Law and Disorder June 30, 2014

Updates

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Michael Ratner Marks CCR Case Rasul v Bush: Courage To Stand Up At The Right Time

In early 2002, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed two habeas petitions, Rasul v. Bush and Habib v. Bush. This  challenged the U.S. government’s practice of holding foreign nationals captured in connection with its war on Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in indefinite detention. This is without counsel and without the right to a trial or to know the charges against them.  Michael Ratner then explains the timeline of how the Supreme Court, over the administration’s objections, agreed in November 2003 to hear the cases of the Guantanamo detainees, and also the case of al Odah v. Bush.  This week’s anniversary marks the historic ruling on June 28th, 2004 that detainees have access to U.S. Courts to challenge their detention.

Attorney Michael Ratner:

  • We won that in June 28, 2004. We won it in a 6-3 decision. The Center for Constitutional Rights was the only human rights organization on the case. The only one willing to take that case.
  • Many of my colleagues, not me, thought that would be the end of Guantanamo (Bay Prison)
  • There are still 149 people left in Guantanamo, over half of them have been cleared for release. The reason I want to mark this is because it talks about a struggle that in some ways was successful and in some ways not successful.
  • It also talks about the courage of these lawyers that started these cases in the thick of the most anger in the country and . . . fears that we would lose our fund raising.
  • We thought at that time, as I said some of our friends, said that we would close Guantanamo. But since that time there’s been incredible stubborn resistance by all 3 branches of government.
  • Bush first, then Obama, despite promises has failed to live up to them, promises to close Guantanamo. The courts are therefore useless now in this.
  • Congress is going retrograde at a speed unimaginable, trying to ban every transfer for the rest of our days from Guantanamo.
  • Within 2 months of the 911 attacks, President Bush issued Military Order Number 1. It’s November 13, 2001 Military Order, I thought a coup de tat happened in the country. It said the president had the authority to pick anyone, anywhere in the world. Hold them indefinitely, incommunicado and abolish habeas corpus.
  • We tried to get other human rights organizations to do it. No one else to their shame would come aboard with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
  • The Center for Constitutional Rights could’ve gone under for this. Let me be clear. It was a much smaller institution. It didn’t have that much funding. There was a high risk that we were going to get cut off completely.
  • January 11, 2002, they take the people, the first plane load to Guantanamo.
  • We never expected the Supreme Court to take the case in 2003. When it finally did, it accepted the case. It was argued in April 2004. It was decided in our favor on June 28.
  • We then put out a call for other lawyers to join us. Over a hundred lawyers joined us immediately. 600 within a year or two. We then created what I call a mass movement of lawyers to fight this.
  • As a result of the 2004 ruling, our first attorney went down (to Guantanamo) Gita Gutierrez. The big thing that Gita’s visit represented is that we found out about torture at Guantanamo.
  • You begin to understand when a government does incommunicado detention in an offshore facility that doesn’t have any court review, there’s a reason, and the reason is almost entirely torture.
  • There’s been no prosecution. Obama has given them all a huge pass unfortunately. It’s really damaging because what it has done for torture is its saying, torture isn’t necessarily illegal, Obama claims it’s illegal but he didn’t prosecute anybody.
  • So, next time we have another “scare” like this people will say it’s a political issue, we can torture, it works, etc.

Guest – Law and Disorder Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner,  President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. Ratner is also a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights.

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Israel Increases Rate of Palestinian Home and Structure Demolition

In the past few months, the Israeli government has stepped up its campaign of Palestinian home demolitions, specifically in the E1 area between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement. United Nations reports show 231 Palestinians had been displaced from their homes in early 2014. This is at a much quicker pace than 2013. Remember the demolishing of homes include livestock pens, fences, water reservoirs, schools, all vital to the livelihood and communal life of Palestinians. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates since 1967, nearly 29 thousand Palestinian homes and livelihood structures were demolished in the Occupied Territories. However, at the same time the Israeli government has announced the construction of thousands of homes and buildings in the settlements of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Dr. Jeff Halper:

  • This is an area called E1, that’s the planner’s jargon.
  • The significance of E1 is that it closes the last north south corridor the Palestinians have from the north of west bank to the south since they can’t come through Jerusalem.
  • Even the United States say if Israel build in E1 and closes that corridor that’s the end of the two state solution.
  • This guy Irwin Moskowitz who is a big casino out in California gives millions to the settlements. He bought for the Israeli government a 10 million dollar state of the art police station. It’s the main police headquarters for all the West Bank that is in the E1.
  • There’s a whole infrastructure of roads leading to Jerusalem, but Israel has still refrained from actually building. The plan is to build 3,500 housing units that absolutely, thickly closes that corridor to Palestinians.
  • The 2 state solution is gone but this (building of E1 area) would be an absolute measure of the ending of the 2 state solution.
  • We’re trying to mobilize international civil society against the occupation. The occupation is not going to end because the Israeli public rise up and end it.
  • They’re living the good life, they’re profiting from the occupation especially from the point of view of testing and developing and selling weapons systems tested on Palestinians.
  • And the governments of the world aren’t doing their job. Governments manage conflicts, they don’t resolve conflicts.
  • So I’m here in the United States to try to speak to activist groups, church groups because the churches here have a very strong moral voice.
  • We’re dependent on the Palestinians for leadership on where to go next. Not  being Palestinians, we can’t tell them what the solution is.
  • I think its urgent we formulate a one state solution. A one democratic bi-national state.
  • I think there has to be a bi-national component in which both peoples have a sense of self expression and limited self determination within the common country.
  • You have to create structures of sharing power.
  • I think the Palestinians would have the ability to achieve a fair amount of parity with Israel within a short amount of time if we create this consociational type of state.
  • Israel is beginning to be more and more of an albatross around the American’s neck.
  • Operation My Brother’s Keeper had nothing to do with these kids who disappeared. It was a stand alone operation that used the disappearance as a trigger for being launched. The whole idea was to crack down on Hamas, to weaken the PA to keep it dependent on Israel.
  • I think what’s happening is we’re in the midst of collapse.
  • Jeff@ICAHD.org

Guest – Dr. Jeff Halper, co-founder and Director of ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He was born in 1946 in Minnesota and emigrated to Israel in 1973. Since then he has been a tireless advocate for justice and civil rights for all Israelis and Palestinians. He spent ten years as a community worker in Jerusalem aiding low-income Mizrahi families. He co-founded ICAHD in 1997 to help resist Israel’s strategy of house demolitions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He is the author of three books, ‘Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century’, ‘An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Possession, Redeeming Israel’, and ‘Obstacles to Peace: A reframing of the Palestinian – Israeli Conflict’. In 2006 Dr. Halper was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing ICAHD’s work “to liberate both the Palestinian and the Israeli people from the yoke of structural violence” and “to build equality between their people by recognizing and celebrating their common humanity.”
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Law and Disorder June 23, 2014

Updates:

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The 2 Year Anniversary of Wikileaks Julian Assange At The Ecuadorian Embassy

We mark the two year anniversary of Julian Assange being in custody at the Ecuadorian embassy. Our own Michael Ratner, cohost of this show is Julian Assange’s attorney. Michael describes the conditions Julian Assange is living in at the embassy, he explains the legal reasons why Julian is still there and lists the recent significant  accomplishments of Wikileaks.

Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner:

  • He’s sitting in the embassy with political asylum. It’s an apartment on the ground floor with about 6 or 8 rooms. He has one of those rooms. It’s small. There’s no outside space.
  • He has a sun lamp.
  • There are police outside, there are police out front when you walk in. They’re at every window. There’s a couple big police vans outside picking up every one of your conversations. That’s where Julian has been for two years.
  • Julian has been in pretty good shape in there. He’s been functioning. Wikileaks has been functioning. A key thing that people have to understand is Wikileaks, Sarah Harrison, Julian and others saved Edward Snowden from going to prison in the United States.
  • Remember he was in Hong Kong (Snowden). The U.S. issued a criminal complaint against him. Two counts of espionage, one count of theft of documents. There was an extradition request by the U.S. Hong Kong being part of China. The likelihood is at 90, 95 or 100 percent that Edward Snowden would have wound up in a U.S. jail.
  • Instead of that, Wikileaks helped him gain asylum where he eventually did in Russia. Sarah Harrison accompanying him on the plane to Moscow.
  • Another story we’ve covered, the Trans Pacific Partnership, that’s the trade agreement they’re trying to impose on countries particularly in the far East.
  • What the U.S. just admitted,  filed a brief in April 2014 in federal court. It was a brief in which they refuse to give up documents on a FOIA case. The claim was they couldn’t give them up because there’s a continuing investigation going. It was documents EPIC sought around Wikileaks.
  • The Department of Justice said (in that brief) there’s an ongoing criminal national security investigation into Wikileaks and Julian Assange, its multi-subject and its ongoing.
  • It’s been 4 years since the allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against Julian Assange by two women, but by particular, the prosecutor who seems to have vengeance to carry this out.
  • Remember, they’re allegations, not charges. They’ve asked to extradite Julian Assange based on those allegations.
  • Allegations from a prosecutor from another country are not sufficient to get someone extradited. We have the UK having changed the law so he can no longer be extradited.
  • Ecuador has been extremely supportive of Julian.
  • There’s a letter that will be sent in the next two days to our Attorney General Eric Holder by at least 30 human rights groups around the world.
  • That letter wants to hold him to his words (Holder) that journalists and editors will not be subject to prosecution.
  • It starts off with a demand to close all criminal investigations of Wikileaks and its Editor in Chief Julian Assange. It says they have to stop harassing and persecuting Julian and Wikileaks for publishing. FreeAssangeNow.org

Guest – Law and Disorder Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner,  President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. Ratner is also a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights.

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Shocking: California Court Rules Teacher Tenure Violates Student’s Right To Quality Education

David Welch, a Silicon Valley tech millionaire has been funding the movement and legal suit that led to the Vergara decision two weeks ago when a California court struck down a series of laws that grant tenure and other protections to public school teachers. Students Matter, an education reform group had sued on behalf of nine students arguing protections for substandard teachers have a disproportionate impact on children of color and low-income families. The decision that has identified teacher tenure as the cause of underachievement within inner city schools could have a larger influence in other states. Many see this decision as part of a strategy to transform the public education system into a major profit center. Examples include No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core Curriculum, Charter Schools.

Brian Jones:

  • The court ruled in California that teacher tenure is a violation of students’ right to a quality education.
  • The ramifications are . . if we find students who are not doing well in school that the remedy is to remove that teacher and get a new teacher and anything that stands in the way of removing that teacher is therefore a violation of that student’s rights.
  • Its actually going to have very negative consequences.
  • We already have a problem holding on to great teachers. We have a problem holding on to teachers.
  • Half of the teachers in this country leave the profession within five years. We’re literally bleeding teachers.
  • A lot of wealthy people have taken an interest in transforming public schools in this country.
  • Their idea that schooling should be run more like a business with more authority, power and decision making concentrated at the top with the workers, parents and students having little or no say on what goes on. Their job is to accomplish the task laid out before them by the millionaires and billionaires.
  • One of the worst examples of course is Bill Gates who has been effectively setting education policy for the nation for several years now.
  • You have this Silicon Valley millionaire who created a “parent group” and bringing this lawsuit you have a bunch of parents whose children are in charter schools and private schools arguing that their rights are being violated.
  • They use their wealth to effect the changes that they want.
  • They bypass any democratic process or debate or discussion about what our schools should be like.
  • This is a famous ploy by the corporatizers is to wrap themselves in the robes of the civil rights movement and claim they’re getting justice on behalf of children.
  • We have to remember that the civil rights movement was pro-union was very involved in unions.
  • The corporate reformers want us to believe that we can get justice for kids by beating up on adults.
  • If we can attack the union we can then get justice for the young people.
  • That’s the tenure attack is eliminating an obstacle for anyone to speak back, to talk back.
  • Without tenure, without unions, without those kinds of protections the people working in a school can never speak back, can never express themselves, can never protest or try to assert some other idea.
  • Let’s talk about what its going to take to improve the teaching profession. Let’s talk about what its going to take to improve the conditions of teaching and learning.
  • Teachers feel under attack. The things we’re putting on teacher’s shoulders right now are insane.
  • We (teachers) were already suffering under Bush’s No Child Left Behind, then Obama doubled down on it and made it even worse. He raised the stakes of those high stakes tests even higher. Our whole platform is available at HowieHawkins.org

Guest – Brian Jones, taught elementary grades for nine years in New York City’s public schools, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Education at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is Green Party’s 2014 candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York. Brian co-narrated the film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, and has contributed to the book Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation. He is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators: the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers. Brian has also lent his voice to several audiobooks, including The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World and Howard Zinn’s one-man play, Marx in Soho. Brian is the recipient of a 2012 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship.

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Law and Disorder June 16, 2014

Updates:

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The Electronic Privacy Information Center, The NSA, FOIA Requests, And Wikileaks

The Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC is among a handful of organizations trying to reveal the massive surveillance of the National Security Agency. We talk about a few of EPIC’s most important cases being litigated that you may not have heard about. EPIC had filed a massive FOIA request on behalf of Wikileaks to the Criminal and National Security Divisions of the Department of Justice, and to the FBI asking for multiple records including any individuals targeted for surveillance for support for or interest in WikiLeaks. We talk about that and their lawsuit involving the NSA not being subject to FOIA requests plus a victory involving the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to deactivate wireless communications networks in a crisis.

Attorney Marc Rotenburg:

  • The FOIA requests we made five years ago for the NSA Cybersecurity Authority was a request that we sent to the NSA, litigated in the district court and on appeal in the DC Circuit last Friday just a few days before the government’s brief was due, they contacted us and said they were disclosing to us the document we had been trying to obtain.
  • This is National Security Presidential Directive 54 and that outlines all the cyber security authorities for the federal agencies.
  • The scope of our work is very much driven by our mission. Our mission is to focus public attention on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues.
  • The FBI wants to put together the next generation identification system which will be the largest biometric database in the world and we think the implications for privacy and freedom are just staggering.
  • Google also retains everybody’s search histories.
  • We also do a lot of open government litigation so people can learn about these issues and we do a lot of amicus briefs.
  • In our organization there’s actually deep division about Wikileaks. Some people think Julian Assange is a hero and some people would like to see him arrested.
  • What was interesting to us about the Wikileaks case – we did see a persons of expressions of support for Wikileaks as core First Amendment speech.
  • We became very interested through the FOIA with how the federal government was apparently intervening with private companies, bank payment companies, cloud service providers and others to try to chill the ability of Wikileaks supporters to contribute to the organization, to get access to hosted documents.
  • We simply believe it was wrong for the government to simply discourage people their support or even their opposition.
  • With the FOIA, one of the things you’re trying to do is get information out to the public and hope that others find that its useful.
  • We think its a fundamental obligation for any internet company that collects personal data to stand up to the government when there are court orders.
  • Our other case in the DC Circuit – this concerns a technique used in San Francisco basically to shut down cell phone service among people who had gathered at a protest to object to the police conduct that I think resulted in the death of a person on the BART system.
  • Pursuant to a secret policy known as Standard Operating Protocol 303, somehow the Department of Homeland Security got the local telephone service to shut down cell phone service in the region and people couldn’t communicate and the protest was effectively stopped.
  • Our FOIA request was for the policy which we think has to be made public. You can’t have a secret procedure that so deeply implicates First Amendment freedoms.
  • We went laser focused after that one document and the DHS was throwing up all these law enforcement exemptions, 7E and 7F involving techniques and methods saying this was vitally important to protect public safety which was an interesting argument too.
  • Submit FOIA requests – if a government agency has a reason to withhold a record, the burden is on the agency to justify the reason for the withholding.

Guest – Attorney Marc Rotenburg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on many issues, including access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security, and communications privacy. He testified before the 9-11 Commission on “Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism.” He has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU.

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Hundreds of California Prisoners in Isolation to Join Class Action Lawsuit

Last year we spoke with attorney Jules Lobel about his lawsuit challenging long term solitary confinement in California prisons. Recently, a federal judge in Oakland California ruled to agree to consider as part of that lawsuit if long term isolation violates a prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights. Prisoners in prolonged solitary confinement at Pelican Bay prison can spend 22 to 24 hours a day in a cramped, concrete windowless cell. Mostly, they’re there for their alleged connection to gangs and their refusal to become government informants.

Attorney Jules Lobel:

  • Pelican Bay is a prison that holds over 1000 prisoners. It’s located on one of the most isolated sections of the United States coast line border between California and Oregon.
  • It was deliberately placed there because most of the prisoners are from Los Angeles.
  • It’s very hard for their friends and family to visit them.
  • They spend virtually their whole day in an 80 square foot cell with no window.
  • They virtually get no visitors, they can’t make any phone calls. They’re fairly isolated from the outside world and from each other.
  • Many of my clients have been in this kind of cell for over a decade.
  • California estimates there are about 225 that have been there for over a decade.
  • A number of my clients have been there for over 2 decades.
  • California puts them there not because they’ve done anything violent in prison, or in some cases they haven’t done anything violent outside of prison . . mainly drug offenses . . . but because they have an association could be very loose, could be because of having a tattoo or a piece of art work which suggests you’re in some way associated with a gang.
  • The only way out was to become an informant and then you and your family were in grave danger of being killed or assaulted by the gang.
  • Recently in California after 3 hunger strikes, pressure from the lawsuit, pressure from the legislature, has instituted some reforms so there are for some of the people a way at least to another solitaire prison or the general population.
  • They come up for review once every six years in the system that’s currently in place.
  • The Ninth Circuit court has said anything over 1 year is too long for reviews.
  • There have been hundreds of law suits challenging various aspects of this situation in Pelican Bay, from the due process to they’re not given any chance to prove that they can get to its cruel and unusual punishment to keep people in there for 10-15-20 years.
  • Now for the first time the judge has said I’m going to take this as a class action which means I’m going to look at the general policies that California is instituting and if we were to win, try to change the system.
  • Our argument is that these conditions are cruel and unusual to keep people in for this long of time.
  • We said we need to meet with all of our clients all together. We can’t meet with one individual then another individual.
  • The state said that’s impossible, these people are so dangerous you can’t possibly meet with them all together, but the judge ordered it.
  • We got a meeting, if you can imagine the cell that Hannibal was in? They put 10 of these cages side by side, and they put us in a big conference room. They mandated that we had to wear flak jackets. We were seated at a table with Marine outfits.
  • What it really is is to force these guys to become informants, to make it as cruel as possible and the only way out is to become an informant.
  • It essentially alters your personality. You die a social death.
  • Our case, if we were to win would be the beginning of the death knell of solitary confinement in this country.
  • 80 thousand prisoners as we speak are in some form of solitary in this country.
  • One of the things about this case is that it requires substantial funding and we’re always looking for people to help with funding the case.

Guest – Attorney Jules Lobel, has litigated important issues regarding the application of international law in the U.S. courts. In the late 1980’s, he advised the Nicaraguan government on the development of its first democratic constitution, and has also advised the Burundi government on constitutional law issues.  Professor Lobel is editor of a text on civil rights litigation and of a collection of essays on the U.S. Constitution, A Less Than Perfect Union (Monthly Review Press, 1988). He is author of numerous articles on international law, foreign affairs, and the U.S. Constitution in publications including Yale Law Journal, Harvard International Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. He is a member of the American Society of International Law.

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Law and Disorder June 9, 2014

Updates:

  • Michael Ratner: Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Exchange
  • Five Taliban In Exchange For A U.S. Prisoner Held In Afghanistan
  • 149 Detainees Left In Guantanamo Prison – 88 Cleared For Release
  • Michael Smith Reports Back On Highlights At the 2014 Left Forum

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9/11 Memorial Museum Protests

There were many protests during the official opening of the 911 Memorial Museum. Muslim communities and other groups have voiced concern about the film in the musuem titled  “The Rise of Al-Qaeda” and how it fails to adequately discern between Al-Qaeda and those of the Islamic faith. Meanwhile, the museum’s official response is that the film is objectively telling the story of what happened.

Donna Nevel:

  • We came together because of a concern about a video they were showing called The Rise of al-Qaeda. It’s a 7 minute documentary and the concern is about the problematic language that its using. It makes it seem as if the acts of 9-11 are equated with Islam.
  • Our feeling is that the film needs to be edited and could exacerbate an already anti-Muslim climate.
  • Quoting criticism – The film in its current state presented risks that visitors would assign collective responsibility for September 11th to Islam and all Muslims.
  • There’s a historian Todd Fine who says its an inconsistent array of terminology that gets carelessly thrown around with little concern for the harmful impact it can have on people.
  • The video didn’t do enough to separate al-Qaeda from Islam and from mainstream Islam. It’s reckless.
  • Despite the fact that the own museum’s own advisory board was instantly concerned when they saw the film and said it should be reviewed and edited – despite the fact that 400 scholars wrote letters saying it contains problematic and contested terminology that conflates terrorism with Islam – and despite the fact that leaders from so many different inter-faith communities have spoken out about this – that the museum continues to stand by its decision not to edit the video – is astonishing.
  • I was doing a little research on her (Debra Burlingame-on 911 Memorial Museum Board of Directors) and there’s a high number of racist quotes she’s said. “Islam’s a transnational threat.”
  • Millions and millions of people will be going to this museum and museums can have a big impact.
  • We have to remember that this is in the context not of a society that welcomes and embraces the Muslim community but one that’s surveilling the Muslim community.
  • It’s feeding into this notion that all Muslims are responsible for the acts of a few individuals.
  • This video also feeds into police surveillance because what do they say? After 911 we have to be more vigilant and that means surveilling an entire community.
  • Communities are coming together and speaking out, including about this video.
  • We have to change the structures that enable this to happen. The Islamophobes are really problematic and have connections to some of the institutions.
  • We have to make sure our institutions are fomenting Islamophobia.
  • Book – Islamophobia and Israel by Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel
  • We wanted to analyze the intersection of Islamophobia and Israeli politics and to look at the way the “war on terror” impacts both. Also to raise an issue that’s basically taboo in the Jewish community as well as outside the Jewish community.
  • We have 4 different areas that we look at. Our lengthiest area is “follow the money” where you basically see how connected the Islamophobes are with right-wing Israel crowd, the settlement movement and others as well.
  • Jews Against Islamophobia / Jews Say No / Jewish Voices For Peace / Jews For Racial and Economic Justice
  • Contact Donna Nevel – denevel(at)gmail(dot).com

Guest – Donna Nevel, a community psychologist, educator, and writer whose work is rooted in Participatory Action Research (PAR) and popular education. Co-author with Elly Bulkin of Islamophobia and Israel.  She has been involved with a wide range of organizing efforts to challenge segregation and inequality and further equity and racial justice in public education. She has also been a long-time organizer for Palestinian-Israeli peace and justice and works with groups to challenge Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.

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Free Flow of Information Act (Journalist Shield Law)

Current shield laws for journalists in the United States have broad exceptions for national security. This means that a prosecutor can override the law by showing how the information sought would “materially assist” the government in “preventing” or “mitigating” an act of terrorism. Initially, the shield law is set up to provide a confidentiality privilege for journalists so a police officer or FBI agent can’t get that information even with a court order unless there is an unusually strong justification for it. The latest version of the shield law as of September 2013 has a clause telling judges that it only covers legitimate news gathering. This of course makes very easy to declare any kind of news gathering you don’t like as illegitimate, and therefore the sources are not protected. Last month, the House of Representatives voted to approve an amendment to an appropriations bill barring the Justice Department from compelling reporters to testify about confidential sources.

Carey Shenkman:

  • We are going to get a shield law but its going to be one that doesn’t protect any journalists or sources.
  • It’s a lot easier for the FBI and the DOJ to just skip the investigation and go straight to the reporters. Why do they have to any work when they have the journalist getting all the sources for them.
  • They subpoenaed records from the Associated Press last summer, they subpoenaed the source for James Risen who wrote a book and that actually appeared before the 4th Circuit of Appeals and was turned down by the Supreme Court for review.
  • There’s been a push to try and pass a shield law before but Obama back in 2009 said he wouldn’t let any shield law pass that didn’t have a big national security exemption.
  • What happened back in September is that there was a massive compromise with 2 Senators, Diane Feinstein from California and Dick Durbin from Illinois. They wouldn’t let this law go through unless it contained a big national security exception. Meaning any reporter covering national security would have to disclose their sources, and second it had a big exclusion for wikileaks and other organizations that published leaks.
  • There’s actually a balancing test as part of this law that tells judges to consider if a journalist is engaged in legitimate news gathering. This is problematic because anyone can be a journalist, this has been the case since the founding of this country.
  • They’re trying to put into law the fact that some journalists are legitimate and some are illegitimate.
  • The internet has brought this country back to the time of its founding in terms of journalism because when the “press clause” in the First Amendment were passed, anyone could be a journalist.
  • The “press clause” was defined as the right to publish.
  • I believe we do need shield laws, but not this shield law.
  • I think there is a big push by the institutional media to keep journalism as a profession, but that’s not what journalism is. Now with the internet, anyone can publish. As long as anyone as the intention to disseminate information, they should be protected as a journalist.
  • When it helps the government the definition of the media is very broad.
  • It’s going to be political suicide if Holder or anyone from the Obama administration pushes to send James Risen to jail.
  • The DOJ argued in an affidavit that James Rosen was aiding and abetting his source.
  • More and more, we’re seeing this administration trying to frame the news gatherer and the source, not as a journalist and a source but as criminals in a conspiracy.
  • I was a radio journalist for 3 years. I used to work at the Center for Constitutional Rights where I met Michael Ratner and was involved with Chelsea Manning’s trial.

Guest – Carey Shenkman, has worked with several legal teams including Chelsea Manning’s defense, and legal research defining  the protection of new media under the Bill of Rights and The U.S. Constitution.  

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Law and Disorder June 2, 2014

Updates:

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Remembering Dr. Vincent Harding

Last month pioneering historian, theologian and civil rights activist Dr. Vincent Harding had died at the age of 82.  Harding was a close adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wrote King’s famous antiwar speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” King delivered the address at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967.

After King was assassinated, Harding became the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World.  He later became  Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver.  After serving in the Army for several years Harding became a pacifist and later served as co-chairperson of the social unity group the Veterans of Hope Project.  He’s the author numerous books including There Is A River and Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals.

Dr. George Tinker:

  • Vincent was sometimes called by black activists across the continent, the gentle giant.
  • Giant, not because of his physical size but because of intellectual stature.
  • Last summer we did a conference together speaking to a national conference of Quakers.
  • He was an incredibly soft-spoken and gentle person, yet could be so absolutely incisive in his quiet comments.
  • He was so persuasive that everyone had to pay attention to him.
  • On campus he was either in the midst of a student group trying to quietly cajole them into activism themselves or once the students became activists, he was one of the few faculty that was right there with students walking them through that activism.
  • Every thing in that speech (Beyond Vietnam) is a part of what Vincent lived every day.
  • He was in the Army during the Korean War and became a convert to Gandhi and non-violence theory.
  • His participation to bringing me to Iliff was a clear signal that he was one of those civil rights warriors who was not satisfied with interpreting the civil rights struggle as a black and white issue.
  • When we engaged in protest on the streets of Denver, beginning around 1989, getting ready for the 1992  Columbian Quinscentenary, we had Iliff students who would come out with the American Indian Movement of Colorado to help us protest what we always framed as state supported hate speech.
  • We were never against Italians celebrating their heritage but its the fact that Columbus Day is a federal holiday. It’s a federal celebration then, of the genocide of Indian people.
  • About a year and a half ago he joined Jewish activists and African American activists on a trip to Palestine, the West Bank. He came back deeply affected.
  • He immediately began to see the deep deep connection between the Palestinian struggle for freedom and American Indians on this continent.
  • We’re seeing it still today, US foreign policy is characterized by violence and the threat of violence and if not military violence, economic violence.
  • Vincent and Dr. King were men of conscience who once they understood the truth in Vietnam could not help but speak to it.
  • 18 year old kids don’t have the clear reading of history to fall back on their decision making. (military)
  • His passing is a passing of an era marked by the passing of Maya Angelou. It deeply deeply saddened me because I was hoping this next month to have lunch with him.

Guest – Dr. George Tinker, a colleague of Dr. Vincent Harding at the IIliff School of Theology.  Dr. Tinker. He teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. His publications include American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (2008); Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (2004); and Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide (1993). He co-authored A Native American Theology (2001); and he is co-editor of Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance (2003), and Fortress Press’ Peoples’ Bible (2008).

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