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).

 Law and Disorder September 27, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Obama Administration To Sell 60 Billion Worth of Advanced Aircraft.
• International Institute For Strategic Studies Report: Threat From Al-Qaeda / Taliban Exaggerated

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Census Bureau Case: Johnson v. Locke

Earlier this year, thousands of people of color who applied with the 2010 Census were deemed ineligible or deterred from the application process. The Center for Constitutional Rights co-counsel Outten & Golden and others filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against the Census Bureau for race and national origin discrimination in the hiring of temporary workers. In Johnson et al. v. Locke, CCR says that the U.S. Census Bureau’s practice of running job applicants’ names through the FBI criminal records database-a notoriously inaccurate and incomplete database-disproportionally excludes applicants of color and deters them from completing the application process. Basically, anyone with an arrest will not be eligible, including those arrested and not charged in a demonstration for example.

This practice directly undermines the Census Bureau’s self-avowed commitment to hiring temporary workers from within historically under counted communities, such as low-income people of color and immigrants.

African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are subject to exceedingly disproportionate rates of contact with the criminal justice system, from disparate rates of stops-and-frisks and arrests, to higher conviction rates and harsher criminal penalties.  Lawsuit Website.

Sam Miller:

• I’m one of the litigators of a class action lawsuit against the Census Bureau based on its hiring practices for those who would be doing the counting process.
• The Census Bureau eliminates virtually anyone who has ever been arrested.
• I was arrested for civil-disobedience and if I were to go to the Census and apply for a job and I were to get a letter that your name popped up on the FBI database, you have to get an official court record of your arrest and if you can’t do it. You’re out.
• You get a form letter that says you’re flagged for having some criminal record. Roughly one quarter of the adult US population has a record in the FBI database. The FBI database is flawed with an enormous amount of errors in it.  It includes things like an arrest without a prosecution, juvenile records, expungments.
• Tens and even hundreds of thousands of people effected by hiring policy.
• This is what we call a disparate impact lawsuit. The challenge to the policy is, here you have a policy that is checking people’s criminal background and excluding them on the basis of that background.  The discrimination occurs because of the enormous disparity that’s in the criminal justice process.
• I believe this is the largest employment discrimination case for many years. We’re talking about 700 thousand were excluded from these jobs, just on the basis of this form letter that went out.
• This information came to us in the Spring 2010 and we got the litigation underway as fast as we could.
• What were looking for now is to change their policy and practice. They can’t deny people employment based on arrest records where there’s never been a prosecution, there’s never been a conviction.
• We’re also asking for damages. We have a class of over 100 thousand people who should be compensated for the jobs they should have gotten. My concern is it’s the tip of the iceberg, that there is a broader problem within the federal government.  We learned that the Census Bureau did it the same way 10 years ago.
• The standard question employers should is has there ever been a conviction, it should not be has there ever been an arrest because that’s irrelevant.
• My hope is that word of how completely outrageous the policy in the Census Bureau is gets up high into the government, whether its the Secretary of Commerce, the White House. Credit history is also a very significant issue that’s related.
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander – furthering the under caste.

Guest – Attorney Sam Miller, with co-counsel Outten & Golden. For more than two decades, he has represented plaintiffs in individual and class action civil rights cases.Prior to joining O&G in July 2009, Sam was the Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he directed a twenty-person legal staff in domestic impact litigation (including a recent victory against the New York City Fire Department based on class-wide race discrimination), international human rights litigation (including a recent multi-million dollar settlement against Shell Oil for human rights abuses and environmental degradation in Nigeria), and the Guantànamo Global Justice Initiative.

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FBI Inappropriately Tracked Domestic Advocacy Groups

In the last year we’ve reported on the FBI’s over-reaching authority in cases that profile Muslims and the use of informants to entrap people on terrorism charges. Now, in a report released by the Justice Department the FBI is exposed for inappropriately targeting left leaning groups after 9/11.  Among those groups surveilled are PETA, Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker.  In the case of The Catholic Worker, the OIG report concluded that the FBI inappropriately characterized” certain “nonviolent civil disobedience” as terrorism-related. The Catholic Worker is a group committed to “nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality for the homeless.

The four year internal investigation “found no evidence that the FBI had any information at the time of the event that any terrorism suspect would be present at the event.” There are many other examples. The report concluded, that FBI Director Robert Mueller “unintentionally provided inaccurate testimony to Congress” in 2006 about an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh four years earlier.  Download PDF Copy of Report

Thomas Cincotta:

• This report was prompted by media reports of FBI surveillance of domestic political organizations.
• These reports came to light through several FOIA requests. The report illustrates a really broad scope of authority that the FBI has right now.
• This report covers from 2001-2006. Sheds a lot of light on what the FBI is doing and what they’re characterizing these days as terrorism.  There seems to be some disconnect with reality here because of who the FBI is choosing to investigate.
• Half of the report focused on the investigation of a pacifist group in Pittsburgh called the Thomas Merton Center.
• Why did the FBI focus on an anti war group?  These terms forceful and violent spelled out in FBI policy, so there’s a lot of discretion to slap this terrorism label on their investigations which can be extraordinarily prejudicial to their targets.
• An example of the broad definition of terrorism, the FBI made a determination in the case of the Catholic Worker,  that spilling human blood on the walls and an American flag were forceful acts and damage to government property.  They are immediately put on the VGTOF. The VGTOF list is used by all of the screening centers and by TSA, Customs Bureau. . .
  
• There’s a complete disconnect here in what the common notion of what terror is is.  Michael Ratner: This verifies what we been thinking about for 10 or 11 years.
• There’s an emphasis on ideology, which is a very sloppy way to do criminal law enforcement work. It has a very predictive quality. Meaning, organization X has said this, espouses this in its philosophy that means we can expect that intends to do Y.  This report demonstrates we can’t trust the FBI to police themselves.
• We need mechanisms in place so when people are targeted unfairly by the government they can be held to account.  Minnesota blog on RNC arrests.
  

Guest – Thomas Cincotta, Project director with the Political Research Associates. A criminal defense lawyer, he led the Denver chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in support of peace groups and others during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and connected progressive lawyers with other community efforts around sentencing reform, immigrant rights, and police misconduct. He also represented migrant farm workers and served on the board of El Centro Humanitario, Denver’s first day laborer center. He currently serves on the NLG’s national board and international committee. Before becoming a lawyer, Cincotta worked as a labor representative for UNITE HERE Local 217 in Providence, Rhode Island.

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 Law and Disorder September 20, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

WBAI Listeners Please Click Here For This Week’s Rundown

The United States and Yemen: Destroying Lives in the Name of National Security

We hear the voices of leading Yemeni activists and a Center For Constitutional Rights attorney speak on state violence, targeted killings, and human rights abuses enabled by the so-called “War on Terror” from the Brecht Forum event titled The United States and Yemen: Destroying Lives in the Name of National Security. The event was co-sponsored by the International Federation for Human Rights and the Brecht Forum.  We hear first from Pardiss Kebriaei staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.  Pardiss is working on a lawsuit to challenge a U.S. government kill-list and the targeting of a U.S. citizen now in Yemen and far from any armed conflict with the United States.

We hear from Tawakkol Karman chairwoman of the Yemeni non-government organization Women Journalists Without Chains, which campaigns for freedom of the press in Yemen and against human rights violations. She is a very prominent young activist, and Reporters Without Borders chose her in 2009 as one of the top seven women who have led change in the world. Karman is among the activists who in 2007 launched the “Phase of Protests and Sit-ins” in Yemen, holding regular sit-ins in the capital’s Freedom Square to demand democratic reforms and an end to human rights violations—including the harassment and imprisonment of journalists and dissidents, closure of critical newspapers, and censorship of news articles.  A special thanks to Leili Kashani Education and Outreach Associate for the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Also on the panel, to be heard soon, Ezz-Adeen Al-Asbahi,  president of Human Rights Information & Training Center (HRITC), a non-governmental organization which seeks to enhance human rights in Yemen and the Arab World, focusing on the Gulf States in particular. HRITC has consultative status with the United Nations, offers training courses and forums on human rights, publishes a quarterly human rights magazine called Our Rights, and has published 30 books on law and human rights. Al-Asbahi is also the coordinator of a large regional network of human rights activists in the Gulf States and the Peninsula, and the president of a Yemeni network of human rights organizations which includes six Yemeni NGOs. A journalist and researcher, he has published eight books on literature and human rights. He is also the head of the civil society sector of the Supreme National Authority to Combat Corruption.

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Troops out of Iraq, Permanent Bases and Privatizing the Occupation.

While many reports claim most US troops are leaving Iraq, there will still be 50 thousand troops remaining, 4 thousand will be replaced by 7 thousand security contractors. These are armed private contractors, former military with specialized skills in weaponry, radar and explosives. They will have less accountability in war zones. Meanwhile, massive permanent US bases remain including the world’s largest US Embassy in Bagdhad, Iraq. As the occupation in Iraq is privatized, veterans return back to the US. We’re joined today by conscientious objecter and Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Jose Vasquez. Jose joined IVAW in June 2005 and co-founded the NYC chapter serving as the president. He also served on the interim board of directors and was elected to the first official board in 2006. He helped organize numerous actions and events including the Veterans’ and Survivors’ March to New Orleans, Operation First Casualty in NYC, and Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jose Vasquez:

• IVAW is a membership based organization, we are all folks who’ve served since September 11th.
• We call for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq. We also have the same resolution for Afghanistan.  We also want reparations for the Iraqis and full benefits for returning service members.
• I signed up right out of high school, graduated in ’92. I went straight in to active duty, I served 4 years as a Calvary Scout.  Got out went to school and the Army Reserves as a medic.
• I had been in the military for a while before September 11th. I had a pretty good understanding of what our relationship was to Iraq.  It was confusing to me, I was facing deployment. I stumbled across Democracy Now and I just started listening to that show religiously.
• By 2004, I was so upset about the Iraq War, I didn’t care what happened, I was not going to this.
• I started researching conscientious objection, six months later I filed for CO status. It took 27 months to get an answer.
• The Obama Administration has a finger on the pulse in terms of marketing hope. What they’re skimming over is how contractors are on the ground (in Iraq)
• From the perspective of an Iraqi, Americans running around with guns has not diminished that much.
• I think we owe the people of Iraq a lot. This mostly has to do with the US positioning itself to access the resources that they have.
• Stop the deployment of PTSD troops

Guest – Jose Vasquez, Jose was born in Bronx, NY and grew up in Southern California from the age of nine. After graduating high school in 1992, he enlisted in the U.S. Army serving over four years of active duty as a cavalry scout assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 24th Infantry Division at Fort Benning, GA, and the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, HI. He was honorably discharged in December 1996 at the rank of specialist (E-4).

 Law and Disorder July 12, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• G20: Canadian Police do not have special powers under their public works act
• New UK government publishes major reports on Bloody Sunday and to settle damages for Guantanamo torture.

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C0-host Michael Smith talks with attorney Jim Lafferty about the upcoming anti-war conference in Albany, New York, July 23-25. Noam Chomsky, internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Emeritus of Linguistics is the keynote speaker. Click here for flyer (PDF) Groups sponsoring the event:   After Downing Street,  Arab American Union Members Council, Bail Out the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campus Antiwar Network, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Citizen Soldier,  Code Pink, Grandmothers Against the War, Granny Peace Brigade, International Action Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, May 1^st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Office of the Americas, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project Salam, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Voters for Peace,Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The World Can’t Wait.

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Iraq War Veteran, Conscientious Objector and Musician Clifton Hicks

Clifton Hicks is an activist with the Iraqi Veterans Against the War. Hicks is disabled and enrolled as an Anthropology student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.  Appalachian State is a center for old-time music, and Hicks is also an accomplished musician and banjo player.  Cliff Hicks is psychologically disabled and got out of the Army as a conscientious objector several years ago. In the Spring issue of The Veteran, published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, there’s printed the following chant, that is repeated by soldiers in training to go to Iraq.  “I went down to the market where all the people shop, I pulled out my machete, and I began to chop,  I went down to the park where all the children play, I took out my machine gun and I began to spray.” This is the kind of psychological brutalization that our young men are forced to endure that turn them into creatures they never thought they’d become.

Clifton Hicks:

• I was in 9th grade when 9/11 happened.  I called the recruiter when I was 16, to try and get in.
• I saw Muslim and Arabic people and thought they were all out to get us.
• I listened to a lot of daytime AM right-wing radio. I had the ole cliche patriotic notions going.
• I wanted to go combat arms from the start, I figured if I was going into the Army, I wanted to fight.
• My feet were on the ground in Iraq in October 2003. The guys I was with that had already been there for a while had gotten pretty nasty. Guys get nasty, because their friends get killed and you realized you can’t trust anybody.
• We were the first division in combat to be out there for more than 13 months.
• They would literally give us candy and toys to give out to Iraqi kids at schools, the next day you’re ridin’ around and you see a b unch of kids get shot.
• I became an anti-war activist while I was still in the Army.  We started an IVAW chapter in Gainesville Florida

Guest – Clifton Hicks, Branch of service: United States Army (USA) / Unit: C Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st U.S. Cavalry Regiment / Rank: PFC / Home: North Carolina / Served in: Ft. Knox, OIF 1, Germany. Hicks a musician and is currently a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

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 Law and Disorder June 14, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Economic Crisis, Greek Theater, Our Drama

We are joined in the studio by Professor of Economics Rick Wolff and National Lawyers Guild Attorney Eric Poulos.  Both have recently returned from Greece. Rick Wolff’s recent articles outline an economic theater playing out in Greece and across the globe. There is no alternative and this is all the worker’s fault, is the mantra from rulers who are cutting wages and pensions in Greece. It’s deceptive and false says Rick Wolff,  and the economic conditions in Greece is an old pattern that is replicating everywhere. Greek capitalist enterprises and top shareholders evade paying taxes Rick writes. Meanwhile economic contradictions of Greek capitalism drive employers and employees to demand more from the government. The government can’t finance its expanding services and tries to raise taxes. The masses resist, social movements to tax the rich accelerate,  then the rich quickly offer to lend the government more of the money they saved from not paying taxes.  There are many more acts to this economic theater , Rick Wolff asks what will the final scenes be in the European working class?

Professor Rick Wolff:

• I looked at the professors faces and I realized the economic crisis had come home and hit them very hard.
• Every single professor received a pay cut, which took a effect as soon as I arrived to Athens.  Fifteen to 20 percent less a year for every teacher in the country.
• Not only every teacher, but every public employee, it includes the police, and the foot soldiers in the Army.
• On top of the unemployment, this is a blow against every single working person. We are at the beginning of a major disaster. This also threatens other countries, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland.
• This crisis is showing us we are for years of dysfunctional captialism as a global system.
• Greece is remarkable in that it has a well organized, strong working class.  The super rich in Greece do not want to pay taxes.  The working class is powerful enough in Greece (unlike here in the United States) to make the government stand up and notice.
• Governments borrow money as a solution for taxation. Lenders ask why lend to a small country with little promise of making good on the loan.  Lenders had already loaned to the US. It’s the US crisis that created the dilemma for Greece. The biggest holders of the debt of Greece are French and German banks.
• They turned to the Greek government and said, squeeze them, but don’t squeeze them to the point where they’ll default.
• The people who brought us the crisis are dictating the suffering of masses of people to work their way out of the crisis with no cost to themselves.
• We have a president today in a terrible economic crisis, and not only is there not a government program to hire people, it’s not proposed, it’s defended, our government isn’t explaining our own history has that as the thing we did the last time.
• Those who made out like bandits in the last 30 years, ought to be made to pay, the lion’s share of the cost for cleaning up the economic mess.  If democracy means anything it should begin in the place where we spend most of our adult lives. Where we work.

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Attorney Eric Poulos:

• Greece is really a society that is smouldering. There have been 3 general strikes since the cutbacks in March.
• 40 thousand jobs a month are being lost in Greece.
• The civil servants in Greece have not had their prescriptions filled since March.
• The country has been run by Socialist for 30-36 years. Socialists and Communists have bought on to this.
  
• There have already been huge demonstrations in Portugal and Spain. Portugal was huge.
• This is looting. They are looting Greece.
• Greece is now going privatize the post office. The gas, the water works, the railway.
• The banks are really picking off the pieces of Greece.
• They’re interested in suppressing the social wages and whatever they can accumulate.
• The landscape in the United States is not very hopeful because the working class labor movement hasn’t stepped up at all.
• If private corporations want government money to bail them out, we take them over, we run it.
• If there are going to be lay offs. We cut the work week. Work 4 days but the workers get paid 5 days.
• You need the political will and the question is where will that come from and how will that be done.

Guest – Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In his new book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About, Rick takes the reader back to 2005 and step by step reveals how policies, economic structures and wage to profit systems led to a global economic collapse.

Guest – Attorney Eric Poulos with the National Lawyers Guild who traveled to Greece.

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United National Anti-War Conference

Attorney and radio host Jim Lafferty joins us today. We get updates on the upcoming anti-war conference in Albany New York, the ongoing immigration policy conflicts in Arizona and new developments on the Israeli attacks and killings on the Gaza flotilla. We will also get more information on Attorney Peter Erlinder’s condition in Rwanda. As listeners may know, former National Lawyers Guild president Professor Peter Erlinder was arrested 2 weeks ago by Rwandan Police for allegedly denying the country’s 1994 genocide. He is currently imprisoned in Rwanda and very little information is getting out.  Facebook Group – Free Professor Erlinder Now

Jim Lafferty:

• United National Anti-War Conference July 23 / 24
• There’s been an ebb in the anti-war movement in terms of the way it’s manifested itself in the streets.
• US Should Not Condone Israeli Attack – By Michael Ratner
• Sponsored by IVAW / US Labor Against the War / Code Pink / Raging Grannies /
• Hundreds will be gathering in Albany to help revitalize the sentiment.
• During the Vietnam War, the teach-ins preceded the growth of the movement.
• Now that the war has expanded, it’s important to teach to younger generations that this is US imperialism in its worst form. Why it has nothing to do with making us safer.
• Get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan and leave the people of Pakistan alone.
• Arizona Immigration Legislation Update
• Peter Erlinder Update – Lawyers have been able to make contact with Peter Erlinder. He was recently denied bail.
• Rwandan Ambassador James Kimonyo – 202-232-2882 / National Lawyers Guild Page Updates

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

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 Law and Disorder May 31, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

No End In Sight, Number One In War

What will you remember on Memorial Day?   US law officially proclaims Memorial Day “as a day of prayer for permanent peace.” – However, the US is much closer to permanent war than permanent peace – writes Bill  Quigley,  legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in his recent article titled No End In Sight, Number One In War. The  article outlines, the rising costs of war, the damage to country and who reaping massive profits. At what point do we begin to transition to permanent peace?

Bill Quigley:

• Yes, politicians are making hay from the permanent war, but there’s also a lot of people who are making an awful lot of money from the US military.
• We discount the role they’re playing, in keeping the US constantly fearful and preparing for and perpetrating war in every place across the globe.
• This is something that people are afraid to talk about.
• The “Axis of Evil” spends less than one percent of what the US spends. This coming year the US will spend 708 billion dollars on war and another $125 billion for Veterans Affairs.
• Al-Qaeda spends less than one percent of one percent of what the US spends.
• You have to ask yourself “why?” Why are people in the United States more afraid than anybody in the whole world? Fanning the flames of fear. Behind the scenes are huge corporations that are making billions of dollars.
• We talk about Blackwater, but there are a couple corporations that dwarf Blackwater.
• Lockheed Martin, a huge corporation that runs almost entirely on tax payer money. 140 thousand employees.
• A corporation totally reliant on the United States Congress. You spend 125 thousand lobbying Congress and Congress doesn’t get some benefit from that.
• The US is spending 10 times more on the military than China.  Who is calling for accountability on this spending?

Guest – Bill Quigley. Bill is the Legal Director for 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. Bill joined CCR on sabbatical from his position as law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. He has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977.

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End The Korean War

Hosts get an update on the uneasy tensions between North and South Korea. A multinational investigation concluded last week that a North Korean submarine had torpedoed the 1200 ton warship called the Cheonan back in March killing 45 people. North Korea denies involvement in the sinking, South Korean defense ministry denies that any of its ships had crossed “Northern Limit Line.”  Meanwhile, the threat of sanctions against the already oppressed North Korean population escalate. South Korea and the Obama administration have agreed to initiate joint anti-submarine military exercises near North Korean border.  Right now, there are almost 29,000 U.S. troops in South Korea.

Eric Sirotkin:

• When you look into the history of the conflict, and we are still technically at war, as an armistice doesn’t technically end a war only stops the shooting.
• These kind of incidences occur because you don’t have a peace regimen to fall back on.
• There is a very conservative South Korean government. Very hawkish toward the North
• The intitial report of them torpedoing the boat, there are a lot of questions, there are people who are writing about Tonkin Bay, and thinking about.
• You have a choice to march toward war or go toward peace.
• The United States at this point is ramping up the rhetoric.
• Before this situation with the South and the North, we had a lot more exchanges and things were going in a positive direction.  If you think there’s no exit strategy after Iraq, look at Korea, sixty years later.
• We’re working with a campaign to end the Korean War.

Guest – Attorney Eric Sirotkin, is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and helped found Korean Peace Project. Eric Sirotkin, the founder and Director of Ubuntuworks,  LLC mixes his experience as a human rights lawyer, film producer, author and peacemaker. Over the years his peacemaking activities have taken him around the world, including India, Peru, Cuba, South Africa, Japan, North and South Korea, France,  Netherlands, Canada and China.  He contributed to dialogue on the new Constitution in South Africa, was a UN sponsored election observer at President Mandela’s election and coordinated an international monitoring Project of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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Omar Khadr, First Military Commission Trial Under Obama

Last week the first military tribunal opened under the Obama administration. It is the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen, military prosecutors say that Omar Kadr threw a grenade that killed a US Special Forces medic in Afghanistan and helped build roadside bombs to use against American soldiers. We look at why the Obama Administration is putting a detainee on trial who was 15 when he was captured and whether the self – incriminating statements he has made can be used as evidence.  Unless the Prime Minister acts to request repatriation, Khadr could face conviction by a jury of U.S. military officers based on evidence extracted by torture.

Attorney Jonathan Hafetz:

• International law is very clear on how you treat child soldiers. In 2001, military commissions were struck down by the Supreme Court, in 2006 in the Hamdan Case, Congress created them again.
• The hope was that Obama was going to close this chapter and end military commissions.
• Obama suspended military commissions for 4 months and brought it back.
• You have huge issues in Khadr’s case. He was a child soldier. He was accused of killing an American soldier in a fire fight. Number one, the US doesn’t seem to have any credible evidence not derived from torture or other abuse that Khadr actually killed the serviceman.
• Even if they had evidence that Khadr was responsible for the death of this serviceman, it’s not a war crime. It’s part of war but not a war crime.  The US government’s theory of war is totally distorted.
• On the day of the first war crimes trial of a juvenile in US history, the day its starts and new rules are handed out, I don’t think they had enough copies to give to all the council.

Guest – Jonathan Hafetz, attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project.

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 Law and Disorder April 26, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• CCR Lawsuit: U.S. Census Bureau Sued for Racial Discrimination in Temporary Hiring
• Goldman Sachs Top People Revolving Positions From Federal to Private to Federal
• Henry Paulson / Neel Keskhari / Ben Bernanke / Tim Geithner
  

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Jobless Recovery and the Federal Reserve Holdout

Today we welcome back Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and his son Max Wolff freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics  to discuss the current economic recovery, is it recovering without job growth? Rick is also the author of the book, Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, where he takes the reader back to 2005 and step by step reveals how policies, economic structures and wage-to-profit systems led to a global economic collapse.

We get a critical update from both Rich and Max. Will there be another leg down as predicted. Another leg down meaning, will the economy continue to drop? This was mentioned because of the way people were investing, investing in a way that expected the market to drop.

Rick Wolff / Max Wolff :

• There’s a recovery in some parts and not others. The missing piece of the economic puzzle is job growth.
• Housing assets are 35 percent off their 2006 peaks. 15.5 million people unemployed.  1 out of 6 in the labor force in a dire economic situation.  Misery index, looks at long term unemployed – 27 weeks or more.
• 41 percent of our unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks.
• Average unemployment benefits cap out at 2000.00 a month
• “Phony ‘Economic Recovery’, Real Alternatives” – article by Rick Wolff
• You have to wonder that we live in a time of massive unemployment, the recovery didn’t deal with that problem, and yet we don’t have a national discussion of “direct employment.”  We did need a banking bailout, we chose to bail out some elements of society and not others.
• A couple of hundred billion dollars for say kids to continue to got to school on the subway, or community colleges can stay open, or job training programs, or the state of California can stay open, we decided was a waste of money?
• The average person in the US has a 30 day life expectancy without International finance.
• 61 thousand UAW workers laid off.
• US Cash for Clunkers program, borrowed European model but replaced old used cars with new SUVs, and increased price of used car parts.
• Oregon Example: Last summer, the state legislature controlled completely by the Democratic party passed a bill to face their 700 hundred million dollar shortfall, not by cutting social programs, but by taxing the corporations and the rich.  Unions, liberal folks, and the democratic party (left of where it is in the rest of the country)
• We need 110 – 120 thousand new jobs a month to keep up with population growth. Jobless growth recovery from 2002 to 2007 was from explosive consumer debt.
• People buying more things without getting jobs (credit) The last 18 months we witnessed the largest re-distribution of wealth in US history. The bottom 80 percent stood still and the top 20 percent lead by the top 5 percent shot up.
• 7.8 million homes in the foreclosure pipeline

Guest – Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.

Guest – Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.

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Radio Documentary – It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories

April 24, 2010 marks the beginning of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race 95 years ago. Carried out by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire, over half of the Armenians living in the Empire were killed. To commemorate this, the first genocide of the 20th century, Law and Disorder co-host Heidi Boghosian and producer Geoff Brady present a 90-minute program titled, It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories.

We wish to thank WBAI for their commitment to recognizing the Armenian genocide, and are grateful to the individuals we interviewed for opening their hearts and sharing the difficult memories of the past.

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 Law and Disorder April 19, 2010 [54:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Mumia Abu Jamal’s Birthday

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Israeli Policy and Palestinian Children – Nora Barrows-Friedman

We talk today with the Nora Barrows-Friedman, she is the host of radio show Flashpoints at KPFA in Berkeley California.  Nora spent the last month in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. She’s been investigating stories about the ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights and has been frequently traveling to Palestine since 2004. Today we look specifically at the Israeli policy against children from arresting, detaining, interrogating, torturing, imprisoning and beating children, some as young as 10. Nora says  International laws designed to protect children — including the UN convention on the rights of the child are being circumvented and violated on a daily.

Nora Barrows Friedman:

• Kids randomly picked off the street, allegedly for throwing stones. The Israeli punishment is 10 years in prison for a child.
• Israeli military can arrest (Palestinian only) children as young as 12.  Right now there are 300 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons.
• Hebron is a city where settlers have been given half of the old city, a settlement colony is inside the Palestinian community
• These two young children were followed and taken into a military center inside the settlement colony.
• This whole family had been destoryed by these illegal actions against these 2 brothers. The only recourse this family has is to take it to the Israeli military court.  Motive: trying to get Palestinian families to leave.
• This family lives in an area where settlers have their eye on, seems to be very deliberate.
• There are hundreds of women in Israeli prisons, there’s a story where a woman gave birth in the prison, and the baby is now a prisoner.

Guest – Nora Barrows Friedman: Senior producer and co-host of KPFA’s Flashpoints.

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Obama’s Plan for Elimination of Nation-Controlled Nuclear Power

Nine nations now have a combined total of more than 22 thousand nuclear weapons. The United States has about 5 thousand nuclear weapons,  500 of them are land based warheads which can fly in three to four minutes after the order is given. President Obama recently hosted a nuclear security summit in DC with more than 45 foreign leaders, he traveled to Prague and signed a treaty that would cut the combined US and Russian stockpile by a third. Meanwhile, the US nuclear stockpiles have been shrinking for the last 40 years. We talk more about the current nuclear disarmament effort with attorney Peter Weiss is Vice-President, former President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.

Peter Weiss:

• Leave the doomsday clock where it is. Reaffirming of the status quo.  The agreement with Russia in reducing the nuclear weapons allowed to each country from 2200 to 1500.  They count all the warheads on a bomber plane as one, instead of 10 or 12 weapons.
• Jimmy Carter: A single nuclear armed submarine had enough weaponry to destroy every Russian city of 100 thousand or more.
• Nuclear Posture Review – Zero document / “It’s difficult to operationalize a vision.”
• Obviously there is a great danger of loose nukes.  No one seems ready to adopt an anti-nuclear convention except the countries that don’t have nuclear weapons.
• Conference in Riverside Church on May 1, 2010, United For Peace and Justice
  
• The anti-nuke movment will be re-energized.
• The US wants to be the sole repository of weapons grade nuclear material, committment from Chile, and Canada, to ship WGNM to the US.   That’s kind of weird isn’t it?

Guest – Peter Weiss, former Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights and Vice President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.

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Why Human Rights are Indispensable to Financial Regulation

Today we speak with Radhika Balakrishnan, Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College, about her recent article in the Huffington Post titled Why Human Rights are Indispensable to Financial Regulation. Balakrishnan enumerates the global human fallout from the world financial crisis. The World Bank estimates an additional 400 thousand children will die before their fifth birthday, while those responsible for the turmoil are benefiting from bailouts and promotions. She references the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its inclusion of economic and social rights, that is the right to work, to education, to rest, to an adequate standard of living. Dr. Balakrishnan has also outlined steps for meaningful reform that we will also examine today.  She is currently working on a project trying to use human rights norms to evaluate and construct macroeconomic policy.

Radhika Barakrishnan:

• We pretend there is no criteria regulating (economic policies)  We argue in our piece, that human rights have a way to set up an ethical basis and framework. Most people don’t know that human rights include economic and social rights.
• In the United States the assumption is you can vote the people in to give you social and economic rights.
• The idea that the market is this Greek Oracle that we can’t question. . . is a problem.
• We’re saying there is a form of biased market regulation, where the state has the interest of the financiers and the banks.
• and not those of the working people and the working class.  One example is the minimum wage.
• The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate, one is to have price stability, the other is the right to work.
• In the United States, we have not signed the Convenant on Economic and Human Rights.
• The Federal Reserve is a government agency and the fact that they act in a cloak of secrecy is a real problem.
• I think there is a great case to be brought, as far as freedom of information.
• What kind of financial models are they using to make their decisions? This cloak of secrecy because you independence to make monetary policy?  But independence doesn’t mean secret.
• Their Board of Governors are from the commercial banks, whose interest will they work for?
• Bailout Bill – TARP / This went to financial agencies to give them the money. 720 Billion dollars overnighted to the Federal Reserve has not gone out?   The Stimulus Money, for employment creation, though it was used for tax cuts.
• Congress did not extend unemployment benefits for Spring recess.
• The United States is coming up for the Universal Periodic Review in the Human Rights Council of Geneva
• The Center for Women’s Global Leadership

Guest – Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. Previously, she was Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. She has worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program. She is currently the Chair of the Board of the US Human Rights Network and on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has published in the field of gender and development.

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