Law and Disorder February 16, 2009

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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The First 100 Days: Dismantling the Police State in a New Presidency – Part 2

This is the second of a three part special. Law and Disorder hosts bring a series of interviews with key attorneys, authors and activists from the front lines such as the Center For Constitutional Rights, Universities of Law and the National Lawyers Guild. Some of the police state policies are beginning to be reversed such as closing down secret CIA sites, a timeline to shut down Guantanamo, and mandating everyone CIA included follow US Army Field Manual Interrogation tactics.

Recently the Obama Administration defended the telecom wiretapping legislation. Attorney General Eric Holder told Senator Orin Hatch –  “The duty of the Justice Department is to defend statutes that have been passed by Congress.”

CCR staff attorney Shane Kadidal explains in detail the 3 main groups of Guantanamo detainees, the laws that allow for secret sites, FISA wiretapping, National Security letters, data mining and the Patriot Act.

Shane Kadidal:

  • The Three Groups in Guantanamo: First Group – Two dozen genuinely involved with “Al Qaeda” – planning terrorist activities  – the people who would be tried in federal courts if GTMO never existed.
  • Second Group – Shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The US says they may charge as many as 80 people, there are 255 people left, that means there are close to 200 people that the US gov’t will send home. Like the 500 people who have already been sent home from GTMO.
  • Subgroups – there are about 110 Yemenis waiting to return back to Yemen
  • Third group: Guantanamos refugees who come to GTMO from places with horrible human rights records, Syria, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, about 13 countries where we ordinarily give them asylum. We can’t return them in good faith back to the countries they are citizens of. Find traditional asylum accepting countries to send them to largely in Europe.
  • Secret Sites: The next president could decide to end the secret sites – Who is accountable for sending people to black sites to be tortured? – Military Commissions Act gives those involved  immunity from actions that would have been violations of the War Crimes Act or Anti Torture Act
  • Repeal MCA – Once you do that, then any officials participating in the black sites have to worry the rest of their lives of being criminally prosecuted for what they did.
  • Repealing the MCA would restore Habeas Corpus to full flower that Supreme Court did in the case of Razul and proper judicial oversight regarding detentions.
  • Repudiate the whole practice of using black sites and rendition
  • Torture: There is one measure out there to propose that the military revert to the model of the Army Field Manual, that actually has acceptable interrogation tactics. – Done
  • The Army Field Manual was designed by Interrogation experts with long history of experience and know from practical experience that torture doesn’t work in producing reliable information.
  • All of this can be done by executive order, a stroke of the pen as Clinton used to say.
  • FISA – wiretapping – the secret court that approves wiretaps – The historic model was that law enforcement would have to present a little bit of evidence of suspicion and that the court would authorize the person to be wiretapped. You go to the judge you get the order directed to one person.
  • Right now, it’s broader, instead of going to a judge with specific evidence and getting specific authority for a very limited wiretap. Now based on the FISA Amendments Act passed this summer of June 2008, – they seem to want to get authority to do a wholesale authority on wiretapping and they’ll give the judge criteria in very rough terms. The discretion of law enforcement no longer limited.
  • The colonists wrote the fourth amendment with the warrant requirement in it because they were concerned the king had issued these general warrants to allow his agents to run around where there might be violations of the stamp tax act.
  • The Supreme Court may argue that the fourth amendment is outdated and allow the broader wiretap powers.
  • Also, a new president coming in may decide not to use this power, but there is going to be a great deal of inertia from the intelligence agencies who had five or six years of this power under the NSA
  • Its hard to get rid of this entrenched thing, they’ll come to the president with all sorts of arguments.
  • This is an area where Congress would have to step in to restore post Watergate era restrictions that were put in place in the FISA act in 1978
  • Patriot Act – A lot of it hasn’t been used as predicted.
  • Preventive detention – they can hold citizens for 7 days without charge/ but the president asserted executive power to hold citizens and non-citizens without charges for years.
  • Now the Patriot Act looks like a model of checks and balances.
  • National Security letters and Data Mining – The government pulls in huge amounts of data both from private sources and things that can accumulate. We know that they were seeking calling records, the story broke in the middle of 2006 from nearly all the phone companies and they complied.
  • We know they’ve been seeking search terms in various contexts from internet providers, we know they have worked with Swift which processes interbank tranactions to get huge amount of financial transfer data, financial transactions that happen anywhere in the world.
  • They’re putting this into a database to see if they can catch terrorists by applying pattern analysis. The first problem with that is that we don’t know if it works, its likely to have a very false positive rate.
  • Very close to profiling and pull in people who should not be made the targets of suspicion.
  • There is so little human intelligence on the ground, and its tempting for intelligence agencies to look to for technological panacea.

Guest – Shayana Kadidal has been at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) since 2001. Shane is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at CCR. In addition to supervising the Guantánamo litigation, he also works on the Center’s case against the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, CCR v. Bush, and its challenge to the “material support” statute, HLP v. Gonzales. Shane has testified before Congress on the material witness statute and is a contributor to the Center’s book Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, 2006. He graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

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Mara Verheyden-Hilliard: Criminalizing Dissent

Criminalizing Dissent has chilled most free speech movement in the United States, especially when demonstrators take to the streets. We talk with attorney Mara Verheyden Hilliard co_founder of The Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund about criminalizing dissent, surveillance, data mining, fusion centers and the ability to exercise first amendment rights. A recent example were the violations of free speech during the mass arrests of protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention. The demonizing of protesters and their message in the media will usually allow for the use of military force by police. That combined with intelligence gathering and targeting of lead organizers squelched the voice of dissent in all age groups.

Mara Verheyden Hilliard:

  • A lot of our work is at the intersection of first and fourth amendment rights.
  • PCJ has a class action suit pending from the world bank IMF protest – 8 year drag out tactic.
  • “What they want to do is stage-manage democracy.”
  • Victory: After years of litigation the government has to lift regulations on number of people at the Great Lawn
  • Is it important to say that we don’t want to go back to Jan 19, 2001 just the day before Bush took office- or is there more that we have to do?
  • We think there has to be an audit of every agency’s databases to determine exactly what the databases are.
  • Identify what has been collected, where it has been put, who has access to that information,
  • Then to tell people in the United States individually, what has been collected on them and then to expunge it.
  • For people in their United States, their government collecting information, maintaining information, in these massive database files, that can be used by law enforcement, pulled up in a moment’s notice is really a very dangerous practice.
  • What they’ve done is misuse existing databases and data tools.

Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden Hilliard co-founder of The Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund.

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Law and Disorder February 9, 2009

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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The First 100 Days: Dismantling the Police State in a New Presidency – Part 1

This is the first of a three part special. Law and Disorder hosts bring a series of interviews with key attorneys, authors and activists from the front lines such as the Center For Constitutional Rights, Universities of Law and the National Lawyers Guild. Some of the police state policies are beginning to be reversed such as closing down secret CIA sites, a timeline to shut down Guantanamo, and mandating everyone CIA included follow US Army Field Manual Interrogation tactics.

We define the current laws in place that now constitute a police state. Then we look at the steps the Obama Administration must take to turn back the major breaches in civil liberties such as the Patriot Act One and Two, the Military Commissions Act, FBI Guidelines and legal provisions that allow for torture. As you’ll hear, some attorneys believe much of the dismantling can be done by executive order.

We begin with a description of what we have seen since September 11, 2001 and precursors such as the Effective Death Penalty Act, the earlier renditions under Clinton’s administration. Then, right after 9/11 came the overreaching of executive power in the form of signing statements that misuse the war powers resolution to detain, torture and try so_called enemy combatants. This includes racial profiling against Muslims here and abroad, massive surveillance capacities and warrant_less wiretapping.

The dismantling of police state blocks in the new presidency will take attention to detail to ensure a full restoration of democracy that will ultimately allow for social progress. In the next hour we look at some remedies and solutions to reverse laws that have created domestic enemy combatants, Guantanamo Bay prison, Renditions, Secret CIA sites, Torture, Kangaroo Courts: Special Trials, FISA, domestic surveillance, private military contractors.

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Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vince Warren discusses the abuse of preventive detention, torture, rendition and states secrets. Hosts cite recent examples of deep surveillance on peaceful protesters and the unprecedented collusion between federal, state and local law enforcement. Warren points out the importance of rolling back the police state measures put in place by the Bush administration, in that No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.

Vincent Warren:

  • Torture/rendition/states secrets / right to dissent / the abuse of preventive detention.
  • Torture top of list, the export of torture and CIA black sites.
  • torture crimes at this time are unprosecutable adn its up to the president to
  • Close Guantanamo prison – send prisoners back to countries they came from, repatriate.
  • CCR and civil proceedings – hold accountable, the Bush administration to declare what they’ve done unconstitutional, damages to clients CCR represents and injunctive relief, future deterrents
  • Universal jurisdiction stems from the Nuremberg principles that say a crime that is committed against a person anywhere is prosecutable anywhere.
  • Countries such as Germany Spain and France have statutes for human rights abuse survivors to bring cases for prosecution.
  • States secrets privilege, the privilige that the government has routinely invoked in a range of CCR cases, whenever the government says states secrets, the courts, including the supreme courts usually kick the case. The remedy?
  • Congress can create a statute that limits the use of a states secrets power in order to make it consistent for truth telling and accountability.
  • No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.
  • The abuse of preventive detention, fusion centers – intelligence gathering and data mining – the concern is that no one can monitor and again its done in secrecy. no oversight, more preemptive law enforcement
  • The irony here is that government usually acts as if one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, unless they’re coming down on our constitutional rights, then they’re all on the same page.

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Naomi Wolf : 10 Steps

We’re joined by author and activist Naomi Wolf. She is the author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. We want to re-visit those ten steps.

Naomi Wolf:

  • A small group of people used the law to subvert the law. Reichstag Fire, then disembowel their own Constitution.
  • Initial thinking inspired from my friend who is the daughter of holocaust survivors, she said the Bush strategies echo early 1930s Germany.
  • Enabling Acts in Germany gave the power to the state to read a person’s mail, listen to their phone calls and read their telegrams. This, in the alleged interest of national security and the fight against terrorism.
  • Nazis used to unload the coffins of the war dead at night.
  • A would-be dictator sought to close an open society or crush a democracy movement. Mussolini in 1920, the great evil pioneer. Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler.
  • I looked at Russia, studied Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Pinochet’s coup in 1973, the Chinese crackdown on democracy in the 80s.
  • What I saw was there was a blueprint. The blueprint has 10 steps. The 10 steps have been codified, they teach them at the School of the Americas.
  • To help would be Latin-American dictators to overthrow their own governments. What terrified me is that those ten steps are being put in place by the Bush Administration.
  • The Ten Steps
  1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
  2. Create a gulag
  3. Develop a thug caste
  4. Set up an internal surveillance system
  5. Harass citizens’ groups
  6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
  7. Target key individuals
  8. Control the press
  9. Dissent equals treason
  10. Suspend the rule of law

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Law and Disorder February 2, 2009

Human Rights, Prison Industry, Torture

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Analysis of Current Economy and Economic Aid Package: 2009

Economists say the United States is facing it’s biggest economic crisis since World War II. In the wake of historic massive bailouts to banks, the democratic party has proposed an economic stimulus plan designed to create 3 million jobs, provide tax cuts and stimulate areas of the economy such as energy and health care.

  • Law Enforcement: $3 billion for state and local law enforcement assistance. / $1 billion for community policing services.
  • General Services Administration: $6 billion for construction and repair of federal buildings.
    $1 billion for immigration facilities at ports of entry.
  • Homeland Security: $250 million for salaries and construction at ports of entry. $500 million for purchase and installation of explosive detection systems. $150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges.

Max Wolff:

  • When you look at the stimulus, it’s a kinder gentler and much larger version of what we started 12 months ago when the Bush administration realized the gig was up.
  • It’s nice to see some money for the electrical grid, which now isn’t even the envy of the developing world.
  • We need the stimulus, but we need structural change. It’s a missed opportunity, if we’re going to go this much deeper in debt.
  • We did two things wrong. We kind of nationalized the banks, without nationalizing them, and we kind of bailed out the private banks without giving them enough money.
  • We gave them enough money to not go bankrupt immediately but not enough to get back into the business of banking.
  • Then, we turned the Federal Reserve, without public discussion or Congressional debate, into a giant national central bank.
  • Now the Federal Reserve is getting into the business of buying US treasuries, loaning money to corporations and bailing out private banks.
  • To me, the lesson we should have learned is that you can’t use credit and debt to substitute for people who don’t have enough money to live and can’t make purchases above more than 2 weeks pay.
  • As long as that is in place we are slipping into a debt trap.
  • We needed to do something to bail out the banks. The bottom line is that we’re asking the banks to give more money when we have an international crisis because they’ve loaned to people who can’t pay them back.
  • Remember the Great Depression also involved weapons of mass destruction and the loss of more than 200 thousand lives
  • We need to have higher wages, which means lower profits. We need national health care immediately.
  • We need to import a little less. We need to export a little more.
  • That means ten years of economic pain, best case scenario, while you re-center the economy and teach people a different way to view their citizenship and livelihood.
  • You would need massive unrest, creative and constructive for fundamental change in structure

Guest – Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.

Professor Rick Wolff:

  • Giving a lot of money to the people who screwed up the economy is not the best recipe for fixing it.
  • A great deal of money will be given back to the people in the form of tax rebates. As we have seen people are not using tax rebates in ways that boost the economy.
  • All 50 states who refused to see the writing on the wall, will get money that will drive the same old pork barrel spending scenarios.
  • A very small amount of money will go to significant change that would begin to make a difference. We will be sitting here 6 months from now saying . . this didn’t work either.
  • The fundamental thing that created 30 years of crazy misdevelopment has been the end of rising real wages, it came to end because corporations found ways to stop paying higher wages.
  • From outsourcing to computer technology, between desperate women looking for jobs, desperate immigrants looking for jobs. Put all that together, they didn’t have to pay any more wages to a population who measured their success in life as a rising standard of living.
  • If people believe that and it’s reinforced by every politician and advertisment, then they will borrow, with banks eager to lend, you produce an explosion of credit that, in the end could not be sustained.
  • Our problem now is you fund the banks again and you tell them to go lend, they can’t.
  • One thing no one is talking about is that this stimulus and the next one later this year, is based on the continuing to borrow money. As a hobbling world economy invests back into the United States, it will create a bizarre disorganization.
  • The clue is to look at the Great Depression. There was no social security, no unemployment insurance.
  • If the goverment is going to be the bank of last resort, the lender of last resort, then the logic will arise, why isn’t it the employer of last resort. We have an unemployment rate at nearly 9 percent.
  1. Reorganize the way business works so that the people become there own board of directors.
  2. Corporations reorganized so that workers collectively become there own boss.
  3. Mon-Thurs – You come to work and do your job as you always did, less hours, wage increase.
  4. Friday – Attend meetings all day to assess the impact of the product on the community, what products to make, what to do with profits. Cultivating the community.

Guest – Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst Rick teaches at the Brecht Forum and the New School in New York City. (Read Rick’s article, Economic Blues in the Monthly Review)

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Class Action Victory: More Than 500 Women Prisoners Sexually Abused In Michigan Prisons

More than 500 women prisoners in Michigan say they were sexually assaulted by prison guards in the 1990s. Now after 8 years of getting the courts to recognize women prisoners as people, among other obstacles, this class action lawsuit has brought their stories to the public domain and yielded verdicts of nearly $50 million. Attorney Deborah LaBelle has led a team of lawyers to get justice for the abused women in Michigan prisons. These cases represent only 18 women, many have yet to testify. Read – Human Rights Watch Report

Attorney Deborah LaBelle:

  • The case began with re-framing what the rights are of women in detention and their bodily integrity.
  • Their right to be free of any sexual harassment, or sexual conduct similar to people on the outside.
  • We started out using the State’s Civil Rights Act – A law that had not been used in these types of cases.
  • The SCRA, protected people’s civil rights in employment but expanded to state facilities.
  • It took 8 years to establish that state prisoners are people too, before Deborah LaBelle and her team began trials.
  • Many prisoner cases are tried for injunctive release, the central issue is the awarding of money to validate the humanity of these women.
  • Other than Attica cases, no one has awarded this kind of money to prisoners.
  • Some women were abused within the period of 8 years, rapes/force oral sex/groping.
  • One of the testimonies is that women would put a pop can in front of their cell doors to wake them up when the door opened.
  • When raped outside of prison, you can get away from the location, or not see that person again.
  • They’re being sexually abused by employees of the State – in charge of judging your character – which creates a deep hopelessness for justice.
  • There are 500 women, as a class. The courts decided we would try them in groups of ten.
  • One of the stunning things in the first verdict is that jury came forward in the end and issued an apology.
  • The state has continually said, these are liars, prostitutes, criminals, the same argument that they are not a person was played out in the trials.
  • There are 482 more women to bring to court. Many of the women are out and stumbling, returning to prison.
  • Michigan stopped the cross gender pat downs, and removed men from the housing units.
  • We’re hoping the state says, people were really hurt and you have to acknowledge this, they need treatment.

Guest – Deborah LaBelle, an Ann Arbor civil rights lawyer who headed a team of lawyers to sue on behalf of the women. LaBelle was recently quoted saying . “No one, no one in this country, no one in a civilized society is sentenced to be raped and assaulted in prison.”

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Law and Disorder January 26, 2009

Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Military Tribunal, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Stop The Israeli Massacre in Gaza – Speech by Chris Hedges

On Tuesday, Jan 13th, 550 people attended a Revolution Books Emergency Town Hall Meeting held at the Center for Ethical Culture in Manhattan. The meeting demanded a stop to the Israeli massacre in Gaza, and condemned the U.S. role in this war crime. The emergency meeting was an important challenge to people to understand the horrific situation in Gaza, the causes and implications, and to act.

Chris Hedges:

  • Those who orchestrate these sieges, do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse.
  • 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza last year, said they wanted to be a martyr.
  • The refusal of our political leaders from Barack Obama to all but five members of Congress and the major media to speak out in defense of the rule of law and fundamental human rights exposes our cowardice and hypocrisy.
  • We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter.
  • We forget that the innocent who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves. Of how we might have been if fate, time and geography had made the circumstances of our birth different.
  • The lesson of the holocaust is not that Jews are eternal victims.  The lesson of the holocaust is when you have the capacity to halt genocide and you do not, no matter who carries out that genocide or who it carried out against, you are culpable.
  • We are very culpable, the F-16 fighter jets, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250lb GBU39 Smart Bombs are all part of the 3 Billion dollar a year aid we give to Israel.
  • But our indifference to senseless killing is expected, we kill women and children on a vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Governments distort and manipulate facts, knowing that propaganda is a vital instrument in war.
  • Lies permeate absurd reports like the front page NY Times story titled A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery.
  • In this story unnamed Israeli officials justify bombing school because Hamas was firing mortars near the building. They offered a photo as proof. The photo was taken a year ago.
  • Reporters are asked to abandoned their trade and become stenographers.
  • Using unnamed Israeli officials to report the news is the poison of American journalism.
  • Gaza will be ruled in the future by warlords, clans and antagonistic mafias. Out of that power vacuum will rise a new generation of angry Jihadists.

Speaker – Chris Hedges, author of many books specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans and right now, he’s a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities.

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The World Turns Away From Gaza: Abdeen Jabara

In the last few weeks, the focus has been on the humanitarian crisis and military devastation Gaza.  We’re joined by Abdeen Jabara, board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights, an attorney and the former head of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.  Abdeen Jabara gives us his perspective and reaction to the killings of thousands and damage in Gaza.

Abdeen Jabara:

  • 4100 Houses Destroyed, 17 Thousand Houses Damaged, 25 Mosques Destroyed
  • 31 Security Headquarters, 16 Ministry Buildings, 1500 Commercial Facilities
  • “The Palestinians must made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” – Israeli militant
  • Attack Lebanon in 1982, the destruction rained down on that country drove the PLO out of Lebanon in to Tunisia.
  • What led to the Oslo Accord, then they split the Palestinian people, classic colonial strategy.
  • Its shocking to me how the world looked away as Israel slaughtered Palestinians.
  • . . that there has not been more of an outcry from the Europeans.
  • The Czech president of the European Union was very supportive of the Israeli bombardment on Gaza.
  • Now the Europeans that say they want to build in Gaza,  are adhering to Israel’s demand that none of this aid will go to Gaza that may aid Hamas.
  • The Israelis moved to attack because they knew that Bush was a known quantity.
  • Europeans are keeping a low profile on this, as economic pressure continues.
  • Very few people understand that Gaza is a very large open air concentration camp.
  • This was essentially a jail break on the part of Gaza, because they were being suffocated.
  • More than 50 percent unemployment in Gaza, the conditions of life there are untenable.
  • Aside from Chavez and Boliva, the world looked away.
  • I believe it’s difficult for secular people to grasp, they believe in individual rights, while the fundamentalism (in Gaza) is building.
  • Hamas’ popularity is going to grow. I see a much more pronounced religiously motivated movement.
  • There is a strategy to pit one group against the other to create chaos, as in what’s happening in Iraq.
  • Perhaps if the chief architect of the Oslo Accords had not been assassinated, there could’ve been real progress.
  • They want to divide the Palestinians and have Hamas stand in Gaza, impoverished.
  • The attack on Gaza, the ferocity and to grind the Palestinians into the ground, will lead to a lot of repercussions in places all over.
  • A lot of people do not want to talk about Zionism in the United States.  It is alive and well.
  • A lot of people talk about Israel as being post-Zionist, it’s not. It’s still in the process of inculcating the idea of the in-gathering of the exiles.
  • Brett Stevens from Wall St Journal, will speak at 92nd Street Y titled, Why Zionism Has Become A Dirty Word.
  • We have to talk about what Zionism is for people to understand the roots of this problem.
  • Israel is no longer giving out the names of the Brigade Commanders in Gaza for fear they will be tried in an International Court

Guest – Abdeen Jabara. Jabara has campaigned for more than two decades against harassment and the infringement of Arab-American’s First Amendment rights. Amid this, he scored a signal victory in his own suit against the FBI for its years of surveillance and harassment of him. He has led and helped organize fact-finding missions to Lebanon and the Israeli Occupied Territories, most recently leading a delegation of American mothers and grandmothers to Qana last May after the Israeli massacre of civilians there.

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Law and Disorder January 19, 2009

Afghanistan War, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Israel in Gaza: “A Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal” – Michael Ratner’s Recent Post

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Boycott, Divest, Sanction – Naomi Klein

Two weeks ago the 15 nation Security Council at the United Nations approved (14 in favor) an immediate cease fire in Gaza and full withdrawal of Israeli forces. The US abstained from the vote. Yet Israeli forces continue to use military force against Hamas and Palestinian women and children.

There are other ways to stop Israel says award_winning journalist and author Naomi Klein. In her recent Nation magazine article Boycott, Divest, Sanction, Naomi lays out measures that could economically slow down Israel. When weaker measures have failed such as protests, petitions and lobbying, Naomi writes that the Boycott Divest Sanction strategy is practical on a country so small and trade dependent. The strategy worked to help end apartheid in South Africa, and may have a real possibility to weaken Israel.

Naomi Klein:

  • These strategies are based on the effective methods used in anti-apartheid movement.
  • Including consumer boycotts and economic sanctions that governments would impose.
  • Israel’s lawlessness has intensified, from the attack on Lebanon to the siege on Gaza,
  • Despite this, there is the opposite of sanctions with Israel right now.
  • For example: Israel was invited as a guest of honor in the Paris book fair.
  • Israel signs free trade agreement with Mercosur.
  • Israel’s trade with Canada increased by 45 percent last year.
  • This has escalated Israel’s lawlessness and its time for a new strategy.
  • The two companies that are currently the focus of the BDS strategy – Motorola and Caterpillar
  • There’s a very well funded and organized anti-boycott movement/pro-Zionist movement that is spreading disinformation
  • They’ve re-framed the academic boycott as a Nazi style boycott of Jews.
  • This anti-boycott campaign is more aggressive than the actual boycott campaign.
  • It also targets companies to boycott who are boycotting Israel
  • End the Israeli Occupation
  • Hang Up On Motorola
  • Why boycott Caterpillar? – CCR
  • Boycotts also target Israeli wine, Israeli fruit, Israel tourism.
  • Israel is being singled out not for tougher treatment but for lenient treatment.
  • The attack on Gaza was pre-planned since last March.
  • What Israel is doing is very similar to what the US is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan; “responding to terrorism.”
  • I’m hearing from my friends and colleagues in Israel that they really want sanctions to come from the outside, because they’ve lost hope for any internal pressure.
  • There is a one sided boycott going on. It’s been going on for 18 months and its this brutal, illegal, embargo on Gaza imposed by the state of Israel and the United States, and Canada, etc.
  • This is depriving Palestinians of food of life saving medicine, of water, of cooking fuel.
  • Its just amazing to me that they would call this international legal boycott that would deprive Tel Aviv of some international symphonies as “one sided.”
  • Regarding doing interviews and writing recent article: It’s always a difficult calculation of – when do you want to leave yourself open to the onslaught of hate and propaganda. . .?
  • Writing this column wasn’t courageous, it was cowardly. I thought about writing this column about five times over the past couple of years. In many ways this is the easiest time to call for a boycott.

Guest – Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and the earlier international best seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate.

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Adam Shapiro: Israel’s Continued Assault On Gaza

Now into its fourth week, the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has been called catastrophically misguided by human rights supporters. Thousands have come out to protest the bombardment of the residents in Gaza, where the Palestinian death toll is nearly one thousand and more than 4000 injured. Add to that a media blackout around the world about the real facts on the ground in Gaza as Israeli forces use advanced weaponry such as white phosphorus ammunition in civilian areas.

Adam Shapiro: International Solidarity Movement

  • International Solidarity Movement: brings people around the world to come join the Palestinians in solidarity -using non violent resistance to concretely and strategically oppose what Israel is doing in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
  • ISM has evolved in Jerusalem as eyewitness and reporting.
  • Some of you may have seen a youtube video that’s making the rounds of Huwaida standing up to Israeli soldiers
  • She is physically standing in front of Israeli soldiers who are pointing to shoot at Palestinian protesters.
  • The Israeli Defense Force talking point of “merely defending themselves”, ignores the last forty years of history of direct occupation of the Gaza Strip.
  • The blockade has led to the impoverishment of the Palestinians, which has led to some of the worst living conditions anywhere on the Earth.
  • 80 percent of Gazans are refugees of Palestine from 1947. Gaza is not their home.
  • Israel’s version of history is saying, “this conflict started when Israel started to fire back.”
  • Among the rocket fire that was occuring prior to the cease fire, most of them fell into empty areas.
  • These Hamas rockets were meant as a political message and not targeting Israeli civilians.
  • Israel’s arguement that it is acting in self defense is “pure fabrication.”
  • There is no mistake that this war was pre-planned and pre-organized.
  • We know that before the Gaza attack, Israeli soldiers trained in mock Gaza urban settings.
  • We also know that Israel prepared its people months in advance for going to war.
  • If you use overwhelming force you can eventually bend the political party to your will.
  • Arab parties are banned from running in the next Israeli election.
  • NY Times printed that 80-90 percent of Israelis support the war in Gaza. Ridiculous when more than 20 percent of Israelis are Arab.

Guest – Adam Shapiro, human rights activist and documentary filmmaker. He was the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian organization, the stated mission of which is to bring civilians from around the world to resist nonviolently the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. His latest film is the documentary series, “Chronicles of a Refugee.”

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