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

Updates:

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

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The State of Perpetual War

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

Anthony Arnove:

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

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

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

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The Guantanamo Syndrome

Attorney Michael Ratner:

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

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Audio Collage

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

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 Law and Disorder August 29, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Truth About the Situation in Libya Cutting Through the Government Propaganda and Media Lies

Libya, a country of 6 million people possesses the largest of Africa’s oil reserves. It’s oil is of a particular high quality. Since March 19 2011 the Air Force of Britain, France and the United States have conducted nearly 7500 bombing attacks. Meanwhile,  ground forces made up of special operations and commando units are NATO led and direct the military operations of the so called rebel forces.  In his recent article titled The Truth About the Situation in Libya Cutting Through the Government Propaganda and Media Lies, Answer Coalition National Coordinator  Brian Becker lays out the history and facts about the ongoing Libya invasion.  See Partial Interview Transcript

Brian Becker:

• Unfortunately there’s a large number of people who have accommodated themselves to a full scale demonization to the targeted government, the government in this case Qaddafi and Libya.
• Targeted comprehensively by the corporate sponsored media in the United States, in Britain and France.  The United States, Britain and France the former colonizers and slave traders of Africa, always assigned their bombing missions, invasions a noble cause.
• They characterized the targeted government as having threatened a full scale massacre in Benghazi. There was no proof offered of that.  The propaganda campaign is always part of the overall war effort.
• Qaddafi came to power in 1969, he immediately evicted the (US)Air Force base and the two British bases that were the dominant powers inside of Libya.
• The National Transition Council, the group that is fighting Qaddafi, and is sponsored by NATO,  their first act when they formed a government coming into being was to invite those same powers to begin bombing the country.
• In 2004 after the invasion of Iraq, George W Bush and the European powers there ended the sanctions on Libya.
• Libya attempted to accommodate itself to the western powers.
• He was a player, they don’t want players, they want puppets.
• He let the companies come in but he kept irritating and annoying them.
• In the recent months we’ve seen demonstrations of hundreds and thousands of Libyans, maybe as many as a million gathering in Green Square against the bombing of Tripoli.
• Not all of them were with Qaddafi, some of them were but they nonetheless were against the bombing of their city by a foreign power.
• In the last days, there’s been a psychological war to over throw the government in Tripoli.
• What we don’t see is NATO carried out 7,500 bombing missions many of them against military formations of the Qaddafi government, many against civilian and communication centers.
• Why don’t they start bombing Saudi Arabia? There’s no elections in Saudi Arabia, women can’t drive cars in Saudi Arabia, the punishment for women committing adultery is stoning to death.  There’s no protest in Saudi Arabia because they’re met with torture, imprisonment and execution.
• Why because the Saudi government functions a proxy, puppet client regime of the United States.
• If you watch TV or read US media you’d think there was 40 years of dark grim dictatorship with nothing good, the nightmare is finally ending.
• There was mass illiteracy in 1969, today 92 percent of the people are literate.  Life expectancy of Libyans today is 77 years old.  The entire operation is a NATO operation.
• The slogan of self determination has no credibility except in that struggle against imperialism.
• In World War I when that war was about to end, there was a secret treaty called the The Sykes–Picot Treaty.  What that treaty showed was despite the utterances of self determination at that time by Woodrow Wilson and the other western leaders, that these powers were secretly dividing the spoils of war.
• If this operation in Libya succeeds, the use of foreign military forces and intelligence forces, and drone aircraft and military operations, the same tactics will be applied to countries deemed to independent of the dictates in Washington.
• Because its Obama and not the Republicans, too many progressive anti-war normally active people are sitting on the sidelines, watching, wondering rather than building the kind of militant anti-war movement in the United States that says to the people of the world

Guest – Brian Becker, National Coordinator for the Answer Coalition, he’s also been a central organizer of the mass anti-war demonstrations that have taken place in Washington, D.C. over the past decade.

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Better This World: Katie Galloway

In recent shows we’ve talked about the cases involving the FBI’s targeting of protesters, over-zealous prosecutors, and their collective impact on domestic dissent. These topics are just part of a riveting story in the documentary titled Better This World, directed and produced by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane dela Vega, produced also by Mike Nicholson.

It’s a story of two boyhood friends from Texas who travel to the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota and find themselves embroiled in an FBI case involving multiple domestic terrorism counts. Better This World gets right to the heart of the so called War on Terror, its impact on civil liberties and protest activities.  One review described the film as “Riveting. Structured like a taut thriller, it delivers a chilling depiction of loyalty, naivete, political zealotry and the post-9/11 security state — and it features one doozy of a kicker in the “where are they are now” category.”-

Katie Galloway:

• It was early 2009 and we saw a headline in the New York Times about the arrest of two young activists at the Republican National Convention.  I didn’t hear about the story until David McKay was going to trial.
• His co-defendant had taken a plea, that’s what most people do in the federal system for sure.
• David had decided to roll the dice and he was going to federal trial. He was alleging that he had been entrapped.
• David and Brad went to an informational meeting in Austin, Texas about protesting at the Republican National Convention. Anarchist collective.
• While there they were approached by a well known activist Brandon Darby, who had gained some measure of fame after Hurricane Katrina and co-founded an organization called Common Ground.
• Two years leading up to the convention, multiple law enforcement and federal agencies had been involved in pro-active investigations into activist groups who might be coming to the RNC.
• David and Brad by coming to this meeting raised the suspicion of the government.
• There’s a lot of love in both families for these two guys.
• It’s a story about friendship and loyalty against the back drop of the post-9/11 domestic security apparatus with the full weight of the state on these guys trying to turn them against each other.
• What I learned is that the “war on terror” is really an extension, a continuation of the “war on drugs.”  The rampant yet increased use of informants in the “war on terror.”
• David who built Molotov cocktails but didn’t use them was facing 30 years. Our sentences are 5 to 12 times longer than other countries.  We get a strong sense of collateral damage of federal prosecutions, what it puts the families through. The tendency is to absolutely demonize the defense.
• We’re trying to make sure this film becomes part of the national dialogue about life after 9/11, about the legal system, the tension between civil liberty and security.
• When we got to Minneapolis we thought we would follow the legal cases as they unfolded. Our normal style is verite, letting things play out before the camera. We quickly realized that the heart of the story is what led to the six months leading up to the convention.

Guest – Katie Galloway,  director producer of the Better This World.  Katie has directed and produced numerous award winning films and series for PBS Frontline and POV, among others. Her feature documentary Prison Town, USA (POV 2007) called “documentary making at its best” by The San Francisco Chronicle and “intriguing” by The New York Times, was developed as a fiction series by IFC, for which she co-wrote the first 3 episodes. Her critically acclaimed film Better This World (POV 2011) has won 3 top doc awards on this year’s festival circuit.  Galloway taught documentary production at the Columbia Journalism School and now teaches Media Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

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 Law and Disorder August 15, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Heidi Boghosian in the New York Times – Mobilizing Help for People Accused of Hacking
• Book: The Man Who Wouldn’t Die, by Roger Hollinder – Union Organizer Legend Joe Hill
• Film About FBI Informant Brandon Darby – Better This World
• DOJ Invokes State Secrets Privilege in Mosque Spy Suit

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A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers

The Department of Justice’s campaign to stigmatize whistle blowers and force reporters to open up their notebooks under the Espionage Act is failing. Recently, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in an opinion released a couple weeks ago, said prosecutors could not force author and New York Times reporter to testify about how he learned certain classified information for a book on the Central Intelligence Agency.  In another example, a former senior NSA official was charged under the Espionage Act and accused of leaking classified information to a newspaper. He recently walked out of court a free man, sentenced to a year’s probation and community service, after hearing the judge excoriate the government for its handling of the case.

Attorney Scott Horton:

• Obama criticized the oppression of whistle blowers on the campaign trail.
• He talked about how early in his career he had represented whistle blowers, and they play a part in our society and they need our protection.  When confronted now, he shoots back I was talking about whistle blowers in areas other than national security.
• There have dozens of whistle blowers in the national security area, but I would say the pattern that unfolds, is there’s an internal investigation, the person is stripped of their security classification, they usually lose their job.
• These prosecutions don’t lead to long prison terms.
• I think what we see is a turn to the Espionage Act in order to justify far more serious terms and have a 10 or 20 year sentence.
• The Espionage Act can be used to justify going after reporters. Access to their internet accounts, phone records, and compelling reporters to give evidence against their sources.
• The Drake case and the Sterling case are two most important ones right now. The NSA took the position that Drake was disclosing secrets by revealing all of this.
• At least half a dozen senior figures in the Obama Whitehouse provided extremely sensitive and classified information to Bob Woodward for that book. No investigation, no prosecution.
• You can open the New York Times and the Washington Post everyday and find some national secret that’s been leaked by a member of the administration to help score a point for the administration. There’s never any investigation.
• Nothing is more clear that only political motivations drive these cases. The cases that are most embarrassing are the cases that are most rigorously prosecuted.
• The person prosecuted Thomas Drake was a selfless civil servant, spent his entire life serving the government, served in the Air Force, the Navy, the NSA and had sacrificed through his life to advance the interest of government.
• He was being prosecuted because of his concern for taxpayers. He saw fraud and waste in contractor management he tried to stop. He went through every proper channel and then when he went to the press, he’s prosecuted for doing that.
• The prosecutor William H Welch is the man known for having bungled the prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.  The Washingtonian did a whole career profile on William Welch.
• The Obama Administration came in, it made certain promises. You see inside the DOJ, they’ve assigned people to change the policy guidelines. And they have, if you go back and look at the policy guidelines for state secrets invocations and the policy guidelines, they’re there for these whistle blower cases and the guidelines have been changed.
• What I hear from lawyers there (DOJ) is that the attitude they have now toward the CIA and the NSA are that these two agencies are their clients. They do the bidding of these agencies, they never question their characterizations or assessments.
• I think that’s what we see in the prosecution decisions here. We see senior officials at the CIA and NSA who have been embarrassed by these disclosures and they want to get even with the people who have embarrassed them and the Justice Department is perfectly happy to go out there and do their bidding.

Guest – New York attorney Scott Horton, known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict. Scott is also the contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.

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BDS Movement Ignites Amid U.S. Food Co-ops

An emerging BDS movement is making waves at a Food Coop in Brooklyn, similar to the successful Boycott Divestment Sanction effort last summer in Olympia, Washington. The Olympia movement was pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the home city of the Corrie family.  The Brooklyn BDS protest is causing backlash amid the Jewish community. Some Jewish leaders opposed to the movement say it reveals antisemitism and that the assumption of Israel’s right to exist isn’t shared.

The boycott, in this case urges people around the world to stop buying products that support Israeli infrastructure such as Loreal, Motorola, Caterpillar, and many more.  Sanctions, would target those companies exporting to Israel and applying tariffs or trade barriers. Divest or disinvestment, is the call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power.

Attorney Dennis James:

• I’m a co-op member and the co-op has been around since the seventies. It’s the oldest and largest food co-op in the United States, it’s got 16 thousand members and a waiting list.
• In the past 2 or 3 years, there has been a running dispute reflected in the editors of the Linewaiters Gazette of counter charges and charges regarding the issue of handling Israeli produced goods.
• There has developed a movement to try to resolve this. To do it in a democratic way that’s provided for by the procedures of the co-op which was founded in a political sense. It’s had about 11 boycotts.
• The proposal made by the proponents of the boycott is that it should be by referendum of all 16 thousand members rather than at a general membership meeting in which 3 or 4 hundred people attend.
• Where we are now, slogging our way through the procedures of the co-op is that there has been a meeting specified in the process is a pure discussion of whether or not there should be a referendum.
• There’s the Hava products and people are doing research on what particular products there are.
• There are certain fresh foods that come in off season. Two principle objectives come up, why Israel? – meaning while there’s this misery around the planet of the Chinese imposing on the Tibetans, Turks imposing on the Kurds and the other one is – it will destroy the co-op.
• The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about and that is US support for everything Israel does, which is not characteristic of almost any other conflict as bad as it might be of majorities vs minorities throughout the world.
• We support this, we finance this. We back it up with a guaranteed veto in the U.N. whenever Israel wants it.
• There is 81 Congressmen in Israel right now on vacation. Paid for by AIPAC. They give Netanyahu 29 standing ovations, no president gets that.  They’re shaking in their boots, whether AIPAC is going to come to their district.
• The anti-boycott people (co-op) are saying we’re going to walk out, we’re going to destroy. (the very people who want to prevent the vote – referendum)
• They don’t want to debate you, they want to destroy you. They want to shut you down to shut you up.
• In Israel: People can lose their tax exempt status if they are of an organization like an NGO that has advocated boycotts of say settlement produced goods as do a number of Israeli NGOs.
• They can be fined. There is a number of particular civil sanctions that are available to those who advocate a boycott.

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Attorney Barbara Harvey:

• The BDS movement really took off after calls went out for a global BDS in 2005 from Palestinian Civil Society.
  176 of the major civil society Palestinian organizations issued a joint call for a global BDS. They asked for non-violent economic resistance to occupation.
• The U.S. Zion organizations, AIPAC, the Jewish Federation, the JCRC and other Jewish organizations in this country would not have jointly created a six million dollar fund dedicated to defeating the BDS movement in the United States.
• Something we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by in my opinion. It is an effort to revive, reenact anti-boycott provisions of an old export administration act. These anti-boycott provisions expired a decade ago, but they were continued by presidential emergency orders including one signed by President Obama.
• They intend to prohibit collaboration by U.S. people that includes corporations, with the Arab League Boycott Against Israel. If intended to prevent exporters from cooperating with and supporting the Arab League Boycott. It is not directed against human rights campaigns such as BDSs.
• The Olympia Food Co-op is actually an important story. Olympia, Washington is the hometown of Rachel Corrie who was the young Evergreen College student who was bulldozed to her death by the Caterpillar D9 weaponized bulldozer.
• (The Olympia Food Co-op) adopted a boycott on the purchase for re-sale all goods from Israel, in accordance with the goals of the BDS movement a year ago.  It has been successful, it has been under the gun ever since. The fact is, it hasn’t hurt business and it hasn’t backed off.
• This highlights the hysteria fomented by the opponents of the BDS that they’d like us to lose sight of. The majority of American Jews in this country, genuinely want a fair and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
• The whole Netanyahu Administration has been a real trauma for American Jews.
• TIAA-CREF is a retirement behemoth. It has more than 400 billion dollars assets. The goal is to persuade TIAA-CREF to divest its portfolios from the occupation.
• WeDivest.org / WhoProfits.org / BDSMovement.net / Al-Shabaka.org

Guest -  National Lawyers Guild attorney Dennis James.  Dennis has been active in anti-war, civil rights, and social justice issues. He recently traveled to Gaza with a UN delegation in 2009.

Guest -  Attorney Barbara Harvey in Detroit who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats

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

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

Chip Berlet :

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

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

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

Updates:

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

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Blair Mountain March

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

Attorney Dan Gregor:

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

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

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National Lawyers Guild Report: Human Rights In Tunisia

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

Azadeh Shahshahani:

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

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

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 Law and Disorder June 20, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• President Obama Visits Puerto Rico
• Michael Ratner: History of Puerto Rico
• Is Common Wealth Status Ok?
• FBI and Intel Dominate Puerto Rico
• Michael Ratner Testified With the Decolonization Committee at the UN
• Internal Politics Have Moved to the Right In Puerto Rico: Privatization of Public Institutions
• Expanding War Powers:  Defense Authorization Act Moving Through Congress
• Hialeah, Florida Mayor, Honors Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles With Keys to the City
• CCR: Representing Families of Suicide GTMO Prisoners
• Asymmetrical Warfare Embarrassing the United States

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FBI to Expand Domestic Surveillance Powers

On many of our shows, we’ve discussed the broad over reaching powers and underhanded tactics the FBI use when targeting environmental or pro-Palestine activists, Mosques and Muslim-Americans.  Now, new expanded FBI guidelines would allow agents easier access to search commercial or law enforcement databases, conduct lie detector tests, search people’s trash and conduct physical surveillance. Read: Anything Goes: The New FBI Guidelines

Though the guidelines are still under review, they would allow agents further access into people’s lives without suspicion of wrongdoing. The guidelines will be part of a new edition of the FBI manual, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.  Civil libertarians criticize the guidelines in light of recent cases such as the Fort Dix Five, the Newburgh Four and Yassin Aref in Albany, where the FBI is accused of entrapping people by infiltrating poor or specific ethnic and religious communities. Michael Ratner’s Forthcoming Book:  Hell No, Your Right To Dissent

Attorney Mike German:

• The government is saying they have unfettered authority to look into your private life without any justification, and they’re claiming they don’t need any factual basis to suspect you of wrongdoing.
• National Security Letters were initially a tool to go after KGB spies, it was expanded to international terrorists. What the Patriot Act did is expand it to anyone who’s relevant to an investigation of spies or terrorists.
• The fact that the government had no reason to suspect you was no longer relevant if they could use this tool.
• That was originally set to sunset in 2005. Inspector General audit on the FBI’s use of this tool. There were five IG reports, that found the FBI were using these tools against people two or three times removed from the person of the investigation.
• Phone records, bank records, credit history and they gag the bank or place from telling you.
• IG audit found between 2003 and 2006 there were over 200 thousand National Security Letters.
• Its the FBI manual, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the FBI’s internal policy. Their internal authority created by the Department of Justice.
• These were initially designed to curb the abuse. As an FBI agent for 16 years, I found it useful to focus on the people doing bad things, not straying from that and focusing on people saying things I didn’t like, or doing things I didn’t think were right but wasn’t illegal.
• The outgoing administration in 2008 had radically altered the guidelines. People who are completely innocent and not suspected of doing anything wrong can come under suspicion and investigation under these assessments.
• The 2008 guidelines allowed the FBI to map communities based on race and ethnicity and track racial and ethnic behavior and facilities.
• Under these new guidelines 2011, an FBI agent would be allowed to search private databases, data aggregaters, that pull together all sorts of information based on marketing, state and local law enforcement information – includes if you’ve also been a victim of crime or witness to a criminal act.  No factual predicate required.
• It doesn’t require attorney general approval to open an assessment.  There’s no necessity to identify what federal crime they think you’re violating.
• The tools include physical surveillance, they can stand outside your house, follow you around 24/7. They can get an informant to start engaging you in a false pretense, and your friends or neighbors.
• They can interview your neighbors, they can interview your employer.
• When you become a subject of investigation you get on the terrorist watch list.
• The scary thing the Inspector General revealed, is that these (abuses) were all under the 2002 guidelines.  He said where he found violations, under the 2008, this would all be perfectly legitimate.
• We at the ACLU are not just seeing the abuse with the FBI but within state and local law enforcement. You can visit www.aclu.org/spyfiles we’ve documented spying and obstruction of first amendment activity in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
• It was predictable because these laws were put in place to prevent exactly that, because that’s what the state and local police and the FBI were doing in the absence of rules.
• It’s not surprising when you take those rules away, they go into political spying mode.
• It’s very frustrating, because so much of what’s happening is happening is secret.
• Scott Crow: He found under a FOIA request, the FBI had gone to the IRS to find some small tax violation that they could put him in jail for. Because they suspected him of something, yet they had years of investigation and found no wrong doing.
• Mike German’s book – Thinking Like A Terrorist, it’s a look at what terrorists are trying to accomplish, that is to coerce the government into taking measures that actually take away the government’s legitimacy.
• Past Law and Disorder interview with Attorney Mike German.

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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 Law and Disorder May 9, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Osama Bin Laden Story Inconsistencies: Analysis
• CF Law (By analogy in law) Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch
• Authorization To Use Military Force, the Justification For Torture, Blowback
• Torture Architect John Yoo Writing in the National Review
• Dalia Hashad: Article In The Scoop: Bin Laden Gone Problems Remain

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Guantánamo Leaks Must Be Met By Release of Obama Task Force Assessments

The 759 Guantanamo files that were classified “secret” cover nearly every inmate since the camp opened in 2002. The documents obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian last month, reveal how children, the elderly and mentally ill were wrongfully held. The documents also reveal that many prisoners were sent to Guantanamo for nearly nothing or to be interrogated. What did these documents reveal?

Attorney Shane Kadidal:

• These stories started on Monday morning, because administration officials gave out a briefing saying that the nickname of Osama’s couriers was given out by one of the detainees.
• Assuming information taken from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
• We do know it took eight months from the time they identified this compound to the point they decided to strike at it.  I think its clear, they relied on a whole slew of information from a variety of sources.
• We already know the true name of the courier, which is more important than a nickname came from agents on the ground and electronic surveillance.
• 172 detainees, 90 cleared from release, 2/3 of those from Yemen have been indefinitely suspended for repatriation because of the “underwear bomber.”
• The problem is so much of (media) attention is focused on the ones that will never be released.
• WikiLeaks – 2400 pages of documents almost all risk assessments of about 740 detainees who’ve been to Guantanamo
• They represent the Defense Departments best case for detaining someone.
• You have these long analysis of very shady facts, not detailing where allegations are coming from.
• If you look at the documents as a whole, it shows that most of the detainees were held on flimsy, unreliable information.
• The documents show that people were interrogated in GTMO about nothing to do with terrorist attacks in the United States. You had Samuel Hodge interrogated about the inner workings of Al-Jazzera
• Everyone ended up with the categorization of high or medium risk
• When you see a leak of this magnitude, the only corrective is to release more information and that’s what we’ve called for at CCR.
• The government quickly emailed us – They said consistent with the security clearances you signed on for, you have to treat this information as classified (leaked documents) even though its been scattered to the winds on every newspaper on Earth.

Guest – Attorney Shane Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and a former law clerk to Judge Kermit Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In his eight years at the Center, he has worked on a number of significant cases in the wake of 9/11, including the Center’s challenges to the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay (among them torture victim Mohammed al Qahtani and former CIA ghost detainee Majid Khan), which have twice reached the Supreme Court, and several cases arising out of the post-9/11 domestic immigration sweeps.

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Green Is The New Red: An Insiders Account of A Social Movement Under Siege

We welcome Will Potter award-winning independent journalist and now the leading authority on “eco-terrorism.” He’s the author of the new book ,Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, and it reveals a complex environmental movement emerging amid police state pressure. As we’ve reported here on Law and Disorder, environmental activism have been labeled terrorism under certain interpretation of the Patriot Act, essentially criminalizing dissent and chilling free speech in this country at a critical time.  Our guest was an FBI target for merely leafleting against animal testing, and he was threatened to be put on the domestic terrorist watch list if didn’t comply with FBI demands. We talk more about that, the environmentalist movements and his new book.

Will Potter:

• My background is in mainstream newspapers. As I was working as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, about 9 months after 9/11. I was covering breaking news, blood and guts.
• I decided to go out leafleting on a campaign I became aware of against a controversial animal testing company.
• Couple weeks later the FBI knocks on my door telling me I need to become a government informant and help infiltrate animal rights and environmental groups and if I didn’t they’d put me on the domestic terrorist list.
• It scared the tar out of me. I wish I could say it didn’t.
• Afterward it really lit a fire under me to figure out what was going on.
• One of the reasons I started the website was because of this new law being considered called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
• What I decided to do with the book is tell the personal stories of the people involved.
• I followed Daniel McGowan a few days before his sentence to how he ended up in this facility, his own journey as an activist. Daniel was convicted of serious crimes, two arsonists that didn’t harm anyone and he was labeled a terrorist.
• The book looks at the wide range of activity being labeled “eco-terrorism”
• The FBI has labeled the environmental and animal rights movement the number one domestic terrorism threat.
• These corporate campaigns were pushed for so long through the courts, politicians, and the press that over time they began to dovetail with government policy.
• The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is so broad it can even wrap up non-violent civil disobedience as terrorism, only if its directed at what is called animal enterprises.
• The real power of this is fear.
• The activists who are really effective and pushing the boundary are the ones being labeled eco-terrorists.
• I recently wrote about 3 bills that are under consideration for the Huffington Post. What Is Big Ag Trying To Hide.

Guest – Will Potter,  award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, D.C., who focuses on “eco-terrorism,” the animal rights and environmental movements, and civil liberties post-9/11. Will’s work has appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, and the Vermont Law Review, and he has testified before the U.S. Congress about his reporting. He is the author of Green Is The New Red: An insider’s account of a social movement under siege forthcoming from City Lights Books.