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

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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.
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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.

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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.

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 Law and Disorder June 15, 2009 [57:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Dr. Alan Berkman Remembered – Michael Smith
  
• Troy Davis Update /Amnesty USA Action / NAACP Action
• Holy Land Case Update
  

Segments This Week:

• Disgraceful Coverage: New York Times Article Riddled With Inaccuracy
• US “Preventive Detention” System In Place

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Disgraceful Coverage: New York Times Article Riddled With Inaccuracy

On May 21, the New York Times newspaper published a front page story, titled 1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds. Journalist, Elisabeth Bumiller stated from the Pentagon report that 74 prisoners released from Guantanamo had “returned to terrorism.” Many have criticized Bumiller for parroting the Pentagon without investigation or at least being aware of the Seton Hall Law School’s work in challenging the Pentagon’s many recidivism reports. Using the phrase “rejoining jihad” assumes guilt to all former Guantanamo prisoners. The DOD counted Uighers and the Tipton 3, to have returned to the battlefields. The Myth of Return To The Battlefield from Guantanamo

Mark Denbeaux:

• Pentagon playing with numbers, first they said people (in Guantanamo) returned to the fight who were never in the fight, and then they said they returned to the fight from Guantanamo who were never in Guantanamo and never in the fight.
• None of the people that the DOD has listed in its 45 times has ever attacked American troops or its American interests or Americans anywhere in the world. With one exception, none of them have left their home country to whom they’ve returned.
• I was quoted in that article, the reporter called me for 2 days in a row, saying she’s under enormous pressure from her NYTimes editors.
• Talking with the Public Editor we both agreed comparing Elisabeth Bumiller with Judith Miller wasn’t fair but he said it was reminiscent of the lead up to the Iraq War
• A disgrace in the coverage of Guantanamo, a grotesque statement that was wrong with huge political consequences and they (NY Times) couldn’t un-ring that bell.
• There are NY Times reporters immersed in Guantanamo and National Security issues, why did they drop this in the lap of Elisabeth Bumiller? She said (Elisabeth Bumiller) that the Pentagon can’t release information because of politics. I said at least say that politics are involved. She said, I can’t say that.
• Add to that, that the editors were pushing her to get this story out. (Memorial Day Weekend)
  
• I think everyone agrees that the headline was grotesque and everyone noted the story came out on the morning of Cheney’s speech, and he had it at the ready in his speech.
• I was able with a group of Seton Hall Law students to go through the data the AP produced from a FOIA application.
• My students discovered that only 4 percent of those in Guantanamo were picked up by US forces, 86 percent were bounties in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• It turned out that if you had 4 or 5 Arabs in a truck that was 20 or 25 thousand US dollars. But for one bounty, it 5 thousand dollars.
• For that 5 thousand dollar bounty you could feed your village as it said in the (CIA brochure) for a year. . .etc
• 55 percent of those in Guantanamo were not accused of commiting a hostile act.
• One of my conservative students asked, Where’s Mr. Big? We’re reading through the lists, he says what about this guy? He turns out to be under US allegation conscripted by the Taliban to be an assistant cook.
• This person surrendered but considered to be among the 45 percent of GTMO prisoners accused of hostile acts. His hostile act was surrendering to the Northern Alliance.

Guest – Seton Hall Law School Professor Mark Denbeaux gives an accurate reading on the Guantanamo prisoner recidivism rates. Professor Mark Denbeaux, one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members, is also the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, which is best known for its dissemination of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp.

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US “Preventive Detention” System In Place

President Obama has held on to the power to allow for a “preventive detention” system that would indefinitely jail terror suspects in the United States without a trial. In a number of Guantanamo habeas corpus cases, the US government’s arguments set up a framework to give the president power to hold terror suspects indefinitely without charge or trial. This is the same broad executive power wielded by the Bush Administration that essentially defines a police state. It would be a total disaster if Congress were to pass a preventive detention regime into law say concerned civil rights lawyers.

David Remes:

• One of my colleagues called CCR and asked how can we help, and CCR doled out 13 Yemenis to represent at Guantanamo.
• We represented them since July 2004, along the way we’ve picked Albanians, more Yemenis and a Pakistani.
• I have my own non-profit human rights litigation firm called Appeal For Justice. I’ve had this up and running since it became clear I could no longer continue at a corporate law firm.
• I really lost interest in the corporate work that I was doing. I would come back from Guantanamo thinking on the way back, nothing else matters.
• I am right now at the secure facility at Arlington Virginia. This is a facility that the government set up to hold our interview notes and exhibits that are deemed to be classified information. It’s not a very pleasant place to work.
• So here are now in June, a year after the Supreme Court said that the men could bring Habeas cases, and they’re still here, five months after the Obama Administration said they would determine case by case who could be released.
• President Obama has released two men.
• My client Adnan Latif with severe psychological issues and a variety of neglected medical conditions. He’s tried to commit suicide a number of times that we know about.
• He’s a very intelligent young man, he writes beautiful poetry. In the last meeting I had with him, but under the table he had chipped off a piece of the formica and started sawing into the vein in his wrist.
• Then at a certain point he said I have a gift for you. I want something for you to remember me by, and he threw a small cup of his blood at me.
• Guantanamo prisoner suicides are considered acts of war against the US.
• I think the idea of preventive detention is an idea that goes too far analytically, because if you can preventively detain people why try them at all.
• I’m afraid that the Obama Administration may pursue legislation, that would strip jurisdiction and deny the right of Habeas.
• Forty percent of Guantanamo prisoners are Yemenis. This is diplomatic problem, not a case by case review.

Guest – Attorney David Remes , who represents 16 Guantanamo detainees from Yemen. Remes played a role in a challenge focused around the captives’ detention based on an avenue of appeal that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA) opened. The DTA closed the opportunity for captives who had not yet had writs of habeas corpus filed on their behalf. But the DTA allowed captives to challenge the determinations of their Combatant Status Review Tribunals, that they were properly classified as “enemy combatants”.

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

Host Updates:

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

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Segments This Week:

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

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A Look Into the Memorial Day Weekend Terror Plot

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

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

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

Mike German:

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

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

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

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

Speakers :

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

Organized by Revolution Books / Libros Revolucion

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For WBAI Listeners:

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

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

Jim Petras:

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

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

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 Law and Disorder 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)

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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)

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

Host Updates:

• Obama Speech To CIA
• Obama Administration Releases Torture Memos
• Leaked: – More than 200 waterboarding applications done to 2 people.
• Rahm Emanual Misspoke: Protect CIA Line Agents and Lawyers
• US Attny General to make decision on whether to prosecute
• Coalition Suggests Impeachment of Judge Bybee
• Armenian Genocide Bill

Hear more of the Jim Lehrer Newshour interview with Michael Ratner and Jeffrey Smith

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US To Escalate War in Afghanistan

Nearly 15 thousand US troops have been recently committed to Afghanistan, and progressive think tanks are pushing the Obama Administration to send an additional 17 thousand which would bring the total to 70 thousand troops. Expansions are being built onto the Bagram prison, as mass incarceration is expected. Progressive Think Tank Tells Obama to Escalate

Tom Hayden:

• Global Phoenix Program - in testimony last week, 10 – 12 years overall to win the Afghanistan War. Two years of hard fighting, a couple extra billion dollars a month. I think they plan to send the troops into Southern Afghanistan and to take on the Taliban or who ever the local resistance forces are.
• I think people need to buckle their seat belts for a war. We’re going to have a war in Afghanistan that’s soft on torture. Where are the human rights groups, we’re sending US troops into a dirty war that incarcerates without evidence, tens of thousands of people.
• Center for American Progress – I’m disappointed in them, they’re usually good liberal democrats. Now they’ve come out for a military surge in Afghanistan.
• Obama has narrowed it down to one goal. Can we prevent Al-Quaeda from getting a base area from which they can attack Europe or the United States. The more we go into Pakistan with the predators and drones, the more Pakistan turns against us. It becomes a recruiting tool for more militants.
• The other way to go would be to address the grievances of the Muslim world that give al-queda some support base.
• 1. The US unconditional support for Israel
• 2. 150 thousand troops still in Iraq
• 3. US troops in countries where Muslims control their own oil.
• It’s all laid out in a book by Michael Scheuer -Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
• I work very closely with Robert Greenwald at Brave New Foundation. Getting Afghanistan Right. There’s a huge sectarian problem in the anti-war movement. Nonetheless there’s always a peace and justice community in every city I go to.
• One wonders what it will take for someone in the House or Senate to stand up and say I want to lead the anti-war movement.

Guest – Political and social activist Tom Hayden joins us today to fill in the detail and time line in this escalation of war. Tom is also the author of Ending The War In Iraq.

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US War in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Follow Up

As tensions rise between Pakistan and the United States, President Obama recently mentioned that stability in Afghanistan depends on what will happen in Pakistan. The United States and Pakistan have been allies in their interest to purge Islamist extremism, however the two countries are now embroiled in miscommunication, drone wars and mistrust that is centered around a 10 billion dollar military aid fund. Analysts say the Obama administration is asking a lot from a fragile Pakistani government that has been in power for now only a year.

Michael Schwartz:

• President Obama’s speech - on Pakistan, tells the whole story. You have to unpack it.
• Not a lot of people have read the speech, Obama starts by saying a campaign against extremism will not succeed by bullets and bombs alone then he launches into the peaceful side of American policy.
• The US is planning to make Pakistan another outpost of globalization creating an opportunity for multinational corporations to invest into a local economy and basically take it over.
• What they’re saying is they’re trying to execute a policy to bring Pakistan into full economic domination of American capitalism. – a globalized version of American capitalism. The military aspect of this is only a part to secure the farthest reaches of the middle east, the part of instability.
• Obama’s speech is filled with being “adminstratively involved with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• The delivery is profound American presence. American enterprises, adminstrators, experts, trainers, a kind of colonial presence, then on the other side of this, an integration into the global system.
• Private multinational enterprises will build schools, infrastructure.
• This same neo-liberal process has ocurred in Africa, South America and what we know about this process is that there is an extraction of large profits by these multinational corporations. The Taliban would set up a social organization that is incompatible with the globalized agenda, so you can see this as a counter-insurgency maneuver.
• The military part of this is that they’re not going to be able to do this in a peaceful way, they’re going to have to conquer the area.
• In a period of two years with more than 90 drone attacks have killed 5000 innocent Pakistanis. They want to kill civilians
• The sense that people are waiting to see whether Obama and Congress move to escalate the war is a big part of the lack of energy in the anti-war movement.
• These are colonial wars, because the United States seeks to have a real administrative hold over these countries.
• The United States can’t withdraw from Afghanistan because it borders on the three Caspian Sea oil companies. Those oil companies are gravitating toward China and Russia in the grand scheme of things.
• Regarding the Poppy agriculture in Afghanistan, the Taliban had gotten rid of the poppies, since the US had invaded Afghanistan, the poppy agriculture has come backWe talk today with Michael Schwartz about the current relations amid Pakistan, the United States and the war in Afghanistan.
• $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years – resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan’s democracy. I’m also calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Maria Cantwell, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Hoekstra that creates opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence. And we will ask our friends and allies to do their part – including at the donors conference in Tokyo next month.

Guest – Michael Schwartz is a professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include the recently published War Without End.
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Cuba, South America and the Summit of the Americas

Earlier this year we spoke with film maker and Cuban scholar Saul Landau about the Cuban 50th anniversary and its significance. Now Saul describes the changes we can expect with regard to Cuban / US relations from the Obama Administration. The discussion also covers some detail of the recent talks at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

Saul Landau:

• Obama has allowed Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba and allowing more loose travel regulations as well.
• What can Cuba really do except to promise to stop hitting the US in the fist with its face.
• What did Cuba do to the United States to merit 50 years of punishment?
• I don’t think Cubans are prepared to have 100 thousand Spring Breakers descend upon Havana.
• Nor are they prepared for American investors with big wads of cash, trying to buy up everybody and everything that they see.
• I think Obama is one of the cleverist, winsome, brightest people I can ever imagine, he’s a hard man to resist. But you have to get behind his optimistic rhetoric, his humility, his smile and his handshake and remember that prize fighters also shake hands before the first round.
• Cuba will have a lower profile in the future, we’ve seen the most publicity we’re going to see for quite a while now.
• I think things are little better, they’re a little quieter and less hostile. I think Cuba has its own problems that it really has to deal with

Guest – Saul Landau is an internationally known author, commentator, and film maker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights, for which he won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” In 2008, the Chilean government presented him withthe Bernardo O’Higgins Award for his human rights work. Landau has written fourteen books including a book of poems, “My Dad Was Not Hamlet.” He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt.

He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.

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

Host Updates

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

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Some Prisoners at Bagram AFB, Afghanistan May Challenge Detention

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

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

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

Attorney Tina Foster:

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

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

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

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Guantanamo Bay Prison, Update

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

Attorney Emi MacLean:

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

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

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

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

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 Law and Disorder 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

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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.

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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.
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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.

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 Law and Disorder February 9, 2009: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The First 100 Days: Dismantling the Police State in a New Presidency – Part 1

This is the first of a three part special. Law and Disorder hosts bring a series of interviews with key attorneys, authors and activists from the front lines such as the Center For Constitutional Rights, Universities of Law and the National Lawyers Guild. Some of the police state policies are beginning to be reversed such as closing down secret CIA sites, a timeline to shut down Guantanamo, and mandating everyone CIA included follow US Army Field Manual Interrogation tactics.

We define the current laws in place that now constitute a police state. Then we look at the steps the Obama Administration must take to turn back the major breaches in civil liberties such as the Patriot Act One and Two, the Military Commissions Act, FBI Guidelines and legal provisions that allow for torture. As you’ll hear, some attorneys believe much of the dismantling can be done by executive order.

We begin with a description of what we have seen since September 11, 2001 and precursors such as the Effective Death Penalty Act, the earlier renditions under Clinton’s administration. Then, right after 9/11 came the overreaching of executive power in the form of signing statements that misuse the war powers resolution to detain, torture and try so_called enemy combatants. This includes racial profiling against Muslims here and abroad, massive surveillance capacities and warrant_less wiretapping.

The dismantling of police state blocks in the new presidency will take attention to detail to ensure a full restoration of democracy that will ultimately allow for social progress. In the next hour we look at some remedies and solutions to reverse laws that have created domestic enemy combatants, Guantanamo Bay prison, Renditions, Secret CIA sites, Torture, Kangaroo Courts: Special Trials, FISA, domestic surveillance, private military contractors.

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Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vince Warren discusses the abuse of preventive detention, torture, rendition and states secrets. Hosts cite recent examples of deep surveillance on peaceful protesters and the unprecedented collusion between federal, state and local law enforcement. Warren points out the importance of rolling back the police state measures put in place by the Bush administration, in that No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.

Vincent Warren:

• Torture/rendition/states secrets / right to dissent / the abuse of preventive detention.
• Torture top of list, the export of torture and CIA black sites.
• torture crimes at this time are unprosecutable adn its up to the president to
• Close Guantanamo prison – send prisoners back to countries they came from, repatriate.
• CCR and civil proceedings – hold accountable, the Bush administration to declare what they’ve done unconstitutional, damages to clients CCR represents and injunctive relief, future deterrents
• Universal jurisdiction stems from the Nuremberg principles that say a crime that is committed against a person anywhere is prosecutable anywhere.
• Countries such as Germany Spain and France have statutes for human rights abuse survivors to bring cases for prosecution.
• States secrets privilege, the privilige that the government has routinely invoked in a range of CCR cases, whenever the government says states secrets, the courts, including the supreme courts usually kick the case. The remedy?
• Congress can create a statute that limits the use of a states secrets power in order to make it consistent for truth telling and accountability.
• No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.
• The abuse of preventive detention, fusion centers – intelligence gathering and data mining – the concern is that no one can monitor and again its done in secrecy. no oversight, more preemptive law enforcement
• The irony here is that government usually acts as if one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, unless they’re coming down on our constitutional rights, then they’re all on the same page.

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Naomi Wolf : 10 Steps

We’re joined by author and activist Naomi Wolf. She is the author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. We want to re-visit those ten steps.

Naomi Wolf:

• A small group of people used the law to subvert the law. Reichstag Fire, then disembowel their own Constitution.
• Initial thinking inspired from my friend who is the daughter of holocaust survivors, she said the Bush strategies echo early 1930s Germany.
• Enabling Acts in Germany gave the power to the state to read a person’s mail, listen to their phone calls and read their telegrams. This, in the alleged interest of national security and the fight against terrorism.
• Nazis used to unload the coffins of the war dead at night.
• A would-be dictator sought to close an open society or crush a democracy movement. Mussolini in 1920, the great evil pioneer. Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler.
• I looked at Russia, studied Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Pinochet’s coup in 1973, the Chinese crackdown on democracy in the 80s.
• What I saw was there was a blueprint. The blueprint has 10 steps. The 10 steps have been codified, they teach them at the School of the Americas.
• To help would be Latin-American dictators to overthrow their own governments. What terrified me is that those ten steps are being put in place by the Bush Administration.

• The Ten Steps

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

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 Law and Disorder January 26, 2009 [57:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Caution Against Trapdoors in the Executive Orders to Close Guantanamo
• Hole allowing for a possible Preventive Detention System
• Obama Doesn’t Mention Global War on Terror
• Army Techniques of Interrogation Apply To All Agencies Including CIA
• Every CIA Secret Site Ordered Closed
• Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Memos Null and Void

• Inauguration Logistics: Co-host Heidi Boghosian and NLG member Dan Gregor

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Stop The Israeli Massacre in Gaza - Speech by Chris Hedges

On Tuesday, Jan 13th, 550 people attended a Revolution Books Emergency Town Hall Meeting held at the Center for Ethical Culture in Manhattan. The meeting demanded a stop to the Israeli massacre in Gaza, and condemned the U.S. role in this war crime. The emergency meeting was an important challenge to people to understand the horrific situation in Gaza, the causes and implications, and to act.

Chris Hedges:

• Those who orchestrate these sieges, do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse.
• 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza last year, said they wanted to be a martyr.
• The refusal of our political leaders from Barack Obama to all but five members of Congress and the major media to speak out in defense of the rule of law and fundamental human rights exposes our cowardice and hypocrisy.
• We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter.
• We forget that the innocent who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves. Of how we might have been if fate, time and geography had made the circumstances of our birth different.
• The lesson of the holocaust is not that Jews are eternal victims.  The lesson of the holocaust is when you have the capacity to halt genocide and you do not, no matter who carries out that genocide or who it carried out against, you are culpable.
• We are very culpable, the F-16 fighter jets, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250lb GBU39 Smart Bombs are all part of the 3 Billion dollar a year aid we give to Israel.
• But our indifference to senseless killing is expected, we kill women and children on a vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Governments distort and manipulate facts, knowing that propaganda is a vital instrument in war.
• Lies permeate absurd reports like the front page NY Times story titled A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery.
• In this story unnamed Israeli officials justify bombing school because Hamas was firing mortars near the building. They offered a photo as proof. The photo was taken a year ago.
• Reporters are asked to abandoned their trade and become stenographers.
• Using unnamed Israeli officials to report the news is the poison of American journalism.
• Gaza will be ruled in the future by warlords, clans and antagonistic mafias. Out of that power vacuum will rise a new generation of angry Jihadists.

Speaker – Chris Hedges, 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 and right now, he’s a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities.

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The World Turns Away From Gaza: Abdeen Jabara

In the last few weeks, the focus has been on the humanitarian crisis and military devastation Gaza.  We’re joined by Abdeen Jabara, board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights, an attorney and the former head of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.  Abdeen Jabara gives us his perspective and reaction to the killings of thousands and damage in Gaza.

Abdeen Jabara:

• 4100 Houses Destroyed, 17 Thousand Houses Damaged, 25 Mosques Destroyed
• 31 Security Headquarters, 16 Ministry Buildings, 1500 Commercial Facilities
• “The Palestinians must made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” – Israeli militant
• Attack Lebanon in 1982, the destruction rained down on that country drove the PLO out of Lebanon in to Tunisia.
• What led to the Oslo Accord, then they split the Palestinian people, classic colonial strategy.
• Its shocking to me how the world looked away as Israel slaughtered Palestinians.
• . . that there has not been more of an outcry from the Europeans.
• The Czech president of the European Union was very supportive of the Israeli bombardment on Gaza.
• Now the Europeans that say they want to build in Gaza,  are adhering to Israel’s demand that none of this aid will go to Gaza that may aid Hamas.
• The Israelis moved to attack because they knew that Bush was a known quantity.
• Europeans are keeping a low profile on this, as economic pressure continues.
• Very few people understand that Gaza is a very large open air concentration camp.
• This was essentially a jail break on the part of Gaza, because they were being suffocated.
• More than 50 percent unemployment in Gaza, the conditions of life there are untenable.
• Aside from Chavez and Boliva, the world looked away.
• I believe it’s difficult for secular people to grasp, they believe in individual rights, while the fundamentalism (in Gaza) is building.
• Hamas’ popularity is going to grow. I see a much more pronounced religiously motivated movement.
• There is a strategy to pit one group against the other to create chaos, as in what’s happening in Iraq.
• Perhaps if the chief architect of the Oslo Accords had not been assassinated, there could’ve been real progress.
• They want to divide the Palestinians and have Hamas stand in Gaza, impoverished.
• The attack on Gaza, the ferocity and to grind the Palestinians into the ground, will lead to a lot of repercussions in places all over.
• A lot of people do not want to talk about Zionism in the United States.  It is alive and well.
• A lot of people talk about Israel as being post-Zionist, it’s not. It’s still in the process of inculcating the idea of the in-gathering of the exiles.
• Brett Stevens from Wall St Journal, will speak at 92nd Street Y titled, Why Zionism Has Become A Dirty Word.
• We have to talk about what Zionism is for people to understand the roots of this problem.
• Israel is no longer giving out the names of the Brigade Commanders in Gaza for fear they will be tried in an International Court

Guest – Abdeen Jabara. Jabara has campaigned for more than two decades against harassment and the infringement of Arab-American’s First Amendment rights. Amid this, he scored a signal victory in his own suit against the FBI for its years of surveillance and harassment of him. He has led and helped organize fact-finding missions to Lebanon and the Israeli Occupied Territories, most recently leading a delegation of American mothers and grandmothers to Qana last May after the Israeli massacre of civilians there.

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 Law and Disorder November 3, 2008 [56:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Troy Davis Update (Dalia Hashad)
• Guantanamo Update: Mohamed Jawad
• Bush Launches Last Minute Deregulation Push
• Emanuel (Toto) Constant – Haitian Death Squad Leader Sentenced To Prison On Mortgage Fraud
• Muslim, Arab, Men Rounded Up Post 9/11 Based On Racial Profiling: Ashcroft, Others Knew.
• R.A.N.D. Lobbys Pentagon: Start War To Save US Economy
• A Torturer’s Tale: Trained By The US, This is Why He Stopped
• Calls Go Out To Save Autistic Scots Hacker From Threat of US Prison.

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Iraq Veterans Against The War: Jose Vasquez

The group Iraq Veterans Against The War or IVAW has emerged as the leading antiwar group in the United States. Recently, thousands of IVAW members held rallies and marches at the RNC and nearly 10 thousand marched at the DNC in Denver. The demonstrations urged presidential candidates to endorse ending the Iraq war and paying reparations to the people of Iraq.

The IVAW also calls for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq, stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq, and full benefits, adequate healthcare for returning servicemen and women. IVAW chapters are in 48 states, Canada and DC, members include recent veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all branches of military service, National Guard members, and reservists who have served in the United States military since September 11, 2001.

Guest – Jose Vasquez, a 14 year US Army veteran and conscientious objector. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) serving as the New York City chapter president. Jose was also a key organizer of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Iraq War – Status of Forces Agreement: Anthony Arnove

Nearly 4,200 US soldiers and 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed in the US occupation of Iraq since 2003. .Right now there are 75 major US bases in Iraq, 140 thousand US troops and 180 thousand private contractors operating in Iraq. The cost of the Iraq War so far is 3 trillion and this year the monthly average expense is 12 billion dollars.

A pact recently negotiated in secret by the US government intends to extend the US occupation 3 more years in Iraq despite public and Congressional opposition. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated against the pact that calls for full US withdrawal by 2012, but the agreement also leaves open the possible later date of withdrawal.

Anthony Arnove:

• Status of Forces Agreement; Orwellian slieght of hand – Combat troop withdrawal only.
• US is currently responsible for the detention of thousands of Iraqis who are being held without trial.
• 14 permanent US bases in Iraq: Areas to project power from in the future.
• Iraq: World’s second largest oil reserves, and world’s most strategic shipping routes.
• In the SOFA agreements, the US is making a condition to pass a national oil law.
• Iraq’s oil is distributed unevenly, leading to regional tensions between Kurdish and Shia regions.
• Obama rhetoric: Blaming the Iraqi people – the Iraqis haven’t spent money or achieved political reconciliation, or passed a national oil law

Guest – Editor and writer, Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic Of Withdrawal.

Anthony Arnove Wikipedia Entry:

Arnove 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. He has also written for The Nation, In These Times, Le Nouvel Observateur, L’Humanité, and The Financial Times.

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