Law and Disorder August 30, 2010 [56:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Political Prisoner Lori Berenson Released From Peruvian Prison, Sent Back For 5 Years
• Cordoba Center Near Ground Zero: A Distraction. Michael Smith Update.

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Climate Ground Zero – Update with Jimmy Tobias

We get an update from Mountaintop Removal activist Jimmy Tobias. Jimmy was arrested this summer with others for using direct action to shut down a coal mining mountaintop removal effort in Virginia. He was held on a 3500.00 bail and later released. A New York Times editorial states that movement to slow down and stop the mountaintop removal mining in that area is gaining traction and the Obama Administration is restricting permits for mountaintop removal mining.  Recent Action.

Jimmy Tobias:

• I’m in Rockcreek, West Virginia where the campaign houses are located.  The campaign houses have a big role, but there a million other things people work on.
• At the moment we’re gearing up for a mass mobilization in Washington, that will take place between the 25 and the 27 of September.  Appalachia Rising. We’re focused on bringing national attention to the issue.
• I’ve been loathe to put my faith in the EPA to solve these problems. Their actions have been really ambiguous. They go back and forth and its really hard to get a sense of the ultimate outcome of their actions (EPA)
• My passion is for the local organizing, because that will make it or break it basically.  We have four campaign houses, a big outdoor kitchen, everyone eats together, organizes together, works on different aspects of the campaign.  The civil dis-obediance campaign is called Climate Ground Zero.
• Coal River Mountain Watch, Sludge Safety Project, Mountain Justice.

Guest – Jimmy Tobias, activist and direct action protester against Mountaintop Removal.

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Blackwater Reaches Deal on U.S. Export Violations

The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide has reached an agreement with the State Department for hundreds of violations of US export control regulations. The company now called US Training Services will pay the US government 42 million dollars in fines to avoid criminal charges on export violations. Violations include shipping weapons to Iraq hidden inside containers of dog food. There are other legal troubles facing Blackwater officials, but the company continues to obtain government contracts. Last June, Blackwater was awarded a 120 million dollar contract to provide security at a State Department regional office in Afghanistan and the CIA renewed the firm’s 100 million dollar security contract in Kabul.

Jeremy Scahill:

• This is a company that has been repeatedly involved with criminal activity, with murder and has gotten off scott-free.  It has been shielded by its handlers at the State Department or at the DOD.
• The idea that this company can pay what amounts to 146 thousand dollars per violation is outrageous.
• The real meat of it is the murder they’re involved with, the human rights violations.
• What would it take for this company to be completely knocked off the US Government payroll?
• US operations in Afghanistan now, have become so dependent on Blackwater, both in the CIA and State Department.  Eric Prince, the owner of Blackwater who has since fled to the United Arabs Emirates, which has no extradition with the United States. He moved there after five of his top deputies were indicted on conspiracy and weapons charges. This is a man who knows where the bodies are buried, he was working for the CIA, for the Joint Special Operations Command. They (Blackwater) could reveal details of action that would horrify the average American if they knew this was being done in their name.
• After 9/11, Eric Prince cut a deal with the number 3 man at the CIA, Alvin Buzzy Krongard. Find Fix and Finish Operation.
• There are also cases of I’ve heard of Blackwater working inside of Syria.
• Two former Blackwater employees, a man and a woman, the man worked in war zones, the woman worked on the financial side. They have filed a whistleblower case against Blackwater, alleging extrajudicial killings and bilking US taxpayers.  Susan Burke recently deposed Eric Prince.
• Blackwater is involved with secret assassination programs in countries around the world, where we aren’t at war, where we aren’t informing those countries.
• The only serious challenges to Blackwater, aka Xe, aka US Training Services are people like Michael Ratner and Susan Burke. Bill: Stop Outsourcing Security Act.

Guest – Jeremy Scahill is the author of the international best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
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Cuba Travel Ban

Will the Obama Administration come to a decision on how much to enable travel to Cuba.  The Administration could simply reinstate President Clinton’s policy which is a costly case by case application or grant general licenses to the remaining 11 categories of travel to Cuba. General license would include schools, cultural institutions, Chambers of Commerce, religious bodies, World Affairs Councils, humanitarian organizations and more.
Sandra Levinson:

• The travel regs are not really travel regs. They are regulations set up by the US Treasury Department at the instigation of the US State Department. You can’t spend money in Cuba.
• President Carter lifted the travel ban, there were direct flights to Cuba during the brief time he was president.
• During the Clinton Administration, we were able to take a number of trips. Ban in effect for a number of rationales, we don’t wanna give money to Castro. It always surprised me that William F. Buckley was in support of ending the travel ban to Cuba.
• We can always do professional trips. I’m leading a trip for professional artists.
• Lawyers traveling to Cuba fall under the general license, it’s by assertion. You simply say as legal professionals you’re doing legal research.
• We’ve been to Cuba so much, our travel is not formal, it’s intimate.
• Although the food and medicine embargo was lifted several years ago, the regulations about payment are so tough on the Cubans, everyone else can buy on credit. The Cubans can’t, they have to buy up front, before a ship leaves US territory with the food, with the medicine.
• I fell in love with Cuba, I arrived on July 4, 1969. I was there for six weeks. Socialism with salsa.
• On the fifth day of my first trip, Fidel Castro taught me how to cut sugar cane. I think he is the one of the smartest leaders we’ve had in this hemisphere.  I think he’s been in power that long, because we have not had relations with Cuba.

Guest -  Sandra Levinson,  Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City and Director of the Center’s Cuban Art Space. Facebook link

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 Law and Disorder Aug 23, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Rights Groups Release Documents From (ICE) Agency FOIA Lawsuit
  Groups Call “Secure Communities” Program a Racial Profiling Dragnet That Undermines Community Policing and Public Safety
• Descendents Appeal to UN Over Latest Mamilla Cemetery Demolitions

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In the Land of the Free, a film by Vadim Jean

Director Vadim George joins us to discuss his recent documentary film “In the Land of the Free.” As many listeners may know, the Angola 3 are Robert King, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. Each had arrived to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in the late 1960s.  While in prison, and in contact with Black Panthers, the men helped build a prison chapter of the Black Panthers.  They organized inmates to end systematic rape and violence and worked as jailhouse lawyers.  The men have spent a combined century in solitary confinement in the Angola prison. Vadim’s powerful documentary explores the issues of accountability and examines the biases against the sentencing of African Americans compared to Whites and Latinos.  The film is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, and it’s noted toward the end, that there is a pending civil suit  ‘Wilkerson, Wallace and  Woodfox’ vs the State of Louisiana, ruled by the US Supreme Court and to go to trial based that their 30+ years in solitary confinement is “inhumane and unconstitutional”. This case could stop long-term solitary confinement in US prisons.
Vadim Jean:

• I was friends with Anita Roddick, she knew Robert King, and when she passed away in 2007, Robert King was one of the speakers at her memorial.  They wouldn’t let me film in the prison.
• The Angola 3 came together in the New Orleans parrish prison in the 1970s.
• The criminals were put in with the Black Panthers and the Black Panthers educated the criminals.
• In the 1970s Angola was the bloodiest prison in America.
• Robert King was told why he was kept in solitary confinement after 25 years in CCR (solitary confinement)
• Because he was being investigated for the murder of Brent Miller, which happened when he wasn’t even in the prison.  They’re incredible human beings. They’re strong men. They’re self educated, in prison.
• I think they have their side, the fact that they know they’re innocent, and that makes you strong, that’s made them incredibly strong.  They refused to be beaten.
• Robert is free. His conviction was overturned in 2001. People have reacted strongly to the film.
• I’ve tended to make drama comedies. I made a completely mad film called Jiminy Glick in Lalawood with Martin Short.
• I made this film for Anita. (Anita Roddick)  The Roddick Foundation.

Guest – Vadim Jean, began his career directing commercials for products such as Blockbuster Video, Woolworths, The Observer and Mercury 121 Mobile Phones. He then moved on to music videos for Elton John and Oasis before co-directing his first feature film, Leon the Pig Farmer (1992). For his work he won an Evening Standard British Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer, a Chaplin Award for Best First Feature at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

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Law and Disorder Barack Obama Series – CCR Staff Attorney Shane Kadidal

We’re joined by Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney Shane Kadidal to give us an overview on several critical topics we’ve been following over the years here on Law and Disorder. We look at what is happening in Guantanamo right now, the Obama policy of preventive detentions and the state of Habeas Corpus in the United States.  In January of 2009 Barack Obama issued orders to close Guantanamo Bay prison. There was talk of transferring prisoners to a supermax prison in the United States.  Military tribunals move forward for Guantanamo prisoners.

Shane Kadidal:

• What we won is the right to get into court and challenge the legality of your detention. CCR won that in 2008
• Obama gets into office and says he’s going to close Guantanamo Bay Prison in a year.
• Obama to set up expert agency to decide what to do with people in Guantanamo prison
• About 50 cases have gone forward and we (CCR) won 72 percent of the cases
• About 180 left in Guantanamo.  Obama has improved physical conditions for detainees in Guantanamo, but they’re still stuck there. Nothing much has changed, we see stasis, there isn’t much political movement.
• About a month into the administration, the Obama Department of Justice says our position is the same as the Bush administrations on Bagram AFB prison
• We’re taking the same legal position about executive power as the previous administration – state’s secrets about rendition
• Six hundred people in Bagram right now. Bagram is an active war zone, can’t have courts interferring
• About 30 of the remaining 180 in Guantanamo will be charged. Most of the people brought there were innocent. The victim of profiling policies.
• General Stone says 400 of the 600 hundred in Bagram Prison have done nothing and should be released immediately.  Task Force report on Guantanamo prisoners. 10 percent leaders of Al-Qaeda, 20 percent had a logistics role, others are low level soldiers. This is false.
• There are innocent people in Guantanamo, who have been there for 8 years.
• We still have a military commissions, an indefinite detention system. Lieberman proposing to strip citizenship from terrorism suspects so they can be interrogated without Miranda warnings.
• Moving Guantanamo Prison to Thomson Prison in Illinois.
• Obama as committed to removing checks on executive power

Guest – 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.

Past shows with Shane Kadidal

 

 Law and Disorder August 16, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Who Can Stop the Drums?: Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela

Who Can Stop the Drums?: Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela is the title of Sujatha Fernandes’s new book. Sujatha is an author and assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.  Her book looks at the transformations under way in Venezuela that are shaped by negotiations between the Chávez government and social movements using their own forms of historical memory and local organization.  In her book, Sujatha shows everyday life and politics in the shantytowns of Caracas from the perspective of community-based radio, barrio assemblies, and the many interviews she conducted with activists and government officials. Most of the barrio activists in the book are Chávez supporters.

Sujatha Fernandes:

• There’s a real push back against neo-liberal reforms. Chavez who came into office in 1998, have been pursuing an anti-neoliberal agenda, trying to reverse the privatization and extend the social welfare net.
• The argument I make in the book is that Chavez has carved out a space within the global economy and Venezuela is a hybrid state containing both neo-liberal and anti-neoliberal elements.
• Who are these people, the large majority who live in the shanty towns, what do they think?
• The movements date back to before Chavez, the guerilla movements, cultural and community based groups. They trace their trajectory back to a long struggle in Venezuela.  They’ve been reinvigorated by Chavez.
• The community based groups demand the very basics, running water, gas and electricity.
• Chavez in the middle between community groups and elite. Chavez has created institutions such as the missions, where some oil profits bypass the elite and toward community groups.
• I lived in a popular housing building, which are projects, (security problems, with gangs, violence and police)
• Bolivarian circles, Chavez’s first attempts to transfer power. 93 percent of Venezuelans are urbanized.

Guest – Sujatha Fernandes is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures, also published by Duke University Press.

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Unrepentant Radical Educator: The Writings of John Gerassi

We’re delighted to welcome back Professor John (Tito) Gerassi, once an editor at Time magazine, then at Newsweek. He obtained his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a long time civil rights and anti-war militant and author / editor of ten books plus scores of articles and pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. We talk with Tito today about his recent book, Unrepentant Radical Educator: The writings of John Gerassi, edited and with interviews by Tony Monchinski (Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education) Indypendent Book Review

The book joins personal narratives from Gerassi’s days of journalism and activism, featuring Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver and others of the era, with  essays on figures such as Sartre, Camus, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  One review writes, ( Especially fascinating are the tales of deliberate misreporting by the major media outlets for which he worked, epitomized by the words of owner Henry Luce when Gerassi was hired: “We here at Time believe that objectivity is neither feasible nor desirable.”)

John “Tito” Gerassi:

• Time Magazine: I hear you’re coming aboard Mr. Gerassi. In the long run, it was great that I got kicked out
• Met Che Guevara in Uruguay, as a journalist for the New York Times, there was a fight with anti-Castro students, the police were scared, one man fired his gun in the air, it ricocheted and hit and killed a USIS Cuban.
• Che told me I don’t talk to the imperialist press. At the hotel, they had reserved a large table where all the left-wing characters sat around with Che.  Argentines say chez vous, that’s how Che got his nickname Che.
• The Great Fear in Latin America – John Gerassi
• Che Where Are You? Eventually there will be many Che’s.
  

Guest – Professor John Gerassi, once an editor at Time magazine, then at Newsweek, who obtained his PhD at LSE, is a long time civil rights and anti-war militant. He is the author or editor of ten books and scores of articles and pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.

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 Law and Disorder August 9, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Longtime activist Marilyn Jean Buck passes.
• Puerto Rican Activist Lolita Lebron Remembered
• Attorney and radio host Jim Lafferty Anti-War Conference Debrief

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Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Released Today After 30 Years

Last week Puerto Rican community activist Carlos Alberto Torres was released from a federal prison in Pekin, Ill after serving 30 years as a political prisoner. Torres was convicted of seditious conspiracy – conspiring to use force against the lawful authority of the United States over Puerto Rico. Torres was punished for being a member of an armed clandestine organization called the FALN – Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (English: “Armed Forces of National Liberation) which had claimed responsibility for bombings in Chicago that resulted in no deaths. He wasn’t accused of the bombings only of being a member of FALN.

In 1898 Puerto Rico was ceded to the US by Spain as war bounty in the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War. Still, the US has occupied it since. Torres was sentenced to 78 years in prison but used international law in his defense. Torres argued that the courts of the colonizing country may not criminalize captured anti-colonial combatants, but must turn them over to an impartial international tributnal to have their status adjudicated.

There was an outpouring of support to free Carlos. His attorney, National Lawyers Guild member Jan Susler of Chicago, notes, “Carlos is being released from prison due to the unflagging support of the Puerto Rican independence movement and others who work for human rights. The more than 10,000 letters of support from the U.S., Puerto Rico, Mexico and other countries sent a strong message to the Parole Commission.”

Jan Susler:

• Carlos got a disproportionate sentence, a punishment for who he was politically. He did 30 years, standing tall and maintaining his political integrity.
• People stop him on the street, and embrace him.
• The bombing in which he was accused of was only property damage.  If he had killed or injured someone and convicted as a social prisoner, he would gotten a less sentence and served far less time.
• He was always treated more harshly than the other prisoners.
• Right after 9/11, the US rounded up political prisoners and put them in the hole for months.
• You’re always watched, you’re always monitored. Every prisoner has access to email, Carlos did not.

Carlos Torres:

• The reception that I’ve had here in Puerto Rico, has been, . . there’s no way to describe it.
• I never imagined that it would be so loving, so fantastic, so supportive.
• The only cloud is that we still have 2 Puerto Rican prisoners in jail, Oscar Lopez Rivera and Avelino González Claudio
• We landed in Puerto Rico and we were met by a mob of friends and family.
• I was paroled by the US parole commission. I was given conditions and I accepted those conditions.
• Lolita Lebron, we don’t have enough time to describe in words what that woman demonstrated and gave as an example throughout her whole life to us.
• During the wake and funeral, a lot of people referred to Lolita Lebron as “the Mother of our Homeland”
• I helped carry her coffin.
• My immediate plans are to develop a pottery studio

Guest – Attorney Jan Susler joined People’s Law Office in 1982 after a six year stint as Clinical Law Professor at Prison Legal Aid, the legal clinic at Southern Illinois University’s School of Law. Her long history of work on behalf of political prisoners and prisoners’ rights includes litigation, advocacy and educational work around USP Marion and the Women’s High Security Unit at Lexington, KY. Her practice at PLO focuses on police misconduct civil rights litigation, which has lately included wrongful conviction litigation on behalf of people exonerated after serving many years in prison, innocent. Her work with the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and with progressive movements challenging U.S. foreign and domestic policies has been a constant throughout her 30 years as a lawyer.

Guest – Carlos Alberto Torres member of Puerto Rico’s independence movement and the longest-serving Puerto Rican political prisoner. He was convicted and sentenced to 78 years in a U.S. federal prison for seditious conspiracy – conspiring to use force against the lawful authority of the United States over Puerto Rico.  He served 30 years, being released on July 26, 2010.

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CCR and ACLU Sue Obama Over Limits On Lawyers Seeking To Represent Suspect on Administration “Kill List”

The Center for Constutional Rights and the ACLU have filed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s authority to use the military and the CIA to kill the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. He’s an American citizen, accused of terrorism but hasn’t recieved a trial. He is believed to be hiding in Yemen. Because it would be against the law to challenge the government’s attempt to kill al-Awlaki, the lawsuit was filed against the Treasury department, that challenged a regulation that would require the Center and the ACLU to obtain its permission in order to provide uncompensated legal services for Mr al-Awlaki.

Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that international law did not permit a government to kill people far from combat zones, and in the case of a US citizen, Vince said that  such a policy also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment — and is a dangerous precedent.

CCR Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:

• The case that we filed last week was a challenge to a regulatory scheme under the Department of Treasury and OFAC which prohibits transactions with anyone designated as a terrorist by the government. That includes pro-bono legal services.
• Al-Awlaki is the subject of an assassination order by the president, ordering and authorizing the CIA and Special Forces to target and kill him.
• OFAC powers go back to the 1970s IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
• All we have against this guy are allegations.
• The CIA, which is one of the agencies that carries out these killings has primarily used drones. We think that drones would be the primary way that this killing would be carried out.

Guest -  CCR staff attorney Pardiss Kebriaei joined the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in July 2007. She provides direct representation to several of CCR’s clients at Guantánamo and helps coordinate CCR’s network of hundreds of pro bono counsel representing other prisoners. She also focuses on using international human rights mechanisms to bring international pressure to bear on the U.S. government and hold other governments accountable for their role in the violations at Guantánamo.
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CCR Attorney Legal Observer Arrested in Arizona Immigration Protests

Legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights were arrested last week during mass demonstrations of protesters who opposed Federal law 287G, Arizona law SB 1070. What happened?  CCR Legal Director Bill Quigley told the media, Arizona is starting to act like Mississippi in the civil rights days. Among those arrested were National Lawyers Guild officer Roxana Orrell and CCR staff attorney Sunita Patel.

Sunita Patel:

• It was my first time in Maricopa County. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known for branding the most horrible incarnation of 287G and ICE police collaboration.
• 287G is the statute by which this program is authorized by Congress. He also has what’s called a secure communities program which allows for the identification of anyone who is a non-citizen through a finger printing system.  287G allows for local agencies to implement immigration law through a memorandum of understanding with the federal government.
• At the same time he implements what’s called “crime suppression sweeps” Where he takes his units and regular citizens to sweep through neighborhoods.
• I spent the night in jail, I hadn’t planned on it. It was really an honor to be in solidarity with the rest of the protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a highway and public thoroughfare and failure to obey a police officer.  People in Arizona call it a war zone when it comes to immigration enforcement.
• Arizona has also become the site for a spark of incredible activism and the growth of an incredible human rights movement.

Guest – CCR Staff Attorney Sunita Patel with racial profiling, immigrant rights and other human rights litigation. Prior to her position at CCR, she held a Soros Justice Fellowship at The Legal Aid Society, Immigration Law Unit in New York where she represented immigrant detainees in removal proceedings and worked with criminal justice and human rights groups to create independent community oversight for detention operations through public accountability boards.  Sunita is a former law clerk for the Honorable Judge Ivan L. R. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
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 Law and Disorder August 2, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Holy Land Foundation Case Update

Hosts talk with Noor Elashi, Noor is the daughter of Holy Land Foundation prisoner Ghassan Elashi. Ghassan is currently being held in the Communications Management Unit in Marion, Illinois and has now had his visitations canceled. Noor says visitations have been cruelly obstructed by a Texas prison guard while at the prison in Seagoville Texas in October 2009.  Noor’s brother Omar is 9 and has Down’s syndrome, during a visitation, Omar ran up to his father to give him a hug and the guard says “What Mr. Elashi, you think you’re an exception?”  After the visit, the guard filed a complaint against Ghassan for not following instructions.   The same prison guard during Thanksgiving that year, prevented his sons from entering the room during a visit. Ghassan called the guard evil and compared him to a guard at Abu Ghraib. The guard filed another complaint. After an internal investigation, Ghassan’s visitations were banned for 6 months.  The visitation doesn’t usually apply when an inmate transfers to another prison, but when Ghassan was transferred to the CMU in Marion, the visitation ban was upheld. www.Freedomtogive.com

As many listeners may know, Holy Land Foundation was the largest Muslim charity in the United States,  the Bush administration shut it down after the September 11th attacks, and arrested five people from the charity. During the trial, the prosecution used unrelated video of suicide bombers to emotionally sway the jury.

Noor Elashi:

• Book in progress: Eyes Like My Father, A Daughters Narrative of Displacement
• Father was sentenced to 65 years in prison for giving material support in the form of humanitarian aid to Zakat committees – Palestinian charities in the West Bank and Gaza, that prosecutors were alleging were fronts for Hamas.
• These are the very same Zakat committees that USAID, the Red Cross and UN NGOs were giving money to.
• The Holy Land Foundation, co-founded by Ghassan Elashi, was the largest charity in the US until the Bush Administration with an executive order shut it down 3 months after 9/11.
• The material support law is a very flawed law and singles out Muslim charities and with the recent upholding of the material support law by the Supreme Court, I feel that Americans are at risk.
• There were 2 trials (for Ghassan Elashi) the first in 2007 which looked at the Zakat committees. Jury deadlocked on most counts against the HLF. The prosecution showed the jury scenes of terrorism, buses being blown up expecting the jury to be prejudiced by seeing this and convict Ghassan Elashi, and they didn’t.
• In the second trial, the prosecutors were more aggressive, the defense attorneys, families and civil libertarians around the world were flabbergasted, when the jury delivered all guilty verdicts after 9 days of deliberation.
• Trials took place in Dallas, Texas. Ghassan Elashi, Noor’s father and the CEO of the Holy Land Foundation recieved a 65 year sentence. Other fund raiser reps were sentenced between 15 and 20 years.
• Ghassan Elashi currently in a CMU – Communications Management Unit in Marion, Ilinois – termed “little Guantanamos.”
• As far as visitations go, those in and of themselves are cruel and unusual punishment because you travel all that way and you can’t touch, there is a plexi-glass between you and its monitored live in Washington DC.
• Four of the defendants are being held in CMUs, 2 in Marion, Illinois and 2 in Terra Haute, Indiana.
• My father is hopeful and optimistic, he does yoga and pilates, reads the Quran.
• It was New York Senator Chuck Schumer who co-authored the anti-terrorism law in 1996 that strengthened the material support provision.
• I’m the eldest of 3 boys and 3 girls. It’s a double tragedy, these convictions that were made possible by “fear” in the courtroom and the 65 year sentence.  Appeal: they have until August 3 to file briefs.
• Humanitarian Law Project Supreme Court Case upheld the material support provision.
• During both trials, the prosecutors brought in an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer who testified under a fake name. He said could smell Hamas.
• During the testimony, the court benches were cleared except for the family.
• Michael Ratner: After 9/11 they made it extremely dangerous to give money to Muslims anywhere in the world.
• Everybody is at risk at this point, even Jimmy Carter

Guest – Noor Elashi, the daughter of Holy Land Foundation prisoner Ghassan Elashi. She is a writer based in Dallas, Texas. After receiving a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas, she worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In July 2008, she won the 3rd place Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Award for her manuscript titled “Displaced,” which she plans to expand into a memoir about the displacement of three generations of Palestinians: her grandmother, father, and herself. She can be reached at noorelashi@gmail.com.

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Austerity: Why and for Whom? – Rick Wolff

We are very pleased to have with us Professor Rick Wolff to update us on where we’re in this ongoing global capitalist crisis.  Austerity has appeared in the titles of many recent articles on the global capitalist crisis. What is it? Rick Wolff writes in his article titled Austerity: Why and for Whom? the efforts to broaden the recovery beyond one year have failed and that failure has cost Washington trillions in borrowed funds from lenders. Those lenders now demand guarantees that those loans will be repaid to them with interest. The guaranteed demanded by lenders is “austerity.“  To collect this austerity, the banks (lenders) want governments to raise taxes or cut government spending or both.  Economic Recovery for the Very Few by Rick Wolff. An extreme burden imposed on the global economy. Rick asks, Why not collect austerity from tax exempt multinational corporations, churches and private institutions?

Professor Rick Wolff:

• Governments around the world borrowed enormous amounts of money, never seen before surge of borrowing.  The urgency of the second impending crisis of capitalism, the second major collapse of capitalism in 75 years was so intense, the terror in the ranks of business was so complete, that nobody stopped to worry, just lend us lots of money, take toxic assets off our books and so on.
• Suddenly, the creditors who are lending to the governments are beginning to get nervous. They’ve been going to the governments and saying we don’t want to be stuck with a debt that your people might not pay back.
• Lenders:  You either have to raise taxes on your people, save it and put it into a special account which will only be used to pay us interest on the principle or you cut your programs, your public services and put that into the same account.
• The name of the government’s response to the demand of its creditors is “austerity.”  Imposing on society a severe regimen of rising taxes, or cut government spending to please and satisfy creditors.
• Yale, a multi-billion dollar corporation with billions of annual income, pays no taxes. Rather than increase the taxes of individual persons, why don’t we do what should have done long ago.
• Take a look at California, they’re laying thousands and thousands of state employees.
• No Economic Crisis: Annual world wealth report, the income of the top wealthiest people 2009 rose 17 percent.
• Banks are the buyers of government debt. The bankers produce a crisis, the government bails them out. The government borrows from the banks to bail them out.   The bankers know there is popular opposition.
• French action against austerity: trade unions organizing general strike which will close everything in September in France.  Will the pressure rise within US politicians to re-negotiate this debt?
• The state of Oregon, the democratic party controls both houses of legislature. To pay for the 700 million dollar gap over a 2 year period they raised taxes on business and wealthy people.

Guest – Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.

 

 Law and Disorder July 26, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Groups Sue Virginia Prisons for Unconstitutional Banning of Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook
• Omar Khadr 23 years old / 8 Years in GTMO / Khadr Boycotts Trial

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Lynne Stewart Heard A Death Sentence Today

As many listeners know Judge John G Koeltl sentenced defendant, Lynne Stewart: 120 months incarceration in the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution Connecticut on five counts to be served concurrently.  Lynne Stewart is 70 years old, she’s a breast cancer survivor with other pending health issues.  We’re joined by Vinie Burrows today, she is the UN representative for the Women’s International Democratic Federation and the founding member of the Granny Peace Bridgade. Vinie Burrows made powerful statements in her article titled Lynne Stewart Heard A Death Sentence Today that calls terrorism by its real name under the draconian Patriot Act.

Vinie writes,  “over and over again in his remarks leading up to the sentencing, Judge Koeltl used the term “terrorist enhancement.” Those warning words bring up the specter of  some of the nastiest aspects of the Cold War and its present re-incarnation in the Patriot Act which by expanding law enforcement’s surveillance and investigative powers  represents a significant threat to civil liberties. Read the official text… “Uniting and Strengthening America by providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.  The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart by Michael Steven Smith.

Vinie Burrows:

• Being at Lynne Stewart’s court hearing was useful to see the judge, to see the players, the 2 prosecuting lawyers and to see Lynne Stewart who made a marvelous opening statement.  It was one of the great speeches before the bar
• I felt as he was reading, Judge  Koeltl was responding to each dictate of the appellate court.
• We have to define terror. We can’t go by what the legislative, judicial and now executive define as terror. We’re looking in the wrong places for terror.  A single mother with 3 children living in a shelter, she knows terror. When she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from, that’s terror.
• When her home is foreclosed on, that’s terror, and of course our banks are the biggest terror of all.
• We can’t even think of Lynne Stewart when we talk of terror, she is a human rights defender. She’s been deprived of the ability to defend human rights.
• I think we have to go to “who are the terrorists?” who are the victims of terror?
• We have to talk about the state, the state usually the perpetrator of human rights violations.
• The state must recognize that poverty is a weapon of mass destruction.
• I think we need to talk about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a legal basis to mount some sort of appeal.
• Michael Ratner: This is the Time of the Toad (A Study of Inquisition In America)
• Lynne Stewart has another appeal against this severe sentence.

Guest – Vinie Burrows is an award-winning Broadway actress. She has been active at the United Nations Economic and Social Council on the issues of the status of women and Southern Africa. Burrows won the Paul Robeson Award in 1986.  She was to appear in a show titled Sister! Sister! at the University of Delaware in Newark in November 1991. She was to be a panelist in the 2000-2001 African Diaspora lecture series at the Center for Ideas and Society in Riverside, California.

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Mountain Top Removal Activists Arrested For Direct Action In Virginia (Updated)

Last week 4 activists with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice were arrested for using direct action to shut down a coal mining mountaintop removal effort in Virginia. Two of the 4 activists locked themselves to heavy machinery in the coal mining pit and were later arrested. The activists say they are drawing public attention to the dangers associated with the Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment, which contain up to 8 billion gallons of toxic coal waste. The area is unstable, Brushy Fork’s foundation is built on a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines. If the foundation were to collapse, as others have, the toxic slurry could engulf communities nearly 14 miles away, according to Marfork Coal Co.’s emergency warning plan. Meanwhile, one of the activists, Jimmy Tobias was still in jail during this interview and is now released.

Dea Goblirsch:

• Mountain top removal is a destruction form of coal mining that uses explosives, that blow up the tops of mountains to get to the coal seams beneath.  It’s cheaper and more efficient than underground mining, it also employs fewer miners.
• So far there have more than 800 miles of peaks flattened. They also take the rubble from the tops of mountains and dump it into nearby valleys.  They are called valley fills. The creation of the valley fills cover up the headwater streams.
• A lot of these valleys feed into water systems that supply water to the Eastern United States.
• Brushy Fork is the largest earthen dam in the Western Hemisphere.
• Coal River Mountain was the highest elevation in the area that hadn’t been mountaintop removal mined.
• You can’t always see mountain top mining from the roadside, they tend to keep a veil of trees.
• The work we’re doing is primarily civil disobedience and direct action.  Tree sits within the blast range. Bails and sentencing are widely uneven.
• Community groups to start sustainable energy initiatives in Appalachia, we see this happening in Kentucky, and Virginia and other parts of the coal mining region.
• A woman publicly slapped Judy Bonds, the director of Coal River Mountain Watch.
• A strip miner threatened to slit the throat of a child

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Katie Huscsza:

• We attached ourselves to the high wall miner (equipment) for 4 hours.
• Me and Colin were charged with trespassing, conspiracy and obstruction.
• There are around 30 people this summer actively working to stop mountain top removal.
• We I first learned about it (MTR) I almost didn’t believe that something so awful and destructive could be taking place

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Guest – Dea Goblirsch with Climate Ground Zero and Katie Huscsza, also with CGZ had locked herself to highwall coal mining machines, arrested and released on bail.

Music interludes in this segment by Canton Becker

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 Law and Disorder July 19, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart – Michael Steven Smith

Natsu Saito,   Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law

Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law is the title of Natsu Saito’s recent book, Natsu is an attorney and professor of Law at Georgia State University’s College of Law in Atlanta. The book boldly points out how the United States violated international law since its declaration of independence. As often discussed here on Law and Disorder, international courts and institutions have been at the forefront of holding the torture conspirators accountable.  Meeting the Enemy gives disturbing insight into the origins of American exceptionalism.

Natsu Saito:

• The duality is that the US does exempt itself (from international law) very consistently and very frequently and yet promotes international law very strongly and relies upon it.
• It has relied upon certain premises that are fundamental to the whole outlook and paradigm of colonialism – which is that there is a higher good, a more civilized approach the US embodies.
• The law doesn’t apply because we have a higher aim of civilization and that justifies not playing by the rules.
• The United States making others comply with human rights standards while exempting itself.
• Moving humanity toward this higher goal is so critical because if you strip that away and you look at the realities on the ground, you see what has been termed Western civilization has been incredibly barbaric.
• In order to get around that analysis, you have to say it was for a higher good.
• I think the “left” tends to accept the general framework, and to make particular criticisms of policies and practices that are obviously problematic. The US government engaging in torture for example, but each instant is accepted as anomalous instead of the larger picture.
• It is too frightening even for the people on the left to deal with the reality that this is a country that sits on occupied land, illegally occupied by its own rules. People on the left want to make it a kinder, gentler colonialism.
• I started out thinking I was writing a book about the failure of the United States failure to comply with international law, as I got into it, the more interesting questions were the push / pull dynamics between reliance on international law
• The current system of international law evolved from the international law which was the agreement between the European colonial powers of how they were not going to destroy each other in the process of taking over the rest of the world.

Guest - Natsu Taylor Saito teaches international law and human rights, race and the law, immigration, criminal procedure, and professional responsibility, and is an advisor to the Asian American Law Student Association and the Hispanic Student Bar Association. Professor Saito’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in the United States, the plenary power doctrine as applied to immigrants, American Indians, and U.S. territorial possessions, and the human rights implications of U.S. governmental policies, particularly with regard to the suppression of political dissent. Read more.

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Elena Kagan and the Supremes - Brecht Forum

We hear excerpts from a discussion on the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, and how her position may influence the direction of the Supreme Court.

Panelists:

Martin Garbus – one of the country’s leading trial lawyers. Mr. Garbus aggressively represents his clients in the courts and in the media. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court as well as the highest state and federal courts in the nation. His devotion to ethics, justice and the law has earned him respect among the legal community and beyond as well as prominent awards. Time Magazine has named him “legendary . . . one of the best trial lawyers in the country,” while Newsweek , the National Law Journal and other media agree that Mr. Garbus is America’s “most prominent First Amendment lawyer,” with an “extraordinarily diverse practice.” The National Law Journal named him one of the country’s top ten litigators.

Margaret Ratner Kunstler – former Educational Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She’s an attorney and leads the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and heads the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice.

Anand Swaminathan - an associate at Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C.  He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 2001 and the Harvard Law School in 2006.  Prior to joining Vladeck he was a law clerk for the Honorable Theodore H. Katz of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Michael Steven Smith – Law and Disorder co-host, author and New York attorney.  Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of six books, including “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler.  He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and practices law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department.

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 Law and Disorder July 12, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• G20: Canadian Police do not have special powers under their public works act
• New UK government publishes major reports on Bloody Sunday and to settle damages for Guantanamo torture.

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C0-host Michael Smith talks with attorney Jim Lafferty about the upcoming anti-war conference in Albany, New York, July 23-25. Noam Chomsky, internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Emeritus of Linguistics is the keynote speaker. Click here for flyer (PDF) Groups sponsoring the event:   After Downing Street,  Arab American Union Members Council, Bail Out the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campus Antiwar Network, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Citizen Soldier,  Code Pink, Grandmothers Against the War, Granny Peace Brigade, International Action Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, May 1^st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Office of the Americas, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project Salam, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Voters for Peace,Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The World Can’t Wait.

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Iraq War Veteran, Conscientious Objector and Musician Clifton Hicks

Clifton Hicks is an activist with the Iraqi Veterans Against the War. Hicks is disabled and enrolled as an Anthropology student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.  Appalachian State is a center for old-time music, and Hicks is also an accomplished musician and banjo player.  Cliff Hicks is psychologically disabled and got out of the Army as a conscientious objector several years ago. In the Spring issue of The Veteran, published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, there’s printed the following chant, that is repeated by soldiers in training to go to Iraq.  “I went down to the market where all the people shop, I pulled out my machete, and I began to chop,  I went down to the park where all the children play, I took out my machine gun and I began to spray.” This is the kind of psychological brutalization that our young men are forced to endure that turn them into creatures they never thought they’d become.

Clifton Hicks:

• I was in 9th grade when 9/11 happened.  I called the recruiter when I was 16, to try and get in.
• I saw Muslim and Arabic people and thought they were all out to get us.
• I listened to a lot of daytime AM right-wing radio. I had the ole cliche patriotic notions going.
• I wanted to go combat arms from the start, I figured if I was going into the Army, I wanted to fight.
• My feet were on the ground in Iraq in October 2003. The guys I was with that had already been there for a while had gotten pretty nasty. Guys get nasty, because their friends get killed and you realized you can’t trust anybody.
• We were the first division in combat to be out there for more than 13 months.
• They would literally give us candy and toys to give out to Iraqi kids at schools, the next day you’re ridin’ around and you see a b unch of kids get shot.
• I became an anti-war activist while I was still in the Army.  We started an IVAW chapter in Gainesville Florida

Guest – Clifton Hicks, Branch of service: United States Army (USA) / Unit: C Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st U.S. Cavalry Regiment / Rank: PFC / Home: North Carolina / Served in: Ft. Knox, OIF 1, Germany. Hicks a musician and is currently a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

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 Law and Disorder July 5, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge Found Guilty

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was found guilty last week 25 years after the evidence of torture and police abuse was brought forward. Burge was not convicted of abusing prisoners, the statute of limitations on those crimes had passed, he was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the abuse in a civil case.

According to the People’s Law Office in Chicago, at least 24 African American men are still serving sentences for crimes they say they confessed to after being tortured by Chicago Police officers. This happened when the Chicago police precinct was under Commander Jon Burge in the early 70’s to the 1992. Jon Burge is a Vietnam Vet who is said to have brought back torture to Chicago. People’s Law Office Attorney Flint Taylor says Burge shot through the ranks all the way to commander, primarily by leading a band of torturers. They used methods such as electric shock, dry submarino, (suffocating with bags)

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 in that case. Attorney with the People’s Law Office Flint Taylor says the city has spent over the 10 million dollars in aiding the defense of former Commander Jon Burge. Mr. Burge, who is 62 and in ill health, was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993.  He faces up to 45 years in prison.

Attorney Flint Taylor:

• As you know the torture allegations started to arise almost 40 years ago. In 1982, there was evidence that would have put Burge away for torture, but then a movement against torture in the early nineties brought the case back, but Justice Departments refused.
• As time went on, there was no longer the ability to go after him for attempted murder, torture and other substantive charges because the statute of limitations ran out on that.
• They appointed a special prosecutor in the early 2000s but he turned out to be very close to Daley, and he wouldn’t indict. If we couldn’t get Burge for torture, we would get him for obstruction of justice, lying and perjury.
• Burge had exercised all his pre-emptory challenges in court on the jury to get rid of all the black jurors.
• Judge brought back one black person to the jury with Batson law. It was an unbridled racist defense. Jury found Burge guilty on one charge of perjury and two charges of obstruction of justice.
• Federal guidelines would probably put him in the 9 to 10 year sentence category.
• As we uncovered many more cases of torture and master minded by the same commander, movements came together. Movements against police brutality and human rights.
• We are also pursuing that torture be a federal crime without statute of limitations.
• Meanwhile statutes are running out on the Bush Administration torture conspirators.
• But it took 30 years to get this man in the dock, and he’s convicted by a Republican US Attorney. What does that say about the torture by Cheney, and others, with their admissions by the way?
• However long it takes you can’t give up.
• The jury: they’re human beings like we are, and they shouldn’t be tortured.

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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US Social Forum in Detroit Part 1
Co-host Michael Smith talks with Detroit attorney Ron Reosti about, US Social Forum in Detroit and the rebuilding of the Detroit area. Attorney Ron Reosti, born and raised in Detroit, Ron represented left union activists and tenant unions. He also did class employment law and was part of a team that represented women prisoners who were sexually assaulted in Michigan. He’s an National Lawyers Guild member and active in the anti-war movement.

Attorney Ron Reosti:

• Detroit had a radical history before the 1950s based on the labor movement and vibrant black community
• Radicalization in the sixties stemmed from the defeat of McCarthyism in the mid-fifties, civil rights movement in the South and revolt of colonies in third world countries.
• In Detroit we continued to experience the de-industrialization of the city.
• There were a significant number of auto plants that were closed in the fifties and sixties.
• During that time the radicalization kept getting channeled through the democratic party.
• US Social Forum: People are grappling with solutions to the capitalist system.
• Some of the young people aren’t misinformed about Leninism.
• The young people at the social forum seemed to be smarter than we were.
• What kind of society do you build after you overthrow capitalism?

Guest – Attorney Ron Reosti, born and raised in Detroit, Ron represented left union activists and tenant unions. He also did class employment law and was part of a team that represented women prisoners who were sexually assaulted in Michigan. He’s a National Lawyers Guild member and active in the anti-war movement.

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US Social Forum in Detroit Part 2: Detroit Black Radicals

We another perspective on the US Social Forum from John Williams. John Williams is a long time leader of Detroit’s Black community and central organizer of the historic League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. Williams worked at Ford and Chrysler while teaching at Wayne State University, he was a member of the Black Panther Party, Detroit chapter and a founding member of the Detroit chapter Labor Party. Contact: Rally Comrades / P.O. Box 477113 / Chicago, Illinois 60647 / 773-486-0028.

John Williams:

• US Social Forum this time, questioning captalism and outright anti-capitalism
• The moral question, what this country is doing is wrong, workers laid off, in the streets, immigration, Gaza, Palestine
• LRNA – League of Revolutionaries for a New America, a group of people coming together paying attention to class consciousness in the rising work force.
• We’re talking about workers in the rust belt who have been thrown out of the production. Good union people can’t fight capitalism with the old union ways.
• LRNA ranges from senior citizens to youth who are bound by an understanding of where America is at this point. It’s like a storm that’s developing.
• Back during the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, we moved the Black Panther chapter into the league.
• The head of the Panther party at the time was a Ford worker who had built FRUM. Ford Revolutionary Union Movement

Guest – John Williams, long time leader of Detroit’s Black community and central organizer of the historic League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. Williams worked at Ford and Chrysler while teaching at Wayne State University, he was a member of the Black Panther Party, Detroit chapter and a founding member of the Detroit chapter Labor Party.

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 Law and Disorder June 28, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Peter Erlinder Returns Home: Almost Disappeared.

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Pittsburgh’s Citizen Police Review Board Demands G20 Police Records, Faces Dismantling

Pittsburgh’s city council is worried that if the city’s Citizen Police Review Board are allowed to scrutinize secret records of officer conduct during the G-20 economic summit, more protesters will sue and possibly jeopardize a $20 million liability insurance policy the city bought before the International Summit last year.  We could lose our homes over this,” said City Councilwoman Theresa Smith, chairwoman of the public safety committee.. “If we don’t have insurance, then it falls to us.”  The Seeds of Peace Collective and Three Rivers Climate Convergence have filed a joint federal lawsuit against the city charging that police violated their First and 14th Amendment rights at two events. Meanwhile, city hall has started the nomination process to remove most of the members of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board.

Elizabeth Pittinger:

• The Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board does have subpoena power and when they initiated their inquiry last October, a general request of a number of documents to be turned over so we could begin the inquiry. The city resisted providing that information.
• In December the chair of the Citizen Police Review Board issued a subpoena demanding that police reports specified by number be turned over in addition to operational material and documents.
• On March 18, the courts issued an order directing the city to provide the documents. They finally gave us a stack of more than 300 pages of police reports that were so heavily redacted they were substantively illegible.
• We went back to court seeking that they would have to provide the information in an un-redacted form and that has led to this controversy with city council.
• The Pittsburgh City Council is coming forward with a document called “the will of council” urging the police review board to slow down its inquiry.
• What has happened now is that the request of these G20 documents is really the vehicle that the city has now created to challenge the board’s right of access to any document.
• Protesters hit with OC Vapor – Invisible Vaporized Pepper Spray

• Law and Disorder Interview from Pittsburgh G20, Oct 2009
• Law and Disorder Interview – Jules Lobel – Pittsburgh G20, Sept 2009

Guest – Elizabeth Pittinger, the Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board.

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“Cyber War” Creates Need For Internet “Kill Switch”

Senator Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins have the attention of civil liberties and privacy experts as they craft a bill that would allow the take over of the civilian internet network during an emergency.  After initial outcry, Senator Lieberman told the media,  the Internet Kill Switch bill is a matter of national security, and a kill switch is needed to disconnect immediately from a foreign nation in case of an attack. He continues,  “Right now, China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have that here too,” Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 is the name of the bill, and supporters argue that it is not a kill switch, but a way to divert traffic away from another country. It is added that the President already has broad powers to shut off any and all regulated telecommunications in the 1934 Telecommunications Act.

Tracy Rosenberg:

• I think its clear by the way the bill is currently written, the president could target political groups, but that’s not the intent of the bill.  It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be used in that fashion. The information sharing is quite similar to what happened after 9/11. It potentially creates a situation where corporate providers basically rat out parties at the instructions of the government. That could certainly be directed at political viewpoints.
• Internet sites could potentially be shut down. Information about who is posting to them, who is reading them and who owns them will become the property of the federal government.
• Another motivation behind the bill – Litigation and liability protection for internet companies.
• Internet use in China is considerably compromised

Guest – Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director of Media Alliance since 2007.  She has organized and advocated for a free, accountable and accessible media system,focusing on the protection and sustainability of alternative media outlets from Pacifica Radio to low-power FM, public access and Indymedia, monitored the mainstream media for accuracy and fair representation and facilitated the training of numerous nonprofit organizations and citizen’s groups in effective communications.

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A Dark Day For Human Rights

The Supreme Court’s decision to preserve a vague prohibition on aiding and associating with terrorist groups severely reduced the First Amendment rights of American citizens. The decision could have serious impact on lawyers, journalists and academics who represent or study terrorist groups. The new decision came from a case by the Humanitarian Law Project that challenged the law of prohibiting “material support” to terror groups. The law projected wanted to provide advice to two terrorist groups on how to peacefully resolve their disputes with the United Nations and International Law. The Supreme Court ruled that the peaceful assistance is aiding terrorism.

Shane Kadidal:

• A number of Justices were skeptical about the ways this law may be applied to journalists, to lawyers representing unpopular clients.  “Speech discouraging violence can be banned under the First Amendment.”
• Solicitor General Kagan was asked if a lawyer is entitled to represent someone on the FTO list.
• Foreign Terrorist Organization List.
• Kagan says if you have some Constitutional right to be in court then the statutes should be interpreted in a way to allow the lawyer to represent someone in those circumstances.
• If you think about it, it took the Guantanamo lawyers 7 years to establish if there was a Constitutional right to challenge your detention if you’re a non-citizen.
• Kagan is saying that lawyers were taking their chances to represent Guantanamo lawyers in the first place.
• Lynn Cheney’s group : Keep America Safe.
• You couldn’t send books on Federalism to the Tigers of Tamil Eelam who are on the FTO list.
• The law defines material support to be more than tangible things like guns, and money but also things like personal services, expert advice and assistance. Those terms are so broad.
• (Treating a wounded person with your medical skills) Humanitarian aid during crisis at risk.
• That’s one of the fundamental problems with vague statutes. They give too much discretion to law enforcement, if everything is prohibited than law enforcement is going to be selective on who they choose to prosecute.  The government likes that. Greenpeace would easily qualify.
• President Clinton was the first to use this law directed at whole nations such as Nazi Germany or Cuba and instead direct them at political organizations.
• The government has used this law 150 times since 9/11.  Statute of limitations of 8 years.

Guest – 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.
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