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

Updates:

• New York Historical Society Recognizes Henry Kissinger, Co-host Michael Smith Resigns.
• Wikileaks Cable: Assistant Secretary Posner Discusses Operation Cast Lead With IDF
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder - Book Tour Continues
• OWS Precursor: Resurrection City – Michael Ratner On Jesse Jackson’s Radio Show
• Occupy Dartmouth: Heidi Boghosian

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Occupy Hudson Valley and Bard College Student Movement

Activist and senior at Bard College, Ana Ratner joins the discussion on Occupy Colleges student movement in the Hudson Valley. Ana,  Michael Ratner’s daughter, discusses the mistreatment of workers at the college, specifically employment contractors.

Ana Ratner:

• I think people on their own (at Bard College) had been concerned about the Occupy movement. It was around that time when people found each other and wanted to do something, weekly teach ins, general assemblies.
• At Bard we have a sub-contractor called Aramark .They treat their workers very badly.
• Through the Occupy movement more kids on campus are becoming concerned about worker’s rights and financial transparency and where our money is going, how it effects and who it effects.
• Occupy Poughkeepsie, a local movement, trying to connect the regions in the Hudson Valley. OccupyHudsonValley. They have tents and a kitchen.
• At Bard College: until the Occupy movement, no one really came together. I’m learning about the whole community at Bard.
• For the most part the workers are mostly invisible, they clean your dorm and campus. There’s a group called the Student Labor Dialogue.
• Aramark was kicked off at Bard College, now they want to hire another contractor.

Guest – Ana Ratner, activist and senior at Bard College. Ana has been active with the Occupy Colleges student movement and Occupy Wall Street.
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Occupy Colleges Los Angeles and Beyond

Last week, hundreds of students walk out of class and assembled in Union Square Park to demonstrate continued support with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The protests in New York City was part of a full week of student organized action that culminated in a march to Baruch College.  This was where the CUNY Board of Trustees had met to vote on a possible tuition increase. Police and students clashed in the lobby in massive brawls, 15 people were arrested.

Natalie Abrams:

• OccupyColleges.org is all of the facilitators, it helps inform college students about the occupy movement.
• Ongoing occupy colleges action such as walk outs, teach ins, strikes, demonstrations
• Monday November 28th – In solidarity with UC Davis , UC Berkeley, CUNY Schools and all students who are defending their right to protest against rising tuition cost and out of control student debt. We ask you to STRIKE! No work, no school.
• We’re also circulating a pledge of non violence both for students and the UC Davis Presidents of all the eleven schools to commit to non-violence against students for a peaceful demonstration.
• Its gets harder to enforce non violence as they continue to hurt us.
• Non violence is our weapon.
• We’ve noticed that its all different types of schools, its private schools, its public schools, its community colleges, state colleges, the higher university levels, we really see the whole gamut of students that are joining us.
• Its horizontal, like the regular Occupy Wall St movement runs.
• We’re fighting the rising cost of tuition, the student loan fiasco and the fact that we have a lack of opportunities after graduation.
• Michael Ratner:  Hunter College had no tuition from 1874 to 1975. One hundred years without tuition, so we see the shift that’s going on.
• It’s 3 times higher than it was in 1980.
• One of my first points of action is that these administrators need to take pay cuts.
• A lot of us got together from Occupy L.A. and from some past activist groups and we saw that New York schools were calling for a city wide walk out on October 5th and we noticed there wasn’t a national presence.
• We called for a national walk out and had 100 schools participate, almost 8000 students walk out. The interest from all of the students compelled us to continue with this movement. We give ideas to schools on how to set up their occupation. We want to have a very large teach in in the early Spring.
• When somebody else gets tired, somebody else is there to take their place.
• There are always new school calling us and signing up.
• I was called by the student tea party, who were horrified by the violence. The student tea party condemned the violence that happened at UC Davis.
• When we’re a non-violent movement the only way we can lose is by giving up. – Gene Sharpe

Guest - Natalia Abrams, one of the full time facilitators with the OccupyColleges.org website.

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University Faculty, Staff and Students Disgusted At Direction Of California State University

Each year, the state of California makes cuts to the California State University system budget and each year students have responded with angry protests.  This year however the protests were much bigger partly because of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the ongoing police brutality against students and protesters.  The numbers are staggering, tuition has doubled in the last few years and the California State University Board of Trustees recently approved a 9 percent tuition increase in addition to cuts in courses and student services.  Next year, the California legislature is set to impose another 200 million in higher education cuts.  Meanwhile, college students from all over the nation have organized four nationwide acts of support with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Lillian Taiz:

• We have about 430 thousand students in the California State University system.
• The number one struggle we’re having (faculty) is the defunding, the starvation of public higher education. That creates one set of problems.
• Piled on top of that is what we consider, misplaced priorities. At a time when resources aren’t that available, you really have to be careful and targeted in how you use the resources you have.
• The students, staff and faculty are disgusted on how the leadership has a focus on their one percent.
• There’s an enormous resonance with the Occupy movement because these are good middle class jobs that are being destroyed.
• Our students are watching their parents get shoved out of the middle class and hoping their education is a pathway into a decent life.
• People have finally emerged from the shock of what’s been happening, and getting angrier and angrier and getting less tolerant of adjusting to it.
• Demand: that the resources that are available be directed at the core mission of the university.
• We’re all over the state and our faculty have been part of Occupy Oakland and everwhere.
• We’ve got to take back more power and authority over our own destiny.
• Student loans are crushing our students, the leadership of the CSU and the UC seems to think the answer to their problems is privatizing the university by shifting economic responsibility to students, faculty and staff.
• They’re using us like ATM machines. We’re all being exploited and asked to be unwilling donors to the university.
• Occupy Wall Street has opened up a door to a conversation that is so long overdue.

Guest - Lillian Taiz, President of the California Faculty Association, the union that represents the 23,000 faculty members of the California State University system and to clarify, this is (not the University of California system where the pepper spray incident took place).

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

Updates:

• What Does OWS Mean? – Michael Steven Smith
• Liberty Square Symbolic, At The Foot Of Capitalism
• Redistribution of Money and Power
• Nationally Coordinated Bust: Oakland Mayor Says She Was On Conference Call With 18 Mayors
• Michael Smith’s Story Of Liberty Square Police Raid
• NYTimes Candid With Spoils Of Libya Invasion
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder

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Legal Fallout From OWS Raid In New York City

Very early last Tuesday morning, teams of New York City Police in full riot gear descended upon the 2 acre park known by protesters as Liberty Square, home of Occupy Wall Street.  Hundreds were arrested as police and bulldozers dismantled and tore down tents, confiscated gear, computers and clothes.  Plain clothes construction workers assisted in filling large dump trucks with personal belongings and equipment from the encampment.  The massive eviction is one of many reported across the country in past weeks.

Attorney Danny Alterman:

• There’s been a core group of 20 or 30 people working on issues that effect the occupiers down on Wall Street.
• We talked strategy, we created a document that would decide and get us into court in the morning.
• We are arranged to meet Judge Billings at 6AM
• We wanted to judge to issue a temporary restraining order which means that the police could not continue to evict people and order them back into the park with their belongings.
• We got a signed order from the judge to let our clients back in.
• We served Brookfield Properties which is the owner of the park, the city of New York through the corporation council, and the police department by fax with a copy of the order.
• What this reminded me of is was what had happened precisely in 1971 when the Attica Massacre happened. When we got a court order to go in because people were dying and getting shot, inside and the prison authorities refused to open up for medics and lawyers, causing the death of other people.
• Finally I said to one guy who was getting on me and getting on another lawyer that was there. I said listen, this reminds me of Attica, he said I’ve never been to Attica, I said we can make those arrangements.
• I said, you realize you’re violating a court order, and in contempt of court.
• Mayor Bloomberg in the course of us getting an order and finding out about it, had decided to close the park, which was the complete opposite of what the court said which was to re-open the park.
• Homeland Security was definitely there, you can tell by the crew cuts and the shoes.
• There was a temporary restraining order issued at 6:30 AM. We didn’t think Judge Billings would stay on the case. She didn’t. We went back at 11:30AM, and once a judge was assigned had about a 2 hour argument.
• We received papers as we walked into court from the city which contained a affidavit which is a legal document swearing to issues of public safety, health issues, other kinds of issues, that was clearly prepared before they evicted the protesters 10 hours before.
• What this means is that the city knew in preparing these papers that there was going to be a legal challenge.
• Brookfield Properties a descendant from US Steel. This is direct descendant from US Steel.
• We may be looking at 21st century speech assembling petitioning.
• Its a privilege and an honor to represent these people and I think the people have the pulse of the country and its happening.

Guest – Civil rights attorney Danny Alterman, Danny is part of the  Liberty Park Legal Working Group.

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Global Capitalist Crisis and Long Term US Unemployment

Thousands around the country continue to stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement claims to defend the 99 percent of Americans against the wealthiest 1 percent who control 50 percent of the wealth in the United States.  Meanwhile, long term US unemployment is taking a heavy toll socially. The social costs are high, the stress, tension and anxiety within families, the costs of counseling, and much more. We discuss these topics with returning guest, economics professor Rick Wolff  who says, enormous wealth could be produced right now with the unused tools and raw materials put together with the nation’s unemployed people, we could rebuild our cities and infrastructure.

Professor Rick Wolff:

• Debt is always a sign of something else. You go into debt because you see a need or opportunity for which you don’t have the money and so you either forego the need or opportunity or borrow.
• If you see off the chart increases of debt like you do in the case of individuals in the last 30 years, or corporations and in the case of governments at a slow rate over the last 30 years, then you have to ask the question why?
• The 1970s come along and that period of 150 years of rising wages is over. It’s over because the computer replaces large numbers of people they don’t need to be hired. Production is moving out of the United States.
• Immigrants are flowing into the United States because the uneven development of the world economy, makes them poorer and the United States look more attractive.
• Suddenly employers have the greatest of all possibilities, they don’t have to raise wages anymore.
• Employers: If you’re not happy here, there’s a lot of other people that will be.
• Meanwhile you’re drumming into the American people, you should live better, everybody should have more. . .
• You put the American people into an impossible situation.  You might have been able to handle it by having a real political leadership in America. We didn’t have that conversation, no politician wanted to be the bearer of that bad news.
• What can the American people do?  They did more work. You borrow money. Whenever there’s a debt, there’s a lender and a borrower. This is a strange game to blame the borrower.
• Greece, now you have a situation that invites all kinds of corporations to make a decision.
• When the Greek Drachma, their old currency disappears to be replaced by the Euro, all kinds of business decisions became different.
• There was no border, you couldn’t have a tariff as you could before. Once you have a uniform currency you can’t do that. It’s like Tennessee erecting a tariff against products from Kentucky.
• Who lent to the Greek government? Above all, the French and German banks.
• It’s the banks that are making money because of the concentration of production in their country, with which they came to the poor countries and said hey, we got a lot of money you got a lot of need.
• A lot of money has been made off of Greek debt. It’s not some gift to the folks in Greece.
• As usual its a partnership and deciding that its all the fault of the Greeks as if the French and German banks didn’t make a fortune off of this.
• Italy is now where Greece was approximately six to eight months ago.
• The debt of Italy is four to five times the debt of Greece. Italy is the eight largest economy on this planet. They have over 2 trillion dollars of debt outstanding.  We sell a very important part of our output to the Europeans.
• I would demand now, an immediate government employment program. A commitment by the United States government.

Guest -  Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
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 Law and Disorder November 7, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• National Lawyers Guild List For Occupy Wall Street
• OWS Victories / Albany / Cleveland / Nashville / Oakland /
• OWS Arrests-Problems / Denver / Taking Generators / Arizona /
• Bread and Puppet OWS Theater During Halloween Parade NYC
• GI Occupiers Get Guidance from NLG’s Military Law Task Force
• Listener Question About Obama Killing US Citizen
• Food Co-op Board of Directors Fights Back Against Lawsuit Brought by Five Members Over Boycott of Israeli Goods

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Brooklyn Fair Food Festival Urges Trader Joe’s To Support Fair Labor Standards For Farm Workers.

Brooklyn, community members joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers an organization of farm workers in Southern Florida to call on Trader Joe’s to live up to its public image as an ethical corporation by participating in the Campaign For Fair Food.  The Campaign seeks to improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato pickers by calling on major buyers of tomatoes to pay a premium of one penny more per pound for their tomatoes, ensure that this penny is passed down directly to farmworkers, and work together with the CIW to establish and implement a code of conduct in their supply chains.  Sound gathered and interviews by Michael Ratner.

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Wall Street Firms Spy On Protesters In Tax Funded Center

It was six years in the planning according to recently uncovered documents that show 150 million taxpayer dollars funding a round the clock surveillance security center in Lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms sit along side the NYPD. That’s right, high wage Wall Street firm workers will sit next to MTA, NYPD and Port Authority employees and monitor the near 3000 spy cameras installed in the area. Any individual can be tracked by the color of their clothes or face recognition with live feed cameras that also read license plates.  In her article Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters in Tax-Funded Center, investigative journalist Pam Martens also focused on the corrupt alliance of indicted corporate firms merging with police to spy on law abiding citizens funded by tax payer money. Her latest article in Counterpunch titled Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll exposes how private Wall Street corporations are allowed to order a paid detail of New York City Police at an average of 37.00 an hour. The taxpayer again picks up the tab for training, uniforms and any law suit brought from “following illegal instructions from its corporate master.”

Pam Martens:

• I had the benefit of managing my own client base, so Wall Street did not have the same type of leverage over me that it has over so many of its other workers.
• About 10 years into my tenure, I started reading about the private justice system Wall Street had set up where both customers and employees had to waive their rights to the nation’s courts.
• I started complaining and advocating against that. They were self policing, that was totally corrupt.
• Then I started protesting in the streets, filed a large federal rights action, and testified at several venues, the SEC and the Federal Reserve.
• The story is much more insidious than I first realized.  I came across a 60 Minutes expose on the counter-terrorism unit of the NYPD. At the very end of the piece there is a tour of the facility, the one that I’m talking about.
• The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, which is jointly operated by Wall Street’s potential felons and the largest law enforcement police force in the country. It’s actually at 55 Broadway.
• Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, sitting next to public sector employees.
• It consists of 3 rows of computer terminals. 2 of those rows are dominated by Wall Street firms, the NYSE, the Federal Reserve and only one row has uniformed officers.
• I called up the producer at 60 Minutes, and said you had to have seen all these people in civilian clothes.
• The NYPD has used tax payer money to have one massive computer to look at all the individual feeds. That massive computer has artificial intelligence.
• There is absolutely no explanation for why Wall Street firms get to sit there and have access confidential databases that belong to the NYPD.  I have 2 FOIA requests with the NYPD. Every detail of us is under surveillance.
• There are some reports, they can zero in and read text messages on your cell phone.
• These Wall Street firms that have committed crime after crime, after crime, they’re currently under 51 separate state and federal investigations for securities fraud and essentially looting the public.  They’re the partners, the potential felons, are the partners with the law enforcement.
• Credit Suisse v. Billing, 551 U.S. 264 (2007), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which held that Congress’ creation of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) implicitly exempted the regulated securities industry from antitrust lawsuits under other existing laws. Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that the laws creating the SEC explicitly mention that securities regulations are in addition to, not instead of, existing law.

Guest – Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms.  She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006.   She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article.

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 Law and Disorder October 31, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• UN Votes 186-2 To Lift Cuba Embargo – US and Israel
• Anxiety Over Economy: Concentration Of Wealth Seen As Key Issue At A Volatile Time
• OWS Albany Arrest Controversy

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Occupy Des Moines Arrests

Police abuse of authority including excessive use of force are on the increase as more Occupy movements around the country are forced to disperse. Last week, 37 demonstrators were arrested in Des Moines, Iowa when 24 state troopers closed in on the Occupy movement there, arbitrarily enforcing curfew in a local park.  Still more people were arrested in the downtown area that same night. While capturing his friend being pepper sprayed in the face on video, and then arrested, an officer directed Justin Norman to back off the sidewalk into another area. Justin was then arrested for trespassing and interfering with official acts. The officer grabbed his camera, but other protesters were able to wrestle it away from him.

Justin Norman:

• There’s an 11:00 PM curfew at the park that’s normally not enforced. Some of the people said they would walk their dogs in the park after 11:00 and no one cared. The Iowa State Patrol brought out about 24 state troopers.
• I was down there doing some video taping. The protesters began to sit as the police approached.
• The police began to be strangely brutal with some of the protesters.
• One of the leaders of the chant was asked if would like to be arrested or go. He said he would go. As he was leaving they shoved him on the ground and cut open his knees.
• They dragged him off to a police van anyway. Another person was shoved to the ground, the state trooper stepped on his head and struck him the face multiple times.
• Another guy I believe is a ten year Air Force veteran, was refusing to leave the park, arms linked with another protester, in response, one of the state troopers maced him in the face.
• I was videotaping him from the edge of the sidewalk, the state trooper told me to step back, back into the park.  I’m about 20 feet from the trooper and he’s still telling me to move back.
• He tells me if I don’t continue to move back, I’m going to be charged with interference and trespassing.
• They arrested me and tried to take my camera. They took the camera and I yelled out to one of my friends and ran up and tore the camera out of the troopers hands.
• I do a demonstration against torture on a regular basis in west Des Moines.
• People got a bit frightened by the police brutality they witnessed and they decided to apply for a permit in the park. They stayed there for about 3 days, the permit expired in 3 days.

Guest – Justin Norman, activist who has filmed police misconduct, including recent raid on OWS movement in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Guantanamo Murder Case: Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld

Last week, Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriaei present oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the case of Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld. The case is a civil action filed on behalf of two men who died at Guantanamo Bay Prison in June 2006. There deaths, highly questionable and last year, four soldiers came forward with eye-witness accounts suggesting a cover up of the cause of the deaths and that they may have killed at a black site in Guantanamo.  The military has maintained that the deaths were suicides, having once famously called them “acts of asymmetrical warfare.”  Also, CCR attorneys have pointed to other documented examples of deaths and killings covered-up by the military in the recent past, including the falsification of records in the death of former football player Pat Tillman and the premeditated murders of Afghan civilians by members of the Army’s Bravo Company.  Our own Michael Ratner has recently returned from Norway after meeting with family members of one of the men.  Scott Horton article

Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:

• This case is on behalf of the families of 2 of the 3 who died in June 2006. They were high profile deaths, the military came out immediately and said they were suicides that the men had died from creating nooses from bed sheets and hung themselves in their room.
• Then there were offensive remarks made by government spokespeople, they called them asymmetric warfare.
• They saw this as an attack, the fact that these men for having taking their own lives, from having been detained without charge in solitary confinement for 4 years, as an attack on the US government.
• They were characterized as a good PR move. These were military and Department of State spokespeople.
• Yasir was 17, he was from Saudi Arabia, he was, almost like everyone there not charged, held for almost 4 years. He was apparently a long time hunger striker.
• Along with the torture and solitary they were subjected to in terms of their condition, just the torture they were subjected to in general, they were forced into restraint chairs. Restrained at five points, their forehead, shoulders wrists and ankles, had a tube inserted up their nose and a liter of fluid pumped into their stomachs.
• In 2008 from a Freedom of Information Act litigation, the government was finally compelled to produced its information, investigation into these deaths.  Supporting the claim that the deaths were suicides.
• Our clients were really disadvantaged to find out what’s really going on. I don’t think they believed these were suicides.
• The case was dismissed because the case raised special factors of national security and the military and foreign policy that were issues that were within the realm of political branches and basically not the business of courts to interfere in.
• It’s not enough to criticize the administrations anymore because the courts are accepting those arguments.
• If you’re DC, the district courts and the circuit courts in particular have been accepting those arguments.
• In 2010, 4 soldiers stationed at Guantanamo at the time came forward with eye witness accounts and were actually on duty on the night of the deaths.
• One of the soldiers came forward with direct evidence of a cover up of the actual cause the deaths.  They were transported to “Camp No”
• Hickman reported hearing screams for Camp No. They reported seeing plain clothes officers sometimes going there. It was thought to be a site possibly run by the CIA or used by the CIA or Joint Special Operations Command forces of the military who are again, not accountable.
• The disdain from the DC Circuit Court for this case and every case coming out of Guantanamo was absolutely evident from the moment I opened my mouth.

Guest – Attorney 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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 Law and Disorder October 24, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Al-Awlaki’s Family members also killed and US Citizens.
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
• New York Times: A Right To Sleep In Tents – Michael Ratner

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Occupy Wall St. – Think Tanks and Organizing

Like many protesters down at Liberty Plaza, Tim Weldon has been under employed for years. He’s got a Masters Degree, one in economic development and 10 years experience in international business.  He’s now part of Occupy Wall St working with the think tank group.  The first step is taking all the ideas and solutions generated from the movement and collating them into a more accessible format.

Tim Weldon:

• The food is hit or miss, you cycle through, get in line, whatever is there at the time, that’s what you get.
• There’s sanitation, first aid, media press, PR. The group that I’m specifically on is the think tank.
• Similar to a lot of people, said, how do I fit in and what exactly is going on? Like most people I got down there and thought how do I fit in to where I most belong?  So, I walked around for most of the day, I got to the stage to where I thought, what I would be good at and what could fit in here.
• Then I found some very like minded people who were thinking the same thing, to sort of create an opportunity for all of the ideas to be collected, organized and collated together. The think tank, we’re going to have four different receptacles for information.
• One will be from the park where we’ll have discussion groups on topics. We’re trying to develop a web platform within the NYCGA.net .
• We’re getting all walks of life, one of the best participants was a disabled man.
• The discussions have been so positive and energetic and we’re saying how can we take both of these ideas and forget about the established dichotomies and all this dogma that people are working with.
• Let’s go straight to us right here, let’s create a productive use of this information where everybody is happy.
• I found that everybody I’m working with open and wants to listen, wants to learn, the way most of the groups work is there’s no leaders. I like to draw differentiation between leaders and leadership.
• People are coming here after they’ve been setup and more streamline or coming here to get things more streamline. Take a step back, try to envision something different.
• Everybody seemed united around, well, they want it clean, lets get things clean.
• People were doing what had to be done and getting things done, but there was a subtle apprehension there, what’s going to happen tomorrow? How serious is it going to be? How much are we going to have to fight, not in a physical sense but in all sort of senses for this space?
• Most of the country can get behind the fact, whether your left or right, whatever it is, you’ve got some apprehension about what’s going on in the country right now and that’s what we’re trying to voice.
• Holding that space is really important to the movement.
• Maintaining that park is very important because it is the symbol.  You control us in every other aspect of our lives perhaps, but you don’t control us here.
• I left my job last week, this to me is the movement of our generation.

Guest – Tim Weldon is from upstate New York. He quit his job to dedicate his time to help the Occupy Wall Street movement. Specifically, Tim is working with the think tank group, pulling together ideas and solutions pouring in from around the country and making them more accessible to media and others. Tim has a Master’s Degrees in economic development. He also has 10 years experience in international business.

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Occupy Wall Street: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler Part 2

We continue the “know your rights”  discussion on the Occupy Wall St protests, encampments and demonstrations. Last week we talked about how the NYPD collected intelligence data from protesters.  When more than 800 people on the Brooklyn Bridge were arrested a few weeks ago,  that event was more about getting protester names and pedigree information into databases says attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler with the National Lawyers Guild.  Meanwhile students from 90 colleges and universities are protesting the price of education, being saddled with student loan debt and more. There are many aspects to knowing your rights as a demonstrator and we’ll discuss more details today with returning guest attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler.

Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunslter:

• You can be anywhere to express your first amendment rights. I think occupation is a new first amendment right.
• The occupation movement is relatively new and we haven’t really tested it in the federal courts or state courts and I think we have a good opportunity to do that.  They haven’t got people out of the park because when they threatened to do so, the number of people swelled from about 1000 to 6000.
• I think it was a question of mass support for the demonstration that prevented the police from clearing the park.
• Seattle was a successful protest (1999) it interfered with delegates going to the convention center and it was a very embarrassing thing for the police because it was an international conference.
• Kettling is those big iron fences, they put people in these fenced areas to keep them separated so they can be crowd control.
• By the time Michael and I finished this book, we were saying, oh, they’re never going to be able to demonstrate again. But lo and behold, a new form of demonstrations is upon us, and its just thrilling.
• The police officer who pepper sprayed the young woman, lost ten vacation days.
• That was the immediate result after Seattle, there were fusion centers. Those are centers where the FBI and local police get together and collect information.
• Every time they hear of a demonstration, they try to prevent it, they have many ways to dissuade people from coming to demonstrations.
• Militarization of the police: It was no longer a family occupation to protest against the war, it was a dangerous thing to do. You got stuck in a pen and you couldn’t get out.

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Margaret is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

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 Law and Disorder October 17, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Jose Couso Murdered By US Military In Iraq:
• Sami al-Hajj – Former Guantanamo Prisoner, Now Al-Jazeera Correspondent
• 44th Anniversary of Che Guevara’s Murder
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
• Groups Follow Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s Path to Canada
• UK Protects Israeli War Criminal
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder – Michael Ratner
• Richard Falk – Afghanistan War

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Occupy Wall Street: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler

There is a North America-wide strategy to take away the right to mass protest. We’ve talked about the book Hell No: Your Right To Dissent in 21 Century America, but today we have both authors of this book in the studio, attorney Magaret Ratner Kunstler and our own co-host Michael Ratner.

In Hell No, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the country’s leading public interest law organization, offers a timely report on government attacks on dissent and protest in the United States, along with a readable and essential guide for activists, teachers, grandmothers, and anyone else who wants to oppose government policies and actions. Hell No explores the current situation of attacks upon and criminalization of dissent and protest, from the surveillance of activists to the disruption of demonstrations, from the labeling of protestors as “terrorists,” to the jailing of those the government claims are giving “material support” to its perceived enemies. Offering detailed, hands-on advice on everything from “Sneak and Peak” searches to “Can the Government Monitor My Text Messages?” and what to do “If an Agent Knocks,” Hell No lays out several key responses that every person should know in order to protect themselves from government surveillance and interference with their rights.
Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunslter:

• This is a time that we don’t know the return dates are because they weren’t put throught the system, they were given desk appearance tickets or summons, people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge and elsewhere.
• Politically what do you make of the fact that they let these people stay in the park? Perhaps Michael they had an opportunity to do something about it if they did something quickly.
• In Boston, they closed it down much more quickly. Each Lawyers Guild office has a hotline.
• They (the NYPD) actually led people down to the bridge walkway. There’s a law in New York that says you can’t block roadways, but you can march on sidewalks.
• They led people down to the roadway, then announced with a bull horn that not everybody could hear of the more than 800 people on the bridge – - you’re now doing something illegally and we’re going to disperse immediately or we’re going to arrest you. Most people were chanting, nobody could hear that announcement.
• Why do this? There was no place to put these 800 people. To get their names, to get their pedigree information, to do intelligence work.
• Early on with the RNC arrests, they had a sheet of paper asking what political affiliations they had. We stopped that quickly. The police department in New York City has a tremendous intelligence division.
• Some people we have no idea why they were arrested.
• Yesterday morning a young woman was chalking on the sidewalk, “good morning NYPD.” Not only was she arrested, but the people photographing her arrest, were arrested.
• Much of the planning on how to stop demonstrators, happened after Seattle 1999. At that point there was this training program that began with all of these local police forces across the country and the FBI.  It wasn’t til 9/11 that they were fully funded.
• When Michael Ratner and I wrote this, we were totally depressed because we thought that demonstrations were over. There were so many ways of preventing demonstrations and people were penned.
• You can film the police in NYC. The law may be on your side, but the police don’t follow the law.
• If you’re recording audio, and only one party knows you’re recording, that’s ok in New York.
• The cop doesn’t have to give you his name, or badge number. If you ask a cop his badge number, he’ll give you the wrong number.
• I’d like to last through winter, I’m worried about these children.  The demand for justice and equality is the demand basically all over the world.
• How can we say this is too abstract for us, isn’t this what we all want?

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Margaret is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

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 Law and Disorder October 10, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Dean Christopher Edley – Prosecution of Torturers in the Bush Regime
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder – Michael Ratner
• Occupy Wall St Brooklyn Bridge Arrests – Magaret Ratner Kunstler

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Saul Landau – Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up

We welcome back internationally known scholar and film maker, Saul Landau. We talk with Saul about his recent article, A Judge Grants Dubious Probation and his film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up? In his article, Saul writes about the release of Cuban Five member Rene Gonzalez who was released on parole in Miami for 3 years. Miami isn’t a good place for an admitted Cuban agent, Saul writes, and he’s a man who infiltrated the anti-Castro Brothers to the Rescue; his life would be in danger from Cuban exile terrorist groups.  Earlier this year, Gonzalez had asked the court to allow him to return to Cuba where his family lives.  As many listeners may remember the Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prison, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court. They were accused of committing espionage conspiracy against the United States.

Saul Landau:

• The classification of terrorist fall into 3 categories.  The good, the bad and the crazy.
• The good terrorists are freedom fighters. Those are people still walking around Miami because they’ve directed their violence against Cuba, who is a bad guy.
• Then there are the bad terrorists and of course they’re all Muslims. Then there are the other terrorists who are neither good or bad, simply crazy like the guy who did the Oklahoma City bombing and this Norwegian guy who did this massacre.
• The idea in the film “Will The Real Terrorist Please Stand Up” is that people don’t know what the Cuban Revolution was and they don’t much about US policy. Ironically, Cuba is now showing this film in their high schools having found out their own students are ignorant about their own history.
• Cuba had very little recourse over terrorism for decades, other than to infiltrate the groups that were planning violence against Cuba and try therefore to impede their terrorist actions.
• The Cuban Five were looking for information that would help them stop bombings in Cuba.
• They were spying on Cuban exile groups that were based in south Florida.
• When the Soviets went away in 1991, Cuba had very little recourse in terms of economic survival other than tourism. As she began to get her tourism revved up, so to did the Cuban exiles in Miami start to level their guns; deterring tourists from going.
• Posada Carriles: We have interviews of him in the film, and of course he denies he did any of it in the New York Times.
• He gets honored, he got the keys to Hialeah, Florida for doing things he denies he has done. If he hasn’t done all these things, why would they honor him?
• Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch hired two Venezuelans to plant bombs in an airplane bathroom, which would go off after the two bombers left the plane.
• The Venezuelans confessed they were hired by Posada and Orlando. The Venezuelan police arrested them. They both got out for weird reasons. Posada escaped with the help of a 50 thousand dollar bribe to the warden of the prison.
• When Posada got out he went to work for Col. Oliver North. His next job was financed by the Cuban American National Foundation, which was the heart of the anti-Castro lobby. Orlando Bosch died after getting honored at the University of Miami.  Orlando Bosch was pardoned by George HW Bush.
• Rene Gonzales: Essentially she’s put a bulls eye on his chest.
• After the United States assassinates a U.S. citizen abroad because it is said he planning terrorist acts against the United States. Under that precedent would Cuba not have the same right to send assassins into Miami and gun a whole bunch of people who are Cuban citizens in the United States who are plotting against Cuba?
• People can screen the film at CinemaLibreStudio.com

Guest – Saul Landau, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, has produced more than 40 films in his career, most concerned with human rights. His latest documents 50 years of US-Cuba relations in which violent Cuban exiles–backed by the CIA–tried to dislodge Cuba’s government, and of five Cuban spies, now in US prisons, who tried to stop this US-sponsored terrorism.

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Occupy Wall Street: Liberty Square, New York City

We go now to hear a wide range of voices from One Liberty Plaza at the Occupy Wall Street encampment.  During these interviews, the Occupy Wall Street movement remained a collective with people of many political persuasions.  In this early period of  austerity measures, they call themselves the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1% and claim they’re using the revolutionary Arab Spring strategy to achieve results and encourage the use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.

Our own Heidi Boghosian spoke with activists, union workers, a lawyer and many more about where the movement is going, the support for it and a focus on demands such as pushing for the redistribution of wealth from the top 1 percent of Americans.

 Law and Disorder October 3, 2011 [57:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Occupy Wall Street Protest Update
• Law and Disorder on Troy Davis – July 2007 /April 2008/ October 2008 / November 2008 /
• Israelis Announce They Want To Build 1100 Houses in East Jerusalem
• 75th Anniversary of the First Brigades Going To War In Spain
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder – Michael Ratner

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Irvine 11 Case Update

Earlier this year 11 Muslim students were arrested on charges for disrupting a speech of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. The incident took place last year on the campus of the University of California at Irvine. The local District Attorney claims that the students had no right to disrupt the event, charging them with conspiracy to shut down the ambassador’s speech, even though he was able to complete the speech. Supporters claim that the Muslim students’ actions are protected by the first Amendment, and that are being charged for being vocal critics of Israel.

Last month, an Orange County court has found 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors. Facing up to one year in jail on multiple misdemeanor charges, they were sentenced to three years of probation, 56 hours of community service and fines. Each was convicted of one misdemeanor count of conspiring to disrupt Oren’s Feb. 8, 2010 speech and a second count for disrupting it.

Attorney Lisa Holder:

• I knew there were some very difficult challenges in this case. The students modeled their protest after a protest that took place in Chicago.
• There 11 students who stood up serially, one after the other, with about 3 or 4 minutes in between.
• Each student made a short statement of protest. None of the protesters in Chicago were arrested.
• A lot of the students who had a pro-Palestine perspective were targeted.
• The prosecutor framed his whole case on the notion that the students shut down the First Amendment rights of the speaker.
• This is the way they framed it at the beginning; in the statements they made to the media.
• In terms of their framing, it makes no sense from a legal perspective.
• The way the Bill of Rights work, is to protect individuals from the government. In terms of the First Amendment which protects free speech, the Fourth Amendment that protect against unreasonable searches and seizure.
• It protects the individual from the government impeding on those rights.
• An individual can’t impede or violate another individual’s First Amendment rights, only the government can do that.
• The prosecutor should not have been allowed to argue to the jury, these students violated Mr Oren’s free speech rights.
• These are wonderful young men, they’re very gracious people and there’s no way that the judge could lose sight of that.  It was outrageous, because really what was being prosecuted in their conspiracy charge was their First Amendment right to assemble.
• Penal code section 403a violates the First Amendment essentially says you can’t disrupt a meeting, violates our First Amendment to free speech.

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Attorney Dan Stormer:

• Islamophobia is really taking hold.
• I tend to believe it is Islamophobia, 9/11 hysteria, more Arab / Muslim focus than Israeli / Palestine focus.
• The use of conspiracy in this case allowed them to get in all sorts of evidence that might not otherwise be admissible.
• Penal Code 403 says if you upset a meeting and substantially interfere with its progress, you can be criminally prosecuted.
• I think the statute is unconstitutional and that’s going to be a primary basis for our appeal.
• The district attorney was calling for jail time. The D.A. attacked the judge subsequently for failing to give jail time. I think it is a severe sentence but given Orange County, and given the nature of hysteria against our clients, I’m ultimately please with the sentence.
• The background is they actually took this to a Grand Jury, and alleged they might file a felony conspiracy and felony allegation against them.
• Its shocking and horrifying that this prosecution went forward.

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Guest – Attorney Lisa Holder, Los Angeles, criminal trial attorney since 2000. Ms Holder is a member of the California Bar, The National Lawyers Guild and the California Employment Lawyer’s Association. She is a member of the board of directors for the Southern California ACLU. In addition she is an adjunct professor at Occidental College, teaching pre-law classes. Ms. Holder graduated from New York University School of Law in 2000 after obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree at Wesleyan University.

Guest – Attorney Dan Stormer, a Civil Rights, International Human Rights and Constitutional lawyer for thirty-five years and has been recognized internationally, nationally and locally as one of the top attorneys in the United States.  A graduate of New York University School of Law and Wagner College, Stormer has lectured and published extensively and has taught law school at Hastings College of Law and Loyola Law School.  He has obtained a number of large verdicts in gender discrimination in employment, civil rights violations, and age discrimination.  He has appeared before the U. S. Supreme Court and  is currently one of the attorneys on a Guantanamo Bay case.

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People Wasn’t Made to Burn – Joe Allen

People Wasn’t Made to Burn is a shocking personal story of a Mississippi Black share cropping family that faced incredible hardship and tragedy after moving to Chicago in 1947. Within the year, 4 of their infant children perished in a massive blaze in an overcrowded tenement. The father sickened with grief took justice in his own hands and shot the landlord, thought to have the set the fire. James Hickman was jailed and facing murder charges. The story takes off, author Joe Allen gives the reader an inside look into the strategy to defend Hickman in the most racist area of the country.

Joe Allen:

• I think his story is really symbolic of a whole generation of African Americans who left the South for the North or the West to find a better life and a measure of dignity and freedom.
• He came to Chicago and permanently settled here in 1945. He got a job in the steel industry which was very typical of African American men who came to the Midwest.
• While you were sort of welcomed here for the hard work and labor you would give particularly to the big steel plants, finding a home was the thing which was a source of incredible frustration and humiliation.
• Housing is the whole that Joe Hickman’s trial really revolves around.
• The African American population really up until the second world war, was really confined to a thin sliver of land on the south side of the city (Chicago)
• It was overcrowded, and what the banks do is try to use this limited space to make as much money as possible.
• Kitchenette apartments, one room hovels, that didn’t have running water, no electricity, rat infested.
• Richard Wright’s book – Native Son.
• James Hickman would go from one end of the city to the other looking for a place and would have the door slammed in his face each time.
• Black landlords were not very common at that time. Coleman took his money and never gave the apartment that he wanted. When James Hickman raised the issue of what happened with the money, Coleman threatened to set fire to the place.
• On January 16, 1947, a fire breaks out, it spread so quickly that Annie Hickman, the mother and wife, and one of the eldest sons, made it out of their attic apartment and jumped to safety.
• Because of the speed of the fire and incredible smoke, the four youngest kids, they suffocated and burned to death.
• Six months to the day of the death of children, he confronted Coleman at his home.
• The police acted very quickly in this case. He faced execution in the electric chair or minimum 14 years in prison.
• They pulled together a Hickman defense committee. They organized a very broad based campaign.
• Even though he was a man racked by grief he went out to find some measure of justice for his children when he couldn’t get that from the criminal justice system.
• Housing is still a crucial issue for working class people.

Guest – Joe Allen, a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review and a long-standing activist, based in Chicago.

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 Law and Disorder September 26, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Law and Disorder on Troy Davis – July 2007
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder – Michael Ratner

Mother Jones: The Informants

Since 9-11, the FBI now spends more than 3 billion dollars a year on counter-terrorism, the bureau maintains a team of 15 thousand spies in a nationwide network of informants. Many of these informants are tasked with infiltrating Muslims communities in the United States. We’ve discussed in the past, the expanded FBI guidelines plus the broad over reaching powers and underhanded tactics the FBI use when targeting Mosques and Muslim Americans. We talk with investigative reporter, Trevor Aaronson, about his recent article titled “The Informants” in Mother Jones Magazine.  The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. Aaronson asks “are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?”

Trevor Aaronson:

• There are as many as 45 thousand hip pockets. A hip pocket is somebody who isn’t on the FBI’s books.
• Could be a store clerk, – you should go check out this guy. It’s never information that can be used in court or any sort of criminal affidavit.  It’s what the FBI could use to build information and get tips.
• It’s all part of the FBI’s effort to build a larger network of people, that could provide information to the FBI of potential terrorist threats.
• Money is the incentive for informants. In the case of the Newburg Four outside of New York City, the informant earned 100 thousand dollars for his role in that case.
• What the FBI has been particularly fond of is using immigration as a form of leverage.
• To find people who are trying to get family over from overseas and use that as leverage, saying well, if you work with us as an informant. . .
• In the 500 defendants we looked at, 49 involved what we considered an agent provocateur, which is an informant which provided the opportunity and/or the means to move forward with a terrorist plot.
• We were able to identify by name, 13 informants who were these high level operators who moved from case to case, in some cases state to state.
• When someone pleads guilty a lot of the information about the behavior of the informant and the actions of the FBI never sees the light of day.
• Domain Management was a program that took crime data and looked for trends.
• In 2004, the FBI hired a man from the CIA named Phil Mudd to help it transition to an intelligence gathering organization.
• It started to allow the FBI to create demographic maps of specific cities. The technology that the FBI uses today are small transmitters.  Informants: One thing we did find is that they usually have checkered pasts.
• They tend to be economically desperate, if not poor. In many cases they’re converts to Islam, with such an elementary understanding of Islam that the informant is able to use that against them.
• What we tried to do is build a database that we could draw conclusions from.
• I think at the this point the FBI has gone too far the other way, bringing in people who don’t have the capacity to commit these crimes.
• The FBI would admit they create a hostile environment for people who would commit terrorism. You engender this fear among the potential terrorist.
• The problem is that you create fear in the community of people that aren’t terrorists either.

Guest – Trevor Aaronson, an Investigative Reporter and Program fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.

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Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

As many suspected, the attacks on September 11, 2001 didn’t drive anti-Muslim sentiment by itself.  There was some help, a lot of help.  In a shocking new report, seven foundations have been part of a 10 year campaign to spread Islamophobia in the United States. The 130 page report by the Center for American Progress titled Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America (PDF link) names the foundations and key individuals who have promoted Islamophobia from 2001 to 2009. The report mentions that the funds from these foundations such as Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust, Russell Berrie Foundation went to think tanks and grassroots organizations to spread messages of hate and fear as far as they can. The Donor Capital fund was the single biggest contributor donating 18 million out of the 42 million in the 8 year span.

Attorney Wajahat Ali :

• This is an investigative report, an expose on how 7 funders had given 43 million dollars over 10 years to a small interconnected group of individuals and organizations responsible for mainstreaming fear bigotry and hate against Muslims and Islam in America.
• What we do for the first time is dissect and expose this network, categorize it, name the names, connect the dots.
• The network is broken into five categories.
  
• There are 7 funders. The next group is what I call the Islamophobia scholars and experts, which is the nerve center of this Islamophobia network. A group of about 5 individuals and organizations that are primarily responsible for creating the manufactured talking points we just heard.
• Some were mislead by these individuals, within the network who are by the way very successful, by posing as legitimate experts and scholars on Islam.
• Rush Limbaugh from the hate radio section.
• Bridget Gabriel said a practicing Muslim can’t be a loyal American.
• This group is so effective because it is so self reliant and incestuous.
• Islamophobia is an exaggerated fear, hatred and hostility toward Islam and Muslims, that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political and civic life.
• The report is intended for a mainstream audience. This report inoculates Americans. Inoculates them from the fear and misinformation. This report has gone viral. It’s all over facebook, its all over twitter.

Guest – Wajahat Ali,  a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Wajahat  is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, “The Domestic Crusaders” is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America, and was published by McSweeney’s in 2011.

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Audio Collage – Muslim Surveillance

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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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