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

Updates:

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

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The State of Perpetual War

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

Anthony Arnove:

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

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

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

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The Guantanamo Syndrome

Attorney Michael Ratner:

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

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Audio Collage

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

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 Law and Disorder September 5, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• In Memory: Attorney Debra Evanson
• Court Says Public Has Right To Video Police In Public Places

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Workers Win Large Settlement at Supplier to Chinese Restaurants After Hard Fought Campaign

A bitterly contested campaign against Pur Pac, a food distribution warehouse giant reached a settlement of 470 thousand dollars for workers who had their wages illegally withheld and more. The workers organized with Focus on the Food chain, Brandworkers and International Workers of the World to challenge sweatshop conditions, wage theft, retaliation and discrimination in the sprawling industrial corridor of food processing and distribution that service New York City markets and restaurants.  Daniel Gross, the executive director of Brandworkers said – quote – The conditions in the sector are deplorable and systemic but, as the Pur Pac workers have shown, positive workplace change can and will be won.”

Attorney Daniel Gross:

• Pur Pac is typical of an industrial corridor of food processing and distribution warehouses that service a tremendous amount of food to restaurants and supermarkets in New York. Much of what we eat in restaurants is processed in sweatshops.
• Pur Pac is a distributor of restaurant and food supplies to Chinese Restaurants, cafes and bakeries. They distribute huge quanitities of rice, cooking oil, chopsticks.
• Sweatshop, tremendous amount of wage theft, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Vicious retaliation for workers who stand up for their rights, exhausting long shifts, very heavy work.
• We facilitate worker led, comprehensive campaigns. The company used several tactics to avoid accountability here, the main approach that they used is they engaged in sham sales.
• They would fraudulently transfer assets, rebrand the company. The company was originally called Easy Supply. Easy Supply escaped accountability by purporting to go out of business, now same factory, same trucks, same products was called Sunrise Plus. We caught up with Sunrise Plus and they engaged in another sham sale and that created Pur Pac.
• We were also able to win a binding code of conduct, which creates very powerful protective mechanisms for collective activity, going forward.
• We were able to win recognition for the IWW, as exclusive bargaining agent for Pur Pac workers. It was really the biggest victory for Focus On The Food Chain.
• I was a low wage worker mostly in retail and fast food. I was working at Borders Books and Music and really felt the sting of a multi-national employer which at the time was highly profitable. It didn’t pay a fair wage, offered an insecure and unpredictable schedule.
• It employed a management force that really showed tremendous disrespect for rank and file workers.
• We had 44 Starbucks stores that were infested with rats and insects. We did worker-citizen journalism and we got photos and video of these rats and roaches, we inflated a huge, inflatable rat in front of the stores and shared our video and photographic evidence.
• Starbucks is still engaged in really a scorched Earth effort, complete disrespect for the right to organize and free association.
• The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is the administrative agency charged under federal with administering union management affairs. They have jurisdiction over cases under the National Labor Relations Act.
• Mezonos Maven Bakery is a food production sweatshop. Mezonos Maven was cheating workers out of their wages, disrespecting workers, and the workers came together, they didn’t join a union but they came together with community groups, etc.  Mezonos Maven, started illegally firing workers.
• When the workers stood up to the most basic worker’s rights, they were subjected to fierce immediate retaliation.

Guest – Attorney Daniel Gross, Executive Director of Brandworkers, a non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees.

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Federal Judge Rules Former Mayor Daley Can Be Sued For Alleged Torture Cover Up

We continue to bring updates on the ongoing police torture and abuse scandal revolving around former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Recently, a federal judge has now ruled that former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley can be allowed to be kept in the lawsuit where he is charged with conspiracy to cover up police abuse and torture. As many listeners may know,  Burge has been sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying about torturing prisoners to obtain coerced confessions. The People’s Law Office brought the case in 2005 and the city of Chicago refused to settle while pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the case.

In the beginning of September, attorney Flint Taylor will depose former mayor Richard Daley which will force him to answer questions about the abuse of African Americans under Burge’s command. This case has already cost Chicago taxpayers more than 43 million dollars in settlements and legal fees.  Past shows with Attorney Flint Taylor

Attorney Flint Taylor:

• Daley was the state’s attorney for Cook County for eight years in the 80s during that time he was specifically informed of police torture.
• Instead of doing anything about it and dealing with the torturers, Jon Burge and company, he continued to encourage it by prosecuting men who had been falsely arrested and charged based on tortured confessions sending as many of them to death row.
• When he became mayor, he continued to have an active role in the cover up of the torture practice.
• He had at various times as chief of law enforcement and chief executive of the city of Chicago, the power and obligation to act and if he did, we wouldn’t have had all these men on death row, and in the penitentiary and we wouldn’t have had all these men tortured.
• We brought it several times in lawsuits starting in 2003. Judges had consistently turned their backs on that claim.
• The new Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel who has successfully tip toed past this both in his campaign and now as the first 100 days of being mayor had to respond to it.
• They’ve paid over 13 million dollars to defend these civil cases that we’re in.  We take the mayor at his word, and we hope this leads to settlements and compensation for the men who’ve been tortured.
• There are six men who have lawsuits in court. Unfortunately because of statute of limitations most torture survivors don’t have lawsuits.
• There are still 15 men behind bars in Illinois, based on tortured confessions that Jon Burge and the Area 2 torturers coerced from them.  We’re fighting to have them all get new hearings.
• I don’t know if a Daley denial in some of the actions in this case would tantamount to perjury that Fitzgerald would be interested in.
• There is a major memoranda that was sent from the police superintendent at that time to Daley, a kind of CYA saying “I’ve been giving this powerful evidence of torture from a doctor over at the county hospital.

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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 Law and Disorder August 22, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• NLG, CCR, EFF and Generations Ahead Say DNA Collection Violates Fourth Amendment
• Gang Injunction in Babylon, NY
• Durban 10 Coalition UN Meeting on Racism

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Cruel Solitary Confinement In Pennsylvania Prisons

Earlier this year the National Lawyers Guild called on Superintendent Louis Folino to support the Program Review Board’s recommendation to release Russell Maroon Shoatz into the general prison population at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

Jerome Coffey, a political prisoner currently being held in Pennsylvania’s SCI Forrest.  Jerome’s social work while in prison include sending clothes to villages in Uganda and to women prisoners in the Philippines. That work has labeled him an instigator and he’s been placed in solitary confinement for more than 5 and a half years.

Bret Grote:

• The Human Rights Coalition was founded by state prisoners at the State Correctional Institution in Greene, Pennsylvania in 2000. The Pittsburgh chapter where I work was founded in 2006-2007.
• The main mission of the Human Rights Coalition was to bring the voices of the most excluded from criminal, legal, criminal justice discussions, namely those of prisoners, their family members and effected communities.
• We base our work in building relationships with prisoners and to bring support and advocacy to those most impacted by the prison system and that has led us straight into solitary confinements where people’s lives are being micro-managed down to the most minute details.
• The justifications for solitary confinement shift from to another, it used to be based on escapes.  Now that Russell Maroon Shoatz is approaching his 70th birthday, they’re claiming its because of his past efforts of organizing hunger strikes, and they cite an incident where he was forced to defend himself against another prisoner.
• In Maroon’s case he met with a prisoner mental health staff person because there was some movement towards releasing him from solitary confinement that ended up being blocked.
• This staff person told him there was an allegation that he tried to organize an armed prison uprising in the 80′s. This has been following him around for over 25 years in his file, but he has not been able to challenge this because he was not informed of this at all.
• He is not represented by legal counsel. He is ripe for representation under the 8th amendment clause of cruel and unusual punishment.
• The prison authorities typical treatment for somebody who is the restrictive housing unit is a cursory interview at the cell, maybe once every 30 days with a staff worker, which is to say they’re not really giving them effective mental health treatment.
• You spend 23 hours in the cell, maybe 24 if the guards don’t take you to yard or shower.
• The things that one may witness on the whole are constant screaming, banging, and yelling and crying and cursing and talking to one’s self by prisoners who are psychologically disturbed.  According to the figures up to 2500 or 3000 prisoners can be in solitary confinement on any given day in Pennsylvania. The total prisoner population in Pennsylvania is 52 thousand.
• We are constantly looking for serious and committed civil and human rights lawyers to work with us. We have a massive body of evidence.  The solitary confinement system is an invisible system inside of a larger invisible system of the prisons.

Guest – Bret Grote, law student and volunteer with the Human Rights Coalition, an organization bringing the voices of the most excluded from criminal, legal, criminal justice discussions, namely those of prisoners, their family members and effected communities.  The HRC works to build relationships with prisoners and  bring support and advocacy to those most impacted by the prison system.
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Andre Jacobs

Andre Jacobs is another Pennsylvania state prisoner in solitary confinement. Andre, a 27 year-old jailhouse lawyer, has been held in retaliatory solitary confinement for more than 8 years. In 2009, Andre was awarded 185 thousand dollars in a case against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, an action that has resulted in his being singled him out for abuse within the prison system. In January of this year, he was physically abused, issued death threats and denied medical treatment.

Liz Springer:

• It’s been rough, there had been days where I thought he wasn’t going to make it. I thought I was going to get a call saying he was dead. I send him inspiration cards, and support him, send him some Bible verses to keep him strong.
• There have been times he said to me, I can’t do it no longer, I can’t do it.
• They were beatin’ him in the court room. They said he had an attitude and when he was leaving the court room, I witnessed them beating him, and I said, “I love you Andre.” He turned around and said “I love you too.”
• They started beating him because they said he wasn’t supposed to speak to me.
• He lost that case because the guards got on the stand and said he hurt one of the guard’s wrist.
• He ended up with 18 years because of that. Lately he has a little hope.
• He was strapped to a chair for 12 hours not being able to move anything but his head. Didn’t eat, had to go the bathroom and he just went.

Guest – Liz Springer, activist and the grandmother of Andre Jacobs.
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Russell Maroon Shoatz

As many listeners may know, former Black Panther Russell Shoatz has been in prison since 1972, and the past 21 of those years has been spent in solitary confinement.  He’s 67, his spirit unbroken and in addition to his record of good conduct, members of the Pennsylvania Prison Society who visit Mr. Shoatz regularly attest to his peaceful disposition.  Earlier this year the National Lawyers Guild called on Superintendent Louis Folino to support the Program Review Board’s recommendation to release Russell Maroon Shoatz into the general prison population at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. His daughter Theresa Shoatz joins us talk more about his advocacy work and life as a political prisoner.

Theresa Shoatz:

• The solitary confinement has had the worst effect on us. Within the 39 years we was able to have contact visits.
• The unit he’s in now, there’s no contact, you’re behind a glass when you visit.
• He’s had grandchildren since that time, and he hasn’t touched the grandchildren either. Our family is dedicated to visiting him, every 3 months.
• Russell Shoatz being known throughout the country.  I notice now, his conversations are laid back, he’s not as upbeat as he used to be.
• He keeps stressing almost on our weekly calls, you gotta get me outta here.
• They told me Daddy’s a leader, I said no, he’s a grandfather.  The Panthers didn’t say we want to battle the police. They said, we want to educate our youth, we want to feed them, we want to take control of our community. When it became war, and the Panthers were under attack, they said we got to protect ourselves.
• That’s what happened, and of course, Daddy’s a political prisoner. He took a stand and stood on the front line for his people and his community.
• I had a little attitude with him, I said why would you leave us, this was some years ago. He said,  (I did it for my people. How could I allow you to be raised in that type of system?) It hit me like a ton of bricks.
• The guards, they called themselves the “wolfpack” when you’d see them comin, they would roll one pants leg all the up to the knee.
• I went to Governor’s office, the Governor of Pennsylvania. I was on trains, back and forth.
• It’s the same thing, when our people get in the streets and march, you really can’t do one march.
• At SCI Greene, over 20 young men in their 20′s hung themselves there (lynching) within a short time of solitary confinement.
• Daddy was constantly yelling to the guys, what to do. They come in strollin. Strollin down the solitary unit.
• This prison bubble is going to burst. There are people fighting on all levels, this prison bubble is going to burst.
• It’s going to end, we’re going to make sure of that.

Guest – Theresa Shoatz, daughter of political prisoner Russell Shoatz and activist with the Human Rights Coalition.

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 Law and Disorder August 8, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution

Egypt’s revolution didn’t suddenly happen overnight, there was long important history. Beginning with Egypt and Israel signing the Camp David Accords in 1979 Egypt was rewarded with billions in US military aid that paved the way for neo-liberal style policies under Hosni Mubarak.  By 2000, the first signs of widespread opposition started in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada. The protests centered around poverty, corruption and need for democracy.  A second wave of mass opposition ignited in 2003 in response to the US invasion of Iraq and Egypt’s support for the war.  Then the April 6 movement rose in 2008, protesting against rising food costs and low wages. By 2010 social media and blogs were outlets for organizing and dissent.

Guest – Co-writer of the article and founder of Left Turn Magazine Rami El-Amine.
Guest – Activist Mostafa Henaway who also contributed to the article A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution.

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Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on War of Aggression in Libya

As many listeners know, the military operation in Libya is not a humanitarian intervention, it is part of the global war and effort to militarize North Africa.  The Chinese have sizable interests in Libya in the battle for oil. Meanwhile, the Gaddafi leadership has continued to function despite the NATO bombing campaign in the last four months and the loss of significant parts of the the country. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney had recently returned from a fact finding mission in Tripoli during a time of intense bombing.  She has organized speakers to discuss how billions are spent in this military operation while we’re being told there are no funds available for jobs, health care and education. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was among the speakers, he’s been following the US and NATO involvement in brutal attempts to overthrow the Gaddafi government.

Attorney Ramsey Clark:

• The reality is that its a war of aggression, which the Nuremberg charter and judgement defined as a supreme international crime.
• What we’ve done is used the appearance of a civil war, people rising up against their own government, to wage a massive assault. – really unrelated to their activities, the first place we hit was Tripoli, they were no where near Tripoli and we bombed the daylights out of it.
• The bombing is spreading away from the compound, its hitting areas outside of the city.  Interesting to note, people are still fleeing from Iraq to Syria. It’s safer in Syria, we read in our newspapers it’s violent in Syria.
• If you go back to Rwanda, and remember how everybody was outraged afterward but nobody intervened.
• A clearer illustration is what’s happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have died and are dying by armed troops. Nobody bothers to intervene.
• What you do is, you want to go in anyway, you use humanitarian intervention as justification.
• The poor Congress is defaulting on its responsibility. The military budget exceeds all of the civilian budget. They can gloss over it but until we address the issue of US military expenditures, our country will be a threat to peace in the world.
• We spend more on the military then the rest of the world combined.  It’s almost impossible to think that the United States will curtail its foreign aggressions, while the military expenditures are at what they are.
• We’ve got in the Pacific Ocean today, 8 Trident nuclear submarines, the cost is enormous each one carries 140-145 nuclear warheads, anyone of which can destroy the biggest city in the country and go beyond it, their largest warhead will leave a crater with a 25 mile diameter.
• Hard to sleep in Tripoli and other places that are under direct attack by us.
• We tolerated him for 40 years while he created the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Highest per capita income, highest levels of education.  Health care and more public housing then they can use for their own citizens. – almost enough for their foreign labor. He doesn’t submit to the will of the United States.
• Sub-Sahara Africa primarily, all the places on Earth are dying.  It’s not just the conditions of weather in East Africa, but everyplace you go, structure’s crumbling. The chaos seems to be spreading and we seem to prefer it.
• Rebel Forces: It’s a group that doesn’t always know each other and doesn’t always like each other.
• We took out all of Gaddafi’s planes which was easy to do. It’s easy to hit his armor.
• They’ve held their own against the might of West Europe and the United States for months and months.
• We (U.S.Government) agreed to pay without admitting liability 300 million dollars for the people killed in 1986 by our bombing.
• People have to organize and rise up. I don’t think we’re going to get anything accomplished as far as peace and reduction of US militarization except by an enormous demand by the people.
• We can cut 90 percent of the military spending in my opinion and be safer, and not be engages in all these interventions – which we can’t handle anymore.

Guest – Attorney Ramsey Clark was the former Attorney General of the United States, under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the first Attorney General at the Justice Department to call for the elimination of the death penalty and all electronic surveillance. After he left the Johnson administration, he became a important critic of the Vietnam War and continued defending the rights of people worldwide, from Palestinians to Iraqis, to anyone who found themselves at the repressive end of government action.

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National Lawyers Guild Lawyers Victorious in Internet Free Speech Case

At a 2008, Sunday Service at the Mount Hope Baptist Church in Lansing, Michigan, members of the queer rights group Bash Back! disrupted the service to protest anti-gay policies. Months later, the church and the Alliance Defense Fund, a reactionary Christian nonprofit organization, sued Bash Back! and 15 named activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The church and Defense Fund subpoenaed identifying information in an attempt to find out the protesters’ identities; Risup.net, a provider of online communication tools for individuals and groups working for social change, was the only email provider to challenge the subpoenas. Federal judge Richard A. Jones ruled that Riseup.net did not have to turn over the records, finding that “the Users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously online outweighs Mount Hope’s right to discovery.” National Lawyers Guild members Larry Hildes of Bellingham, Washington, Devin Theriot-Orr of Seattle, and Mark Sniderman of Indiana successfully defended several activists who received subpoenas from Mt. Hope Baptist Church demanding they turn over their internet account records.  Once again, this shows how readily corporations share private personal data on activists with the government or other private entities.

Attorney Larry Hildes:

• This church is particularly virulent with their ministry aimed at turning gay people straight.
• The group picketed outside and tried to pass out leaflets inside.  Two women ran to the front of the sanctuary and kissed each other at the alter.
• Mount Hope Baptist Church called the police. The police showed up and said there’s no criminal activity here.
• The Alliance Defense Fund, a huge fundamentalist law firm and fund raising empire in Scottsdale, Arizona contacted the church and said we’ll take on your case.
• They sued the Bash Back folks under the “Faith Act”  – Freedom To Access To Clinics Act. They sued them and settled for 2500.00 and a consent decree that they would never disrupt a religious service in the United States again.
• In the meantime they went to look for anyone connected with Bash Back in any way. They went to Yahoo and subpoenaed records from list-serves and Yahoo without telling anybody gave them what they wanted.
• Then they went after RiseUp and RiseUp prides themselves on two things, the internet voice of the left and privacy for their subscribers.
• Riseup attorney Devin Theriot-Orr outlined the internet case law, there is some good law.
• In order to engage in free speech you need to have some degree of security and safety that your privacy is going to be protected otherwise, it chills the climate so that very few people are going to be able to take that risk.
• The victory is that there is a first amendment right to be on a list-serve of a group, even a group whose actions can be seen as civil disobedience or illegal. Your information is still protected and private and the Freedom of Association Privilege goes to that.
• We were awarded by the court 28 thousand dollars in fees.

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Attorney Devin Theriot-Orr:

• I’m the pro-bono lawyer for RiseUp.net. The identity information of subscribers is protected by a longstanding precedent going back to 2001.
• Obviously the first amendment has its limits, you can’t speak anonymously about threatening to kill people.
• One of the caveats of the first amendment is that if you have a bona fide law suit and you’re  trying to uncover the identity of the defendants there’s a whole balancing test to go through before you should be able to identify the defendants.
• They also provided identical subpoenas to Yahoo and Google, and even though these companies are located in silicon valley with very good federal benches, and they’re in the ninth circuit, its kind of amazing to me that other companies don’t take a stronger stance to protect their users privacy.
• We’re hoping this is a warning to overly zealous attorneys who are abusing discovery process.

Guest – Attorney Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild attorney in the case, Bellingham Washington.

Guest – Attorney Devin Theriot-Orr,  National Lawyers Guild attorney in Seattle and pro-bono attorney for RiseUp.net.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats

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

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

Chip Berlet :

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

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

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

Updates:

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

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Blair Mountain March

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

Attorney Dan Gregor:

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

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

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National Lawyers Guild Report: Human Rights In Tunisia

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

Azadeh Shahshahani:

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

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

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

Updates:

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

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FBI to Expand Domestic Surveillance Powers

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

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

Attorney Mike German:

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

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

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 Law and Disorder 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 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 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.