Law and Disorder September 14, 2009 [57:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

New Time: Law and Disorder Broadcasts at 9AM on WBAI Listen here

Updates:

• 9-11 Anniversary/ Patriot Act / AUMF / Preventive Detention /Surveillance
• North Carolina terrorists / Consequences of cooperating with FBI
• Spanish prosecution update / Change in universal jurisdiction law / Trying to narrow law at behest of Israelis and Chinese

—–

Rethinking Afghanistan

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates affirmed the US miltary commitment in Afghanistan, as thousands of additional troops are deployed.  To give us a perspective we are joined by Norman Soloman, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.  Solomon is also the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” and has written several articles about his experiences in Afghanistan. Solomon has returned from a visit to Kabul in late August.  His articles have detailed the war torn landscapes, stunning civilian casualties and the desperate living conditions of Afghani children.  Previous Law and Disorder Shows on Afghanistan

Norman Solomon

• It’s worse than the mainline media would tell us.
• People who do go to Afghanistan, travel in a bubble, taken around by the Pentagon and learn very little, often not speaking to any Afghans who aren’t part of  Karzai government.
• The intention of the Obama Administration is to wage war in Afghanistan, and humanitarian aid and assistance is an after thought.
• It’s in the foreground for PR, but the suffering is way beyond the number of people killed that’s being reported
• Afghans are outraged at the US killing civilians and outraged at the air war
• There are no Al-Qaeda in in Afghanistan, that’s been true for a while.
• This is a prescription for endless war, repetition compulsion.
• The agenda is less defensive and high blown, they have to do with geo-political positioning which is primary.
• Recommended Book: Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
• Afghanistan War is a humanitarian disaster that continues to unfold.
• The solution has to do with humanitarian and military activity being inverted.

Guest - Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. Solomon is also the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” and has written several articles about his experiences in Afghanistan.  Solomon returned from a visit to Kabul in late August.

—–

T.Bishop – photo by: Eric Thompson

The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan

The majority of the United States has opposed the continued occupation of Iraq and as the Pentagon decides to send more US troops to Afghanistan, there is a growing public distrust surrounding this recent escalation of war.  Is there also a growing resistance among the ranks of US soldiers? The mainstream media has failed to report on the increasing number of soldiers taking a public stand and finding ingenious ways to express defiance.  Author Dahr Jamail has compiled a report of dissent within the military in his recent book The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Watch Winter Soldier Coverage

Dahr Jamail:

• In the last decade, 50 thousand troops have gone AWOL. In 2007, a 42 percent increase of troops going AWOL in the US Army. Nearly 8 thousand troops each year going AWOL.
• Increase in troops contacting groups such as Courage To Resist and IVAW
• Soldiers resisting are often quickly processed through to shut them up
• Massive escalation in Afghanistan – more than 60 thousand troops. 131 thousand troops still in Iraq.
• McCrystal was advised that after the surge is done, add 45 thousand more troops.
• Lack of quality treatment for PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury are not lost on the military, they know and understand.
• The Will To Resist focuses on active duty troops and veterans, the lead chapter is about resistance on the ground in Iraq.
• Search and avoid missions, IED lottery, we would find an open field, park there and call in every hour, saying yes we’re still looking for weapons caches.
• We often see a demoralized unit being sent in to an extremely bad situation, when it gets time to gear up, the troops are sitting there and the commander sees them and rather than risk media exposure, he’ll cancel the mission.
• A lot of people still in Canada.
• Soldiers are not informed that they can refuse an unlawful order and that they can apply for conscientious objector status. Two resisters from Fort Hood, SP4 Victor Augusto and Sgt Travis Bishop.

Guest- Dahr Jamail, he currently writes for the Inter Press Service, Le Monde Diplomatique, and many other outlets. His stories have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent.

————————————————————————–

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

Updates:

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

——–

Alfred McCoy: CIA OIG Report PDF

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

Al McCoy:

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

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

———————————–

Labor Law Reform: Employee Free Choice Act

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

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

Abby Scher:

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

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

———————————————————-

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

CIA OIG Report PDF

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

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

———

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

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

Jake Ratner:

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

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

———-

————————————————-

 Law and Disorder July 13, 2009 [56:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• U.S. To Continue Using Military Commission System
• Dangerous: Obama’s Preventive Detention System

Segments This Week:

• Cynthia McKinney and 20 Peace Activists Return From Israeli Prison
• Private Contractors in Afghanistan / Pakistan
• Honduran Coup Tries to Halt Advance of Latin American Left

—-

Cynthia McKinney and 20 Peace Activists Return From Israeli Prison

While hoping to deliver humanitarian supplies, a Free Gaza Delegation boat was stopped in International waters by the Israeli Navy earlier this month. Among the nearly 100 U.S. peace activists was former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire. McKinney and others had been in custody since Tuesday of last week, but could have been released earlier if they signed a document admitting they violated Israel’s blockade. McKinney – “It’s quite unusual for anyone to get a glimpse inside an Israeli prison.”

Cynthia McKinney:

• There were 21 of us on the Free Gaza Boat, they were also bringing boats for Palestinian fisherman in Gaza.
• We embarked on our journey on the Spirit of Humanity boat. You can tell the folks put a lot of love in re-furbishing the boat, with the paint and making it a livable place for a 30 hour journey.
• That boat was destroyed by the Israeli military. They took some kind of huge magnetic item that held the boat suspended and shook it violently.
• It was an unusually calm day, it was absolutely beautiful. But it was 37 hours on the boat including the Israeli Navy intercept. It was nighttime, we were still in International waters and the Israelis threatened us.
• Remember I was on the Dignity when the Israelis rammed it.
• This time, they disabled the GPS, they tried to provide an escort to push us into Israeli waters.
• That tactic didn’t work. They also utilized, something I haven’t seen before, a “wave making machine,” because they shook us up and down.
• The GPS was turned off, communications were disrupted ( small EMP weapon?) I think they were trying to get us into Israeli waters, to make it look like we were off course.
• That did not happen, and they regrouped, and waited for us to enter Gaza territorial waters. That’s when these four speed boats came very quickly. Eight soldiers dressed like ninjas with the ski-mask, they commandeered the boat. Ejected the captain, and took over the steering.
• They put into one room on the boat, told us to sit down and shut up. We were forced to leave the boat with our hands in the air, some were handcuffed.
• The Israeli soldiers were rough with Maguier, she saw them take down one of the women, and she protested, and the soldiers roughed her up with bad language, it was a scene, and the men came to her rescue and those men got handcuffed.
• We got a full body search, we were held by the military for several hours, they transferred us to a detention facility, then to a full prison.Romley Prison. We were mixed in with the prison population. It was amazing, where we were there were young women of African and Asian descent.
• The Israelis actively blocked our effort to meet with our attorneys. We were deported from a country we didn’t intend to enter. The Free Gaza Movement has no intention of stopping.

Guest – former United States Representative and was the 2008 Green Party nominee for President of the United States. McKinney has served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993–2003 and 2005–2007, first representing Georgia’s 11th Congressional District and then Georgia’s 4th Congressional District. She is the first African-American woman to have represented Georgia in the House.
—–

Private Contractors in Afghanistan / Pakistan

Since President Obama announced the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in late March of this year, news of troop deployment, drone attacks, and the killing of innocent Afghani and Pakistani civilians is heard nearly every week. Private contractors, mercenaries and the war profiteers in the region rarely make headlines however. One study has concluded that private contractors and mercenaries outnumber US soldiers. Check out – Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq by Amnesty International and Pratap Chatterjee.

Pratap Chatterjee:

• President Obama has inherited long term contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, 5-10 year contracts.
• If canceled (contracts) the system will shutdown. For every soldier in Iraq there is a contractor, for every soldier in Afghanistan, there are 2 contractors
• A lot of these people are cooks, janitors, builders, mostly from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Phillipines, Egypt, Bosnia. They do the dull and dirty work nobody else wants to do.
• There’s no draft, so in a volunteer army, the US employs Indians/Bangladeshis for 300 dollars a month, cooking, cleaning. You have contract interrogator types who are making 250 thousand a year.
• There are now 15 thousand prisoners in each country, Iraq, Afghanistan.
• When US goes to interrogate these prisoners, they need translators.
• L3 which is based in New York City, bought up Titan. Titan. under L3 subcontracts interrogators.
• Titan is gone now (by name, same people involved) , but there’s a new company set up by Spider Marx, the guy in charge of intelligence during the invasion of Iraq. Global Linguist Solutions with Dyncorp.
• Contracts are designed to maximize profits. Company such as L3 is paid for 7000 translators, but penalized for having only 6000. 1000 unqualified translators are brought in to war zones.
• Interagency Roundtable Standards

Guest - Pratap Chatterjee, he’s recently returned from Afghanistan. Pratap is a journalist and former executive director of Corpwatch, an Oakland based corporate accountability organization.

—–

Honduran Coup Tries to Halt Advance of Latin American Left

Two weeks after the Honduran Coup ousted President Manuel Zelaya was prevented from returning to the country. Today we look deeper into the life of Manuel Zelaya, his background among the land_owning class, and his shift as a reform minded leader increasing wages for workers and teachers. Half way through his term Zelaya was inspired by changes in Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. He soon had the support of labor unions and social organizations that put him at odds with the corrupt social elite and drug mobsters. Today we talk with author Roger Burbach, about how Zelaya enraged the Honduran elite which led to up to the military coup.

Roger Burbach:

• The news in the main stream press about the coup was to stop Zelaya from re-election.
• Zelaya was not seeking re-election but a constituent assembly on the ballot to draft a new constitution for the country. Similar to Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
• Either way, Zelaya could not run for re-election as the media and Honduran elites are portraying.
• The existing Honduran constitution was drafted in 1982, a very repressive constitution, back when John Negroponte was working with the death squads.
• US Sec of State, Hilliary Clinton doesn’t like Zelaya, she didn’t like him when she met him in early June.
• ALBA, an alternative free trade agreement that believes in solidarity measures and economic measures, led by Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
• The US has the strongest military presence in Honduras, than any other Central American country. I would suggest that the US military intelligence knew about the impending coup and did nothing to stop it.
• Why does the US care about Honduras? Strategic military point in Central America, amid three radical governments now rising.
• New radical left leaders such as Chavez, Morales, Correia in Ecuador, Reformist governments of Brazil, Uraguay, maybe El Salvador. The US wants to drive a wedge in there, as with the coup Zelaya was aligned with the radical countries.
• The World Bank and the IMF have all suspended economic support except for the United States.

Guest – Roger Burbach, author of the Pinochet Affair and Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas based in Berkeley, California. Read more articles from Roger Burbach.

—————————————————————————–

 Law and Disorder June 22, 2009 [55:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Jose Padilla Sues John Yoo
• Four Uighurs Released To Bermuda
• State Secrets - ACLU’s National Security Project.
• State Secrets – Torture Photos – Release them, so the US can see what their government did.
  
• State Secrets – CIA Fights Full Report on Tortured Detainees
  
• Obama Refuses to Show Visitor’s List to the Whitehouse / Coal Company?

Segments this week:

• Peter Weiss : International Human Rights Law and the Royal Dutch Shell Settlement
• A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE – Chris Hedges / Laura Flanders
  
• For WBAI - Men, Mobs and Law by Rebecca Hill

——-

Peter Weiss : International Human Rights Law and the Royal Dutch Shell Settlement

Europe’s largest oil company Royal Dutch Shell settled a landmark lawsuit last week, agreeing to pay 15.5 million to avoid a trial over it’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta. The case was brought by relatives of human rights and environmental activists killed in Nigeria who accused Shell of complicity in the 1995 executions of Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa and eight others. Charges in the case include summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, wrongful death, assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. Attorney Peter Weiss explains how historic laws such as the Alien Tort Claim are used to hold multinational corporations accountable for human rights crimes.

Peter Weiss:

• They (Royal Dutch Shell) knew all along that they were complicit. Decades ago I was involved in the struggle against colonialism in Africa. What that settlement represented was a victory against neo-colonialism.
• I think we all hope at the Center for Constitutional Rights that this will send a signal to other companies.
• Peter Weiss and Rhonda Copeland were instrumental in beginning the first cases in which human rights violations, taking place in other countries could actually be litigated in the United States.
• Alien Tort Statute Claim: We first discovered that during the Mei Li massacre. It’s a one sentence law that goes back to the first judiciary act in the United States in 1789.
• It simply says, an alien shall have a right of action in district court for a violation of the law of nations. (as international law was called in the 18th century)
• Ten years later Amnesty International got in touch with CCR, saying we have this torturer in Paraguay. Which became known as Filartica – 1978 / 1980 was the decision. It set the stage for hundreds of cases.
• About 15 years ago, CCR applied that statute to the human rights crimes of corporations in foreign countries.
• We’ve had a few victories and one of them was the UNOCAL case, where UNOCAL was using slave labor. That case was settled. Now, the Wiwa case was settled.
• If you’re familiar with what corporations are doing around the world, you can imagine how many such cases can be brought.
• Royal Dutch Shell was actually paying these Nigerian soldiers that were committing these atrocities.
• The worst thing that they did was go to the Nigerian government and say we have to get rid of these trouble makers.
• Nigeria was under a corrupt dictatorship at the time.
• We’re not the only ones, the Center for Justice and Accountability out in California have victories against Salvadorian torturers
• Jerry Nadler had a hearing on the state’s secrets act and on the opening statement, he says people bring these suits and the government comes in and says state secrets, the suit can’t go forward. But there’s an international law says Nadler, that has to be a remedy for every right.

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

—–

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

We hear from Laura Flanders, journalist and host of GRITtv, and Chris Hedges, former New York Times Mideast bureau chief, author of many books specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was also the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. Chris Hedges’ new book, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” will be out in July and can be preordered at your local bookstore.

Speakers :

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

Organized by Revolution Books / Libros Revolucion

—–

For WBAI Listeners

Men, Mobs and Law by Rebecca Hill

Men Mobs and Law is the title of Rebecca Hill’s new book that explores the complexities of protest movements, race, class and gender. Hill draws comparisons in two types of left protest campaigns, those that defend labor organizers from prosecution and the anti-lynching groups that seek to memorialize lynching victims. Hill says, both groups have influenced each other throughout history and she specifically connects the narratives and stories of the NAACP’s anti lynching work to the IWW’s labor defense campaigns.

Rebecca Hill’s treatment of these dramatic stories has been called “fresh, lively, richly detailed, and impassioned.”

Rebecca Hill:

• When I first started the book it was about martyrdom and the American Left and heroic politics. I’ll take these particular cases, John Brown, Haymarket etc.
• In the research I found that this other problem that there is no law enforcement and the source of terror that black activists were dealing with was extra-legal. . . . and their anti-lynching activism that started in the 60s – and I then went back to Ida B Wells, Dubois – 1887-1890s
• Ida B Wells talking about how dangerous passion is. This is a problem in leftest activism in general. It goes to the big questions of political theory and rationale, the role of emotions, questions of what is the meaning of popular action,
• I didn’t want to condemn either side, the anti lynching movement strategy or and the socialist left defense organizing, because they both came out of experiences that informed their politics.
• If you’re facing terroristic mobs, you’re going to respond with a strategy. The anarchists and socialists movement response spoke to the lynching and their response was in inadequate - “rise up in self defense.”
• If you lived in the post reconstructive South, rising up in self defense was not realistic without legal protection.
• What came out of the Haymarket movement in the 1880s was the idea that the key element of solidarity in a labor movement is when somebody is arrested, or victimized as a result of organizing, its the membership that can save them. Not the law. The law is a tool, it’s not enough perhaps.
• The courts are structured by the ruling class, they’re stacked against the worker who is in court. They didn’t want the court room take away from the radicalism of the movement.
• Elizabeth Gurley Flynn – defense expert in IWW trials and Sacco Vanzetti case. Anarchists connected to Sacho and Vanzetti case didn’t want structure and organizing
• I was very active in the Mumia Abu Jamal campaign, you see the greater successes in the popular defense organizing it’s not based on the legal strategy, its when is the movement stronger. You see more victories in the thirties because the labor movement was big and the consensus was moving to the left during the New Deal
• John Brown’s defense is close to the fugitive slave rescues which were anti-court . John Brown’s notion that the courts are wrong and should answer to a higher power, not the current law of slavery. John Brown attempted to make available weapons for slaves to take up arms. See the book John Brown Mysteries
• I don’t really think of John Brown as a religious zealot, I think he really believed in popular organizing and popular activism.

Guest – Rebecca Hill, author of Men Mobs and Law.

 Law and Disorder June 1, 2009 [57:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

WBAI Listeners Click Here For June 1, Rundown

Torture And The Need For Justice – Wednesday June 3, at the New York Society For Ethical Culture.

Updates:

• Italian CIA Case Moves Forward
• AT&T Equal Pay For Women
• Supreme Court: Right To Counsel Overturned
  

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

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

Jim Petras:

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

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

—

Gringo – A Coming of Age in Latin America

In the book Gringo – A Coming of Age in Latin America, author Chesa Boudin travels through parts of Venezuela, the streets of Guatemala and to protests in Santiago. Boudin’s narrative chronicles nearly a decade of on-the-road experiences in Latin America. He’s captured the transformation in Latin American politics through the voices of the wealthy and the desperately poor.

One review called Gringo, a quote – compelling firsthand account of the unregulated greed, social neglect, and deliberate misrule that has provoked so many Latin Americans to demand a better life for themselves and their children.”

Seymour Hersch says in another review, it’s quote – cheap beer, fried plantains, long dusty bus rides, radical politics, the repeated kindness of desperately poor people sharing what they have with an outsider, and Chesa Boudin’s eagerness to share what he’s seeing and what he’s feeling, with sympathy and empathy __ as he tries to sort it all out. There’s much to learn in this book.”

Chesa Boudin:

• This is a book that weaves together two different threads. One is my own personal journey, my own effort to make sense of my identity, my place in the world as a white, priveledged North American man. But also, in the context of where I was traveling, working and studying in Latin America at a time when the region was experiencing a dramatic political shift to the left.
• I had grown up in a very political family. All 4 of my parents had been very involved in the anti-war movement. Both of my biological parents Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were incarcerated in New York State maximum security prisons.
• I grew up in two very different worlds, one of prison and one of privelege and opportunity.
• I took public buses mainly, interacted with the poorest and most humble as well as the elite rich.
• I went to Guatemala and from there I went to Chile, which was a classic example of what Naomi Klein writes about in the Shock Doctrine of the US with Pinochet imposing the neo-liberal model on the people.
• I sat for hours and hours in line to change money into pesos, I watched entire families digging through garbage on the street.
• The irony Michael is that I found time and again, the most downtrodden, the most humble, the ones living 17 people in a 2 bed room apartment that took me in. Those were the ones that were the most generous.
• When the political and economic models come out of Washington, it became difficult to fathom what another government approach would look like.
• In Venezuela, I watched the recreation of system based not on shutting people out but rather giving them a stake in the day to day functioning of their government and empowering poor people.
• Instead of having people from another country or economic class come in and tell them what they need to do.
• Venezuela is exciting, its hard to predict what may happen. Ten years into Chavez’s presidency, an opposition opinion poll places him at 60 percent.
• One of the controversies in Venezuela is the constitutional reform of term limits.
• The people voted for this not only for the president but for other offices as well, the New York Times framed it as the downfall of democracy.
• Bolivia has been my favorite country to visit, it’s a beautiful country. Visiting the mines and talking with the miners is something I use as a lens to view the country’s current politics and the political development that led to the election of Evo Morales.
• One thing I’ve noticed in Bolivia is the left has gotten much more experience being critical from the outside then from actually learning to govern from the inside.

Guest – Chesa Boudin – a Rhodes Scholar, is a student at Yale Law School and author of Gringo: A Coming-of-Age in Latin America (Scribner)

—————————————————————————————-

 Law and Disorder May 4, 2009 [56:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• CCR 100 Days Score Card
• 100 Days Glimmer of Hope
  
• Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon Says He Will Continue With Investigating US Torture Conspiracy
• Update on Troy Davis – Brian Evans AI Abolition Campaigner – Stay of Execution Ends May 16, 2009
• Troy Davis Video – Finality Over Fairness
  

–

Unreasonable Intrusions Report

Last month, the Muslim Advocates released a report titled Unreasonable Intrusions: Investigating the Politics, Faith & Finances of Americans Returning Home. The report documents the systematic and widespread practice of federal agents interrogating Americans returning home after overseas travel at our nation’s borders and international airports. Muslim Advocates, a sister group with the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), which is a group of approximately 500 Muslim lawyers, law students and other legal professionals.

Farhana Khera:

• These are folks who are returning home from travel and they’re being stopped at borders, land crossings.
• After showing valid US passports, federal agents are engaging in very invasive questioning and searches of these Americans.
• Muslim or those Americans who may look Muslim.
• The questions (from border agents) go into first amendment protected areas. What mosque do you attend? How often do you pray?
• We want to educate federal policy makers, members of Congress, Homeland Security and the Obama Administration about this practice.
• Laptops, cameras and phones searched, in some cases asking about people in images, and how they particular individuals.
• Again, all of this without any evidence or suspicion.
• Ninth Circuit Decision US v Arnold, pretty much gives blanket authority to federal agents at the border to search laptops and electronic devices of law abiding Americans.
• We really need some standards in place that address the need of probable cause and reasonable suspicion before seizing personal data.
• We believe that Americans have the right to enter the country and not be compelled to answer questions, particularly about first amendment protected beliefs.
• We are giving practical advice in saying that you think this line of questioning is inappropriate. Get badge #’s of officers who have your stuff, then file a complaint.
• Traveler’s Privacy Protection Act – Proposed Legislation, to be re-introduced.

Guest – Farhana Khera, first Executive Director of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML). Prior to joining Muslim Advocates and NAML in 2005, Ms. Khera was Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate, she worked for six years directly for Senator Russell D. Feingold (D_WI), the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. Ms. Khera focused substantially on the USA PATRIOT Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government’s anti_terrorism policies since September 11, 2001. She was the Senator’s lead staff member in developing anti_racial profiling legislation and organizing subcommittee hearings on racial profiling.

—-

FBI Exposed: Federal Judge Orders FBI to Provide Full Muslim Surveillance Records

Last week a federal judge ordered the FBI to submit 100 documents detailing the bureau’s surveillance of Muslim leaders and organizations in Southern California and specifically, documents relating to the Council on American_Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles and its executive director. The court’s decision came in response to a 2007 lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California that claimed the government’s incomplete and long_delayed response violated the Freedom of Information Act.

An attorney with the ACLU of Southern California says the surveillance records will show how the FBI infiltrated Southern California mosques and invasively monitored members of the Muslim community as if they were criminals.

“Truth can never be redacted. Only full disclosure will satisfy us and alleviate the pervasive fear in our communities and congregations,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, who joins us today.

Shakeel Syed:

• It was confirmed in a court of law, under oath, that the FBI had employed informants, in one case, the informant was a former convicted felon.
• Craig Monteilh has multiple identities, he was given a different by the FBI and sent into one of the mosques.
• He embraced Islam proclaiming that he wanted to become Muslim and wanted to make his faith public.
• He abused the Islamic platform to gain trust in the community. The FBI told him the best way for you to infiltrate is to become Muslim and pretend to be a slow learner.
• The people at the mosque were alarmed when Craig Montel was encouraging others to blow up buildings in LA
• They called the FBI office on Craig Monteilh unaware that he was an informant. They brushed the report aside.
• Radiation monitoring of mosques
• We filed a FOIA request jointly not individually, which was good because what was suspected is now fully confirmed in the court of law that informants were paid as provocateurs in the area.
• In 2006, one of our members of the mosque, a student, ambushed an agent that was following him and he was apprehended by the University of Irvine campus police. We later filed a case against this individual and later never heard back from the campus police or the FBI.
• We received similar reports in our conversations with other community leaders in other areas such as Chicago, New York, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco.
• It was revealed in some of the FBI surveillance documents that my private speeches were mentioned that were against the war in Iraq. Dalia Hashad – “They were in the mosque.”
• We continue to receive reports from the community on an almost ongoing basis from within the regions of Southern CA that the FBI has approached them to become informants, threatened them, intimidated them, offered them convenience of getting their naturalization papers expedited or immigration papers duly adjusted.
• I’m disgusted, but more emboldened to stand up and assert my rights.

Guest – Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.

———————————————————————————-

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

Host Updates

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

———

Some Prisoners at Bagram AFB, Afghanistan May Challenge Detention

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

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

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

Attorney Tina Foster:

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

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

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

——

Guantanamo Bay Prison, Update

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

Attorney Emi MacLean:

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

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

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

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

———————–

 Law and Disorder March 16, 2009 [57:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Sarah Kunstler has baby boy, William Ferguson Kunstler
• Co-host Michael Ratner discusses debate at Princeton – Justice After Bush
• Justice Dept. Investigates Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona
• Charles Barkley and Sheriff Joe’s Special Treatment
• Padilla v Yoo, among many cases pending in courts

————

13 Million Dollar Payout in May Day LAPD Police Abuse Cases

In a landmark class action lawsuit settlement, the Los Angeles city council agreed to pay nearly 13 million dollars to those injured or mistreated in the 2007 May Day demonstration in MacArthur Park. As the march ended, LAPD riot police were filmed by camera crews using excessive force, firing rubber bullets and striking people with batons. Dozens were injured in the melee and the footage was seen around the world. The 13 million dollar settlement was part of a larger portion of nearly 300 May Day claims.

Carol Sobel:

• There was an immigrants rights march in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on May 1st 2007, there has been for the last 7 years. The police didn’t want to give the group a permit to march in the streets.
• There are about 20 lawyers on this case, the National Lawyers Guild, the Guild’s Police Accountability Project and MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund.
• As around 10 thousand people approached the park, police “forgot” to direct people into the park.
• The rally was at the Northwest corner of park, so marchers had to cross an 8 lane highway that divides the park. This created chaos of which the problems arose.
• There was no instruction, people didn’t know where they were supposed to go.
• Then people got near police on motorcycles, they used their motorcycles to hit protesters. This was happening as an Aztec circle dance performance closed the march and opened the rally.
• Some protesters through trash, plastic water bottles at police. It was heard that the police said “We need to get rid of these people now.” Police were not giving orders to disperse, they simply said “move”.. to the 10 thousand people in the park.
• The officers were speaking only English, the crowd spoke almost all Spanish.
• Families had no idea why the police were coming with riot gear. While police were saying to move, people were thinking, “well I didn’t do anything wrong, they could’nt be talking to me.”
• So officers began knocking people down and hitting people, firing pellets, it was total chaos.
• 140 rounds of less lethal munitions were randomly fired into the crowds.
• The police report also stated there was no probable cause, no reason to go after the marchers.
• Lesson: It’s very difficult to change the culture of a police department. The police department can’t engage in this behavior, because we can’t afford it as a city.

Guest – California civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, who represented some of the injured. In 2000 Carol was struck by police pellets while serving as a legal observer during the Democratic National Convention.

———————–

Nora Eisenberg: When You Come Home

We’re pleased to have with us Nora Eisenberg, she’s the author of the recent book When You Come Home. It is a powerful novel that acknowledges the physical and psychological effects of veterans returning from Operation Desert Storm-The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991). In this beautifully written ant-war fiction, Nora delves into the corrosive effects post war combat has on the families and communities that are called on to nurture veterans returning home. Mimi is the main character who’s husband was killed in Vietnam, her 20 year old son Tony, a marine reservist, has returned from the Gulf War and there’s Tony’s childhood sweetheart, Lily who was raised by Mimi after her parents disappeared.

One book review describes When You Come Home this way: “In 1991, troops sent to Iraq for the first Gulf War returned home with a litany of physical, neurological, and psychological symptoms that collectively became known as Gulf War syndrome, a subject seldom dealt with in works of fiction. Eisenberg poignantly demonstrates that casualties of war occur both on and off the battlefield and ironically illustrates the vivid consequences when those in charge of veterans’ postwar care fail to meaningfully “support our troops.”

Nora Eisenberg:

• The First Gulf War – “The Good War”, 5 weeks of censorship and fabrication. Fabricated by a Washington based PR firm – Hill and Nolton. The campaign was headed by Craig Fuller. Fuller was also Chief of Staff for George H.W. Bush. Fuller took charge of the campaign to impress the public of what villians the Iraqis were.
• The firm brought this young girl to testify in front of a Congressional Committee – She claimed to work at a maternity ward in Kuwait. “The mean Iraqi soldiers” came in and hurled nearly 300 babies from their incubators and were left to die on the floor.
• This young girl was part of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, her father was Washington / Kuwait ambassador.
• All part of a 10 million dollar PR campaign with Hill and Nolton.
• Aside from the no-fly zones and sanctions, the deaths of Iraqis were massive and continuing.
• I’ve been following the deteriorating health system in Iraq and the rise of disease leading to the deaths of 2 million Iraqi children.
• I started writing this book with the “bad” war looming and with a sense that the ’91 war wasn’t over at all.
• I thought, are we going to kill millions again and get off scott-free, does it really work that way?
• Gulf War Illness, even among progressive people, there remains very little awareness of what this disease is. It attacks the respiratory system, the nervous system, it’s a neuro-toxic event.
• These soldiers got sick, immediately. Some say they got sick after swallowing an anti-nerve gas pill.
• When they were around the insecticides that were soaking the tents, they felt sick immediately, vertigo, stomach cramps.
• The soldiers loved ones, pets and wives coming down with similar symptoms, by proximity.
• It’s taken almost 20 years for Congress to say what the veterans already knew, that they were poisoned.
• A report delivered by high profile doctors at Roberta White say the soldiers were exposed to neuro-toxins. These were not neuro-toxins from Saddam Hussein.
• Those are main culprits, there are other terrible exposures that came out in a report last November.
• Such as the exposure to sarin in a weapons depository that affected 2-3 hundred thousand US soldiers.
• Nearly 15 thousand have died from Gulf War Illness. We have nearly 400 thousand US soldiers coming back as patients / nearly 40 percent are psychiatric patients.

Guest – Nora Eisenberg, New York City novelist and professor of English at the City University of New York (LaGuardia) and directs CUNY’s Faculty Publications Program. The War at Home ws a Washington Post Rave Book of the Year for 2002 and Just the Way You Want Me was awarded the 2004 Gold Prize in General Fiction from Foreword, the weekly of independent publishing. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, Partisan Review, the LA Times, Tikkun., and numerous anthologies.

——————————————————–

 Law and Disorder March 2, 2009 [56:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian discuss the lawsuit brought against the secret society Skull and Bones to return Geronimo’s skull.
• Geronimo’s Kin Sue Skull and Bones

—

CCR Releases Independent Report on Current Conditions at Guantánamo, Calls for Closure of Camps 5, 6, and Echo

The conditions at Guantanamo Bay Prison still violate the law according to an independent report released by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The report partially compiled from attorney eyewitness accounts and detainees,  has found that the conditions of confinement violate Geneva Conventions and International human rights law. Among the violations are the severe isolation of solitary confinement, psychological abuse, abusive force_feeding of hunger strikers, religious abuse, and physical abuse or threats of violence from guards and from the  Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) team.

Pardiss Kebriaei:

• The executive order that President Obama issued on Jan 22 tasked the Sec. Of Defense with conducting a review of Guantanamo.
• Basically, asking the person who was in charge of Guantanamo for years to investigate operations there.
• It’s more on of an internal review than an outside independent one and its not surprising that they think all is fine and well in GTMO
• We have the impression that they’ve only spoken with about a dozen detainees out of the 240 plus.
• Detainees in Camp 6 are held in cells that are 6 X 8 feet. there are no windows. They are in them for 20-22 hours a day.
• There are no openings except a metal food slot, and a window into the interior of the prison that allows guards to look in.
• Their compliant behavior within Camp 6 determines whether they can go to an open air cell for two hours and pace.
• In Camp 5, it is similar, no natural air or light, the lights are on 24 hours a day,
• One detainee who is 17 is smearing feces around the cell and banging his head on concrete.
• As a consequence he is subject to physical abuse by the Immediate Reaction Force IRF team, (riot squad style guards) who beat him up, and spray tear gas in the cell.
• This is the response to someone who needs, competent caring psychological help.
• In January, there were about 70 detainees on hunger strikes. They use force feeding chairs. The chairs are made by a company in Iowa who calls them “padded cells on wheels”
• The person is fully strapped to this chair while a 12 inch tube is forcibly inserted up their nose and down into their stomachs to allow about a 1.5 liter of formula to be pumped into their stomachs.
• Often during this force feeding process, there are guards around them humiliating them, making jokes.

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

——-

Amnesty International-Fuelling conflict: Foreign arms supplies to Israel/Gaza

Last month Amnesty International released an in depth report detailing fresh evidence that the weapons used during the Israel Gaza conflict earlier this year were supplied abroad. The report tracked countries supplied arms to both Israel and Hamas. Weapons such as white phosphorus, anti-tank mines, air delivered munitions and flechettes which are 4 centimeter darts packed by the thousands into artillery shells.

The report also unearthed multiple violations of humanitarian law and in some cases,  war crimes. Flechettes, for example are not specifically banned under international humanitarian law. but they contributed to unlawful killings of and injuries to civilians.

Colby Goodman:

• There were fragments from the US made Hellfire missile where 3 paramedics were killed.
• International military law is clear about attacks on medical personnel.
• White phosphorus burns at a temperture of 1500 degrees.
• Using white phosphorus indiscriminately as a smoke screen creates a situation where it injures and kills civilians.
• Israel had not used white phosphorus in Gaza before. Watch video
  
• White phosphorus burns right through the skin to the bone, very difficult to stop.
• Palestinians doctors did not know how to treat white phosphorus burns, so civilians were dying from minor burns. Some WP munitions are US made and some are not.
• Potential violations of the Arms Control Act

Guest -  Colby Goodman, Policy Director for Military, Security, and Police Transfers at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). Colby he leads AIUSA’s research and analysis on issues related to conventional arms control and child soldiers in support of AIUSA’s major campaigns and issue or country advocacy.
—–

EPIC RECESSION AND GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

There are other economic solutions and proposals that are critical of the 787 billion dollar Economic Stimulus Plan. Dr. Jack Rasmus’s recent article in Z magazine titled Obama’s Economic Plan vs. An Alternative lays out a different recovery program in 20 measures that could stimulate job growth, run an alternative tax plan and a push through single payer health plan.  His Z magazine article is a snapshot from his newly published book titled Epic Recession and Global Financial Crisis.

Dr. Jack Rasmus: – “We are in an Epic Recession phase now, not a normal recession.”

• Banks come first, trickle down. Maybe they’ll give something to the rest of us which they don’t.
• We’ve see a virtual bankers strike for the last six months, we’ve thrown somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion dollars at the banks with the hope they’ll loan a bit out with a lower interest rate. Of course, we know they’re not doing that, they’re paying each other big bonuses, dividends and acquiring each other.
• The commercial money center banks are broke.  Zombie banks, banks by name only.
• It’s a solvency crisis, the banks are in default and are not going to loan.

I) Stimulus Bill – 789 Billion of Tax Cuts and Spending

1. Designed to slow the accelerating collapse of consumption.
2. Not designed to reverse massive unemployment which is gaining momentum. Since 2007 – 13 million unemployed. 20 million unemployed by 2009.
3. We’re losing 400 billion dollars just from the now 10 million unemployed. Add in 401k collapse, stocks collapsing, credit cards cut off, long term rates rising, reduction in hours worked occuring, state and local tax and fee increases, state and local funds decreasing.
4. Obama is changing rhetoric from creating 3 million new jobs to saving and creating 3 million jobs.

II) Big Bank Bailout

1. What to do about the bad assets of commercial banks.
2. Securitize Markets – Auto / Credit Cards/ Student Loans
3. Insurance Scheme Proposal – Instead of giving banks money they’ll insure them. Taking the Citigroup Bailout Plan Model – 300 Billion back up.

III) Housing Industry – Mortgage modification

1. Give the mortgage lenders money – 600 Billion – and hopefully they’ll stop going on strike and they’ll lower the interest rates.

Solutions:

• No way out of housing crisis without nationalizing housing market.
• Create a new government agency and properly fund it, – 900 billion dollars – it would create a small residential and business loan agency.
• Go in there and reduce long term principle and interest to long term averages that existed before 2002′s run up of huge speculation.
• That would be for all loans, not just the ones in foreclosure. Which would stimulate consumption not just shore up housing industry.
• Similar to the Homeowners Loan Corporation of the 1930s
• Auto Companies – You can’t just have 3 US Auto Companies surviving. They have to be nationalized if they’re going to put that much government money into them.
• We don’t give them a penny unless they stop their investment and expansions overseas.
• Ford is building big plants in Petersburg Russia. GM is building big plants in Shang Hai, China. Immediately they should be required to build cars with proper mileage.
• Bring back 2 trillion of the 6 trillion that’s been stuff away in offshore tax havens in the last 20 years.

Guest – Author and Professor, Jack Rasmus teaches in the Department of Economics and Politics at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California.

—————————————————————-