Law and Disorder October 26, 2009 [54:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• 13 Uighers Captured By Warlords For Bounties Still in GTMO
• SHAC 7 Case Update – First Amendment Rights = Domestic Terrorism?

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Historic Strike – Privatizing Puerto Rico; Bar Association Dismantled.

Public services grinded to a halt on October 15 in Puerto Rico as a massive one day general strike brought more than 100 thousand people to protest the lay off of about 17 thousand of Puerto Rico’s public employees. The demonstration shut down all state-owned enterprises including the island’s schools and colleges. The airport remained opened, while tens of thousands were reported to converge on San Juan’s Plaza Las Americas.

Main labor organizations, the General Workers Union and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coaltion supported the general strike. In May of this year, the Puerto Rican government laid off nearly 8 thousand employees and then hired about 3 thousand temporary teachers and assistants. Union leaders claim that Governor Luis Fortuno is planning to privatize government services. Outrage to the proposed layoffs have rippled into New York City, amid second largest community of Puerto Rican people.

Attorney Judith Berkan:

• Public worker dismissals at almost 25 thousand.
• Any agencies who deal in service to the poor or working class in Puerto Rico
• Two days before the strike, the governor signed and passed a bill aimed at dismantling the Bar Association
• After the massive first strike there have been daily strikes
• They want to return us to the days of the Oligarchy, concentrating wealth into the hands of a few while the remainders pick up the crumbs
• Protesters: Students from every university, every sector of the labor movement, the religious sector, cultural organizations, 700 school principals.
• There were 2000 janitors in the schools, right now there are no janitors in the schools of Puerto Rico and that’s going to be privatized.
• Two thousand school janitors were fired in the middle of the swine flu scare. The government plans to put these jobs out to bid for private companies.
• The atitude is . . . we’re doing this and the rest of you be damned.
• Puerto Rican government:  Marcus Rodriguez Ema brought in again whose forte has always been privatization. He said on a radio station that if there was any blockage of commerce that it could be brought under the Patriot Act.  He said that they are terrorists and they’re trying to block commerce.
• The way they framed it, if you stop commerce, particularly, the docks and the airports, that would be sanctionable under federal law.
• There have been a number of very offensive comments by the people in charge. Calling community leaders leeches, lowlifes, openly.
• The legislation has cut off funding for the Bar Association in Puerto Rico.
• I think the militancy will continue, we have not seen the last of general strikes here.

Guest – Attorney Judith Berkan, is a partner in the San Juan law firm of Berkan/Mendez.  She specializes in government misconduct litigation and employment discrimination cases. Berkan worked as an attorney in New Haven, Connecticut before going to Puerto Rico as the staff attorney for the Puerto Rico Legal Project of the National Lawyers Guild, now the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Institute.  For twenty-seven years, she has been teaching, primarily in the Constitutional Law area, at the Inter American University Law School in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A frequent speaker and author of many articles on civil rights issues, she was the President of the Human Rights Commission of the Puerto Rico Bar Association in the mid-1990’s and a member of the Commonwealth Supreme Court’s task force on gender discrimination.

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Guantanamo Update: 223 people left in Guantanamo, 97 are Yemeni.

Alla Ali Bin Ahmed was among the 98 remaining Yemeni prisoners let go from Guantanamo Bay prison.  In May of this year, a judge reviewed the government’s classified evidence again Ahmed, and ruled that his incarceration had never been justified. Never been justified?  Yet, he remained like many Yemenis in Guantanamo Prison. Earlier this year, the Center for Constitutional Rights called for all Yemeni detainees to be released and repatriated.  In a media statement, CCR attorney Pardiss Kabriaei, said ” More than one-third of the prisoners at Guantanamo right now are from Yemen. Most have been detained without any charge and in brutal conditions for over six years.  It is unacceptable that the Yemeni and U.S. governments have not come to an agreement to bring these men home. There is absolutely nothing which should prevent their return to Yemen.”  Law and Disorder March 2009 Interview with Pardiss

Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:

• This is the part of Guantanamo that is about accountability.
• A case filed in 2008 on behalf of 2 men that died in Guantanamo on June 2006
• We brought this case against 20 officials, including Rumsfeld and Michael Leonard, Jeffrey Miller, people who were in charge of and approved torture techniques.
• U.S. Army General Bantz John Craddock who introduced a policy of force feeding in Guantanamo whereby detainees are literally strapped into chairs that are called restraint chairs, strapped in at five points, while a tube is forced up their nose and down their stomachs and formula is pumped into them for about an hour
• also named are physicans who knew by virtue of reports from the Red Cross.
• Center for Constitutional Rights – When Healers Harm – A focus on the accountability of medical personnel in Guantanamo who have a professional duty and oath to protect the health and well-being of men.
• It took 2 years for the military to conduct its investigation of these suicides.
• We filed Monday Oct 6, a motion to dismiss, they want to get rid of the case essentially, under the point that reporting claims of abuse are barred under the Military Commissions Act of 2006
• There is a provision in it Section 7, we’re challenging the constitutionality of that provision, the provision in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, that prevents detainees to bring lawsuits against the United States, the first time this MCA, has been asserted, now under the Obama Administration.
• Mohammed al Qahtani video tapes documents the torture he was experiencing, forced nudity, prolonged solitary confinement, using dogs and sexual abuse. Those are the methods that were approved by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002
• January deadline to close Guantanamo is not going to be met, according to US Attorney Gen. Holder
• 223 people left in Guantanamo, 97 are Yemeni.
• Federal judges have ruled on some 30 cases, that there is no lawful basis to hold them, yet of 30, 19 remain in Guantanamo. (Kuwaitis / Yemenis)
• Not the worst of the worst left in Guantanamo, it is nationality.
• There are innocent people who have been in prison for 8 years, it’s not a solution to sit back any longer.
• Guantanamo may stay open a few months past January and then transfer prisoners to the US.

Guest – Pardiss Kebriaei, Staff Attorney with the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, at the Center For Constitutional Rights.

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 Law and Disorder October 12, 2009 [57:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• The L Magazine Votes co-host Heidi Boghosian among New York City’s top 10 Heroes
• Che Guevarra Anniversary
• Michael Ratner and Michael Smith Announce Book Project: Hidden History of Che Guevarra
• Italian Prosecutors Urge Prison for Americans in CIA Case
• Assistant US Secretary of State Michael Posner Criticizes Goldstone Report
• General Moshe Yaalon Cancels London Trip After Arrest Fears From Gaza Bombing

Elliot Madison: Activist Arrested for Using Twitter To Communicate With G20 Protesters.

Elliot Madison, a social worker and activist was arrested in Pittsburgh last month during the G20 Summit and was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police say he was found in a hotel room with police scanners and computers while using the social networking site Twitter to communicate police movements to protesters. Madison recently said “They arrested me for doing the same thing everybody else was doing, which was perfectly legal,” he said. “It was crucial for people to have the information we were sending.” Madison’s laywer Martin Stolar told the New York Times   “He and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20,” Mr. Madison’s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said. “There’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.”

Attorney Martin Stolar:

• It seems it would be helping out the police in a way. They’re saying disperse, don’t go here, don’t go there.
• They selected him for some reason amid all the various people posting things on twitter boards
• They got a search warrant for his hotel room, rousted he and a colleague who was there, arrested Elliot and he was held on a 30 thousand dollar bail.
• Unfortunately, agents of the FBI, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, showed up at his home in Queens, with a search warrant issued by a Federal Court in Brooklyn, seeking evidence of violating the federal anti-rioting laws. (H.Rap Brown Act) Think about the Chicago 8.
• They spent 16 hours  searching his home, grabbing everything in sight, it was terribly unclear what would violate this law.  So they took pictures of Lenin, his writings, computers, material from producing a documentary film.
• The warrants seemed properly issued, until I can see the affidavits that underlie the warrant.
• I whipped up some legal papers to show cause and a motion under Federal rules of criminal procedure 41G. A motion for the return of property illegally seized.
• He is accused of posting stuff that is publicly available, that is a police scanner that is posted on the internet, such as a police order to disperse.
• That information is passed on through the Twitter board and that constitutes the crime that he is charged with.
• Law enforcement is targeting those who provide support for lawful demonstrations.
• This case is a first in Pennsylvania and a real stretch in criminal law to penalize what is essentially speech
• In New York, there is potentially a separate investigation in which Elliot is a target
• The so-called Green Revolution in Iran, the demonstrators were using Twitter, in exactly the same way the folks in the G20 used it. When the oppressive government came down on the Iranian students using Twitter, the US State Dept said, wait a minute there are free speech issues here.

Guest – Attorney Martin Stolar, president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

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Supreme Court To Argue Life Without Parole Cases For Children

The Supreme Court will address whether it’s constitutional to sentence a child to be imprisoned for life without parole for an offense committed during adolescence. There will be two main cases the Supreme Court will argue.  One is the case involving Joe Sullivan. Joe, at the time, was a mentally disabled 13 year old child living in a home where he was physically and sexually abused. He was convinced to participate in a burglary of a home. The elderly home owner was sexually abused, though she didn’t see her attacker. Joe was tried in an adult court, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  He was fourteen when he was sent to an adult prison, there he was abused and later diagnosed with MS.  That is a summary of one of the cases.

Professor Stephen Harper:

• 2400 Kids in jail serving life sentences without parole in the US. 120 of those kids didn’t commit homicides.
• The United States is the only country in the world that sentences children to life, without the possibility of parole
• Part of this sentencing of kids was an accident, they were getting tougher on adults in the early 80s and 90s.
• There should be an opportunity, Sullivan’s lawyer argued that at some point they could be granted parole
• Florida is the number one state that puts children in prison for life without the possibility of parole

Guest – Stephen Harper, Adjunct professor of  Juvenile Justice University of Miami school of Law.

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National Lawyers Guild Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20

Many listeners have probably seen the videos of the G20 protesters going up against hundreds of riot police. Some of the most compelling footage were of reckless use of LRAD, the sonic weapons, and the surge of riot police onto the University of  Pittsburgh campus. Many students who were not protesting were rounded up, knocked down, tear gassed and beaten by police. We reported last month on the blatant violations of first amendment rights as local police engaged in patterns of harassment on activists such as the group Seeds for Peace. Today we hear first hand accounts of police abuse from our own Heidi Boghosian who was at the marches and demonstrations as a legal observer and we’ll be joined by attorney Joel Kupferman, who was also at the also a legal observer with National Lawyers Guild at the G20 Summit.     Read Heidi’s G20 Blog Entry Here

Heidi Boghosian / Joel Kupferman

• LRAD Sonic Weapons combined with order to disperse.  You had to cover your ears, some stayed still, paralyzed.  We think it’s illegal, it’s and invasion, it’s a weapon.
• One of the legal angles, we’re looking into is the fifth amendment, where we charged Christine Todd Whitman after 9/11 for violating our fifth amendment rights of bodily integrity and in this case, that sound pierced that bodily integrity.
• The manufacturer of the device (LRAD) filed in their SEC filings of Sept 2008 that the device is capable of sufficient acoustic output to cause damage to human hearing or human health, expressing concern that the  misuse could lead to lawsuits.
• Private security police forces were employed. They went up the hill, onto the campus and students were just coming out of their dorms, hearing this noise, the helicopters, they didn’t know whether they should stay in their buildings. They started to arrest people who didn’t know what was going on.
• This is the highest police per protester ratio I’ve ever seen, definitely a radicalizing experience for these students, definitely no cause for arrests. Wantonly arresting people in a violent fashion.
• When we spoke to shop owners downtown, there was a hatred, I’ve never seen before. The sympathy came from the neighborhoods of color, it was a climate of fear, they were basically saying, you can’t assemble.
• It almost seemed like it was a police convention. The Pittsburgh Police Department wore military fatigues.  I saw more Canine Units there then any other demonstration.

Guest – Attorney Joel Kupferman, National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer /New York Environmental Law and Justice Project

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 Law and Disorder September 7, 2009 [52:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• States increase opposition to money making traffic cameras: lawsuits.

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Alfred McCoy: CIA OIG Report PDF

Last month, marked the release of the CIA’s Office of Inspector General report investigating the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees. The nearly fifty percent redacted report focused on incidents which exceeded the torture guidelines written in the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos.    In the report, waterboarding a detainee 183 times was noted with only a concern, and highlighted abuses include faking the execution of a detainee by (quote) “contractors” without training and pointing an unloaded gun to a prisoners head.  This report was not released with John Yoo’s torture memos. A move which could’ve helped prosecute torture architects such as Yoo and other Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who violated their professional ethical duties when they wrote memos claiming the administration’s proposed torture techniques were legal.  Hear Al McCoy speak at Left Forum

Al McCoy:

• The chronology is important, the report is an investigation into excesses.
• The report also looks at the period ranging from 12 to 18 months when the alternative methods were authorized by President Bush  – “enhanced interrogation techniques”
• For the first time in the history of the CIA, they were authorized to operate their own prisons, the so-called 8 black sites that operated from Thailand to Lithuania
• (Inspector General investigators) They opened up these secret sites and started collecting these detainees before they had clear guidelines and supervision
• Torture is seductive, erotic  to the human mind, a process of which we know very little.
• Under US law section 23.40 of the Federal Code, psychological torture is legalized, there are only 4 things you can’t do under US law.  One of them is death threats and death threats against a third party
• One of those hapless field agents that went over the top will take the fall. Yet, we know former Defense secretary authorized extraordinary techniques and his directions went down through the chain of command, it got all the way down to Abu Ghraib (prison photos link), where those soldiers were actually complying with those directives.
• The directives were illegal. You should be prosecuting the person who gave those orders at the top of the chain of command.
• In this case instead of having bad apples in military parlance, we’re going to have “rogue agents.”
• The stages of a country ruling with impunity -  we’re not talking about a change of regime and then a tribunal, this is assuming continuity of government. (Clinton/Bush/Obama)
• It was necessary for our security: Dick Cheney’s latest argument – “so what, it made us safe.”
• We may have done these crimes but we now need to pull together and develop ourselves as a nation.
• The CIA had two distinguished cognitive scientists at Cornell University medical center in New York City, Doctors Henkel and Wolf. Ultimately they found the most devasting mode of torture is forced standing.
• Stand for hours motionless, sometimes days at a time, fluids flow to the legs, kidneys shut down, hallucinations begin, it’s incredibly painful.
• What they found back in the 1950s is you can make people do forced confessions, but its not very good in extracting objective information.
• Colin Powell’s former military aid, charged that Cheney in particular ordered this torture and extracted the false information – specifically with Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi a prisoner whose false confession was used to link Saddam Hussein and Al-Queda.
• The best we can hope for is a Congressional Review, perhaps a Senate inquiry into the Bush years, that would look at the origin of the policy, the full nature of the policy, and whether or not it worked, not only gains but the costs. A serious, sober politically objective honest inquiry, apart from the prosecutions that may come from the Special prosecutor.  Check out Progress Report’s – Accountability
• Within the American Psychological Association, these are not medical practicioners, they don’t take the Hippocratic Oath. It’s one branch of the medical community, the psychologists.

Guest – Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.

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Labor Law Reform: Employee Free Choice Act

The Employee Free Choice Act is a proposed legislative bill that would speed up the process for employees to form a union.  Under current labor law, workers can select union representation either through an election or something called card check, – a majority sign up.  The US National Labor Relations Board will only certify a union as the exclusive representative of employees only if it is selected by a secret ballot NLRB election or if the employer agrees to a card check process.  The catch is, that companies can refuse to bargain with a union chosen by a card check process even if 100 percent of employees want the union.  Right now, the choice to use an election process or majority sign up is controlled by the companies.

The Employee Free Choice Act would change this process and take away employers’ ability to decide whether to use only the card check process or secret ballot election.  This would make it much quicker process for employees who needed to form a union.  This labor reform law has not been proposed without a fight, nearly 200 million is funding a misinformation campaign back by groups such as the Chamber of Commerce. Read Abby’s Public Eye article here.

Abby Scher:

• In the fifties, unions represented a third of the labor force, now they represent 12 percent.
• Employers have a lot of time to beat back the union.  The Center for Responsive Politics found that the Chamber of Commerce spent 400 thousand dollars a day in opposition.
• The chamber of commerce is the largest lobby group in the country
• You can hear the rhetoric in their misinformation campaign. ..“EFCA is unAmerican, it takes away the secret ballot, unionists are thugs that will coerce workers into giving up their individual rights.”
• It’s harsh rhetoric from what you would consider a main stream group
• The national right to work committee since the fifties has flipped the script.
• Two phone calls have gotten attention, Bank of America and Citigroup . . .the center for Union Facts,  – Rick Berman and Bernie Marcus talking about how EFCA would destroy capitalism and tried to motivate people on the call to give to Republican candidates
• Chamber of Commerce front group – Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs. In the misinformation campaign, the chamber of commerce is saying that EFCA will hurt small businesses, because everyone loves small businesses.
• They retained this woman to do a study about how EFCA would destroy 600 thousand jobs. This woman’s specialty is intellectual property, this is not her background, she is a gun for hire.
• It (her research) was easily debunked but you still hear people citing that study.
• Surprisingly, unions are growing. Big businesses are the threat against small businesses, not unions.
• I encourage everyone to subscribe to the AFL-CIO blog
• Unions help workers bargain for better wages, people have money to spend, buying power, quality of life.

Guest – Abby Scher, Editorial Director of the Public Eye. Check out Abby Scher on Making Contact’s Radio Feature

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 Law and Disorder August 31, 2009 [57:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

CIA OIG Report PDF

Attorney General Eric Holder appoints special Justice Department prosecutor John Durham to conduct a preliminary investigation into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of certain detainees in U.S. custody.  In this lively first half hour discussion, hosts Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith discuss and detail why the investigation does not go after higher-ups within the US torture program, how tortured confessions are used to support war and that interrogators did not act alone.

• CIA OIG Report (PDF): Released because of requests by the ACLU / CCR / Amnesty International / Physicans For Human Rights
• Office of Legal Counsel Torture Memo Authors Should Be Prosecuted.
• Sham and Diversions: Special Prosecutor not “independent”
• 500 Year Setback: Doctors evaluating limits of torture
• Doctors, lawyers, officials, CIA, government agents involved.
• Torture report also reveal Cheney lies that intel was extracted from torture.
• CIA OIG Report Press Release
  
• Like a rat through a maze  trying to find their way around the language

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Jacob Ratner:  Bolivia Debrief (photos courtesy of Jake Ratner)

We are very pleased to have with us Jake Ratner, our own Michael Ratner’s son, that is fresh off the plane from Bolivia.  Jake is entering his final year at the University of Pennsylvania and shares with us some of his experiences from his three month stay with a Bolivian family.  Experiences include, the Aymara indigenous culture, economics and socialism among the  classes of people in Bolivia and comparisons to Cuban culture.

Jake Ratner:

• Working at a Bolivian Womens Prison
• Working with NGO helping women’s prison, teaching workshops, replacing faulty lighting etc
• San Pedro’s Mens Prison in La Paz: The prison is self functioning, the prisoners run small businesses and pay rent for their cells.
• That kind of autonomy was also in the women’s prison.
• When you go into the prison it’s like a small Bolivian village, there’s a fountain, kids running around.
• The spirit of rebellion is completely related to their culture, a culture of collective reasoning and resistance to the imposing power.
• Many women in prisons acted as drug mules. Drug laws in Bolivia, similar to Rockefeller drug laws in New York.
• El Alto, one of the poorest cities in Bolivia, extreme poverty. No plumbing. The eat a lot of freeze dried potatoes.
• Former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante made back room deals with Bolivia’s natural gas resources.  Bolivians took to the streets, many were killed. A lawsuit is pending.
• El Alto, Bolivia is a “city” of roughly 800 thousand people that sits on a plateau above La Paz. It has been growing at an exponential rate and will soon supersede the population of La Paz
• Bolivia Social Security system:  Bonos – payments to lower income families.

Guest – Jake Ratner, son of co-host Michael Ratner.  He is in his last year at the University of Pennsylvania. Jake has traveled to and studied in Cuba.  Check out Jake’s Flickr page here.

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 Law and Disorder August 3, 2009 [55:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

David Kairys: Lawyers You’ll Like

David Kairy began his career at the Philadelphia public defender’s office in the late 1960s. Since then, he’s been a leader in effort to fight discrimination and protect individual rights, now he’s regarded as one of the nation’s preeminent civil rights attorneys. David is a professor at the University of Temple Law School, where he teaches civil rights and constitutional law. He has written several books, including Philadelphia Freedom: Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer, which was published last year.

David Kairys:

• We were of a number of young firms dedicated to civil rights and representation of progressive groups.
• The Camden 28, caught in the act of breaking into a Camden, New Jersey draft board and destroying all of the files. This was a Catholic Left action.
• FBI had informant in the group, who the FBI was paying on an hourly rate. The informant supplied the means to make the action happen.
• One hundred FBI agents sat around and waited til they destroyed all the files in the office.  Many of the 28 were priests. There were more than 300 draft board raids during Vietnam.
• Father Michael Doyle said when your government is napalming children, the place you should be is in jail.
• Father Doyle and I strategized a way to start talking to the FBI informant Bob Hardy and eventually got an affadavit saying that the FBI manufactured this crime.
• I filed the affidavit and it was on the front page of the New York Times.

Guest – David Kairys, Professor of Law, the first James E. Beasley Chair (2001-07), and one of the nation’s leading civil rights lawyers. He authored Philadelphia Freedom, Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer and With Liberty and Justice for Some and co-authored the bestselling progressive critique of the law, The Politics of Law, and authored With Liberty and Justice for Some and over 35 articles and book chapters. His columns have appeared in major periodicals, and he has been profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Wall Street Journal, and Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine. Kairys’s Public Nuisance Theory.

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Detroit’s Economic Corrosion

The bankrupt General Motors will use the billions of taxpayer bailout funds to move their productions to Mexico and China.  In one report Mexican workers will be making 3 dollars an hour without benefits.  Meanwhile, the jobless in Detroit rose to 13 percent unemployment. Retired Auto Worker member of local 235,  Dianne Feeley says Detroit is 40 percent unoccupied, homes are looted for furnaces and copper and soon burned to the ground.   Dianne joins us today to give us a sense of the economic corrosion in Detroit.   Dianne Feeley Speaking – Youtube.

Dianne Feeley:

• In Detroit we were a city of 2.2 million now were about 900,000.
• Saving Corporations, Sacrificing Workers by Dianne Feeley
  
• We need manufacturing to be re-tooled like in WWII. It took 8 months to re-tool those plants.
• We’re suggesting since the United States, doesn’t have mass transit, that’s something our plants can build.
• General Motors used to manufacture buses. In addition to green vehicles, there’s the whole range of mass transit.
• Detroit no longer has any department stores in the city, although we’re 140 square miles.
• There’s no major grocery store in the city, no wonder fast food is the only thing available for large swaths of the city. Detroit is 85 percent African American.
• GM has insisted that more auto workers are laid off, and more benefits are cut back.
• Right before GM went bankrupt, the US Treasury Department demanded the UAW give up the retiree vision benefits and dental benefits.
• Now, why in an economic downturn are you going after small benefits that retirees have?
• Out of the price of the car manufactured, auto worker wages represent 8-10 percent of the total cost.
• At least in other countries when the government gives money to corporations, they don’t lay off workers. In our case, the government has helped GM and Chrysler to lay off workers, that’s what they’re demanding.
• (Instead of laying off workers) How do we move out of an auto-centric society into a mass transit society?
• In the last 30 years the unions have taken the position of “how do we make the company profitable” so there’s no concession we can’t make.
• The media and politicians (esp) have demonized the auto-worker. We’re supposed to be the high paid 73 dollars an hour worker.
• No one talks about how much CEOs make an hour. We don’t make 73 dollars/hour, that’s a miscalculation.
• The jobs not only left the US, but they left where there were better labor laws.

Guest – Dianne Feeley,  a retired auto worker who currently serves as an editor of Against the Current, a socialist magazine.  She is an advocate for auto workers and has written recently about the U.S. auto industry, arguing that the government should buy Chrysler and General Motors and turn them into a public trust.

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 Law and Disorder July 27, 2009 [57:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Obama’s Detention Policy Taskforce
• Federal Court Trials / Military Commissions / Preventive Detention
• Holder May Not Prosecute If Torturers Stay Within Yoo Guidelines
  

Segments This Week:

• Washington DC Check Points: Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
• Jewish Fast For Gaza

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Washington DC Check Points Not Legal: Mara Verheyden-Hilliard

Last summer,  D.C. police set up checkpoints around the city’s Trinidad neighborhood and denied access to drivers who refused to disclose their destination. The purpose of the checkpoints, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, was to deter violence after a string of drive-by shootings in 2008.   Recently, a federal appeals court ruled that these checkpoints are unconstitutional.  In the opinion,  Chief Judge David Sentelle of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that “citizens have a right to drive upon the public streets of the District of Columbia or any other city absent a constitutionally sound reason for limiting their access.”  The Partnership for Civil Justice

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard:

• We do think if we had not succeeded with this case, it would have been a model in implementation in urban environments throughout the U.S.
• In the District of Columbia, last summer the mayor and the attorney general deployed an extraordinary checkpoint program. It was really a blockade or barricade program.
• It was the sealing off of an entire neighborhood, police setting up check points and not letting anyone through without being interrogated. It’s an interrogation and seizure program.
• The police would question you, as to where you were going, who you were visiting, demand that you provide identity information, information on your associates, information on what you were doing, who you knew.
• You could not continue to drive on this public roadway unless you proved to the satisfaction of the police, a legitimate reason to travel further. When we challenged them, they stayed in court, they defended the program, saying it was absolutely constitutional.
• Plaintiffs included a 50 year old resident, a retired DC school teacher.  He would have to be stopped at the checkpoint to get to his own home. Visitors were reluctant to come over, to avoid getting tangled with the police. Racial profiling, police misconduct, abuse of power.
• It’s not nearly that your stopped by the police and you can explain your way in. The police set up 6 defined categories of legitmate reasons for entering. Visiting a friend is not a legitimate reason.
• If crime became the prevention for fundamental fourth amendment rights, then there wouldn’t be any fourth amendment rights to speak of.
• The issue is you have the right to travel down a public roadway without being seized by the police without any allegation of criminal activity or suspicion of criminal wrong doing.
• The Trinidad neighborhood is on the cusp of gentrification. We’re seeing a lot of these programs happening in areas that are moving toward gentrification.
• The community wants geniune responses to crime in their neighborhoods, this program was not only unconstitutional but ineffective.
• We believe they were collecting information at the checkpoints and collecting a criminal database.
• We demanded that they cease that activity and expunge the information collected in the database.
• They were sending in tag readers, they’re mounting cameras on government vehicles, they do a mass scan on license tags and suck up information on where you are.

Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard is an attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice, which represented three drivers challenging the checkpoints.

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Jewish Fast For Gaza

A group of American Rabbis have launched a water-only fast, aimed at breaking the Jewish Community’s silence over Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians. The initiative, called Jewish Fast For Gaza includes Reform, Reconstructionist, Orthodox and Conservative rabbis who call for lifting the blockade on Gaza. They plan to fast the third Thursday of each month, lasting from sunrise to sunset.

Rabbi Brian Walt:

• This idea of a fast in a time of trouble is an ancient tradition. We were stunned by the silence among the Rabbis.
• So we decided to gather together as a Minyan, to break the silence in our community.
• It’s not a Jewish-only initiative,  it’s a Jewish initiated event to draw people of all faiths.
• The state that is the state of the Jewish people is preventing food from reaching children whose growth is stunted by these actions.  To be silent in the face of that as a Rabbi, is inconceivable to me.
• Can’t one separate out, an opinion about a government and collective punishment of a whole people?
• Four goals: Lifting Israeli blockade, bring in food, make peace with your enemies.
• Does Israel recognize the Palestinian people?
• Why is Israel asking two things of it’s partner that its not prepared to do?
• It’s a pretext because Israel doesn’t want to negotiate. If Israel doesn’t want to negotiate, they’ll say the other side doesn’t want to, it’s a trick that Israel has done for decades.
• Anyone can join the fast, nearly 600 have joined. 70 Rabbis so far.
• The most vile and violent responses we get come from Israel.
• I grew up under apartheid in South Africa in a very Zionist family with deep connections in Israel.

Guest – Rabbi Brian Walt, co-coordinator of Jewish Fast For Gaza. Rabbi Walt is also the founding executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Mishkan Shalom, a synagogue in Philadelphia, PA. He is dedicated to the integration of spiritual life and social justice.  Born in Cape Town, South Africa, he was active in the struggle against Apartheid. He is a member of the board of the National Religious Campaign against Torture.

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 Law and Disorder June 8, 2009 [57:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Susan Jordan Remembered by Lynne Stewart and Heidi Boghosian
• Activist Lawyer Susan Jordan Killed In Plane Crash

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Segments This Week:

• A Look Into the Memorial Day Weekend Terror Plot – Guest Mike German
• A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE
  
• WBAI: Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

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A Look Into the Memorial Day Weekend Terror Plot

A few weeks ago we spoke with Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California about how the FBI infiltrated Southern California mosques and intrusively monitored members of the Muslim community as if they were criminals. Similar news broke the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.

Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen were ex cons and drug addicts who were probably entrapped by an all too familiar FBI informant sting that lured them into plotting to commit political violence.

Columnist for the Nation, Robert Dreyfuss writes in his article titled, Yet Another Bogus ‘Terror’ Plot since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! proved to be utter nonsense.

Mike German:

• Typically what I do is completely ignore the news stories and go straight to the indictment.
• There were a couple things in the indictment that were shocking. One, the indictment made clear that the informant was convicted in a fraud scheme. The FBI sent this criminal into a mosque. Sending a criminal into a house of worship seems like a misguided approach.
• These hapless unemployed guys were not going to get their hands on heavy weaponry any time soon, the fact that FBI brought in the SAM (Surface To Air) missle is a problem. It makes these people more dangerous than they ever would have been.
• Reading through the indictment, these guys weren’t able to find a gun in New York City, let alone a Stinger missile.
• It was also the informant who introduced the terrorist organization into the discussion.
• Bottomline is you don’t want the government inventing a crime than enticing innocent people into that crime.
• The argument against that is that the people were pre-disposed to commit the crime and the government presented the opportunity. In this case the informant seemed to bringing all the important facts into the game.
• Fits into pattern – you can turn to the Liberty 7 Case, The Ft. Dix Case, the California Lodi Case that involve informants.
• I worked as an undercover agent and it surprises me why these aren’t long term projects with undercover agents. (instead using ex-con informants)
• For the most part the undercover agents’ motives are pure, they’re better trained on how not to commit entrapment and document the planning of the crime instead of using enticements.
• The indictment says that the informant was offering money in an impoverished community. 10 – 15 thousand dollars to join the team. If you’re out of work, it’s kind of hard to turn that down.
• The facts will have to come out in the case as far as documented history of whether these people are involved.
• They could have wrapped this up without making it seem like they’re saving New York City from this terrible destruction.

Guest – ACLU attorney and former FBI agent, Mike German, German develops policy positions and proactive strategies on pending legislation and executive branch actions concerning domestic surveillance, data mining, freedom to travel, medical and financial privacy, national ID cards, whistleblower protection, military commissions and law enforcement conduct. German currently serves as an adjunct professor for Law Enforcement and Terrorism at the National Defense University and is a Senior Fellow with GlobalSecurity.org. German graduated from the Northwestern University Law School , and graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in Philosophy. A sixteen-year veteran of federal law enforcement, German served as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations. As an undercover agent, German twice infiltrated extremist groups using constitutionally sound law enforcement techniques. These operations successfully prevented terrorist attacks by winning criminal convictions against terrorists.

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A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE

We hear from Sister Dianna Ortiz, who was abducted in 1989 by right-wing forces in Guatemala and brutally tortured.  She wrote about her experiences and recovery in the book The Blindfold’s Eyes. My Journey From Torture to Truth.  Ortiz is the founder and director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).  We listen also to Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Jeremy is also a frequent contributor to the Nation.  Lastly we hear an excerpt from Michael Ratner’s speech.  Co-host Michael Ratner, is the president, Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international human rights lawyer who in 2006 filed a criminal complaint in the courts of Germany requesting the criminal prosecution of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Speakers :

• Michael Ratner, is the president, Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international human rights lawyer
• Laura Flanders, journalist and host of GRITtv
• Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
• Sister Dianna Ortiz -founder and director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC)
• Gitanjali Gutierrez, attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights representing prisoners held at Guantanamo
• Chris Hedges, former New York Times Mideast bureau chief, author “American Fascists”
• Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books and author of “The Collapse of ‘The Movement’; the Resistance and the Revolutionary Movement We Need”

Organized by Revolution Books / Libros Revolucion

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For WBAI Listeners:

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

Here on Law and Disorder we recently talked with several guests on the escalation of war in Afghanistan under the Obama Administration. Last week Obama appointed General Stanley McChrystal to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan, – another decision revealing how Obama has restored the most notorious Bush era policies according to James Petra, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. In his article titled Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars, Petra outlines how McChrystal’s past brutal leadership is marked by systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and extrajudicial assassinations. Between September 2003 and August 2008, Petra writes – McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations. Petra also mentions that McChrystal is one reason why Obama is fighting to prevent the release of graphic photos that document torture by US soldiers and interrogators. Related: Mysterious Chip-CIA’s Latest Weapon Against Taliban.

Jim Petras:

• It’s very clear that Obama wants a bigger and more ferocious counterinsurgency program.
• Obama is also concerned because the entire Pakistan and Afghanistan borders are supporting resistance. Indigenous, anti-colonial forces have taken over.
• He’s going all out now, he’s pressured the puppet president of Pakistan to launch this humanitarian crime against the Pakistani people, creating 2 million Pakistani refugees, destruction and civil war.
• The overall picture that we get is a tremendous boost in militarization. In the last couple of months it’s one attack after another on the Pakistan military.
• McCrystal is gung-ho, he’s a greater asset to destroy the social networks among the resistance. Similar to Vietnam, to go into villages and assassinate local leaders.
• General McCrystal is a proponent of direct action strictly involved in US terrrorist operations. Slitting throats and strangling anyone remotely connected with the armed resistance.
• There was effort to distinguish between civilians and armed resistors. McCrystals approach is to empty the pond to catch the fish. There going in to drive out millions of people in Pakistan to catch a few thousand resistance fighters.
• This is a monstrous humanitarian disaster compared to Rwanda.
• Torture Photos: You can’t publicize the worst activities of the person you appoint to be the head honcho in this phase of the war.
• Navy Seals, Delta Force, Special Operations Command. I was at Ft. Bragg, in a debate with military officers regarding death squads in Central America. These are killing operations, no surrender. The people that go into it are psycopaths.
• That Obama appointed McCrystal to this position builds bridges back to the worst part of the Bush Administration. Obama has accepted the general paradigm of the past presidents, he has a vision of military empire building, rather than realizing that much more power is achieved in economic expansion and investment.
• The US thought they could do both, economic and military empire building, but with the loss of manufacturing and rise of financial businesses there was no counterweight to the military side of empire. American power can only be realized through a massive military commitment.
• This is a war against a people, it’s going to be a long dirty war. It’s already shaping up. It’s a cost for big oil and manufacturing, rather than a benefit.

Guest – James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50_year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co_author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006); Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007) and Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press 2008)

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 Law and Disorder April 13, 2009 [57:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates

• Michael Ratner: NATO Laws allow for extraordinary rendition
• US Can Pressure European Countries For Authority To Use Their Airports To Render People
• Michael Ratner Visits Karl Marx’s House
• Spain to Indict Six Top US Attorneys Involved With Torture

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Some Prisoners at Bagram AFB, Afghanistan May Challenge Detention

Last week a federal judge ruled that some prisoners held by the US military at Bagram Air Base prison in Afghanistan have the right to challenge their imprisonment. There are more than 600 people being held at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan without charges.

The federal ruling does not apply to prisoners captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, citizenship and location of the capture will determine if prisoners could challenge their detention in court.

Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network said that the Bagram ruling meant that changes to the Bush detention policies would go beyond merely closing Guantánamo and extend “to any place where the United States seeks to hold individuals in a legal black hole.”

Attorney Tina Foster:

• Filed writ of Habeas Corpus for the 4 detainees to challenge their detentions.
• Judge Bates: The US cannot manipulate the jurisdiction of the courts by holding people deliberately in places where the courts have not traditionally exercised jurisdiction.
• Bagram is the main military base in Afghanistan, it was an old Soviet air hangar, that’s where they’ve established a prison.
• 600 in Bagram prison.
• There are other coalition forces at Bagram AFB with military presence, but as “guests” of the US.
• US Government: Unlike Guantanamo, Bagram is in the middle of a war zone.
• Bagram was the original Guantanamo, a lot of the people at Guantanamo first spent time at Bagram.
• A few years ago, working with you Michael (Ratner) one of the happy tasks I had, was to travel all over the world, contacting the families of the detainees at Guantanamo. It also became clear that there were people locked up in other places besides Guantanamo.
• Shockingly,the Obama Administration has adopted the Bush Administration policy on Bagram. All of their legal arguments, all of their secrecy, still deciding not to disclose any information.
• What has been different than the Bush Administration, is that when Obama signed orders to close Guantanamo, he set up a task force to look at detainee policy more broadly. That report is due in July.

Guest – Tina Monshipour Foster is the founder and Executive Director of the International Justice Network (“IJN”), and serves as lead counsel in several of IJN’s legal cases on behalf detainees imprisoned without charge at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Ms. Foster’s work on behalf of prisoners and other victims of human rights violations has been featured in major media outlets in the US and abroad, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian, Al Jazeera channel, and others.

From November 2004 to May 2006, Ms. Foster was an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and Counsel for CCR’s Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. Prior to joining CCR, she was a litigation associate at Clifford Chance US LLP and previously served as a law clerk for Hon. Delissa A. Ridgway at the United States Court of International Trade. Ms. Foster is a graduate of Cornell Law School, where she was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal.

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Guantanamo Bay Prison, Update

Today we talk with Emi MacLean, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights to get an update, an impression of where things stand with Guantanamo Bay prisoners, their status of Habeas Corpus, and the Obama administration’s position. There are also 17 innocent Chinese muslims called Uighurs asking, again for their release. Our guest Emi MacLean has worked with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers to torture.

Attorney Emi MacLean:

• More Guantanamo prisoners have left in the last weeks of the Bush Administration then the first 100 days of the Obama Administration.
• 240 people at Guantanamo right now. Approximately, 20 Guantanamo prisoners will face any prosecution.
• We’ve held more than 775 people at Guantanamo
• The people at Guantanamo right now are not there because of some greater threat assessment, they are there because of their country of nationality.
• Almost all the Europeans were released early on, almost all the Yemenis remain behind.
• A federal district judge ordered the release of the Uighers last October, the Bush Administration challenged the release.
• When we asked the Obama Administration to drop the challenge, they have yet to do so.
• I remember seeing civil liberties groups celebrating the executive order calling for the closure of Guantanamo in one year. But nothing has really changed for the reality of those men in Guantanamo. This is a consistent devaluation of the life of the men imprisoned there.
• We’ve seen the Obama Administration lawyers refuse to back away from the Bush Administration’s position on states secrets.
• It’s very hard for people to give up power.
• What makes our work difficult, is that it usually takes a couple of weeks for our communications to clear. The communication between counsels on what the Guantanamo conditions are.
• The Obama Review Team determined that the conditions at Guantanamo complied with Geneva Convention, which was certainly not what we were hearing and certainly not what we were seeing.
• The overwhelming majority of the men at Guantanamo were still in brutal conditions of solitary confinement and still reporting severe psychological and religious abuses at Guantanamo.
• No middle ground, these men should be tried or released.

Guest – Attorney Emi MacLean has worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative (GGJI) since June 2006. She works on issues related to Guantánamo and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers-to-torture. She helps coordinate the pro bono attorneys representing the hundreds of men still detained at Guantánamo and supports CCR’s direct representation of a number of current detainees.

In addition, Emi is involved in civil actions brought on behalf of former prisoners released from Guantánamo (Rasul v. Rumsfeld and Celikgogus v. Rumsfeld) and actions under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) challenging the government’s refusal to disclose information about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of Guantánamo attorneys (Wilner v. NSA) and the CIA’s secret detention program (Amnesty International, CCR, et al. v. CIA). In addition to direct litigation, Emi’s work with CCR includes legislative and international advocacy.

Emi has previously worked or volunteered with the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), Human Rights First, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Prior to law school, Emi worked with South Africa’s National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL), and Médecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). Emi graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center.

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 Law and Disorder January 12, 2009 [57:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Rick Warren, invited speaker at invocation ceremony – Obama Inauguration
• Pope says homosexuals bad for ecology.

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Saul Landau – Cuba 50th Anniversary

Then and now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960_2008

Hosts talk with author and internationally known scholar Saul Landau about his recent article titled Then and Now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008 and the Cuban 50th Anniversary.
Saul Landau:

• It’s almost a miracle the revolution in Cuba survived 50 years, considering the United States was determined to destroy it.
• In light of all that the Cuban revolution emerges as something miraculous.
• One looks at Cuba today, one finds lots of despair, especially after 3 brutal hurricanes.
• You see Cubans hanging out in the street in the middle of the work day, drinking beer, not exactly a sign of high spirited socialist morality.
• Some are plotting to go to Florida, where they still think there’s some paradise waiting for them. Some do succeed, cleaning the toilets at the Miami airport.
• I kept saying to myself, if someone came over from Europe to the United States in 1862, they would say “Oh, this place had so much promise.”
• I see the Cuban Revolution as a total success, in the sense it achieved all of its goals and then some.
• When I first went to Cuba, I was 24 at the time, the kids were running ministries and it was creative anarchy.
• Pre – Bay of Pigs: Cuba survived so many US based sabotages, terrorist attacks were launched from the United States.
• Some were assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, some were attempts to burn down Cuban installations.
• Fidel set out the goals of the Cuban Revolution that were established in the 1860s with the first war of Cuban Independence against Spain.
• Which meant not taking crap from the United States. However, anyone who defied the United States was removed from office by the Marines, or overthrown by a coup backed by the US.
• Removed from office in Domican Republican in 1965, Removed from office in Brasil in 1964, Ghiannah, the coup in Chile.
• Here Fidel stands for Cuban sovereignty which means disobedience.
• Today Cuba has 70 thousand doctors. 20 thousand in Venezuela, plus Cubans were actors on the world stage.
• Cuban soldiers helping stop apartheid in Southern Angola in 1986-87, and paved the way for independence in Angola and the release of Nelson Mandela.
• The Cuban Revolution WAS successful. Now, there are many professionals, such as engineers and doctors working as cab drivers or making pizza. The salary and wage structure are not just.
• When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cuban economy tanked and Cubans were on their own. They’ve buying and selling illegally, which in the last 18 years, has had a corrosive effect. Each Cuban has had to have some sort of hustle in order to get along. Cuba must begin to make reforms now.
• Upsides: They can’t get evicted or homes foreclosed on them/ Access to the best medical care.
• A gerontocracy has been running Cuba for security reasons and they have to hand the car keys over to their middle aged kids.
• You have no right to practice opposition politics. Which is a minus. When you have highly educated people without access to the internet, creativity and productivity suffers.
• Ironically, the US and Cuba military have had good relations.
• Once the travel ban and embargo is dropped, and a million Americans come pouring in with fat wallets, the state has basically lost control of the economy.
• If they can’t trust the citizens to back up the system that has given them these rights, the right to housing, jobs, education, medical care etc.
• The counter-revolution was exported to Florida, (Republican Cubans – Miami) that’s where they are.
• Obama Administration – look for travel ban lifted for Cuban Americans. For the first time the President of the United States will owe nothing to the Cubans in Miami.
• Raul Castro has offered a swap of prisoners with new president
• Monroe Doctrine Funeral : Established 1823, written by John Quincy Adams, essentially saying that European colonial powers should stay out of Latin America

Guest – Saul Landau, an internationally known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights. Landau has written over ten books, short stories and poems. His films include: Fidel, 1968 /Cuba and Fidel 1974, / The Uncompromising Revolution, 1990. To order films send email to RoundWorldProductions at gmail.com

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RNC 8: Terrorism Charges Filed, Free Speech Chilled

Eight alleged leaders of the Republican National Convention protest organization called the RNC Welcoming Committee have been charged under the 2002 Minnesota Patriot Act with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. The RNC 8, may each face up to 7 and a half years in prison for their alleged roles in the RNC protest activities. The charges against the RNC 8 follow a year’s worth of investigation by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department with coordination of state and federal agencies that had infiltrated and collected information on the group.

The RNC 8 are Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector

According to Bruce Nestor, Minnesota Chapter president of the National Lawyers Guild, police did not find evidence of bomb making materials during the raids only common household items such as paint and computers. The National Lawyers Guild also mentions that police used paid informants that alleged the protesters intended to sabotage airports.

• RNC Welcoming Committee: anti-authoritarian anarchist group. It is an open, public organization with a website and press releases.
• Originally charged with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism.
• Now, the Ramsey County attorney Susan Gertner in St. Paul Minnesota has added 3 more charges.

1. Conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism, second degree.
2. Conspiracy to damage property in furtherance of terrorism.
3. Conspiracy to damage property criminal charge.

• With these charges the RNC 8 could get 20 years each under Minnesota patriot act style statute.
• Includes property damage as an act of terrorism /some plate glass windows broken, some police cars damaged.
• No property damaged occurred before the RNC 8 were arrested. Evidence Project – National Lawyers Guild

Guest – Gena Berglund with the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration

We hear from Elizabeth Holtzman, Author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush. The panelists at the event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.”

Elizabeth Holtzman:

• When the president takes the oath of office, treaties are the law of the land.
• The president is responsible for carrying out the Geneva conventions.
• The idea to torture in order to get information is not accurate. As a prosecutor, we handle murders, rapes, robberies, everyday in New York City and around this country.
• We don’t get the information to solve these crimes by beating it out of people, we do it through smart detective work and we do it through careful investigation.
• The idea that we can handle local crimes without torture or crimes of war is nonsensical .
• It’s important for us not to get into this trap of the ticking clock. When you’re dealing with a serial rapists or murderer you got a ticking clock too.
• We manage to deal with that everyday without torturing people in this country.
• Impeachment: A person can be impeached after he or she has left office.
• Statute: The Anti-Torture Act, it is a convention against torture making it a US crime. Which makes torture a felony prosecutable in the USA.
• If death results from torture, there’s a death penalty, which means there is not statute of limitations.
• Which means that somewhere down the line as long as these people are alive, they can be prosecuted and brought to justice.
• The War Crimes Act of 1996, which makes it a federal crime to deal in a cruel and inhuman way with detainees. This can be prosecuted in federal courts.
• So, whether “water boarding” is torture or not, is irrelevant under the War Crimes Act.
• That’s why Alberto Gonzales, wanted to opt out of the Geneva Conventions with respect to the members of Al-Quaeda.
• A little problem: The Supreme Court in the summer of 2006 ruled: the Geneva Convention applies to all US detainees. War Crimes Act liability.
• While passing the Military Commissions Act, they also slipped in that the War Crimes Act would be in effect retroactively.
• We need to restore the War Crimes Act because it has no statute of limitations. Restore as it was before October 2006, That will allow us no matter what to bring the prosecutions that need to be brought.

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 Law and Disorder December 1, 2008 [53:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Ali Al-Marri Case Update: Key Police State Building Block At Stake
• Jeremy Scahill: This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House – Scroll Down

Host Updates:

Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith update on the media discussions of whether to prosecute the “torture conspirators”, the details of Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s collapse, and a preventive detention scheme that could replace Guantanamo prison.

• No truth commission. Insist on criminal investigations and prosecutions of torture conspirators.
  
• Power concedes nothing without demand, it never did and it never will.
  
• Mukasey gives speech about not prosecuting people during Federalist Society speech, then collapses on the stage.
• A Seattle state court judge in the federalist society audience started yelling, Tyrant! Tyrant! Tyrant!
• This was about law itself, unless you have prosecutions going forward it will happen again.
• How will Guantanamo be closed? CCR general position: Repatriate 95 percent, try the rest in federal court.

Related Articles:

• Don’t Repackage GTMO by Michael Ratner and Jules Lobel
• A Preventive Detention Law – Michael Ratner
  
• Laws Broken With Impunity Today, Can and Will Be Broken With Impunity Tomorrow – Michael Ratner

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Ali Al-Marri Case Update: Key Police State Building Block At Stake

In June of this year, an en banc Federal Appeals Court in Virginia ruled 5-4 that the Bush Administration could subject Ali Al-Marri to indefinite detention even though he was a resident of the United States. The court in the fourth circuit ruled that US residents could be locked up indefinitely as enemy combatants even though they were never charged with a crime. Al-Marri is the only enemy combatant currently in detention and without charges in the United States.

Jonathan Hafetz:

• Can the president declare legal residents including American citizens, enemy combatants, deprive them a right to a trial and hold them indefinitely.
• This, based on the idea that there is a global and never ending war on terror.
• Though on sovereign soil, no right to habeas corpus. He was declared an enemy combatant, the case was lost in an embank in the fourth circuit
• Why is this case so critical to liberty in the United States . . . ?
• The five judges who ruled against the case, said essentially that there must be this power to effectively detain people in the United States to prevent terrorist attacks.
• Ruling: the president can label legal residents including American citizens an enemy combatant in the United States, without a trial, no habeas, hold them indefinitely.
• It’s the idea of the president to use the military to seize people including citizens from their home or places of work.
• A very dangerous power to allow any president to have, it corrupts the justice system, it can be used as a weapon,
• Seven years of these cases of assertion of executive power, and the courts have not answered this fundamental basic question, who can be detained by the military, who is a soldier and who is a civilian?
• All that is stated is that if someone picks up a weapon on the battlefield, that person can be a soldier, but in the most extreme cases in the war on terror – - such as being picked up in the United States as a soldier in the extended geographic concept of the war on terror – - the courts have not grappled with whether there is habeas in those cases.
• Even the judges who ruled against us did say that it included American citizens.

Guest – Jonathan Hafetz, Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, National Security Project.

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Jeremy Scahill: This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House

As President-elect Barack Obama starts building his administration, many are watching who he selects and how these choices will be consistent with the rhetoric of change. Hosts talk with investigative journalist and author Jeremy Scahill about his recent article calling to question the list of recent appointees to the Obama team. Some have a history of supporting torture, despite Obama calling for the shutting down of Guantanamo, and others have associations with the neo-conservative Project For The New American Century.

Jeremy Scahill:

• Clinton’s policies laid the groundwork for some of the most repressive and violent policies of the Bush era, on Iraq, civil liberties, on economic policy.
• He (Clinton) rained missles down on Iraq, bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 without UN authorization. He pushed through NAFTA and GAT, he launched airstrikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, he militarized the war on drugs, particularly the counterinsurgency war in Latin America. CIA renditions began.
• Obama is taking these same individuals who were part of that bi-partisan war machine and putting them back in prominent positions.
• Obama’s defense secretary – Robert Gates, George HW Bush’s former director of the CIA.
• What message does that send not only to the anti-war people who were a large part of Obama’s base but to those which heard Obama say we’re going to change the way Washington’s foreign policy is run?
• Henry Kissenger says it’s (Obama administration) outstanding.
• The fact that these people are praising Obama, gives us a sense of what to expect from the economic team.
• The message is clear that corporate interests are going to reign supreme, over the interests of ordinary working folks in this country.
• A total contradiction in Obama’s campaign pledge to speak up for the middle class. The reality is is that he is putting together a team with the people who are part of the problem.
• Naomi Klein: Obama represents the status quo, which is not good for people who roll up their sleeves everyday and go to work, or suffering poor
• Eric Holder, attorney general, though better than any AG the Bush Administration has appointed, Holder has worked the Chiquita Banana Co., the most vicious violators of human rights in Latin America.
• I think its incredibly important that we put tremendous pressure on the Justice Department, on the Obama Administration to actually seek out justice.
• Obama Adminstration may not prosecute “torture conspirators.” because they open themselves up to Democratic complicity. Complicity such as voting for the Patriot Act, supporting the illegal, unlawful prison in Guantanamo.
• Former Chief Assistant of the CIA, Brennen steps down from CIA director nomination, a passionate supporter of torture techniques.
• The idea that Obama even keeps him on board as one of the people who is going to decide who runs the intelligence apparatus in this country is shameful.
• It’s Orwellian, you vote for change, and you get torture and skewed intelligence.
• The reality is that Obama is not going to end the occupation in Iraq, he is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
• He’s not going to be great at all in holding the Bush officials accountable.
• We need to start building a movement in this country that is independent of electoral politics.
• Ultimately the premier issue of our time – Radical Privatization.
• Yes, its good that John McCain and Sarah Palin are not in power in this country but Obama is not a saint, he is a center democrat, closely tied to the democratic policy elite.

Guest – Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation. Scahill and colleague Amy Goodman were co-recipients of the 1998 Polk Award for their radio documentary “Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship”, which investigated the Chevron Corporation’s role in the killing of two Nigerian environmental activists.

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