Law and Disorder December 5, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Chilean Judge Indicts US Military Official in 1973 Killings – CCR Case
• Newt Gingrich: “Water Boarding Is By Every Technical Rule, Not Torture.”
• Michael Ratner: S.1867 — National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

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Occupy Albany: Undisturbed By City Officials

The collusion among mayors and police departments around the country to raid and take down Occupy Wall Street movements by force has revealed a particular hierarchy of control.  However, as listeners may know there is a unique situation with the Occupy Wall St solidarity movement in Albany, New York. Despite the request of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Albany mayor to shut the encampment down at Academy Park, the police refused, then the State Troopers refused.  In a memo obtained by the The Times Union, Albany Police Deputy Chief Steven Krofoff stated “At this time I have no intention of assigning officers to monitor, watch, videotape or influence any behavior that is conducted by our citizens peacefully demonstrating in Academy Park.

Attorney Mark Mishler:

• The Governor a few days before the occupation started met with the city of Albany office and as best as we can figure out at that meeting sort of all agreed that this wasn’t going to be permitted.
• It seemed to be permitted that people would not be able to stay past the 11PM curfew at the park.
• We have two very independent minded folks in law enforcement here.
• They took a different view. We have a District Attorney David Soares, who was independently elected as an opponent to the Albany County machine and with a lot of grassroots support.
• David Soares say he wasn’t interested in using his office to prosecute peaceful protesters.
• In correlation with that our police chief in the city of Albany, who also came into office as result from a grassroots movement for improved police / community relations. He also said he didn’t want to use the resources of his department to arrest peaceful protesters.
• The mayor who we believe really wanted to carry out the governor’s direction was really boxed into a corner and couldn’t do that.
• The park is really 2 parks, half of the park is city owned, the other half is state owned.
• We’re now in the sixth week, there are now about 50 tents.
• Essentially completely undisturbed by city officials.

Guest -  Mark Mishler, attorney and National Lawyers Guild member.
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Occupy Los Angeles Legal Action

Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Philadelphia were among the encampments forcibly removed last week. Occupy LA demonstrators had expected to be evicted after the mayor announced that the park would be closed at 12:01 a.m. on Monday last week. Late the following night, police in riot gear stormed the encampment and dozens were arrested as protesters chanted and stood defiant through the raid. The more than 500 tents have been taken down. The encampment at Philadelphia’s Occupy Wall Street movement was also raided after demonstrators marched to protest their eviction. Up to 40 protesters were arrested.

Hours after the Occupy Los Angeles eviction deadline protesters filed for a federal injunction that would prevent the police from dismantling the occupation in Oakland Park. The city, mayor and chief of police are named in the lawsuit as defendants. The complaint also says the city engaged in “arbitrary and capricious action in violation of the 1st and 14 Amendments by first approving the Occupy presence for 56 days before suddenly revoking permission through the unilateral action of defendants.

Attorney Carol Sobel:

• We filed papers, we argued that the mayor’s actions were unlawful because the City Council of Los Angeles passed a resolution saying that they could stay there.
• The Council, only the Council has the authority to do that.
• Once that Council acts, he could veto it, he chose not to at the time, back in October, or he could get it rescinded. He chose not to.
• Our position is, the Mayor can’t make up the rules as he goes along.
• This is a public forum, we’ve had anti-war marches here, marches to protest the Pope when he came.
• The mayor used to be friend. The Mayor went to the same Guild law school that I did.
• I think that the Mayor is bought and paid for by the developers in Los Angeles. Somebody said to me last night, he’s lost his soul.
• He’s not progressive by any definition of that term. He is the head of the US Conference of Mayors.
• It looks bad for him I guess to have the largest Occupy in the country, in his city, at his doorstep.
• They (LAPD) have agreed that they will not come out with a show of force, unless and until it’s needed.
• If you can’t close the park after the fact, then these arrests were all unlawful.

Guest – Civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, a legal advisor for Occupy protests across the country. Carol Sobel is listed as the attorney on the new complaint.

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Collusion in the Defense of the 1% is No Vice

As mayors of cities across the country colluded to crackdown on the OWS encampments, an international non-governmental organization had coordinated with police chiefs and mayors behind the scenes. The group is called the Police Executive Research Forum, it is an influential private membership based organization that is marketed to heads of major metropolitan areas as specialists with mass demonstrations.  The group has ties to the US Department of Homeland Security and their general membership in the group is exclusive to former executives leading a state or county funded agency that provided police services.

Geov Parrish:

• The Occupy Seattle movement is community college property.
• The community college let them stay there but at first it was a public square and it was a cat and mouse game with the police.
• From November 4-10, there were conference calls. Much of the local media coverage was very coordinated.
• This smacks of the operations of some of the high ranking people the PERF has been associated with.
• The PERF actually does research on less then lethal weaponry, such as the pepper spray that has been used in lots of different cities.
• Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia Police Commissioner and the chair of PERF’s board of directors is also on the Homeland Security Advisory Council as are a couple of other board members from PERF.
• There’s an entire industry that has sprung up around the militarization of the police forces. The routine use of SWAT teams now for even non threatening situations.

Guest -  Geov Parrish, a Seattle-based columnist and reporter. He writes the Straight Shot column for WorkingForChange.  Parrish also wrote the article Collusion in the Defense of the 1% is No Vice.

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• b/w_occupyLAphoto-bymikeywally
• occupyAlbanyphoto – byDylanBoyce

 Law and Disorder November 14, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Ohio Voters Override Restrictions on Collective Bargaining For State Employees
• Arun Gupta On New York Times Panel
• Two Month Anniversary of OWS
• Generators Return to OWS
• National Lawyers Guild – Legal Help Center
• Mic Check Poster with Rick Wolff

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US Boat To Gaza Violence November 2011

Earlier this month, two civilian boats destined for the Gaza Strip and carrying medical cargo set sail from Fethiye, Turkey.  As many listeners may know, the boats, one Canadian (“Tahrir”) and one Irish (“Saoirse”), carried 27 people–including journalists and crew—from nine different countries were met with a violent take over by Israeli military.  The crew of both boats were attacked by high pressure hoses, there was heavy damage. The crew of the Canadian boat were beaten and tasered. Passengers remain in the Givon detention center. President Obama says the passengers are defying Israeli and American law.  Past Law and Disorder shows last year’s flotilla. June 7, 2010 / June 21, 2010 / October 2010  /  June 13, 2011

Felice Gelman:

• Some are still in prison, the process of getting people out is very opaque. The Israeli courts told them if they wouldn’t sign a false confession, to confess they had entered Israel illegally that they could be held for 2 months in jail.  There were 18 people still left in Israeli jail.
• I would like to point out that this is exactly what happens to Palestinians every day.
• There are more than 6 thousand Palestinian political prisoners who go through this same opaque legal process, tortured. 90 percent of the people who have been arrested by the Israelis, Palestinians, have been tortured.
• Forty percent of the male population at one time has been held by the Palestinians for more than a week. We’re talking about a little over 3 million people.
• It’s endemic process its happening to foreigners at this point. The little kids are hit and shouted at and hooded. I think the Israelis taught the Americans.
• The Israelis are regarded as experts in with what they call terrorists.
• These boats were eagerly anticipated in Gaza. Thousands of people came down to the Gaza harbor and hundreds went out on boats hoping to greet the boats.
• Since 2006 Gaza has been under complete siege and blockade, everything that is allowed in is under Israeli control, almost nothing is allowed out.
• There is no economy, without exports, you really can’t have much of an economy. You’ve got 40 percent unemployment. 90 percent of the population is drinking polluted water because the crucial parts of the water treatment plants have not been allowed in by Israel.
• There’s only one reason Israel has been able to maintain this occupation, and that is because the United States abets it.
• There are no consequences for expanding settlements (from the Obama Administration)
• Right now the Israeli government is trying to get the US to attack Iran.
• Instead of Israel being regarded as an out of control, militarized bully is regarded as a close US ally who should determine our foreign policy.
• Endtheoccupation

Guest - Felice Gelman is with the Steering Committee that organized The Gaza Freedom March and has traveled to Gaza twice since the Israeli invasion.

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Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder

Co-hosts Michael Smith and Michael Ratner discuss their upcoming book Who Killed Che? A groundbreaking examination based on documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act requests filed in 1995.  This new information helps dispel the stories that the US was not involved with the murder of Che Guevara.  Morning Star Review

“Ratner and Smith cut through the lies and distortions to provide a riveting and thoroughly documented history of the murder of Che Guevara. In an era when ‘targeted assassinations’ and ‘capture and kill operations’ have become routine, and are routinely glorified by the mainstream U.S. press, their examination of the U.S. role in Che Guevara’s death could not be more timely.” —Amy Goodman, host and executive producer, Democracy Now.

Michael Ratner / Michael Smith:

• One day when I was a baby I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all the documents the FBI and the CIA had about Che Guevara.
• You and I had received the first documents 15 years ago and we wrote the first book Che Guevara and the FBI
• Ten or twelve years later I get another document drop from the CIA and these are the documents that are the most important in my view, relating to Che’s killing in Bolivia.
• The government had changed in Bolivia since 1819, 189 times.
• The book tells his story in Bolivia, and what the US did starting the counter intelligence process against him and supported the Bolivian government.
• Michael and I enjoyed working on it because we got to really know Che in a way we haven’t before.
• This book had its origin first in a document drop that was about Che’s murder and Che’s time in Bolivia. There are maps we put in the book of the last battles, where he was captured.
• The idea of the book really came from Michael Smith.
• A lot of people bought the story that was put out by the CIA agent on the ground.
• We demonstrate that the US was deeply involved in his murder.
• Ricardo Alarcon who is the president of the Cuban National Assembly, wrote the introduction to our book.
• During the Cuban Revolution, it was the Bastista troops that killed tens of thousand of revolutionaries.
• The book follows Che when he’s in Africa and various places, but then we have him going to Bolivia on November 5, 1966.
• There was a split between Che and Fidel. Fidel was worried about Che every single day.
• The first half of the book is a 25 thousand word essay by Michael Smith and Michael Ratner. It links together what happened with Che once he left Cuba.
• It’s also a biography of the US counterinsurgency program and the characters in that program that tried to make sure they would stop the Cuban revolution from spreading to other countries.
• We dedicated this book to our friend, the great movement attorney Len Weinglass. Len was the attorney for the Cuban Five.
• The Cuban Five are an important part of this story, 44 years after Che’s death.
• The US has attempted to completely destroy Cuba, and squeeze it so it could not carry out the social and economic reforms that really would’ve made it a shining example for the world.

Hosts – Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of six books, mostly recently “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler. He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and practices law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department. Michael Smith also organizes and chairs the Left Forum. Check out Michael’s blog here.

Host- Michael Ratner  NewYork civil-rights lawyer Michael Ratner was in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday,flanked by the mother of one of the Guantánamo detainees he has represented for the past two years, unsure what to expect. After an hour, he was pleasantly surprised. First, Sandra Day O’Connor, and then Justices Souter, Breyer, Kennedy and even Scalia, indicated through their questions that they were skeptical of the government’s argument that the men Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls “the worst of the worst” have no legal right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts.

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 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 July 11, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• CCR: Somalian Captured Held On US Ship Since April 2011
• President Barack Hussein Obama is Impeachable
• US To Gaza Flotilla Update

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Natural Gas Drilling Moratorium To Be Lifted in New York

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing to lift the moratorium on natural gas drilling, known as hydraulic fracturing in New York State.  Hydro-fracking as its called is in many opinions an environmentally wreck-less technique to extract natural gas from shale.  While the lifting of the moratorium is still months away, it comes despite the massive efforts from environmental and community groups in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania who have protected the Marcellus Shale watershed.

In a statement released by the State Department of Environmental Conservation, there will be environmental restrictions placed on the natural gas drilling permits in New York State, such as no drilling within 2000 feet of a public reservoir.

However, ninety percent of the New York City’s drinking water comes from ground zero of where various oil companies want to drill into the Marcelle Shale for natural gas. Every time a well is drilled, the companies use an estimate of 5 to 9 million gallons of water. Each time a well is fractured, it’s another 5-9 million gallons of water, a well can be fractured multiple times.  Up to 275 different toxic chemicals are used in the process and after the well is drilled, there are millions of gallons of industrial waste, it’s essentially radioactive water.  40-70 percent of this water stays underground.

The watershed is 13 thousand square miles and includes four and those that want to mine this resource say it will reduce dependence on foreign oil and boost the economy.   However, many have shown this statement to be false as the natural gas from the United States is being sold to foreign countries such as Norway and France.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit is pending against several federal agencies affiliated with the Delaware River Basin Commission to block final regulations on hydro-fracking until a full environmental review can be conducted. Past shows on hydro-fracking: Law and Disorder March 21, 2011 / Law and Disorder March 29, 2010

Attorney Jordan Yeager:

• Hydro-fracking is part of a broader industrial practice. Basically what we’re doing is allowing companies to drill down a mile deep through our aquifers, which we all depend on for our drinking water.
• Once they get down there, they start to drill horizontally, they’re aiming for the shale formations underground.
• In order to release the gas from the shale, they blast it with this nasty stuff, chemicals that they don’t want to disclose.
• They’re also developing and industrializing large swaths of land. When they do that they’re polluting the waters of New York and Pennsylvania and every place where this is happening.
• Generally what is proposed is to allow around 85 percent of New York State that has Marcellus Shale to be open to drilling that they would not allow drilling to take place in the New York City and Syracuse watersheds. And they would not allow it to take place within what they primary aquifers and state owned game land.
• But all other places and private land, they would allow it to happen.
• Those people who live in New York City, and in Syracuse, those people would be protected from this activity, but the people in the rest of the state would be subjected to it.
• For every 17 or 18 gas wells that you drill, you can expect to see water contamination from that.
• But then we’d ask why would we allow the rest of New York to be exposed to it?
• In Pennsylvania, its completely ruining the roads in the northern half of the state, its tearing up communities. In Bradford County we had a blowout, not too long ago, which caused damage not only to streams but to drinking water in that area.
• We are going to see continued failures wherever this happens.  The question is . . . are we going to allow it to happen? Are we going to force this practice to follow the science and only allow it to happen if the science says it can be done safely? We’re simply not there.
• In Pennsylvania, what we’re seeing is most of those jobs they’re talking about are going to folks outside the state. They’re bringing in people from the western states, who have experience in drilling. You to also look at the broader economic impact. When a community loses its water supply, that is bigger impact than a handful of jobs.
• If we don’t have clean water in order to live and for other businesses to operate, we’re going to see much greater economic damage.
• We’ve been dealing with the Delaware Water Basin Commission to make sure they don’t allow the Delaware River to be poisoned by these activities.
• When the people of Pennsylvania, the people of New York and New Jersey, are fully awakened to the dangers of this activity, we’ll be able to build a movement and reign it in.
• There are dangers associated with these industrial activities, and we have to look at the dangers in the broadest sense.
• Natural gas has been identified by some as a clean fuel, but that’s when they compare it to how it burns and how coal burns.  That’s one part of the natural gas story.
• You have to also look at the dangers in the process of extraction. When we drill down a mile deep, we’re finding naturally occurring radioactive material and as part of the drilling process, we’re then bringing that up to the surface.
• Look, we need energy. We need to decide what level of risk we’re comfortable with. In my opinion, we need to be looking at renewable energy, like solar, like wind, get investments, and get them to a larger scale.
• With this new direction from New York, we need to make sure there’s adequate time public participation and what was announced last week, is they would only allow a 60 day public comment period. That’s simply not enough. They haven’t looked at the research that’s been established since they closed the record in 2009.
• The public needs more than 60 days to educate the folks at the state level about what we’ve been learning since December 2009. We ought to be looking at a 6 month period on what was proposed for New York State.

Guest – Attorney Jordan Yeager, a National Lawyers Guild member, a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and member of Damascus Citizens. Curtin & Heefner LLP recently elected leading public interest attorney Jordan B. Yeager to its partnership. Mr. Yeager is a member of the firm’s Employment and Public Sector Section. Formerly in private practice as the named partner in a public interest law firm, Mr. Yeager served successfully as counsel in several groundbreaking cases, including matters involving constitutional rights issues; claims of reasonable accommodation against a municipal defendant; and the right to a jury trial in a whistle-blower retaliation case.

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Second Austerity Measure Imposed On Greece

Protests and demonstrations continue to erupt in Greece as demonstrators rise up in the streets against deep cuts in services and jobs from austerity.  Austerity is the name of the government’s response to the demand of its creditors.  Austerity imposes on society a severe regimen of rising taxes, or cut government spending to please and satisfy creditors. Greece as predicted by Economics professor Rick Wolff a year ago has been hit the hardest by the global economic disaster. Why? For many reasons, it has a strong working class, socialist roots and a public sector made primarily of union jobs. The austerity has cut into the working class jobs as the country privatizes the post office, gas, water works and railway. Meanwhile, the wealthy continue to evade taxes in Greece and in the United States. Past shows on Greece: Law and Disorder

Professor Costas Panayotakis:

• I was in Athens that last few days, what you have in the European Union is imbalances that resulted partly from the introduction of the Euro, but also, by the general phenomena in the division of the world of some countries more technologically advanced and others that are not.
• Right now you have a crisis, partly a European crisis, its not that the Greek culture is a pathological culture, as the mainstream media sometimes presents. Each crisis has its specifics, Ireland, Portugal, in Greece, the specificity is that the wealthy are not paying taxes.
• There are tax evasion problems, the problem in Greece is of primarily of revenues rather than spending.
• The mainstream media talks about the “bloated” public sector of Greece. The public sector is aligned with other public sectors in other countries. Now what they’re trying to do of course, traffic out jobs from the public sector to make Greece a public sector a small part of the economy  as it is in developing countries in Africa.
• Because its debt has become so unmanageable, there was an austerity pack that was adopted last year that 110 billion dollars. Drastic cuts in public spending, welfare state,
• Now what’s happened as is often the case, with IMF problems, the program didn’t work the way they said it was going to. Now Greece needs another loan to keep servicing its debt. One of the conditions is that Greece has this huge fire sale of all its public assets. The hope is that its going to raise 50 billion Euros.
• Because values in all the public companies have shrunk rapidly, whoever buys them will buy at a really low price.  Many Greeks are up in arms about that. Now they see the banks wanting to follow up with more of the same, that’s why 80 percent of the Greeks oppose this policy.
• We had a 2 day general strike last week, a 48 hour general strike had not happened in Greece for decades.
• You also have a demand for real democracy, direct democracy. One of the demands was not to pass the austerity package.
• Every 3 months there are news measures that have to be adopted in order for Greece to get the next installment of the loan. If Greece defaulted on their loan, it would effect the Eurozone in a very direct way, it would effect European banks.
• I think the lesson to take away from this is fighting back is necessary.

Guest – Costas Panayotakis, a professor at the New York City College of Technology.

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 Law and Disorder June 13, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Rep. Anthony Weiner

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US to Gaza: Flotilla 2011

The Turkish Islamic group,  IHH The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief have organized another flotilla carrying letters of support for the Palestinian people and bring attention to blockade on the Gaza Strip.  As many listeners may know, last year’s flotilla ended with the death of nine activists when the Israeli Navy intercepted the Mavi Marmara.  Meanwhile, the Israeli Navy is training to confront this years humanitarian effort. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu warned Israel not to “repeat the same mistake”  – in using  force against the flotilla. Last week, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that IHH was deliberately provoking Israel and setting the stage for a confrontation, making it responsible for any clashes that happen, according to an Israeli newspaper.  Past Law and Disorder shows last year’s flotilla. June 7, 2010 / June 21, 2010 / October 2010

Felice Gellman:

• I went to Gaza right after the 2008-2009 attack thinking naively that something could be done to rebuild Gaza.
• When I got there, I grew up very quickly and realized the Israeli blockade would prevent any rebuilding from this horrific attack.
• Last year there was a flotilla that sailed at the end of May that was brutally attacked and nine civilians were murdered by Israeli commandos.  There will be an American flagged boat and the passengers will be American citizens, and that is to specifically confront the US covert support for the siege of Gaza.
• The flotilla has been very much on the minds of the Israelis because it was not received well to murder nine civilians. One of them was an American citizen and the United States has done near zero to support the family.
• The initial Israeli attack strategy was to use attack dogs and snipers. Israel signed a deal with Cyprus making it the main transshipment point of natural gas from Israels natural gas development out there.
• The next day the prime minister of Cyprus announced he would not allow the flotilla to sail from Cyprus. Israel asked the Greeks not to intervene.
• The idea was to make this as diverse as possible, as representative of America as possible.
• I’ve been to Gaza twice and people say to me over and over, please we want our freedom.
• They’re saying the same thing that people are saying Egypt, Syria, Bahrain. They don’t want to live in a hand out society.
• The Rafah crossing being open doesn’t end the siege of Gaza.

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Attorney Richard Levy:

• As an American Jew, I feel a special responsibility to do something around this issue.  When Israel first came about and we knew so little about what happened. there. The first reaction was, well this wonderful homeland.
• And then as we grew and the years past and their conduct in the West Bank, their conduct in Gaza, in trapping people, and imposing these horrible checkpoints and settlements that take away the land and take away the water.
• We met with the State Department 2 weeks ago, and pointed out to the State Dept that while the president is applauding peaceful demonstrations across the Middle East, we too are planning a peaceful demonstration.
• Instead of getting a nod and an assurance, we got an email several days later, saying that there was a maritime warning and that people should not go into the zone, everyone can expect interference by the Israelis.
• The thing that is terrible about that we all know if the US said don’t do it, Israel wouldn’t do it.  As a recipient of 3 billion dollars annually of US aid, on which it is totally dependent.
• I think the problem with Israel is we’re letting AIPAC be the voice of Jewish people everywhere.  We gotta get up and say, they don’t speak for us.
• You take a place like Gaza where more than 40 percent of the population is under the age of 14. It’s kids, its women, they don’t have schools, they don’t have food, they don’t have medical care.
• 90 percent of the people (in Gaza) depend on charitable donations to live at all.  The fact that we’re not getting up and being heard on this, is allowing only one voice to be heard.
• And that is a very conservative pro-Israeli voice that I don’t think speaks for the American people at all.
• My optimistic side says we’re going to be massively inconvenienced.
• I think we want to call attention to the Palestinian people that they’re not completely alone.  The US boat is going to be carrying a cargo of letters. From Americans to Palestinians saying we understand your plight, we support your effort to live in peace and to live without these horrible restrictions on your life.
• There was so much fear of over reaching by the US government under the Terrorism Support Act that if you brought over the most innocent product, and it found its way into the hands of Hamas, some hyped up prosecutor could go after you in this country under this very draconian statute.
• In Turkey, the Turkish boat had a million applicants to be passengers on this flotilla.

Guest – Felice Gellman, member of the Wespac Middle East Committee and a member of the Steering Committee that organized The Gaza Freedom March. She has traveled to Gaza twice since the Israeli invasion.

Guest – Attorney Richard Levy, a labor and civil rights attorney. (Cornell, B.A., 1964, NYU School of Law, J.D., 1968) is a senior partner at LR. He has practiced labor, employment, employee benefits and civil rights law since 1971. During law school he was associate editor of the Annual Survey of American Law.  A member of the United States Supreme Court Bar, Levy has lectured at conferences for the NLRB, AFL -CIO, Practicing Law Institute and has published articles on labor law and civil rights litigation.  He has served on the Lawyers Advisory Panel of the AFL – CIO.

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The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack by Jim Petras

The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack is the title of Jim Petras’ timely new book. It was rushed to print and chronicles the growing militarization of US policy in North Africa and the Gulf region.  The essays also give an important historic narrative of the long over due Arab democratic revolution and the popular uprisings. Now as the empire’s crumbling dictatorships began to spread, the United States, France and the UK race to intervene. NATO is deployed using its new “responsibility to protect” doctrine authorizing “humanitarian intervention.”

Professor James Petras:

• Obama supported Mubarak since he (Obama) entered office, and only when it was absolutely clear there were millions of people in the street, the military was divided, there was absolutely no future for Mubarak, Washington then began to leverage Mubarak into a departure which would retain the entire economic, police and military apparatus intact.
• Essentially, sacrifice the dictator to save the neo-liberal, pro-Israeli state.
• The Egyptian economy has been part of a pillage, the US has been giving Egypt, 2 billion a year for decades. This is bribe money so that Egypt will continue collaborating with Israel in keeping the Palestinians under Israeli control.
• Participating in the blockade of Gaza. That’s part of the economy. The other part is that Mubarack family and cronies have essentially run the economy into the ground.
• Egypt draws its income from the Suez Canal, tourism, visiting the pyramids, on a minor scale, agriculture and textiles. But there are enormous disparities in wealth, the per capita of about 40 percent of Egyptians is 2 dollars per day.
• Egypt has a handful of billionaires all organized around the regime.
• It’s a big country with great potential but it was run into the ground by this corrupt family dictatorship.
• The picture now is the ousting of Mubarak has not amounted to substantial change in the governing class.  Essentially, the military took over and kept many of the Mubarak personalities in position of power. The minister of the interior is still there, the generals are still there.  They’ve been arresting and disappearing some of the pro-democracy people.
• The struggles in Egypt haven’t ended.  The Washington Post and the New York Times keep talking as if the democracy process has reached its culmination.
• The surveys show that a vast amount of Egyptians want to renegotiate the arrangement the Egyptians had with the Israelis.
• This is a hot potato because the military wants to continue to get the hand outs from the US.
• The Egyptian military is trying to make a deal with the Muslim brotherhood, especially the elder statesmen.
• There is an attempt here to substitute elections for social changes and economic improvements.
• The business men who’ve been so accustomed to having everything their way are calling on the military to clamp down. To arrest the strikers. There’s been a proliferation of strikers in the hotel industry, manufacturing, public employees.
• We don’t read about those unless you go into some of the Egyptian newspapers.
• The Obama Administration and the Europeans are going to pump in 2 billion dollars on condition that these social reforms are not carried out. That there isn’t any effort to redistribute income. Washington is jumping in at this moment with taxpayer’s money to try to head off any real democratization that effects the great majority of the people.
• You have an opposition that’s divided, you still have the old patronage apparatus of Mubarak. Mubarak had a program of hand outs, never any substantial changes in people’s condition.
• On Libya: This is a war on Libya with the United States and Europe, there’s no question about it.
• The issue here is that Libya has enormous oil and gas wells.  We are trying to control Africa through our military operations, while the Chinese are in there making massive investments, establishing economic presence which far surpasses what Washington can imagine.
• This costs the tax payers billions. We don’t get anything back. This isn’t an investment into a coal mine, or diamond mine where you would get returns.

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

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 Law and Disorder April 4, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• In Memory: Attorney Leonard Weinglass
• To Hell With The Constitution, Obama Goes To War – Michael Ratner – How is it that Congress isn’t screaming at President Obama for usurping its power to take this nation to war against Libya?
• Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Anniversary
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Beyond Vietnam, A Time To Break Silence
• Law and Disorder National Pacifica Radio Special:  Class Warfare  – Click Here
  

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In Memory of Attorney Leonard Weinglass

Hosts remember one of the great civil rights attorneys, Leonard Weinglass from his early years as a lawyer in the Air Force to his big cases.  Michael Smith shares a great anecdote. Len vigorously defended a black soldier and upset the Air Force brass. They sent him to Iceland for 2 years. Much later in the late fifties,  he moved to Newark, NJ, set up a one man office and represented black people in police abuse cases.

The remarkable and heroic progressive lawyer Len Weinglass died on March 23.  Among his cases were the Chicago 8, the Ellsberg case and the Cuban 5.   He was our close comrade and will be missed by his friends and all those seeking a better world. – Michael Ratner.

• Len Weinglass November 9, 2009
• Len Weinglass June 29, 2009
• Len Weinglass June 16, 2008
• Len Weinglass September 24, 2007

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A Poem for Len Weinglass by Linda Backiel

Almost Ready

“I have everything almost ready for the spring,”

you said. Brush cut, brambles cleared, new trees

planted. A lop-sided smile flit across your silver

stubble beard, a late winter field momentarily lit

by a break in a fleet of migrating clouds.

click for more

——–

Universal Jurisdiction: Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck

Co-host Michael Ratner interviews attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, German civil rights attorney and General Secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. They discuss the effectiveness of Universal Jurisdiction cases. The cases that helped international human rights prosecutions.  Specifically the cases in Argentina against corporations that profited from dictatorships and human rights abuses and how Argentina can be used as a model to bring cases against other powerful leaders or corporations.  Optimism overcomes cynicism, Wolfgang says its not easy, it’s work bringing cases against the powerful of the world.

Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck:

• I have the privilege to work on behalf of Germans and Argentinian victims of the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina.
• The Argentinian cases and the Chilean cases were the most important phase in universal jurisdiction.
• We filed cases in Germany, Italy and France.
• The idea to file Argentinian and Chilean cases in European courts was not to try Argentinians and Chileans in Europe but to impose accountability in Chile and Argentina.
• That’s what people call the Pinochet Effect.
• In 2005 and 2006 when the amnesty laws were abolished. If you go to Buenos Aries now you will observe military junta tribes from Monday to Friday and you will police officers, military leaders, torturers, guards.
• At this point, special prosecutors and parts of the civil society are demanding an investigation and prosecution into crimes committed by corporations who aided and abetted the dictatorship, or who profited from the dictatorship.
• The history in Argentina, 30 thousand people disappeared, 100 thousand were tortured.
• The human rights movement in Argentina was so strong, that they maintained a certain presence, a certain public attention.
• For us, Argentina is like the blue print. They inspired the human rights movement not only in Europe
• I filed a case at Mercy Dispense because in Buenos Aires, 15 trade unionists were disappeared. We filed the criminal case in Germany against a German-Argentinian manager who had duel citizenship which allowed us to bring the case in Germany. Then we filed a case in the US, an alien tort claims which is still pending. We filed a case in Argentina which is still pending.
• One line is to blame the torturers and the torturer leaders, we want to talk about why these human rights violations have been committed. Why the Argentinian military took the decision to oppress their populations and our explanation is that they wanted to install a political and economic system which needed the extermination of the trade unionists.
• Actually to demand accountability and do these investigations is trauma work. Society that hasn’t dealt with its past has some problems in the present. Argentina is worth studying as an example.
• Universal Jurisdiction is showing its limits. So far it was very difficult to bring cases against the powerful of the world.
• The suspicion that the criminal justice system is just another tool of the powerful against the powerless,
• We have to try to bring cases against the powerful, Russian, China, the US, or Sri Lanka or Israel, who all undertake actions to avoid prosecution.
• We are very optimistic that some investigation will be carried out in Spain but some people are over-pessimistic, because even now, we achieved that several former US officials, or from the CIA or from the Army, or politicians can’t travel anymore, without running the risk to be arrested.
• We achieved something, I’m also not satisfied from it but still its more than we thought possible.
• President Bush wanted to go to Switzerland.
• It’s always an argument against those cynical people who say nothing is possible. Yes there is, something is possible. We do have to struggle to maintain this, the whole international criminal justice system is at stake.

Guest – Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, a German civil rights attorney. He is also the General Secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. On November 14, 2006, Kaleck sought criminal prosecution charges in German court against a number of US officials and military personnel in connection with alleged human rights abuses at the prison facilities at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay on behalf of eleven plaintiffs. Approximately 30 human rights activists and organizations participated as co-plaintiffs

 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 December 13, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Wikileaks:

1. Much like the Russian Revolutionaries who opened the books on the Czars’ secret diplomacy and like the Pentagon papers on the Vietnam War, Wikileaks has done a great public service.
   
2. US citizens now have access to the truth, that’s the basis of democracy.
3. Julian Assange denied bail.
4. Documents show utter duplicity of US government: Hypocritical and lying about fundamentals of democracy.
5. Amazon / Paypal / Mastercard  quit Wikileaks.
6. Isolating, labeling, calling terrorists, but there’s a huge groundswell of support for Wikileaks.
7. Wikileaks have struck a real blow against an imperial government.
   

• Al-Alwaki Decision Judge: The executive decision to kill a US citizen overseas is constitutionally committed to the political branches and judicially un-reviewable.
• Israel to continue building settlements in Palestine.

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US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries

Last week, members of the extreme Latin American right wing held a meeting in Washington with high-level representatives of the US Congress. The event is evidence of an escalation in US aggression toward the region, writes Eva Golinger in her article US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries.

The countries in the region include Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – all members of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and they were the topic of debates in the meetings that centered around 3 main questions.  – and included “debates” centered around three primary questions:

• Are democracy and human rights in danger under the “21st Century Socialism” of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia?
• Does the ALBA Alliance of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua constitute a threat to US interests and inter-American security?
• Is current US policy toward the region equipped to respond to the erosion of democracy and the pernicious influence of such hostile actors as Iran, foreign and domestic terrorist groups, and narcotics traffickers?

US Congress members at the meeting include House Foreign Affairs Committees, including Elliot Engel, New York democrat and current chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; Connie Mack, Florida republican and incoming chairman of the same committee; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and many more who met with the extreme Latin American right wing responsible for coup d’état’s terrorism and destabilzation.

Eva concludes in her article that this event is proof following the November 2 elections, that Washington’s policies toward Latin America will be more aggressive in the near future.

Eva Golinger:

• The meeting took place in the US Capitol Visiting Center on November 17th 2010, and it was titled Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights and Inter-American Security.
• The meeting counted on the participation of several figures, personalities in Latin America from the extreme right.
• There were some people from Bolivia who attempted to overthrow the Morales administration.
• One member participating in the meeting at the US Congress in November was involved with directly in an attempt to assassinate the president of Bolivia. Louis Nunez
• In Latin America there’s been a shift toward more progressive governments and policies, regional integration but at the same time an increased assault on Latin American stability and democracy coming from forces that either held power in prior years or want to take power in the region.
• We’ve seen five coups in the past ten years. Venezuela in 2002, Haiti in 2004, Bolivia in 2008, Honduras in 2009, and Ecuador this year.
• Two of those were successful, Haiti and Honduras. All right wing coups backed by the United States.
• The decision that they (Latin American right wing)  came to at the meeting is that the US isn’t doing enough.
• The policy toward Cuba is equated directly with Venezuela, and the policy of Venezuela is going to Ecuador and Bolivia because they all form part of this regional block called ALBA.
• If we have people like Connie Mack running the Subcommittee on Foreign Relations on Latin America who declared in that conference in the Congress last month that  with the new Republican majority they need to take action and confront Hugo Chavez head on.
• There are right wing governments in Latin America, we’ve got Peru, Columbia and Chile, but they also rejected the coup attempts.
• Honduras Wikileak memo: The document was an internal memo sent from a US ambassador to the US Secretary of State. It said that the coup that took place June 2009 against President Manuel Zelaya was completely illegal, had no constitutional foundation. It is completely the contrary position the US assumed publicly. The US State Department never declared formally the events as a coup d’état.
• The basis of my work is to use the US Freedom of Information Act to try to declassify US documents, not obtained illegally. One piece of evidence that was demonstrated irrefutably is the increase in funding coming out using US tax payer dollars to fund organizations and political groups in Latin America that are trying to destabilize democratically elected governments.

Guest – Eva Golinger – winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named “La Novia de Venezuela” by President Hugo Chávez, is an Attorney and Writer from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, “The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela” “Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” ,“The Empire’s Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion.”  Since 2003, Eva, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government’s efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America.

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 Law and Disorder December 6, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Renowned author Chalmers Johnson Passes 79
• Oklahoma To Appeal Sharia Law Ban
  
• Portland Bomb Plot Order Preserves Secret Recordings

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A Kidnapping In Milan: The CIA On Trial

A Kidnapping In Milan: The CIA On Trial is the title of Steve Hendricks’ new book. It is a fast paced account of the realities of counter terrroism. Hendricks gives the reader a beginning to end view of international Islamist terrorist networks in Europre while examining the questions of justice and the rule of law. He writes in detail on the February 2003 disappearance of the radical imam Abu Omar and how under the leadership of prosecutor Armando Spataro, Omar was kidnapped, and sent to be tortured in Egypt. Hendricks traces Omar’s roots in the jihadist world of the Middle East and his travels to Pakistan, Albania and eventually the rundown fringes of Milan. Rivalries, mistrust and bad communication is chronicled amid the CIA, the FBI and the Italian counter terrorism agencies as operatives snatched Abu Omar from the streets of Italy.

Steve Hendricks:

• The Italian counterterror police had this imam, Abu Omar under tight surveillance, under suspicion of terrorism. He was one of the ring leaders of a terrorist cell. They were about a month away from arresting him. But one fine day in February 2003, he sets off for his mosque and disappears.
• The CIA had grabbed him off the street literally at high noon. They roughed him up, gagged him, drove him several hours across northern Italy -sent him to Cairo were for months and months he was savagely tortured.
• The Muslim Brotherhood, which really might thought of as the godfathers of radical Islam, got its start in Egypt and toehold in Alexandria. Islam is not going to be re-born simply on its goodness, we have to fight for it.
• The Egyptian authorities cracked down on the radicals and a great number of them fled all over the world, they scattered. Europe was tolerant of foreigners, Italy was one of those countries.
• Abu Omar was tortured for about a year and then they let him out and said don’t talk about it.
• Armando Spataro is this charismatic figure. He did his formative work as a magistrate prosecuting terrorists of the left.
• When the kidnapping in Milan (by the CIA) happened on his watch, he treated it like anything else. He put his foot down on the rule of law.
• SIM Card – Subscriber Identity Module. It’s not just reading the radio waves, it’s in constant contact with the cell tower back and forth. Most cell companies keep record of those interactions. What these kidnappers sloppily did is use their cellphones like teenagers.
• The Italian prosecutors were able to find these kidnappers, they were able to track their movements everywhere they went.  Armando Spataro eventually brought charges against 25 CIA agents and one US Air Force Colonel that coordinated the arrival of agents at Aviano Air Base.
• 23 of the 26 of the accused were convicted of kidnapping. They recieved five to eight years depending upon their degree of involvment.  What moved me to write this book, over everything was outrage over our inhumanity.
• America has been conducting renditions for about a century.

Guest – Steve Hendricks, a freelance writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Helena, Montana. He is the author, most recently, of A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial. His previous book, The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country, made several best-of-the-year lists in 2006.

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Noam Chomsky – Gaza in Crisis:  Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians

Here on Law and Disorder we’ve chronicled the events of Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Today we’re delighted to have with us Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s foremost social critics, institute professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and author of many books including Failed States and Hegemony or Survival, but we talk with him today about his latest book Gaza in Crisis:  Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians. Noam Chomsky wrote Gaza In Crisis with Ilan Pappé, professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK. This book surveys Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza from Operation Cast Lead to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in a very sobering analysis.

Noam Chomsky:

• Let’s start with wikileaks. One of the interesting cables from the Tel Aviv embassy and it was to Clinton.
• It was giving her talking points, about the attack on Gaza, and it tells her Israel had to attack on December 2008 in self defense because Hamas had violated the truce.
• In December 2008 Hamas called for a renewal of the truce that Israel had broken. Israel considered it and rejected it.  I should say US/Israel because these are joint activities.
• The fact that this can pass without comment, tells you quite a lot.
• In the whole wikileaks episode, in my opinion is the remarkable fact is the absolute contempt of democracy that’s revealed by the embassies.
• The most critical issue is did Israel have any right to use force in the first place? Any right?
• Why have a border cutting Galilee in half?
• The only way I know how to proceed is to get the United States to join the rest of the world and stop its rejectionist opposition to the overwhelming international consensus, agree to a two state settlement.
• The strongest support for Israeli crimes is coming from the business world.
• The most rabid supporter of Israel in the media is the Wall Street Journal. They’re not part of AIPAC, that’s the business world.
• US military intelligence are tightly integrated with Israel. Israel destroyed secular Arab nationalism, that’s when US / Israeli relations took off in their current form.
• It’s about expansion of settlements. Israel already controls 42 percent of the West Bank.
• The issue is the settlements, they are all illegal.
• It designed so that there will be no Palestinian self determination.

Guest – Noam Chomsky, n American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident and an anarchist, referring to himself as a libertarian socialist. Chomsky is the author of more than 150 books and has received worldwide attention for his views, despite being typically absent from the mainstream media.

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 Law and Disorder November 15, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Federal prosecutors opt against charging CIA officials in destruction of interrogation tapes
• Bush on waterboarding: ‘Damn right’
• Heidi Boghosian attends last weeks oral arguments for Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case

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Drone Based Targeted Killings of U.S. citizens. Anwar Al-Aulaqi

Can the Obama Administration or any future administration use lethal force against US citizens who the executive office unilaterally determines as a threat to the nation? Not yet, but in recent government arguments, in the Anwar Al-Aulaqi case, the executive branch would have unreviewable authority to carry out targeted killings of Americans deemed to be enemies of the state. The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on August 30, and the government filed its reply brief on September 25.

The ACLU and CCR were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death.

Pardiss Kebriaei:

• This will be our first chance to defend our motion for a preliminary injunction and respond to the government’s arguments.  The sum and substance of the government’s arguments is that there should be no rule for the court at all in the question we presented. Whether the government has authority to execute one of its citizens without any kind of due process.
• There should be absolutely no judicial review at all. They have not got into the merits of why they believe they should have this authority.  They assert the US is involved in a global war against Al-Qaeda, by virtue of the war the US has the ability to target any suspect of Al-Qaeda.
• Outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the question of whether armed conflict exists, is a factual objective question. It’s not a matter of which the president declares and that the level of hostilities and the organization of groups in Yemen are just not such that they to the level of war.
• Anwar Al-Alwaqi is not Al-Qaeda, he is associated with Al-Qaeda.
• The US is not only claiming broad authority geographically but global authority in terms of any and all groups they deem somehow linked to Al-Qaeda.
• They’re claiming AUMF but they’re also claiming a very vague principle of self defense which is tricky. They are claiming self defense under article 51 of the UN charter.
• They’re going around criminal law and claiming un-reviewable authority to carry out global assassination. This is an escalation of what we saw under the Bush Administration with global detention authority, this is global killing authority.
• The authority could reach any citizen they deem a threat to national security. It could reach someone in the United States, the full contours of the government’s arguments would be that the decision to kill is for the executive to determine and that should be an un-reviewable decision.
• The mechanized disconnected nature of the killing is alarming, both by an accountability point of view and a moral point of view.
• The drone project is operated by the CIA and by a covert unit in the Department of Defense called the Joint Special Operations Command.
• Documenting them is incredibly hard, but yet you have the expansion of the war and killings, in this shadow war way. You have this parallel secret war being conducted by the CIA and JSOC largely through the use of unmanned drones. What we have here is the pre-determination of the ability to kill.
• There’s been a steady increase of rhetoric about Yemen and an escalation in the language of war.

Guest – Pardiss Kebriaei, she joined the Center Constitutional Rights in July 2007. Since then, her work has focused on representing men detained at Guantánamo Bay in their habeas corpus challenges, before international human rights tribunals, in diplomatic advocacy with foreign governments to secure resettlement for men who cannot return home, and in post-release reintegration efforts. Her clients have included men from Yemen, Syria, Algeria, and Afghanistan. Her work includes seeking accountability for torture and arbitrary detention at Guantánamo.
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Justice On Trial: Documentary on Mumia Abu-Jamal

We’re pleased to have with us today the director Kouross Esmaeli of the new documentary Justice On Trial. The film focuses on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of the most scrutinized and contested legal cases in American history. Justice on Trial examines the facts of the case, the judicial bias, racial discrimination in jury selection, prosecutorial misconduct and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction. The injustices and problems in Mumia’s case as many listeners know, are common within the criminal justice system in the United States.

Kouross Esmaeli:

• I tried to get an interview with the wife of the police officer who was killed on the night of December 9, 1981
• I thought it was important to show what drives that side  I came to realize that Tigre Hill was making a film (about Mumia, titled Barrel of A Gun) that was propaganda for the other side.
• We had to make sure that film doesn’t become the voice of the nation.
• (Film includes photos 12 minutes after shooting occurred)
• The photos were discovered by an activist and scholar in Germany.  He found them online, Michael met the photographer in the US, and realized there were 22 photographs from that night.
• They were offered to the prosecution, they refused.
• What the photographs show is incredible, they show a roving police hat.
• Officer Faulkner’s hat is placed in different spots on the crime scene.
• They show police handling the gun that was supposedly used in this crime. Handling it without gloves.
• There’s this push to kill Mumia and silence him physically. I’m interested to know what drives these people.
• For a screening in your area contact – - Kouross by email – - Kouross@bignoisefilms.org

Guest – Kouross Esmaeli, independent filmmaker and journalist.

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Final Verdict : What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case.

In 1965, Walter and Miriam Schneir published Invitation to an Inquest, it was among the first critical accounts of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. They were executed in 1953 for passing atom bomb secrets to Soviet Russia. In that book the Schneirs presented exhaustive evidence that key witnesses in the trial had changed their story after prompting from prosecutors. Their conclusion was, the Rosenbergs were innocent. Now after 30 years, Walter Schneir returned to the case with new evidence. Schneir had found that Julius Rosenber was marginally involved in the atom bomb spy ring and Ethel wasn’t involved at all. However they both lied about not knowing about espionage because of their earlier activities in World War II. All of this unravels in the Final Verdict : What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case.

Miriam Schneir:

• The case began in 1950, 60 years ago. American cities were vulnerable to nuclear attacks. In that climate the Rosenbergs were arrested. The legal charge was conspiracy to commit espionage. During the trial, they were charged with stealing the secrets of the atomic bomb.
• The principle witnesses were Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass and his wife Ruth.
• David was in the Army and serendipitously was sent to Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was being constructed.
• Julius was a spy during the wartime years. Ethel did nothing, she was not a spy.
• In a report by the Atomic Energy Commission, Greenglass was ranked as the least effective atomic spies back then. There was a lot of effort on the part of the Department of Justice to convict these people.
• This case is relevant today in a larger frame work.
• We can see that the Rosenberg case is like the Dreyfus case or the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
• It’s essential that leftists of each generation should keep that history alive.
• Now it’s Islam fundamentalism. That’s not to say there was no danger.
• You see the government use the courts to advance policies.
• On a personal level, Walter and I learned from the Freedom of Information documents we recieved, on the basis of the Meeropol suit, that while we were researching an Invitation to an Inquest, the FBI had been track our activities.
• We were just two writers who were trying to research a book, they were tapping our phones, and finally they placed us as well as thousands of others on an index of people who would be detained in the event of a national emergency.
• After the book was published, an FBI memo, directed that the book should be smothered and forced out of the public eye.

Guest – Miriam Schneir, editor of Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present and Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. In addition to Invitation to an Inquest, she is also the co-author of “Remember the Ladies”: Women in America, 1750–1815.

Walter Schneir, a freelance writer on law, politics, and science. He is the co-author, with his wife Miriam Schneir, of Invitation to an Inquest, long considered the definitive book on the Rosenberg case. He is also the editor of Telling it Like it was: The Chicago Riots, an early account of the 1968 Democratic Convention.  He died in April 2009 soon after completing this work.

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