Law and Disorder October 24, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Al-Awlaki’s Family members also killed and US Citizens.
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
• New York Times: A Right To Sleep In Tents – Michael Ratner

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Occupy Wall St. – Think Tanks and Organizing

Like many protesters down at Liberty Plaza, Tim Weldon has been under employed for years. He’s got a Masters Degree, one in economic development and 10 years experience in international business.  He’s now part of Occupy Wall St working with the think tank group.  The first step is taking all the ideas and solutions generated from the movement and collating them into a more accessible format.

Tim Weldon:

• The food is hit or miss, you cycle through, get in line, whatever is there at the time, that’s what you get.
• There’s sanitation, first aid, media press, PR. The group that I’m specifically on is the think tank.
• Similar to a lot of people, said, how do I fit in and what exactly is going on? Like most people I got down there and thought how do I fit in to where I most belong?  So, I walked around for most of the day, I got to the stage to where I thought, what I would be good at and what could fit in here.
• Then I found some very like minded people who were thinking the same thing, to sort of create an opportunity for all of the ideas to be collected, organized and collated together. The think tank, we’re going to have four different receptacles for information.
• One will be from the park where we’ll have discussion groups on topics. We’re trying to develop a web platform within the NYCGA.net .
• We’re getting all walks of life, one of the best participants was a disabled man.
• The discussions have been so positive and energetic and we’re saying how can we take both of these ideas and forget about the established dichotomies and all this dogma that people are working with.
• Let’s go straight to us right here, let’s create a productive use of this information where everybody is happy.
• I found that everybody I’m working with open and wants to listen, wants to learn, the way most of the groups work is there’s no leaders. I like to draw differentiation between leaders and leadership.
• People are coming here after they’ve been setup and more streamline or coming here to get things more streamline. Take a step back, try to envision something different.
• Everybody seemed united around, well, they want it clean, lets get things clean.
• People were doing what had to be done and getting things done, but there was a subtle apprehension there, what’s going to happen tomorrow? How serious is it going to be? How much are we going to have to fight, not in a physical sense but in all sort of senses for this space?
• Most of the country can get behind the fact, whether your left or right, whatever it is, you’ve got some apprehension about what’s going on in the country right now and that’s what we’re trying to voice.
• Holding that space is really important to the movement.
• Maintaining that park is very important because it is the symbol.  You control us in every other aspect of our lives perhaps, but you don’t control us here.
• I left my job last week, this to me is the movement of our generation.

Guest – Tim Weldon is from upstate New York. He quit his job to dedicate his time to help the Occupy Wall Street movement. Specifically, Tim is working with the think tank group, pulling together ideas and solutions pouring in from around the country and making them more accessible to media and others. Tim has a Master’s Degrees in economic development. He also has 10 years experience in international business.

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Occupy Wall Street: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler Part 2

We continue the “know your rights”  discussion on the Occupy Wall St protests, encampments and demonstrations. Last week we talked about how the NYPD collected intelligence data from protesters.  When more than 800 people on the Brooklyn Bridge were arrested a few weeks ago,  that event was more about getting protester names and pedigree information into databases says attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler with the National Lawyers Guild.  Meanwhile students from 90 colleges and universities are protesting the price of education, being saddled with student loan debt and more. There are many aspects to knowing your rights as a demonstrator and we’ll discuss more details today with returning guest attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler.

Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunslter:

• You can be anywhere to express your first amendment rights. I think occupation is a new first amendment right.
• The occupation movement is relatively new and we haven’t really tested it in the federal courts or state courts and I think we have a good opportunity to do that.  They haven’t got people out of the park because when they threatened to do so, the number of people swelled from about 1000 to 6000.
• I think it was a question of mass support for the demonstration that prevented the police from clearing the park.
• Seattle was a successful protest (1999) it interfered with delegates going to the convention center and it was a very embarrassing thing for the police because it was an international conference.
• Kettling is those big iron fences, they put people in these fenced areas to keep them separated so they can be crowd control.
• By the time Michael and I finished this book, we were saying, oh, they’re never going to be able to demonstrate again. But lo and behold, a new form of demonstrations is upon us, and its just thrilling.
• The police officer who pepper sprayed the young woman, lost ten vacation days.
• That was the immediate result after Seattle, there were fusion centers. Those are centers where the FBI and local police get together and collect information.
• Every time they hear of a demonstration, they try to prevent it, they have many ways to dissuade people from coming to demonstrations.
• Militarization of the police: It was no longer a family occupation to protest against the war, it was a dangerous thing to do. You got stuck in a pen and you couldn’t get out.

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Margaret is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

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 Law and Disorder October 17, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Jose Couso Murdered By US Military In Iraq:
• Sami al-Hajj – Former Guantanamo Prisoner, Now Al-Jazeera Correspondent
• 44th Anniversary of Che Guevara’s Murder
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
• Groups Follow Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s Path to Canada
• UK Protects Israeli War Criminal
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder – Michael Ratner
• Richard Falk – Afghanistan War

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Occupy Wall Street: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler

There is a North America-wide strategy to take away the right to mass protest. We’ve talked about the book Hell No: Your Right To Dissent in 21 Century America, but today we have both authors of this book in the studio, attorney Magaret Ratner Kunstler and our own co-host Michael Ratner.

In Hell No, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the country’s leading public interest law organization, offers a timely report on government attacks on dissent and protest in the United States, along with a readable and essential guide for activists, teachers, grandmothers, and anyone else who wants to oppose government policies and actions. Hell No explores the current situation of attacks upon and criminalization of dissent and protest, from the surveillance of activists to the disruption of demonstrations, from the labeling of protestors as “terrorists,” to the jailing of those the government claims are giving “material support” to its perceived enemies. Offering detailed, hands-on advice on everything from “Sneak and Peak” searches to “Can the Government Monitor My Text Messages?” and what to do “If an Agent Knocks,” Hell No lays out several key responses that every person should know in order to protect themselves from government surveillance and interference with their rights.
Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunslter:

• This is a time that we don’t know the return dates are because they weren’t put throught the system, they were given desk appearance tickets or summons, people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge and elsewhere.
• Politically what do you make of the fact that they let these people stay in the park? Perhaps Michael they had an opportunity to do something about it if they did something quickly.
• In Boston, they closed it down much more quickly. Each Lawyers Guild office has a hotline.
• They (the NYPD) actually led people down to the bridge walkway. There’s a law in New York that says you can’t block roadways, but you can march on sidewalks.
• They led people down to the roadway, then announced with a bull horn that not everybody could hear of the more than 800 people on the bridge – - you’re now doing something illegally and we’re going to disperse immediately or we’re going to arrest you. Most people were chanting, nobody could hear that announcement.
• Why do this? There was no place to put these 800 people. To get their names, to get their pedigree information, to do intelligence work.
• Early on with the RNC arrests, they had a sheet of paper asking what political affiliations they had. We stopped that quickly. The police department in New York City has a tremendous intelligence division.
• Some people we have no idea why they were arrested.
• Yesterday morning a young woman was chalking on the sidewalk, “good morning NYPD.” Not only was she arrested, but the people photographing her arrest, were arrested.
• Much of the planning on how to stop demonstrators, happened after Seattle 1999. At that point there was this training program that began with all of these local police forces across the country and the FBI.  It wasn’t til 9/11 that they were fully funded.
• When Michael Ratner and I wrote this, we were totally depressed because we thought that demonstrations were over. There were so many ways of preventing demonstrations and people were penned.
• You can film the police in NYC. The law may be on your side, but the police don’t follow the law.
• If you’re recording audio, and only one party knows you’re recording, that’s ok in New York.
• The cop doesn’t have to give you his name, or badge number. If you ask a cop his badge number, he’ll give you the wrong number.
• I’d like to last through winter, I’m worried about these children.  The demand for justice and equality is the demand basically all over the world.
• How can we say this is too abstract for us, isn’t this what we all want?

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Margaret is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

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 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 August 29, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Truth About the Situation in Libya Cutting Through the Government Propaganda and Media Lies

Libya, a country of 6 million people possesses the largest of Africa’s oil reserves. It’s oil is of a particular high quality. Since March 19 2011 the Air Force of Britain, France and the United States have conducted nearly 7500 bombing attacks. Meanwhile,  ground forces made up of special operations and commando units are NATO led and direct the military operations of the so called rebel forces.  In his recent article titled The Truth About the Situation in Libya Cutting Through the Government Propaganda and Media Lies, Answer Coalition National Coordinator  Brian Becker lays out the history and facts about the ongoing Libya invasion.  See Partial Interview Transcript

Brian Becker:

• Unfortunately there’s a large number of people who have accommodated themselves to a full scale demonization to the targeted government, the government in this case Qaddafi and Libya.
• Targeted comprehensively by the corporate sponsored media in the United States, in Britain and France.  The United States, Britain and France the former colonizers and slave traders of Africa, always assigned their bombing missions, invasions a noble cause.
• They characterized the targeted government as having threatened a full scale massacre in Benghazi. There was no proof offered of that.  The propaganda campaign is always part of the overall war effort.
• Qaddafi came to power in 1969, he immediately evicted the (US)Air Force base and the two British bases that were the dominant powers inside of Libya.
• The National Transition Council, the group that is fighting Qaddafi, and is sponsored by NATO,  their first act when they formed a government coming into being was to invite those same powers to begin bombing the country.
• In 2004 after the invasion of Iraq, George W Bush and the European powers there ended the sanctions on Libya.
• Libya attempted to accommodate itself to the western powers.
• He was a player, they don’t want players, they want puppets.
• He let the companies come in but he kept irritating and annoying them.
• In the recent months we’ve seen demonstrations of hundreds and thousands of Libyans, maybe as many as a million gathering in Green Square against the bombing of Tripoli.
• Not all of them were with Qaddafi, some of them were but they nonetheless were against the bombing of their city by a foreign power.
• In the last days, there’s been a psychological war to over throw the government in Tripoli.
• What we don’t see is NATO carried out 7,500 bombing missions many of them against military formations of the Qaddafi government, many against civilian and communication centers.
• Why don’t they start bombing Saudi Arabia? There’s no elections in Saudi Arabia, women can’t drive cars in Saudi Arabia, the punishment for women committing adultery is stoning to death.  There’s no protest in Saudi Arabia because they’re met with torture, imprisonment and execution.
• Why because the Saudi government functions a proxy, puppet client regime of the United States.
• If you watch TV or read US media you’d think there was 40 years of dark grim dictatorship with nothing good, the nightmare is finally ending.
• There was mass illiteracy in 1969, today 92 percent of the people are literate.  Life expectancy of Libyans today is 77 years old.  The entire operation is a NATO operation.
• The slogan of self determination has no credibility except in that struggle against imperialism.
• In World War I when that war was about to end, there was a secret treaty called the The Sykes–Picot Treaty.  What that treaty showed was despite the utterances of self determination at that time by Woodrow Wilson and the other western leaders, that these powers were secretly dividing the spoils of war.
• If this operation in Libya succeeds, the use of foreign military forces and intelligence forces, and drone aircraft and military operations, the same tactics will be applied to countries deemed to independent of the dictates in Washington.
• Because its Obama and not the Republicans, too many progressive anti-war normally active people are sitting on the sidelines, watching, wondering rather than building the kind of militant anti-war movement in the United States that says to the people of the world

Guest – Brian Becker, National Coordinator for the Answer Coalition, he’s also been a central organizer of the mass anti-war demonstrations that have taken place in Washington, D.C. over the past decade.

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Better This World: Katie Galloway

In recent shows we’ve talked about the cases involving the FBI’s targeting of protesters, over-zealous prosecutors, and their collective impact on domestic dissent. These topics are just part of a riveting story in the documentary titled Better This World, directed and produced by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane dela Vega, produced also by Mike Nicholson.

It’s a story of two boyhood friends from Texas who travel to the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota and find themselves embroiled in an FBI case involving multiple domestic terrorism counts. Better This World gets right to the heart of the so called War on Terror, its impact on civil liberties and protest activities.  One review described the film as “Riveting. Structured like a taut thriller, it delivers a chilling depiction of loyalty, naivete, political zealotry and the post-9/11 security state — and it features one doozy of a kicker in the “where are they are now” category.”-

Katie Galloway:

• It was early 2009 and we saw a headline in the New York Times about the arrest of two young activists at the Republican National Convention.  I didn’t hear about the story until David McKay was going to trial.
• His co-defendant had taken a plea, that’s what most people do in the federal system for sure.
• David had decided to roll the dice and he was going to federal trial. He was alleging that he had been entrapped.
• David and Brad went to an informational meeting in Austin, Texas about protesting at the Republican National Convention. Anarchist collective.
• While there they were approached by a well known activist Brandon Darby, who had gained some measure of fame after Hurricane Katrina and co-founded an organization called Common Ground.
• Two years leading up to the convention, multiple law enforcement and federal agencies had been involved in pro-active investigations into activist groups who might be coming to the RNC.
• David and Brad by coming to this meeting raised the suspicion of the government.
• There’s a lot of love in both families for these two guys.
• It’s a story about friendship and loyalty against the back drop of the post-9/11 domestic security apparatus with the full weight of the state on these guys trying to turn them against each other.
• What I learned is that the “war on terror” is really an extension, a continuation of the “war on drugs.”  The rampant yet increased use of informants in the “war on terror.”
• David who built Molotov cocktails but didn’t use them was facing 30 years. Our sentences are 5 to 12 times longer than other countries.  We get a strong sense of collateral damage of federal prosecutions, what it puts the families through. The tendency is to absolutely demonize the defense.
• We’re trying to make sure this film becomes part of the national dialogue about life after 9/11, about the legal system, the tension between civil liberty and security.
• When we got to Minneapolis we thought we would follow the legal cases as they unfolded. Our normal style is verite, letting things play out before the camera. We quickly realized that the heart of the story is what led to the six months leading up to the convention.

Guest – Katie Galloway,  director producer of the Better This World.  Katie has directed and produced numerous award winning films and series for PBS Frontline and POV, among others. Her feature documentary Prison Town, USA (POV 2007) called “documentary making at its best” by The San Francisco Chronicle and “intriguing” by The New York Times, was developed as a fiction series by IFC, for which she co-wrote the first 3 episodes. Her critically acclaimed film Better This World (POV 2011) has won 3 top doc awards on this year’s festival circuit.  Galloway taught documentary production at the Columbia Journalism School and now teaches Media Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

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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 July 18, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Monica Shay, Professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn Passes
• Prosecutors Demand Laptop Password in Violation of Fifth Amendment
• Human Rights Watch: US Investigates Bush, Other Top Officials For Torture
  
• Ban BDS Movement – The Bill For Prevention of Damage of the State of Israel Through Boycott
• Jeremy Scahill Report On US Secret Site in Somalia

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The People’s Lawyer:  The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Fight for Social Justice, From Civil Rights to Guantánamo

The People’s Lawyer by author and Guild writer Albert Ruben, is the first comprehensive history on the Center For Constitutional Rights and tells the Center’s story from the civil rights era to today’s legal battles on habeas corpus, torture and Guantanamo Bay Prison. The book highlights critical legal fights taken on by CCR revealing innovative tactics that have evolved within the radical organization. Albert Ruben points how the Center for Constitutional Rights continues to fight with the same spirit, audacity and courage it was founded with.  As many listeners may know, CCR has been an important corner stone to this radio show because our own Michael Ratner has been with the Center for 4 decades.

Albert Ruben:

• The founders (of CCR) were 4 in number. They were Arthur Kinoy, Morton Stavis, Bill Kunstler and Ben Smith. Smith was a Southerner, he had an office in New Orleans, and Stavis, William Kunstler, and Arthur Kinoy were northerners who were working for civil rights in the South.
• They were all working their separate beats, they all knew each other and were in communication about the work they were doing. They decided that they needed something, primarily financially, to keep their work going.
• So they got in touch with a lawyer they all knew with financial means named Robert Boem. They incorporated it in New Jersey, and it became ultimately the Center for Constitutional Rights.
• They had a very small office at the beginning with one lawyer in Newark.
• The anti-war movement, the McShirley Case. It threw the Center into the government misconduct orbit. It was in the course of litigating that the Center became aware that the Federal Government was not going to be on the side of the angels.
• (From Wikipedia)  Dombrowski alleged that members of his organization, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, were subjected to continuous harassment, including arrests without intent to prosecute, and seizures of necessary internal documents. Furthermore, the State was threatening to use anti-subversion statutes to prosecute the organization, which was a group of Southern liberals dedicated to fighting for civil rights for Blacks in the South.
• The Dombrowski case, allowed the Center and a lot of lawyers to use that decision to challenge cases that brought against civil rights attorneys and a lot of people who were working in the South and caught up in state laws, that were using anti-red laws to take them out of state courts and bring them into federal courts.
• So, the Center lawyers were very acutely aware that they had on their side the federal courts. What happened with McShurley, was that it overturned that faith in the federal court system. The case led the Center to realize that government misconduct was an area that would be of interest. They could no longer count on federal court to be their allies.
• There were women on the staff of the Center who were both Center lawyers as their occupation but they were also women, and as women they were caught up in the womens movement. They brought the two together.
• It was the early days of the womens movement.  The Center didn’t see itself as a place that would take on criminal law, it was more of a movement organization.  The politics of the founders were central to their beings. They made their politics guide them in whether a case was something that they should adopt.
• Part of the Center for Constitutional Right’s mission was educational, that’s not understood I think.
  

Guest – Albert Ruben, screen and television writer and has served as an officer of the Writers Guild of America East.

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TO END ALL WARS: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918

We welcome returning guest Adam Hochschild, historian and author of the new book TO END ALL WARS: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918. In the book, Hochschild has focused on the antiwar movement in Great Britain. Near the beginning of World War I, 20 thousand British men refused the military draft on principle, others were conscientious objectors and nearly 6 thousand of the men were sent to prison.  Hochschild relied on personal letters, diaries and memoirs to assemble this unique historic report on Britain’s powerful anti-war movement. The book also unearths how anti-war activists were monitored constantly by civilian and military intelligence as agent provocateurs bragged about their accomplishments. To End All Wars is a compelling account of the heroic anti-war struggle while top writers in that period such as Rudyard Kipling and H.G. Wells, contributed rhetoric to support the war propaganda.

Adam Hochschild:

• I always like to think we can learn things from history.  I think you learn to be inspired by people who stuck to their ideals, even in very difficult times,
• I thought it would be a challenge to write a book centering around people who I admire tremendously although they lost, the cause that they were struggling for. I’ve always been fascinated by the first World War, which remade the world for the worst in every conceivable way and killed around 20 million people in the process.
• I’ve been particularly struck by those resisted that war on both sides, who said this war is not worth these millions of lives and we’re not going to fight.
• I wanted to talk about 2 different people in this war, the generals who fought this terrible war filled with illusions, that the next battle would bring a great victory, and then I was also fascinated by these pacifists and war resistors.
• 20 thousand men of military age, refused to go into the British Army.  The largest outright refusals in any of the warring countries.  Of that number many of them accepted alternative service under conscientious objector. Driving ambulances, or work in war industry factory.
• Many men refused that and more than six thousand went to prison.
• Aggression among Germany and Austria-Hungary did really ignite the war. You can’t really say its a war between good guys and bad guys, because the allies at first were Britain and France allied with Russia. The absolute last remaining monarchy in Europe.
• Wonderful trilogy of novels by Pat Barker, The Eye In the Doors.  Had I been alive in that time in 1917, I would like so many people did at that time, who greeted the Russian Revolution with enormous hope.
• I guess I’m thinking more than anything else, of the way the first world war, made the second world war almost certain.  There was something about the way the war ended that gave rise to bitterness and the Nazis in Germany.
• Right up to the very last minute, the German people were fed a diet of totally triumphant propaganda.
• Eugene Debbs got up of his sick bed to do a speaking tour against the war. The Wilson administration charged him with subversion, he was still in prison when got nearly a million votes for president of a Socialist party ticket.
• Illusion that the war is going to solve more problems than it causes. Another illusion is that it will be over quickly, you remember George Bush on the aircraft carrier.

Guest – Adam Hochschild, award-winning author and journalist who has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. His books, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) and Bury the Chains (2005) were finalists for the National Book Award and have won numerous other prizes. Hochschild teaches narrative writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

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

Updates

• Leonard Weinglass Memorial May 13, 2011

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Egypt’s Aftermath and Continued Arab Protests

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

Abdeen Jabara:

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

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

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The American Dream As We Know It Is Obsolete

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

Arun Gupta:

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

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

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

The Irvine 11 Case

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

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

Attorney Daniel Mayfield:

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

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

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

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

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

Omar Barghouti:

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

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

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