Law and Disorder September 12, 2011

Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Green Scare, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister

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The State of Perpetual War

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

Anthony Arnove:

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

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

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

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The Guantanamo Syndrome

Attorney Michael Ratner:

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

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Audio Collage

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

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Law and Disorder September 5, 2011

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power

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

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

Attorney Daniel Gross:

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

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

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

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

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

Attorney Flint Taylor:

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

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

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Law and Disorder August 29, 2011

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister

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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 22, 2011

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Torture, Truth to Power

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Cruel Solitary Confinement In Pennsylvania Prisons

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

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

Bret Grote:

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

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

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

Liz Springer:

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

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

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

Theresa Shoatz:

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

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

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Law and Disorder August 15, 2011

Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power

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A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers

The Department of Justice’s campaign to stigmatize whistle blowers and force reporters to open up their notebooks under the Espionage Act is failing. Recently, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in an opinion released a couple weeks ago, said prosecutors could not force author and New York Times reporter to testify about how he learned certain classified information for a book on the Central Intelligence Agency.  In another example, a former senior NSA official was charged under the Espionage Act and accused of leaking classified information to a newspaper. He recently walked out of court a free man, sentenced to a year’s probation and community service, after hearing the judge excoriate the government for its handling of the case.

Attorney Scott Horton:

  • Obama criticized the oppression of whistle blowers on the campaign trail.
  • He talked about how early in his career he had represented whistle blowers, and they play a part in our society and they need our protection.  When confronted now, he shoots back I was talking about whistle blowers in areas other than national security.
  • There have dozens of whistle blowers in the national security area, but I would say the pattern that unfolds, is there’s an internal investigation, the person is stripped of their security classification, they usually lose their job.
  • These prosecutions don’t lead to long prison terms.
  • I think what we see is a turn to the Espionage Act in order to justify far more serious terms and have a 10 or 20 year sentence.
  • The Espionage Act can be used to justify going after reporters. Access to their internet accounts, phone records, and compelling reporters to give evidence against their sources.
  • The Drake case and the Sterling case are two most important ones right now. The NSA took the position that Drake was disclosing secrets by revealing all of this.
  • At least half a dozen senior figures in the Obama Whitehouse provided extremely sensitive and classified information to Bob Woodward for that book. No investigation, no prosecution.
  • You can open the New York Times and the Washington Post everyday and find some national secret that’s been leaked by a member of the administration to help score a point for the administration. There’s never any investigation.
  • Nothing is more clear that only political motivations drive these cases. The cases that are most embarrassing are the cases that are most rigorously prosecuted.
  • The person prosecuted Thomas Drake was a selfless civil servant, spent his entire life serving the government, served in the Air Force, the Navy, the NSA and had sacrificed through his life to advance the interest of government.
  • He was being prosecuted because of his concern for taxpayers. He saw fraud and waste in contractor management he tried to stop. He went through every proper channel and then when he went to the press, he’s prosecuted for doing that.
  • The prosecutor William H Welch is the man known for having bungled the prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.  The Washingtonian did a whole career profile on William Welch.
  • The Obama Administration came in, it made certain promises. You see inside the DOJ, they’ve assigned people to change the policy guidelines. And they have, if you go back and look at the policy guidelines for state secrets invocations and the policy guidelines, they’re there for these whistle blower cases and the guidelines have been changed.
  • What I hear from lawyers there (DOJ) is that the attitude they have now toward the CIA and the NSA are that these two agencies are their clients. They do the bidding of these agencies, they never question their characterizations or assessments.
  • I think that’s what we see in the prosecution decisions here. We see senior officials at the CIA and NSA who have been embarrassed by these disclosures and they want to get even with the people who have embarrassed them and the Justice Department is perfectly happy to go out there and do their bidding.

Guest – New York attorney Scott Horton, known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict. Scott is also the contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.

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BDS Movement Ignites Amid U.S. Food Co-ops

An emerging BDS movement is making waves at a Food Coop in Brooklyn, similar to the successful Boycott Divestment Sanction effort last summer in Olympia, Washington. The Olympia movement was pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the home city of the Corrie family.  The Brooklyn BDS protest is causing backlash amid the Jewish community. Some Jewish leaders opposed to the movement say it reveals antisemitism and that the assumption of Israel’s right to exist isn’t shared.

The boycott, in this case urges people around the world 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, is the call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power.

Attorney Dennis James:

  • I’m a co-op member and the co-op has been around since the seventies. It’s the oldest and largest food co-op in the United States, it’s got 16 thousand members and a waiting list.
  • In the past 2 or 3 years, there has been a running dispute reflected in the editors of the Linewaiters Gazette of counter charges and charges regarding the issue of handling Israeli produced goods.
  • There has developed a movement to try to resolve this. To do it in a democratic way that’s provided for by the procedures of the co-op which was founded in a political sense. It’s had about 11 boycotts.
  • The proposal made by the proponents of the boycott is that it should be by referendum of all 16 thousand members rather than at a general membership meeting in which 3 or 4 hundred people attend.
  • Where we are now, slogging our way through the procedures of the co-op is that there has been a meeting specified in the process is a pure discussion of whether or not there should be a referendum.
  • There’s the Hava products and people are doing research on what particular products there are.
  • There are certain fresh foods that come in off season. Two principle objectives come up, why Israel? – meaning while there’s this misery around the planet of the Chinese imposing on the Tibetans, Turks imposing on the Kurds and the other one is – it will destroy the co-op.
  • The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about and that is US support for everything Israel does, which is not characteristic of almost any other conflict as bad as it might be of majorities vs minorities throughout the world.
  • We support this, we finance this. We back it up with a guaranteed veto in the U.N. whenever Israel wants it.
  • There is 81 Congressmen in Israel right now on vacation. Paid for by AIPAC. They give Netanyahu 29 standing ovations, no president gets that.  They’re shaking in their boots, whether AIPAC is going to come to their district.
  • The anti-boycott people (co-op) are saying we’re going to walk out, we’re going to destroy. (the very people who want to prevent the vote – referendum)
  • They don’t want to debate you, they want to destroy you. They want to shut you down to shut you up.
  • In Israel: People can lose their tax exempt status if they are of an organization like an NGO that has advocated boycotts of say settlement produced goods as do a number of Israeli NGOs.
  • They can be fined. There is a number of particular civil sanctions that are available to those who advocate a boycott.

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Attorney Barbara Harvey:

  • The BDS movement really took off after calls went out for a global BDS in 2005 from Palestinian Civil Society.
    176 of the major civil society Palestinian organizations issued a joint call for a global BDS. They asked for non-violent economic resistance to occupation.
  • The U.S. Zion organizations, AIPAC, the Jewish Federation, the JCRC and other Jewish organizations in this country would not have jointly created a six million dollar fund dedicated to defeating the BDS movement in the United States.
  • Something we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by in my opinion. It is an effort to revive, reenact anti-boycott provisions of an old export administration act. These anti-boycott provisions expired a decade ago, but they were continued by presidential emergency orders including one signed by President Obama.
  • They intend to prohibit collaboration by U.S. people that includes corporations, with the Arab League Boycott Against Israel. If intended to prevent exporters from cooperating with and supporting the Arab League Boycott. It is not directed against human rights campaigns such as BDSs.
  • The Olympia Food Co-op is actually an important story. Olympia, Washington is the hometown of Rachel Corrie who was the young Evergreen College student who was bulldozed to her death by the Caterpillar D9 weaponized bulldozer.
  • (The Olympia Food Co-op) adopted a boycott on the purchase for re-sale all goods from Israel, in accordance with the goals of the BDS movement a year ago.  It has been successful, it has been under the gun ever since. The fact is, it hasn’t hurt business and it hasn’t backed off.
  • This highlights the hysteria fomented by the opponents of the BDS that they’d like us to lose sight of. The majority of American Jews in this country, genuinely want a fair and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
  • The whole Netanyahu Administration has been a real trauma for American Jews.
  • TIAA-CREF is a retirement behemoth. It has more than 400 billion dollars assets. The goal is to persuade TIAA-CREF to divest its portfolios from the occupation.
  • WeDivest.org / WhoProfits.org / BDSMovement.net / Al-Shabaka.org

Guest –  National Lawyers Guild attorney Dennis James.  Dennis has been active in anti-war, civil rights, and social justice issues. He recently traveled to Gaza with a UN delegation in 2009.

Guest –  Attorney Barbara Harvey in Detroit who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member

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