the new prison in Baghram, Afghanistan. He said it was terrifying.
• You have to understand that the Chicago machine, is the most powerful local machine in the country.
• Almost every important job in the county is held by a Democrat. The mayor of Chicago is very much like the dictator of Chicago.  Obama came out of the most intolerant, the most monopolistic, one sided political machine in the country.
• Murdoch’s bundled campaign contributions were 50/50 between Clinton and Obama.
• I don’t see why we can’t organize around an opposition candidate, raise some money.
• I think what you’re seeing is disillusionment among the party leadership with Obama, because he hasn’t delivered the goods.
• They wanted Obama to deliver the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
• Obama is a tremendously prudent and cautious politician, there’s no audacity at all.

Guest - John Rick MacArthur, an American journalist and author of books about US politics. He is the president of Harper’s Magazine.  MacArthur has been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal (1977), the Washington Star (1978), The Bergen Record (1978–1979), Chicago Sun-Times (1979–1982), and an assistant foreign editor at United Press International (1982).