Law and Disorder June 6, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Justices Block Suit Over Use of Material Witness Law Against Detainee
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Re-charged
• The Conspirator Movie and Military Commissions

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Chicago Torture Cases and Jon Burge’s Deposition

Torture has cast a long shadow over Chicago and its past administrations. Yet in the past year, with the conviction and sentencing of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, Chicago has been a beacon of light in the fight against torture.  Many are waiting to see how the city’s new administration will handle the ongoing torture cases of African American men that number in the hundreds.  Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying about torturing prisoners in the 1960s to obtain coerced confessions. Attorney Flint Taylor and the People’s Law Office in Chicago fought for decades to get prosecutions, and sentencing while the city poured millions of dollars to fund private lawyers for Burge’s defense.

Attorney Flint Taylor:

• We’ve been working on these cases since 1986. Deposing Jon Burge: We were reaffirming to the African American community that he was in prison and he is a prisoner.
• He was complaining about the lack of medical care and the kind of treatment he felt he should be getting.
• The struggle to put him behind bars has come to fruition. Pin stripe patronage, the city funding Burge’s defense. Rahm Emanuel needs to change course, he’s very close to Daly.
• Daly’s policy was not to settle these cases, not to apologize to the victims.
• There’s another issue about Burge getting his pension even though he’s in the joint.
• When you’re convicted you’re supposed to lose your pension.
• There’s eight people on the pension board, 4 of them are former cops.
• Several of the men who were responsible for Burge going to the penitentiary don’t have a claim civilly, never got a penny for the torture they suffered.
• There are about 20 men still in jail, still in the prisons, based on tortured confessions by Burge and his men.
• There is a demand to challenge these confessions, its been happening on a piece-meal basis.
• You most often find that torture does not lead to information that is useful. In the situation here it is to punish African American people.
• It’s a very racist type of torture in this city. There’s linkage here in what happened in Guantanamo, what happened in Abu Ghraib.
• The Fraternal Order of Police: They’re a very reactionary force when reforming the police department generally. In the early nineties when they fired Burge, the FOP stood up and paid for his defense.
• In case that has gotten him to prison now, the FOP paid a million dollars for 3 lawyers of his choice. Now, the same lawyers have switched hats, and the city is now paying them in the civil cases that we talked about.
• When it gets to a point where the city can’t pay for his defense, the FOP steps in.
• Burge deposition: I set up a series of questions for 3 hours where he consistently took the fifth amendment to all questions that would have implicated him if he answered truthfully.

Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office. More bio

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California Inmate Reductions

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling had ordered California to release 46,000 of its 143,435 inmates which has the state trying to figure out what happens next.  The SCOTUS ruling affirmed a lower court order that required California to reduce its inmate population to 137% capacity.  The state’s prisons are now at about 180% capacity and one cause of overcrowding problems is the state’s “three strikes law” which puts third time offenders in jail for life.  Meanwhile, under Governor Brown’s current “re-alignment” program, the tens of thousands convicted of non violent, non-serious, non-sex crimes will serve sentences under county instead of state supervision.  Our guest Professor Ruth Gilmore said to one media source, quote – “County jail expansion does not solve the underlying problems,”  – -These are goals we can achieve now if we take this opportunity to shrink prisons and jails. Building bigger jails to ease prison numbers is the same as rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic: wasting the same dollars in different jurisdictions.

Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore:

• California is out of line with the rest of country when it comes to parole policy. California sends twice the number of people back to prisons than other jurisdictions, when the person has committed a technical violation, late for a meeting, that kind of thing.
• For that reason, California prisons have been bulging.
• We see that numbers are kept up by this one category, parole violation return to custody.  They have to start over and over and over again.
• The Supreme Court ordered the Department of Corrections to reduce the number of people in its custody in its current physical plant. In the 33 prisons, prison camps and dozens of facilities.
• One method to thin the prison population is shipping about 10 thousand prisoners out of the state of California, renting space in other jurisdictions. They’ve been shipping prisoners out of California for 2 and a half years.
• Cost does not seem to have an important effect on the kinds of political decisions, that have been made about prison expansion throughout the United States for the last 30 years.
• A year and a half ago the state presented a plan to the Ninth District court saying here are the changes that we will make to meet the 3 judges’ order that we reduce the number of people in the California State Authority Physical Plant.
• Then, the 3 judges agreed to let California delay in implementing the plan, while they appealed to the Supreme Court.
• California is the proving ground for a new relationship between the state and society.  California is a place that started turning its back on public education.
• For some time, the union of California prison guards were a political force and continue to be quite powerful.
• There are many alternatives to locking somebody in a cage for part or all of their life. We should be cautious in thinking GPS tracking is the answer, because one of the huge barriers, that people convicted of a felony face in their lives, is the impossibility of them reintegrating into society.
• My colleague Michelle Alexander has put out a call in a campaign to end The New Jim Crow.
• Criticalresistance.org / Curbprisonspending.org

Guest – Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.  Professor Gilmore has examined how political and economic forces produced California’s prison boom in Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), which was recognized by ASA with its Lora Romero First Book Award. Gilmore’s wide-ranging research interests also include race and gender, labor and social movements, uneven development, and the African diaspora. She comes to the Graduate Center from the University of Southern California, where she taught courses in race and ethnicity, economic geography, and political geography, was the founding chair of the department of American studies and ethnicity, and won the USC-Mellon Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. She also works regularly with community groups and grassroots organizations and is known for the broad accessibility of her research. She holds a Ph.D. in economic geography and social theory from Rutgers University.

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 Law and Disorder May 30, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Supreme Court Gives Police A New Entry Into Your Home
• Subpoena Issued to Writer in C.I.A.-Iran Leak Case
• CCR Launches Case Seeking U.S. Knowledge of and Role in Deadly Israeli Attack on Humanitarian Flotilla to Gaza

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Middle East Update: Egypt, Israel and the United States

Labor strikes continue in Egypt as tourism declines and the crime rate increases. There have been many strikes including Egyptian police unions who are demanding higher wages. We’re joined by writer and Middle East activist Phyllis Bennis. She is the director at the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Phyllis has recently returned from Egypt and she joins us today for an update and analysis. Update on Egypt Gaza Border

Phyllis Bennis:

• The trip to Egypt merged my work with the Israel-Palestine issue and my broader work in the region of US policy towards the Arab Spring.
• There are no guarantees that the incredible accomplishments of the Arab Spring will lead to the new democratic opening in Egyptian society let alone the Egyptian economy, that people are working for.
• Everybody agrees that the wall of fear that made possible the kind of Mubarak dictatorship, that led to the collaboration of Egypt and Israel, under US auspices in repressing Palestinians and imposing the siege on Gaza, that that’s no longer going to be possible.
• The widespread use of arrests and torture, torture was far more prevalent and routine in Egypt. I’ve studied the region for years, and I didn’t know how ordinary it was.
• Every sector in society in Egypt, were engaged in meetings. Women’s organizations, privacy rights groups, trade unions, the labor movement.
• There’s a lot of fear, but also a sense of excitement in the ability for people to fight back and new levels of unity across sectarian lines, across generational lines, across class.
• The question of the role of the US remains very key.  Egypt’s new foreign minister Nabil al-Arabi, says the siege of Gaza must end. Permanently opening the border to Gaza.
• Egypt’s military will play a role in the border to Gaza. Now the foreign minister position is up for grabs again.
• The media in Egypt is overwhelmingly in Arabic. Al-Aron, the flagship daily newspaper in Egypt, longest state run newspaper, now reflects the interest and approach of the new government.
• Regarding elections, I don’t think there was a unified left position and a right.
• If the elections were held soon, there is a sense that Mubarak’s NDP, National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, those existing parties would trounce everyone else.
• Many support quick elections which are due to be held next month.
• Anytime you have a progressive revolutionary process underway that’s being guaranteed by the old military, you’re kind of in trouble.
• I heard one Egyptian commentator exalted about one of Mubarak’s son being in the same jail cell that he spent many months in. This has not been a economic revolution, we have not seen an overturning of the neo-liberal economic policies.
• Israel and Palestine: The code for land swaps is that Israel gets to keep the 3 main settlement blocks as a starting point.
• We’re talking 40 percent of the land in the West Bank.  Obama’s soaring rhetoric, “we stand with the impoverished fruit seller in the streets of Tunisia, rather than with the dictator”
• Obama’s main challenge was how do we position ourselves to be a friend of democracy while maintaining our strategic alliances with the existing dictators.

Guest – Phyllis Bennis, directs the New Internationalism Project at IPS. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.  She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.

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Resistance Maintains In Wisconsin

Protests continue in Wisconsin against the union busting bill signed by Governor Scott Walker in March. The demonstrations are also aimed at the anti-people measures contained in the budget proposal that would cut more than 3.5 billion dollars from services that help the poor and working class. There is still a chance that this bill will not become law. An injunction is in place because of the people’s massive resistance.  The movement demands are full legalization for immigrants, oppose budget cuts, keep in state tuition for immigrant students and oppose any legislation that targets immigrants in Wisconsin.

Professor Paul Buhle:

• The new governor announced drastic changes under the “budget repair” bill.  Virtually a bargaining rights of public union employees would be rescinded.
• Basic environmental laws would be repealed, and communities that came up with a minus budget would fall under the control of political appointees who could replace them.
• As this was attempted to being passed in the Senate, 14 Democrats fled the state and remained sequestered for a couple of weeks.
• While in Madison, crowds ranging from 1000, to 100 thousand, circled the Capitol on an almost daily basis, and sat in, slept in on the Capitol rotunda for 2-3 weeks.
• As in other states and in Congress, the Republicans insist that pay and benefits of public workers were greater than those in private sector, factories have fled and private sector workers are doing so much worse,
• The idea of public unions was illogical and needed to be cut back because they were a powerful voting block.
• The response from the unions was if belt tightening is necessary we expect everyone to do it, but don’t take away our bargaining rights and our basis for dignified labor.
• Not when huge tax benefits are being delivered to corporations.  Its not a mystery that the Koch Brothers from Kansas were the major backers of Scott Walker’s campaign. They set up an office only a block from the Capitol. They are very likely the architects of the ideas and the plans.
• Public resources are being sold off with no bid contracts.
• Both sides are geared up around current and ongoing legal processes that are beyond the ken of the ordinary Wisconsinites.
• Some members of the Democratic party were not happy with the mass demonstrations.
• Wisconsin protests effected most emphatically Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Maine.
• There has been an occupation at the Capitol of Washington State  It was incumbent to us to show up once a day, some of us twice a day, to march around the Capitol.  There’s a deep ambiguity here, on the one hand the Republicans have to be smashed.
• The Obama signs all went down from the yards a long time ago.  There’s an ambivalence here, and its reflected nationally.

Guest – Paul Buhle, senior lecturer at Brown University, a historian of American radicals, a former member of Students for a Democratic Society and author of many books including images of American Radicalism,  Che, A Graphic Biography, and Isordore Duncan, a graphic biography by Sabrina Jones.

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 Law and Disorder May 23, 2011 [57:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates

• Leonard Weinglass Memorial May 13, 2011

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Egypt’s Aftermath and Continued Arab Protests

Civil rights lawyer and former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Abdeen Jabara joins co-host Michael Smith in the studio.  Jabara gives an update and analysis on the current political and economic shifts in Egypt.  Meanwhile Israel recently celebrated the day it declared independence on May 14, 1948, the Nakba.  More than 60 years later, Palestinian descendants remain the central issue within the Israeli Palestinian conflict.  Last week a wave of coordinated Arab protests hit Israel on 4 of its borders.  Protesters were shot and killed when they clashed with Israeli forces at the Lebanon, Syrian, West Bank and Gaza borders.

Abdeen Jabara:

• There’s been a break down of law and order in Egypt, there’s been a rise in the crime rate.
• There’s been a huge drop in income from lack of tourism.  There have been various strikes, and even the police went on strike demanding higher wages. People have broken out of various prisons. The situation is very much in flux.
• Two sections of an Egyptian elite maintain control over popular forces.
• There were those that were the nouveau riche, that were being promoted by Gamal Mubarak.
• Many of them have been arrested and are in jail for ill-gotten gains.
• One of the most serious problems in Egypt have been, this neo-liberal development where they were trying to sell off state owned business.
• Open Door Policy, wanting Egypt to become part of the Western camp.
• Will there only be change in a cosmetic fashion where there is no change in the basic relationship with the people. That is the real issue.
• I think a lot depends upon the Army. Egypt is a very poor country and its main sources of income other tourism is the Suez Canal, finished clothes and canned goods.
• Under the Mubarak leadership in order to go on strike you had to get permission from the executive council of the trade union movement.  Since the fall of Mubarak, you’ve seen much more labor activism.
• We will be seeing Europe and the United States pouring money into the various formations in the country.
• Israel and Palestine: I think we’re going to see something new now, with all this turmoil.
• We have to understand that the Europeans have been developing some distance on the Middle East issue. The United States and Israel are becoming more isolated in the world.  The United States has never been an honest broker in this situation.
• Flotilla will leave in latter part of June, will have ten boats from different European and North American countries. Wednesday May 25, Flotilla Fund Raiser – UStoGaza.org

Guest – Abdeen Jabara, civil rights lawyer and former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

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The American Dream As We Know It Is Obsolete

Will the Wisconsin and other state union protests be a catalyst for a general strike? Right now, the Wisconsin demonstrations are aimed at restoring collective bargaining rights for public servants, the goal to a middle class.  Reject the opiate of the middle class idealism says our next guest.  The revolution must be carefully thought out and be modeled on the ground breaking uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. How could unions prepare their strategy to include a broader support base?  Unions could build alliances with single mothers, the poor, immigrants, the elderly and a wide range of groups.

Arun Gupta:

• It bugged me as all these progressives defended the middle class. I’ve been studying the Tea Party lately. Is the middle class really under attack?  The core of the Tea Party is middle class, very entrepreneurial, than more management supervisory.
• There’s a duel movement going on with the Republican attack. Social welfare and public sector jobs.
• In Wisconsin, a population of 5 million, there are 200 thousand public sector jobs
• We should expand our notion of who are defending and what are we fighting for?
• I think Krugman is the most egregious, he says the 1950s was era without great extremes of wealth and poverty.
• Really? There were no Rockefellers and sharecroppers in Mississippi?
• How do we understand the 1950s? We have to go back to the term corporatism. Corporatism doesn’t mean corporation, its derived from corpus meaning body.  The government is a mediator between significant sectors of society.
• American capitalism had needed the domestic market. Corporations don’t need internal consumption anymore.
• Capitalism has unmoored itself from geography.  For high speed rail in the US,  who will build it? The companies that are the most advanced are in China, Germany and South Korea.
• If Obama wanted to spend billions on high speed rail, the US doesn’t have the base, the human intellectual base to compete with Germany and South Korea.  We’d have to put tariffs on their goods then you raise the scenario of a trade war.
• Then we’re back in the 1930s which brought on the war. People are not really thinking about the hidden ideologies of green jobs and defending the middle class.
• I’ve seen hopeful potential, these movements pop up and recede so quickly. The immigrants rights movements.
• During revolutions, it is something wonderful, people want to become better people.
• What we don’t hear much about are the little Mubaraks in Egypt, in factories, the workplace, dictators all over the place, and they’re being ousted.
• The Right likes mass movements like the tea party, the Democrats hate mass movements.

Guest – Arun Gupta, Founding editor of the The Indypendent. He recently wrote The American Dream As We Know It Is Obsolete: Why progressives need to think beyond the mantra of creating a “middle class America.”

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 Law and Disorder May 16, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Irvine 11 Case

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

Defense attorneys claim that the District Attorney has acted irregularly, first by using an investigative grand jury to look into felony charges, even though the students were charged with two misdemeanors. Second, in the course of the investigation prosecutors obtained vast personal electronic records from Google and Hotmail; they then released some of these documents to the media in what appears to be an attempt to influence public opinion against the 11 students.

Attorney Daniel Mayfield:

• As far as disruptions go it was about the most peaceful you could imagine.  Michael Oren is invited to speak on campus, it is a hybrid event. Partially sponsored by off campus organizations and off campus organizations.
• When Mr Oren begins to speak say for a minute or two, the first of the 11 defendants stands up to interrupt him to make a statement about Gaza.
• That person then walks to the edge of the auditorium and submits to an arrest and is removed from the auditorium.
• There are roughly five law enforcement groups present. Campus police, Irvine police, county sherrifs, secret service agents, Israeli agents.
• There’s a lot jeering and clapping on both sides. This happens 11 times.
• After the 11th student stands up, all of the students that are opposed to Mr Oren stand up, start a chant and they leave.  Mr Oren then finishes his speech.
• The students are disciplined, the Muslim Student Association at Irvine is ordered off campus for 6 months. By June 2010, everyone thinks the case is over.
• In December of 2010, the District Attorney of Orange County, they convene a Grand Jury.
• Under California law you can only convene a Grand Jury when investigating a felony. They claim they’re investigating a felony. In the affidavits to the judge they swear under penalty of perjury that they’re investigating a felony.
• They call witnesses to this Grand Jury, when they’re challenged, they tell the judge they’re investigating a felony. Then the Grand Jury doesn’t issue an indictment.
• An investigative Grand Jury, not that different from what’s happened in Chicago.
• So the DA has amassed, all of this material, they’ve gotten phone records and email messages.
• They asked Google, Hotmail, Gmail, all of those to turn over the emails and they do. Thousands and thousands of emails, 10 CDs.
• I don’t believe the District Attorney is going to drop these charges. They’ve dumped roughly half a million dollars into this case.
• At this point they’ve assigned 3 deputy attorneys, including 2 of their primary homicide DAs. Pulled off of homicide to work on 2 misdemeanors.
• Our goal is to win this case on motions. Because that meeting was political because poltiical meetings are excluding from the penal code section that we’re interested in here.
• We believe that we can win this case, by arguing on the law before the judge, that they don’t have the right to proceed.  The speech by Michael Oren was thought of as a response to the organizing around the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions work.

Guest – Attorney Daniel Mayfield, one of the attorneys on the legal defense team and co-author of the motion and a National Lawyers Guild member.

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Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights by Omar Barghouti

The boycott, divest, sanction movement was launched in 2005. It calls upon conscientious citizens of the world to shoulder the load of responsibility of holding Israel accountable to international law and principles of human rights. The BDS movement urges those citizens to support 3 basic rights. UN sanctioned rights of the Palestinian people, ending the 1967 occupation, and ending the system of racial discrimination in Israel, the right of return of refugees in accordance with UN resolution 194.

In boycotting, corporations and countries around the world are urges to stop buying products that support Israeli infrastructure such as Loreal, Motorola, Caterpillar, and many more.  Sanctions, would target those companies exporting to Israel and applying tariffs or trade barriers. Divest or disinvestment, a call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power.   Co-host Michael Ratner interviewed independent Palestinian commentator and human rights activist Omar Barghouti in the middle of his book tour.

Omar Barghouti:

• The BDS movement was launched in 2005 which calls upon conscientious citizens of the world to shoulder the load of responsibility of holding Israel accountable to international law and principles of human rights.
• The BDS call urges to support 3 basic rights. UN sanctioned rights of the Palestinian people, ending the 1967 occupation, ending the system of racial discrimination in Israel, the right of return of refugees in accordance with UN resolution 194.
• 80 percent of Gazans are refugees. According to International law, they have the right to go back home.
• We look around and look at how International law is being applied in other situations.
• Jewish communities are reclaiming properties stolen by the Nazis or by their collaborators all over Europe.
• Only when it comes to Palestinian refugee rights does it become a demographic threat to Israel.
• There’s some divine right given to Israel to maintain an ethno-centric state, at the expense of applying International law.
• Palestinians of Israel are not considered nationals of Israel. Israel is the only country on Earth that has this two tiered system of nationality. You’re only a national if you’re Jewish.
• Any Jewish person from New York can go tomorrow and can become a national immediately.
• Palestinians in Israel, citizens of Israel, can’t buy, rent or live on about 93 percent of the land.
• Israel’s discrimination acts like a set of sieves, that have finer and finer holes as you move up towards college, filtering out more Palestinians so you have a very small percentage on top.
• Because Palestinians can vote becomes a form of tokenism, when you discrimination in land, jobs, everything.
• Israel is losing the veneer of sophistication and nuance. It’s becoming a brute form of apartheid.
• Loyalty Oath.
• Israel has lost the battle for hearts and minds and its resorting to bigger sticks.
• BDS, in less than six years we’ve achieved more than our comrades in South Africa that lasted 20 years.
• In a study of Israeli academics who had stood up against the occupation: hundreds of academics in a community of 9 thousand have done anything public against the occupation.  BDS is not a political party, its not an ideology.
• Those who think they can decide for the Palestinians what our basic rights are, ignoring International law and basic principles of human rights, are racist. BDS is a living movement that is growing tremendously.

Guest – Omar Barghouti, the founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

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

Updates:

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

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

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

Attorney Shane Kadidal:

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

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

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

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

Will Potter:

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

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

 Law and Disorder May 2, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Federal appeals court orders a new sentencing hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal
• CCR Says Guantánamo Leaks Must Be Met By Release of Obama Task Force Assessments
• Memorial for Leonard Weinglass Friday May 13 At the New York Ethical Culture Society

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Largest Human Trafficking Case In The US?  Workers Lured To U.S. After Hurricane Katrina And Subjected To Abusive Conditions Seek Class Certification

In what may be the largest human trafficking case in US history, Indian guest workers are suing Signal International for human trafficking ad racketeering. Several law firms filed the lawsuit on behalf of seven plaintiffs representing 500 formers guest workers lured into the US after Hurricane Katrina. The guest workers were subjected to racial discrimination, forced labor and other abuse.

Signal is a multi million dollar marine fabrication company with shipyards in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama. They repair and build oil rigs and ships and subcontract with the Dept of Defense and multinational companies. After Hurricane Katrina, Signal’s workforce scattered and they used the government’s guest worker program to import employees as welders and pipe fitters. Between 2004 and 2006 hundreds of Indian men were paid up to 20 thousand dollars each for travel, visa and other fees after being told it would lead to good jobs and permanent US residency.

When the men arrived at Signal they discovered they would not receive green cards, but instead were given 10-month guest worker visas. Signal forced the men to pay $1,050 a month to live in overcrowded, unsanitary and racially segregated labor camps with no visitors allowed.  To talk more about this case, we’re joined by Chandra Bhatnagar is a Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program and Sabulal Vijayan, a former guest worker involved in the lawsuit.

Chandra Bhatnagar:

• Signal used the opportunity of the storm to seek out new labor pools. Signal in partnership with an American labor broker, an American Immigration lawyer and an Indian recruiter, conspired to bring in a group of 500 men from India as H2B guest workers.
• The workers were promised green cards, permanent residency, and the opportunity for long term jobs.
• Sabulal Vijayan: I was working in the middle east, the United Arab Emirates, I saw the ad by Signal that said we would get permanent residency in America. I paid about 18 thousand dollars, I cut my wrists in fear, I tried to kill myself because I spent a bunch of dollars. I was in the hospital for 3 days. I couldn’t go back to my family in India with bare hands, because I spent all the money on this job. Not only me but 500 workers, sold all their land and houses for this job.
• The EEOC, brought a separate lawsuit against Signal, alleging racial and national origin discrimination and hostile work environment.
• Because Sabulal was one of the workers seeking his rights under the law,  he was particularly targeted by Signal and rounded up in an early morning raid.  The camp was built on a lead contaminated waste site.
• It’s not OSCHA compliant to have 24 guys jammed together in a temporary trailer.
• These are in the United States and in debt. The average income in India is 3000 dollars a year for a ship worker. To pay 20 thousand dollars, you have to sell your property, borrow money from loan sharks.  You have to mortgage your whole life for the opportunity to come here.  Signal also said if you file a lawsuit, we’ll send all of you back.
• Signal is a marine fabrication company, a multi-million dollar company. They repair and build oil rigs and ships. They have yards in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. They provide services to the Department of Defense and major corporations.
• It was a conspiracy between the Immigration lawyer, the Indian recruiter, the labor broker and Signal.
• Signal got this vulnerable pool of workers who they could throw away whenever they wanted to.
• You don’t have freedom of contract as a guest worker, you’re the disposable property of the employer.

Guest - Chandra Bhatnagar, ACLU  Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program. He leads the domestic and international advocacy around racial profiling, affirmative action, and juvenile justice issues, and is engaged in federal court litigation and litigation in international tribunals involving the rights of low-wage immigrant workers, undocumented workers, and guest-workers.

Guest – Sabulal Vijayan, guest worker from India, who is involved in the case. Sabulal, a pipefitter, paid nearly 20 thousand dollars to work in the United States as a guest worker. He worked with others in slave labor-like conditions for Signal International.

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Professor John Ehrenberg: Class Warfare Update and Analysis

Returning guest, professor and author John Ehrenberg joins us in the discussion of where the last 3 years the Obama Administration has led the country.  The United States is pouring trillions into multiple war theaters, unemployment continues to rise, CEOs of banks and corporations have been rewarded with taxpayer bonuses and bailouts, and a massive unequal distribution of wealth has polarize the country. Meanwhile, the very rights that protect organized labor and the benefits of workers are attacked and disassembled during one of the worst economic downturns to hit the United States.  Corporations and the far right wing of the Republican Party are behind some of the union busting yet even President Obama turned his back on supporting union labor demonstrations.  Most recent show with John Ehrenberg

Professor John Ehrenberg:

• The elephant in the room that nobody talks about is the role of the state and the role of the government.
• Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
• What you had since the 1980s is a policy pushed by the Republicans and acquiesced by the Democrats of undoing the Great Society. We’ve seen this in the union busting and refusing to tax the rich. It’s been happening because the Republican party is getting more radical.
• The villan in the room is governmental and fiscal policy.
• The top 1 percent of the population received more than a third of all the wealth created in the country from 1979 to the beginning of the recession.  The top 1/10 of one percent, that’s one out of every thousand households, received over 20 percent of all the after tax gains between 1979 and 2005.
• It was a conscious policy. It began in the late 70s by business. If you look at the neo-conservatives of that period, their target is the Great Society.
• Basically in the late 60s and the early 70s, the traditional stimulus programs of the Democrats failed.
• Along comes Reagan and he takes on a radical restructuring of the economy.
• Which began this process of shoveling huge amounts of wealth to the rich, hoping that it would trickle down and you’d have sustained growth.
• Consider that Obama is going to raise a billion dollars for his reelection campaign. Where is he going to get it from?
• Look, anybody at this stage of the game who continues to trust the Democratic party to lead the country out of this mess, is a fool.
• The Democratic Party by itself is incapable of democratic initiative and progressive change unless forced to respond from pressure from outside.
• When do they have enough? The answer in 1100 pages of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy is it’s never enough.  That the logic of capital is to reduce everybody to starvation and take everything they have.
• This is the motor of the system, this has nothing to do with the Koch Brothers.
• Hopefully people are tired of being pushed around. American exceptionalism, meant that Americans were more tolerant of inequality, than were people from a stronger labor tradition.
• That American’s didn’t care so much if other people got rich as long as they got rich too.
• If you have a situation where Americans are misinformed about the distribution of wealth and are open to appeals to redistribute wealth in the name of fairness and equity, then this is the time for a redistributus Democratic party to step forward.
• If the Democratic Party is even a modicum of sanity in America, it’s because its going to have be pushed again.  Pushed and pushed and pushed from outside.
• 55 percent of Republicans want higher taxes on the rich.
• There are local manifestations of outrage and rebellion, in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ft Lauderdale, around different aspects of the mal-distribution of wealth. – but nothing has been coordinated on the national level.
• There are as yet, no forces talking about the system as a whole, as a state.
• There are a lot of indications across the board that people have had enough.
• Go out there and join something and get involved.
• UNICEF publication. The Children Left Behind. Indices: Health, Education, Material Well Being.  The United States is last of the 24 countries.
• If you look at the fall of any of the world’s empires, it was a combination of the over reach and the refusal of the rich to pay their share of taxes.

Guest – John Ehrenberg,  author of Servants of Wealth, The Rights Assault on Economic Justice, he’s also professor of political science at Long Island University.

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

Updates:

• Pfc. Manning To Be Transferred To Army Prison
• New York State Assembly Passes Rent Regulation Bill
• Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops
• Using Emergency Powers to Dismantle Unions In Michigan – Update with Zainab Akbar Legal Fellow at the ACLU of Michigan

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Court Vindicates Prisoners in Right to Challenge Federal Experimental Isolation Units Restricting Communication

Last month, the Center for Constitutional Rights won the right for prisoners to challenge a violation of their constitutional rights. Prisoners in 2 experimental federal prison units called “Communications Management Units” or CMUs, will have their claims heard in court.  About 70 percent of CMU prisoners are Muslim men.  Judge Urbina agreed that the prisoners raised serious constitutional questions about CMUs.  The Center for Constitutional Rights filed Aref v. Holder in the D.C. District Court on behalf of current and former prisoners of the units in Terre Haute, IN and Marion, IL; two other plaintiffs are the spouses of those prisoners.

As many listeners may know, these CMUs were secretly opened under the Bush administration in 2006 and 2007. They were designed to monitor and control the communications of certain prisoners and to isolate them from other prisoners and the outside world.  The five plaintiffs in Aref were designated to the two CMUs despite having relatively or totally clean disciplinary histories, and none of the plaintiffs have received any communications-related disciplinary infractions in the last decade.

In addition to heavily restricted telephone and visitation access, CMU prisoners are categorically denied any physical contact with family members and are forbidden from hugging, touching or embracing their children or spouses during visits.

Attorney Alexis Agathocleous:

• We’re very troubled about policies and conditions at these units. A number of the restrictions imposed at the CMUs are severe. They are truly cutting people off from their loved ones, they’re community and the outside world
• Blanket ban on physical contact, unparalleled to any other single unit anywhere, including Supermax.
• We feel this needlessly impinges on their right to family integrity and their need to maintain these ties to the outside world.
• What we’re challenging is that there is no due process attached to designation to these (CMU) units.
• Without a disclosure of factual allegations that were used to designate them, without a demonstration of past abuse of communication devices, without a hearing, without an appeal. Once you’re there, no one is told how to earn their transfer to get out. Our clients have benign or in some cases perfectly clean histories.
• What is happening is that Muslim prisoners are being designated there, based on the discriminatory belief that as Muslims they inherently pose a great danger to institutional security, than do other prisoners.
• We’re very concerned also about a pattern of designation of political prisoners and specifically includes environmental and animal rights activists.
• We do believe these are acts of retaliation for protected First Amendment activity, such as speaking out on social justice issues.
• What we’ve asked for in the case is a thorough review of polices and practices in the CMUs.
• What’s next is we’re going into discovery, which is our opportunity to learn a lot more about the CMUs, about their inception, who was involved in designing them and why and about how designations are made.
• CMUs were opened quietly.

Guest – Alexis Agathocleous, staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and works on CCR’s Government Misconduct and Racial Justice docket.  He is lead counsel in Aref v. Holder, challenging policies and conditions at the federal Bureau of Prisons’ Communications Management Units, and Doe v. Jindal, challenging a Louisiana law that requires individuals convicted of Crime Against Nature to register as sex offenders.

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Financial Regulators Failed: Crooks Go Unpunished

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday charged Goldman Sachs & Co. and one of its executives with fraud in a risky offshore deal backed by subprime mortgages that cost investors more than $1 billion. The SEC also contends that Goldman allowed a client, Wall Street hedge fund Paulson & Co., to help select the securities to be sold. Paulson in turn bought insurance against the deal and when the securities sank, losing nearly all value, Paulson then made a $1 billion profit.

While these are not criminal charges, the recently released 650-page report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis (PDF) had exposed the deceptive and risky practices within major financial institutions, that deceived clients and the public.  New Economics Perspective Blog

Professor William K. Black:

• Many people still call it the subprime crisis, it would be far better to call it, the liar’s loan crisis.
• Roughly half of all subprime loans by 2006.
• Somewhere between a quarter and 49 percent of new home loans, were in the form of liar’s loans.
• The incidence of fraud when there have been independent studies has ranged from 90 to 100 percent.
• A liar’s loan is when there is no underwriting, no verification of what’s put into the loan application.
• Overwhelmingly, it was the lenders who put the lie is liar’s loans.
• You can sell these loans in the secondary market if they appeared to have 2 characteristics that finance has told us you can’t have simultaneously.
• A premium interest rate and low risk. You could have the best of both worlds. The way to do that was to gimmick two ratios. Debt to income ratio and loan to value ratio.
• Inflating the value of homes, covered up by industry. An honest secure lender would never inflate value.
• It makes perfect sense for a fraudulent company to inflate the value of the house so they can sell the loan on the secondary market for a higher profit.
• Then Attorney General Cuomo, now governor found this as a common practice at Washington Mutual, the biggest bank failure.  WAMU had a blacklist of appraisers, you were blacklisted if you refused to inflate value of property. None of these people are being prosecuted.
• In 2004, the FBI testified there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud and predicted that it would cause a financial crisis.
• The Savings and Loans debacle cost 150 billion, the current crisis is costing over 10 trillion.
• The Office of Thrift Supervision, Chainsaw James Gilleran
• Instead of being embarrassed that they were working hand in glove with the lobbyists, they were proud of this and put this in their annual report.
• Geithner and Cuomo urged there not be investigations much less prosecutions of the elite financial frauds because he thought the financial system was too fragile.
• The Justice Department ruined an FBI initiative to try and investigate the elite frauds.
• If you are powerful enough, if you have enough ties, after citizens united, and make enough political contributions, you will not be prosecuted.
• You can’t have crony-capitalism and democracy either.
• Big finance is only supposed to be a middle man, it’s supposed to help the real economy, by simply allocating most efficiently capital to the most productive uses.
• Like any middle man you want absolutely minimal profits going to the middle man.
• Under some measures, finance has 40 percent of the total profits of all American businesses.
• This is the worst group of people you can possibly imagine having power.
• We’ve turned too many of our schools into fraud factories, where we train people how to gimmick accounting.
• Citizen’s United is a fragile case, it doesn’t make much sense in terms of the law.
• What these people are, engines for destroying wealth
• They only get 10 billion, they destroy 10 trillion dollars in wealth. They cost 10 million Americans their jobs.

Guest -  William K. Black, a professor of law at University of Missouri, Kansas City who has criticized the absence of any criminal referrals or national task force to effectively punish the elite fraudsters.  Professor Black teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics.

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 Law and Disorder April 18, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Heidi Boghosian Honored As National Lawyers Guild Executive Director
• New Yorker Magazine Article On Bhairavi Desai – 435 Thousand Taxi Rides A Day In NYC
• Patrick Markee New Report: Record NYC Homeless in 2010
• Posada Carriles Acquitted
• Food Not Bombs In Orlando, Fl Restricted From Feeding Homeless
• Len Weinglass Memorial May 13, 2011 Society For Ethical Culture – 6PM
• LA Eight Member Sends Letter Remembering  Len Weinglass

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The Muslim Peace Coalition and the United National Antiwar Coalition

Last week, activists took to the streets in a mass anti-war demonstration in the streets of New York and around the country. We talk with one of the organizers. Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, founder of the Muslim Peace Coalition who joins us to discuss his work as executive producer of Chicago’s Radio Islam.  He’s among the most well-known Muslim activists in the country and has recently completed a 3 state tour having addressed dozens of mosques demanding an end to the ongoing attacks and spying on Muslim communities.

Malik Mujahid:

• 700 thousand Muslims have been interviewed by the FBI. Most of the mosques have been checked out for atomic bombs.  What they think is a Muslim could be a brown skinned guy, who is Hindu, or could be Latino.
• Once you start doing injustice in one group, it doesn’t stay in one group. At this moment there’s quite a bit of inhumanity toward undocumented workers which are in larger numbers.
• The personal cost is very high. A Yale University research, says that 50 percent of Arab Americans have clinical signs of depression. Muslims are last to hired and first to be fired.
• People can get out of this when they realize there’s a criminalization in the inner city.
• Latinos the largest minority in this country lives in a state of fear, becaust they may be mistaken for undocumented and green card holder.
• 75 Pecent of Latinos stopped or arrested for suspect of documentation actually are quite legal citizens from several generations.
• The whole thing is based on a myth that Muslims were responsible for 911 and the continued terrorist attacks.
• War and terrorism are connected through occupation. We say that the hate in the country is rising, we’re becoming an unwelcoming nation. I visited the 1199 in New York and I was surprised how welcoming they were.
• 2.5 million Americans became new gun owners last year.

Guest – Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid is founding Chairman of Sound Vision Foundation, the leading producer of educational content on Islam and Muslims. He is also executive producer of the daily Radio Islam talk show on WCEV 1450 AM in Chicago. Imam Mujahid serves as Chair of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, the premiere interfaith organization in the world. He is former Chairperson of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago.

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Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

We’re joined today by two of the three authors of book titled Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Joey Mogul, director of the DePaul Civil Rights Clinic and partner with the People’s Law Office, and Andrea Ritchie, a Police Misconduct Attorney.  The criminalization of LGBT people is explained in the book with acute detail and historical research.  The book reveals that continual targeting of queers by law enforcement is not an accident  but part of a larger systemic issue.  The cases covered in this searing book show how the legal system routinely discriminates against those identified as queers.  But there’s more to it than that, other factors such as poverty, race and class also make them a target. We learn more about the book and how this discrimination is viewed within the mainstream gay community.

Attorneys Joey Mogul / Andrea Ritchie:

• The term trans-gender is an umbrella term, that is inclusive of gender identities.  It encompasses people who are born with a particular genitalia, but whose gender expression or identity is different from their anatomy.
• We use the term criminal legal system because the system has produced anything but justice for people who fall under the umbrella of LGB or T.
• Sometimes its a cop writing you a ticket for disorderly conduct, because they perceive your expression in a public space to be disorderly.
• Once they get to the police precinct and they don’t know which box to check, that can result in being searched. Not for any lawful purpose as contraband, weapons but to determine what your anatomy is because they feel like that’s relevant in which box to check for you.
• What we’re seeing nationwide is police officers unsure of someone’s identity, police stations nationwide have no guidelines in determining someones gender. What we’re seeing is these genital checks.
• There have been transgender women who’ve been searched in San Francisco, who’ve not only experienced these humiliating strip searches but then have been forced to dance or masterbate, in front of these officers.
• They want to humiliate and punish based on their gender identity.
• Really things are getting better for a small minority of LGTB and the vast majority end up facing these patterns of criminalization.  In the court systems, we’re seeing individuals whose sexual orientations or gender identity is being used against them.
• Archetype of queers as a security threat.  We talk about prisons as queer spaces in that, we see prisons being used as a tool to say that gay people are the predators.
• My home is the People’s Law Office. The work I do is police and government misconduct cases and I do death penalty cases. But I’m queer. I do hold myself out to the queer community and I do get these cases.
• Walking While Trans. One encounter with a cop can change your whole life.
• It’s really important for us to reach out to Guild Members, this is state sponsored homophobia and trans-phobia.

Guest – Attorney Andrea Ritchie,  is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City.

Guest – Attorney Joey Mogul, a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University’s College of Law. She  focuses on civil rights cases involving police misconduct, criminal cases brought against individuals engaged in street demonstrations and other forms of First Amendment expression, and capital defense cases.

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 Law and Disorder April 11, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Israeli Arab Actor, Juliano Mer-Khamis, Killed In Jenin’s Refugee Camp
• Professor Shanara Gilbert and Professor Haywood Burns
• Military Commissions Guantanamo
• Law and Disorder National Pacifica Radio Special:  Class Warfare  – Click Here

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New York City Rent Laws Set To Expire June 15, 2011

Rent and tenant protections for half of all New York City renter households plus thousands more are set to expire on June 15, 2011.  These laws have been the foundation for affordable rental housing for middle-class and low-income New Yorkers. If the rent laws are not renewed, it could lead to unprecedented evictions and homelessness could spiral even further out of control.   It’s explained in the above linked article by Patrick Markee Senior Policy Analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless,  titled Tell Albany: Renew and Strengthen Rent Laws.

Patrick Markee:

• Two out of three households in New York City are renters. Half of all New York City renters are protected by rent and eviction protection laws that go back 60 years to the New Deal era.
• Right now the stakes are as high as they could be and the political environment is as bad as it can be.
• We have a governor who’s been strongly supported financially by the real estate industry.
• Fortunately we have a state assembly there that is strongly pro-tenant.  Half of all New Yorkers are rent stabilized apartments which means rent increases are regulated each year.
• The fundamental protection for tenants is they can’t be evicted except for just cause.
• Those protections have been weakened by vacancy destabilization. Because of that we’ve lost 300 thousand rent stabilized apartments over the last decade and a half.
• Right now we have 39 thousand people including 16 thousand children bedding down in the municipal shelter system.
• Just this past month we’ve reached the highest census in the shelter system since the city has been keeping records.  Forty percent more people are cycling through the shelter system than when (mayor) Bloomberg took office in 2002
• We’ve had a perfect storm, loss of affordable rental housing across the country, due to Bush Administration cut backs, at the same time, we get the economic recession, and unemployment, add on top of that the foreclosure crisis.  3 out of 4 homeless people are families with kids.
• New Yorkers have a state constitutional right to shelter.
• Contact Governor Cuomo, contact your state legislator.

Guest - Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless and writer of many of the fine articles on the Coalition For the Homeless website.

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The Goldstone Report Now Belongs to the World

Lead author of The Goldstone Report, detailing the 2008-2009 Israeli assault on Gaza has changed his position on the issue of targeting civilians.  In an editorial by the Washington Post, Judge Richard Goldstone said, “Civilians were not intentionally targeted [by Israel] as a matter of policy.” And then Israel has called on the United Nations to retract the report on Operation Cast Lead, the war that led to the death of about 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis. Earlier this year, Law and Disorder talked with co-editors of the book titled, The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.

Phil Weiss:

• Our book came out 2 years after the Gaza conflict and people said why now, who cares about this? Now we see why.
• This statement by him (Judge Goldstone) was immediately seized upon as a disavowal of the report by many supporters of Israel.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel immediately called on the UN to withdraw the report.
• The US State Department came out and said this just shows there were no war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict.
• What remains in the Goldstone Report? Geneva Convention: Principle of Distinction and Disproportional Attack
• Other important crimes noted in the report: using white phosphorus, targeting infrastructure, destroying a water treatment facility, destroying a flour mill, destroying food production.
• Even you have a military target, you have to attack that proportionately. One Israeli commander said, we don’t want a hair of our soldiers to fall here.
• This (Gaza) is the size of the Bronx and Queens put together
• The central case that Goldstone based his reconsideration was one of the most horrific cases during the war.
• That took place on January 4, 2009 in a village outside of Gaza City.
• The Israelis were trying to secure parts of Gaza City from the east. They seized this area as a strategic base. They had herded 120 members of an extended family into one house. They had forced them to stay there for a couple of days.
• In the midst of this operation, on that morning, helicopter gun ships came  and shelled that house, killing 29 people. In the report Goldstone offered this as another case of targeting civilians.
• I would say “because” this report came out, Israel has produced evidence that the helicopter gunship guys misread drone images. Showing men carrying firewood back to this house as being men carrying rocket launchers.
• Goldstone is saying, I accept the Israeli version here, I think that it was out of negligence or a mistake.
• This reconsideration has got more attention than the whole report.
• This fall the UN General Assembly could vote to establish to make Palestine, a Palestinian state.

Guest – Philip Weiss,  founder of the blog Mondoweiss, longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute  Philip is the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga.  Weiss is one of the editors of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.

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 Law and Disorder April 4, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• In Memory: Attorney Leonard Weinglass
• To Hell With The Constitution, Obama Goes To War – Michael Ratner – How is it that Congress isn’t screaming at President Obama for usurping its power to take this nation to war against Libya?
• Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Anniversary
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Beyond Vietnam, A Time To Break Silence
• Law and Disorder National Pacifica Radio Special:  Class Warfare  – Click Here
  

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In Memory of Attorney Leonard Weinglass

Hosts remember one of the great civil rights attorneys, Leonard Weinglass from his early years as a lawyer in the Air Force to his big cases.  Michael Smith shares a great anecdote. Len vigorously defended a black soldier and upset the Air Force brass. They sent him to Iceland for 2 years. Much later in the late fifties,  he moved to Newark, NJ, set up a one man office and represented black people in police abuse cases.

The remarkable and heroic progressive lawyer Len Weinglass died on March 23.  Among his cases were the Chicago 8, the Ellsberg case and the Cuban 5.   He was our close comrade and will be missed by his friends and all those seeking a better world. – Michael Ratner.

• Len Weinglass November 9, 2009
• Len Weinglass June 29, 2009
• Len Weinglass June 16, 2008
• Len Weinglass September 24, 2007

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A Poem for Len Weinglass by Linda Backiel

Almost Ready

“I have everything almost ready for the spring,”

you said. Brush cut, brambles cleared, new trees

planted. A lop-sided smile flit across your silver

stubble beard, a late winter field momentarily lit

by a break in a fleet of migrating clouds.

click for more

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Universal Jurisdiction: Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck

Co-host Michael Ratner interviews attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, German civil rights attorney and General Secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. They discuss the effectiveness of Universal Jurisdiction cases. The cases that helped international human rights prosecutions.  Specifically the cases in Argentina against corporations that profited from dictatorships and human rights abuses and how Argentina can be used as a model to bring cases against other powerful leaders or corporations.  Optimism overcomes cynicism, Wolfgang says its not easy, it’s work bringing cases against the powerful of the world.

Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck:

• I have the privilege to work on behalf of Germans and Argentinian victims of the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina.
• The Argentinian cases and the Chilean cases were the most important phase in universal jurisdiction.
• We filed cases in Germany, Italy and France.
• The idea to file Argentinian and Chilean cases in European courts was not to try Argentinians and Chileans in Europe but to impose accountability in Chile and Argentina.
• That’s what people call the Pinochet Effect.
• In 2005 and 2006 when the amnesty laws were abolished. If you go to Buenos Aries now you will observe military junta tribes from Monday to Friday and you will police officers, military leaders, torturers, guards.
• At this point, special prosecutors and parts of the civil society are demanding an investigation and prosecution into crimes committed by corporations who aided and abetted the dictatorship, or who profited from the dictatorship.
• The history in Argentina, 30 thousand people disappeared, 100 thousand were tortured.
• The human rights movement in Argentina was so strong, that they maintained a certain presence, a certain public attention.
• For us, Argentina is like the blue print. They inspired the human rights movement not only in Europe
• I filed a case at Mercy Dispense because in Buenos Aires, 15 trade unionists were disappeared. We filed the criminal case in Germany against a German-Argentinian manager who had duel citizenship which allowed us to bring the case in Germany. Then we filed a case in the US, an alien tort claims which is still pending. We filed a case in Argentina which is still pending.
• One line is to blame the torturers and the torturer leaders, we want to talk about why these human rights violations have been committed. Why the Argentinian military took the decision to oppress their populations and our explanation is that they wanted to install a political and economic system which needed the extermination of the trade unionists.
• Actually to demand accountability and do these investigations is trauma work. Society that hasn’t dealt with its past has some problems in the present. Argentina is worth studying as an example.
• Universal Jurisdiction is showing its limits. So far it was very difficult to bring cases against the powerful of the world.
• The suspicion that the criminal justice system is just another tool of the powerful against the powerless,
• We have to try to bring cases against the powerful, Russian, China, the US, or Sri Lanka or Israel, who all undertake actions to avoid prosecution.
• We are very optimistic that some investigation will be carried out in Spain but some people are over-pessimistic, because even now, we achieved that several former US officials, or from the CIA or from the Army, or politicians can’t travel anymore, without running the risk to be arrested.
• We achieved something, I’m also not satisfied from it but still its more than we thought possible.
• President Bush wanted to go to Switzerland.
• It’s always an argument against those cynical people who say nothing is possible. Yes there is, something is possible. We do have to struggle to maintain this, the whole international criminal justice system is at stake.

Guest – Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, a German civil rights attorney. He is also the General Secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. On November 14, 2006, Kaleck sought criminal prosecution charges in German court against a number of US officials and military personnel in connection with alleged human rights abuses at the prison facilities at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay on behalf of eleven plaintiffs. Approximately 30 human rights activists and organizations participated as co-plaintiffs