CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Released Today After 30 Years
Last week Puerto Rican community activist Carlos Alberto Torres was released from a federal prison in Pekin, Ill after serving 30 years as a political prisoner. Torres was convicted of seditious conspiracy – conspiring to use force against the lawful authority of the United States over Puerto Rico. Torres was punished for being a member of an armed clandestine organization called the FALN – Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (English: “Armed Forces of National Liberation) which had claimed responsibility for bombings in Chicago that resulted in no deaths. He wasn’t accused of the bombings only of being a member of FALN.
In 1898 Puerto Rico was ceded to the US by Spain as war bounty in the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War. Still, the US has occupied it since. Torres was sentenced to 78 years in prison but used international law in his defense. Torres argued that the courts of the colonizing country may not criminalize captured anti-colonial combatants, but must turn them over to an impartial international tributnal to have their status adjudicated.
There was an outpouring of support to free Carlos. His attorney, National Lawyers Guild member Jan Susler of Chicago, notes, “Carlos is being released from prison due to the unflagging support of the Puerto Rican independence movement and others who work for human rights. The more than 10,000 letters of support from the U.S., Puerto Rico, Mexico and other countries sent a strong message to the Parole Commission.”
Jan Susler:
- Carlos got a disproportionate sentence, a punishment for who he was politically. He did 30 years, standing tall and maintaining his political integrity.
- People stop him on the street, and embrace him.
- The bombing in which he was accused of was only property damage. If he had killed or injured someone and convicted as a social prisoner, he would gotten a less sentence and served far less time.
- He was always treated more harshly than the other prisoners.
- Right after 9/11, the US rounded up political prisoners and put them in the hole for months.
- You’re always watched, you’re always monitored. Every prisoner has access to email, Carlos did not.
Carlos Torres:
Guest – Attorney Jan Susler joined People’s Law Office in 1982 after a six year stint as Clinical Law Professor at Prison Legal Aid, the legal clinic at Southern Illinois University’s School of Law. Her long history of work on behalf of political prisoners and prisoners’ rights includes litigation, advocacy and educational work around USP Marion and the Women’s High Security Unit at Lexington, KY. Her practice at PLO focuses on police misconduct civil rights litigation, which has lately included wrongful conviction litigation on behalf of people exonerated after serving many years in prison, innocent. Her work with the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and with progressive movements challenging U.S. foreign and domestic policies has been a constant throughout her 30 years as a lawyer.
Guest – Carlos Alberto Torres member of Puerto Rico’s independence movement and the longest-serving Puerto Rican political prisoner. He was convicted and sentenced to 78 years in a U.S. federal prison for seditious conspiracy – conspiring to use force against the lawful authority of the United States over Puerto Rico. He served 30 years, being released on July 26, 2010.
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CCR and ACLU Sue Obama Over Limits On Lawyers Seeking To Represent Suspect on Administration “Kill List”
The Center for Constutional Rights and the ACLU have filed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s authority to use the military and the CIA to kill the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. He’s an American citizen, accused of terrorism but hasn’t recieved a trial. He is believed to be hiding in Yemen. Because it would be against the law to challenge the government’s attempt to kill al-Awlaki, the lawsuit was filed against the Treasury department, that challenged a regulation that would require the Center and the ACLU to obtain its permission in order to provide uncompensated legal services for Mr al-Awlaki.
Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that international law did not permit a government to kill people far from combat zones, and in the case of a US citizen, Vince said that such a policy also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment — and is a dangerous precedent.
CCR Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:
- The case that we filed last week was a challenge to a regulatory scheme under the Department of Treasury and OFAC which prohibits transactions with anyone designated as a terrorist by the government. That includes pro-bono legal services.
- Al-Awlaki is the subject of an assassination order by the president, ordering and authorizing the CIA and Special Forces to target and kill him.
- OFAC powers go back to the 1970s IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
- All we have against this guy are allegations.
- The CIA, which is one of the agencies that carries out these killings has primarily used drones. We think that drones would be the primary way that this killing would be carried out.
Guest – CCR staff attorney Pardiss Kebriaei joined the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in July 2007. She provides direct representation to several of CCR’s clients at Guantánamo and helps coordinate CCR’s network of hundreds of pro bono counsel representing other prisoners. She also focuses on using international human rights mechanisms to bring international pressure to bear on the U.S. government and hold other governments accountable for their role in the violations at Guantánamo.
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CCR Attorney Legal Observer Arrested in Arizona Immigration Protests
Legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights were arrested last week during mass demonstrations of protesters who opposed Federal law 287G, Arizona law SB 1070. What happened? CCR Legal Director Bill Quigley told the media, Arizona is starting to act like Mississippi in the civil rights days. Among those arrested were National Lawyers Guild officer Roxana Orrell and CCR staff attorney Sunita Patel.
Sunita Patel:
- It was my first time in Maricopa County. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known for branding the most horrible incarnation of 287G and ICE police collaboration.
- 287G is the statute by which this program is authorized by Congress. He also has what’s called a secure communities program which allows for the identification of anyone who is a non-citizen through a finger printing system. 287G allows for local agencies to implement immigration law through a memorandum of understanding with the federal government.
- At the same time he implements what’s called “crime suppression sweeps” Where he takes his units and regular citizens to sweep through neighborhoods.
- I spent the night in jail, I hadn’t planned on it. It was really an honor to be in solidarity with the rest of the protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a highway and public thoroughfare and failure to obey a police officer. People in Arizona call it a war zone when it comes to immigration enforcement.
- Arizona has also become the site for a spark of incredible activism and the growth of an incredible human rights movement.
Guest – CCR Staff Attorney Sunita Patel with racial profiling, immigrant rights and other human rights litigation. Prior to her position at CCR, she held a Soros Justice Fellowship at The Legal Aid Society, Immigration Law Unit in New York where she represented immigrant detainees in removal proceedings and worked with criminal justice and human rights groups to create independent community oversight for detention operations through public accountability boards. Sunita is a former law clerk for the Honorable Judge Ivan L. R. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Lynne Stewart Heard A Death Sentence Today
As many listeners know Judge John G Koeltl sentenced defendant, Lynne Stewart: 120 months incarceration in the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution Connecticut on five counts to be served concurrently. Lynne Stewart is 70 years old, she’s a breast cancer survivor with other pending health issues. We’re joined by Vinie Burrows today, she is the UN representative for the Women’s International Democratic Federation and the founding member of the Granny Peace Bridgade. Vinie Burrows made powerful statements in her article titled Lynne Stewart Heard A Death Sentence Today that calls terrorism by its real name under the draconian Patriot Act.
Vinie writes, “over and over again in his remarks leading up to the sentencing, Judge Koeltl used the term “terrorist enhancement.” Those warning words bring up the specter of some of the nastiest aspects of the Cold War and its present re-incarnation in the Patriot Act which by expanding law enforcement’s surveillance and investigative powers represents a significant threat to civil liberties. Read the official text… “Uniting and Strengthening America by providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart by Michael Steven Smith.
Vinie Burrows:
- Being at Lynne Stewart’s court hearing was useful to see the judge, to see the players, the 2 prosecuting lawyers and to see Lynne Stewart who made a marvelous opening statement. It was one of the great speeches before the bar
- I felt as he was reading, Judge Koeltl was responding to each dictate of the appellate court.
- We have to define terror. We can’t go by what the legislative, judicial and now executive define as terror. We’re looking in the wrong places for terror. A single mother with 3 children living in a shelter, she knows terror. When she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from, that’s terror.
- When her home is foreclosed on, that’s terror, and of course our banks are the biggest terror of all.
- We can’t even think of Lynne Stewart when we talk of terror, she is a human rights defender. She’s been deprived of the ability to defend human rights.
- I think we have to go to “who are the terrorists?” who are the victims of terror?
- We have to talk about the state, the state usually the perpetrator of human rights violations.
- The state must recognize that poverty is a weapon of mass destruction.
- I think we need to talk about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a legal basis to mount some sort of appeal.
- Michael Ratner: This is the Time of the Toad (A Study of Inquisition In America)
- Lynne Stewart has another appeal against this severe sentence.
Guest – Vinie Burrows is an award-winning Broadway actress. She has been active at the United Nations Economic and Social Council on the issues of the status of women and Southern Africa. Burrows won the Paul Robeson Award in 1986. She was to appear in a show titled Sister! Sister! at the University of Delaware in Newark in November 1991. She was to be a panelist in the 2000-2001 African Diaspora lecture series at the Center for Ideas and Society in Riverside, California.
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Mountain Top Removal Activists Arrested For Direct Action In Virginia (Updated)
Last week 4 activists with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice were arrested for using direct action to shut down a coal mining mountaintop removal effort in Virginia. Two of the 4 activists locked themselves to heavy machinery in the coal mining pit and were later arrested. The activists say they are drawing public attention to the dangers associated with the Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment, which contain up to 8 billion gallons of toxic coal waste. The area is unstable, Brushy Fork’s foundation is built on a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines. If the foundation were to collapse, as others have, the toxic slurry could engulf communities nearly 14 miles away, according to Marfork Coal Co.’s emergency warning plan. Meanwhile, one of the activists, Jimmy Tobias was still in jail during this interview and is now released.
Dea Goblirsch:
- Mountain top removal is a destruction form of coal mining that uses explosives, that blow up the tops of mountains to get to the coal seams beneath. It’s cheaper and more efficient than underground mining, it also employs fewer miners.
- So far there have more than 800 miles of peaks flattened. They also take the rubble from the tops of mountains and dump it into nearby valleys. They are called valley fills. The creation of the valley fills cover up the headwater streams.
- A lot of these valleys feed into water systems that supply water to the Eastern United States.
- Brushy Fork is the largest earthen dam in the Western Hemisphere.
- Coal River Mountain was the highest elevation in the area that hadn’t been mountaintop removal mined.
- You can’t always see mountain top mining from the roadside, they tend to keep a veil of trees.
- The work we’re doing is primarily civil disobedience and direct action. Tree sits within the blast range. Bails and sentencing are widely uneven.
- Community groups to start sustainable energy initiatives in Appalachia, we see this happening in Kentucky, and Virginia and other parts of the coal mining region.
- A woman publicly slapped Judy Bonds, the director of Coal River Mountain Watch.
- A strip miner threatened to slit the throat of a child
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Katie Huscsza:
- We attached ourselves to the high wall miner (equipment) for 4 hours.
- Me and Colin were charged with trespassing, conspiracy and obstruction.
- There are around 30 people this summer actively working to stop mountain top removal.
- We I first learned about it (MTR) I almost didn’t believe that something so awful and destructive could be taking place
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Guest – Dea Goblirsch with Climate Ground Zero and Katie Huscsza, also with CGZ had locked herself to highwall coal mining machines, arrested and released on bail.
Music interludes in this segment by Canton Becker
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Historic Strike – Privatizing Puerto Rico; Bar Association Dismantled.
Public services grinded to a halt on October 15 in Puerto Rico as a massive one day general strike brought more than 100 thousand people to protest the lay off of about 17 thousand of Puerto Rico’s public employees. The demonstration shut down all state-owned enterprises including the island’s schools and colleges. The airport remained opened, while tens of thousands were reported to converge on San Juan’s Plaza Las Americas.
Main labor organizations, the General Workers Union and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coaltion supported the general strike. In May of this year, the Puerto Rican government laid off nearly 8 thousand employees and then hired about 3 thousand temporary teachers and assistants. Union leaders claim that Governor Luis Fortuno is planning to privatize government services. Outrage to the proposed layoffs have rippled into New York City, amid second largest community of Puerto Rican people.
Attorney Judith Berkan:
- Public worker dismissals at almost 25 thousand.
- Any agencies who deal in service to the poor or working class in Puerto Rico
- Two days before the strike, the governor signed and passed a bill aimed at dismantling the Bar Association
- After the massive first strike there have been daily strikes
- They want to return us to the days of the Oligarchy, concentrating wealth into the hands of a few while the remainders pick up the crumbs
- Protesters: Students from every university, every sector of the labor movement, the religious sector, cultural organizations, 700 school principals.
- There were 2000 janitors in the schools, right now there are no janitors in the schools of Puerto Rico and that’s going to be privatized.
- Two thousand school janitors were fired in the middle of the swine flu scare. The government plans to put these jobs out to bid for private companies.
- The atitude is . . . we’re doing this and the rest of you be damned.
- Puerto Rican government: Marcus Rodriguez Ema brought in again whose forte has always been privatization. He said on a radio station that if there was any blockage of commerce that it could be brought under the Patriot Act. He said that they are terrorists and they’re trying to block commerce.
- The way they framed it, if you stop commerce, particularly, the docks and the airports, that would be sanctionable under federal law.
- There have been a number of very offensive comments by the people in charge. Calling community leaders leeches, lowlifes, openly.
- The legislation has cut off funding for the Bar Association in Puerto Rico.
- I think the militancy will continue, we have not seen the last of general strikes here.
Guest – Attorney Judith Berkan, is a partner in the San Juan law firm of Berkan/Mendez. She specializes in government misconduct litigation and employment discrimination cases. Berkan worked as an attorney in New Haven, Connecticut before going to Puerto Rico as the staff attorney for the Puerto Rico Legal Project of the National Lawyers Guild, now the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Institute. For twenty-seven years, she has been teaching, primarily in the Constitutional Law area, at the Inter American University Law School in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
A frequent speaker and author of many articles on civil rights issues, she was the President of the Human Rights Commission of the Puerto Rico Bar Association in the mid-1990’s and a member of the Commonwealth Supreme Court’s task force on gender discrimination.
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Guantanamo Update: 223 people left in Guantanamo, 97 are Yemeni.
Alla Ali Bin Ahmed was among the 98 remaining Yemeni prisoners let go from Guantanamo Bay prison. In May of this year, a judge reviewed the government’s classified evidence again Ahmed, and ruled that his incarceration had never been justified. Never been justified? Yet, he remained like many Yemenis in Guantanamo Prison. Earlier this year, the Center for Constitutional Rights called for all Yemeni detainees to be released and repatriated. In a media statement, CCR attorney Pardiss Kabriaei, said ” More than one-third of the prisoners at Guantanamo right now are from Yemen. Most have been detained without any charge and in brutal conditions for over six years. It is unacceptable that the Yemeni and U.S. governments have not come to an agreement to bring these men home. There is absolutely nothing which should prevent their return to Yemen.” Law and Disorder March 2009 Interview with Pardiss
Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:
- This is the part of Guantanamo that is about accountability.
- A case filed in 2008 on behalf of 2 men that died in Guantanamo on June 2006
- We brought this case against 20 officials, including Rumsfeld and Michael Leonard, Jeffrey Miller, people who were in charge of and approved torture techniques.
- U.S. Army General Bantz John Craddock who introduced a policy of force feeding in Guantanamo whereby detainees are literally strapped into chairs that are called restraint chairs, strapped in at five points, while a tube is forced up their nose and down their stomachs and formula is pumped into them for about an hour
- also named are physicans who knew by virtue of reports from the Red Cross.
- Center for Constitutional Rights – When Healers Harm – A focus on the accountability of medical personnel in Guantanamo who have a professional duty and oath to protect the health and well-being of men.
- It took 2 years for the military to conduct its investigation of these suicides.
- We filed Monday Oct 6, a motion to dismiss, they want to get rid of the case essentially, under the point that reporting claims of abuse are barred under the Military Commissions Act of 2006
- There is a provision in it Section 7, we’re challenging the constitutionality of that provision, the provision in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, that prevents detainees to bring lawsuits against the United States, the first time this MCA, has been asserted, now under the Obama Administration.
- Mohammed al Qahtani video tapes documents the torture he was experiencing, forced nudity, prolonged solitary confinement, using dogs and sexual abuse. Those are the methods that were approved by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002
- January deadline to close Guantanamo is not going to be met, according to US Attorney Gen. Holder
- 223 people left in Guantanamo, 97 are Yemeni.
- Federal judges have ruled on some 30 cases, that there is no lawful basis to hold them, yet of 30, 19 remain in Guantanamo. (Kuwaitis / Yemenis)
- Not the worst of the worst left in Guantanamo, it is nationality.
- There are innocent people who have been in prison for 8 years, it’s not a solution to sit back any longer.
- Guantanamo may stay open a few months past January and then transfer prisoners to the US.
Guest – Pardiss Kebriaei, Staff Attorney with the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, at the Center For Constitutional Rights.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Elliot Madison: Activist Arrested for Using Twitter To Communicate With G20 Protesters.
Elliot Madison, a social worker and activist was arrested in Pittsburgh last month during the G20 Summit and was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police say he was found in a hotel room with police scanners and computers while using the social networking site Twitter to communicate police movements to protesters. Madison recently said “They arrested me for doing the same thing everybody else was doing, which was perfectly legal,” he said. “It was crucial for people to have the information we were sending.” Madison’s laywer Martin Stolar told the New York Times “He and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20,” Mr. Madison’s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said. “There’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.”
Attorney Martin Stolar:
- It seems it would be helping out the police in a way. They’re saying disperse, don’t go here, don’t go there.
- They selected him for some reason amid all the various people posting things on twitter boards
- They got a search warrant for his hotel room, rousted he and a colleague who was there, arrested Elliot and he was held on a 30 thousand dollar bail.
- Unfortunately, agents of the FBI, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, showed up at his home in Queens, with a search warrant issued by a Federal Court in Brooklyn, seeking evidence of violating the federal anti-rioting laws. (H.Rap Brown Act) Think about the Chicago 8.
- They spent 16 hours searching his home, grabbing everything in sight, it was terribly unclear what would violate this law. So they took pictures of Lenin, his writings, computers, material from producing a documentary film.
- The warrants seemed properly issued, until I can see the affidavits that underlie the warrant.
- I whipped up some legal papers to show cause and a motion under Federal rules of criminal procedure 41G. A motion for the return of property illegally seized.
- He is accused of posting stuff that is publicly available, that is a police scanner that is posted on the internet, such as a police order to disperse.
- That information is passed on through the Twitter board and that constitutes the crime that he is charged with.
- Law enforcement is targeting those who provide support for lawful demonstrations.
- This case is a first in Pennsylvania and a real stretch in criminal law to penalize what is essentially speech
- In New York, there is potentially a separate investigation in which Elliot is a target
- The so-called Green Revolution in Iran, the demonstrators were using Twitter, in exactly the same way the folks in the G20 used it. When the oppressive government came down on the Iranian students using Twitter, the US State Dept said, wait a minute there are free speech issues here.
Guest – Attorney Martin Stolar, president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Supreme Court To Argue Life Without Parole Cases For Children
The Supreme Court will address whether it’s constitutional to sentence a child to be imprisoned for life without parole for an offense committed during adolescence. There will be two main cases the Supreme Court will argue. One is the case involving Joe Sullivan. Joe, at the time, was a mentally disabled 13 year old child living in a home where he was physically and sexually abused. He was convinced to participate in a burglary of a home. The elderly home owner was sexually abused, though she didn’t see her attacker. Joe was tried in an adult court, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was fourteen when he was sent to an adult prison, there he was abused and later diagnosed with MS. That is a summary of one of the cases.
Professor Stephen Harper:
- 2400 Kids in jail serving life sentences without parole in the US. 120 of those kids didn’t commit homicides.
- The United States is the only country in the world that sentences children to life, without the possibility of parole
- Part of this sentencing of kids was an accident, they were getting tougher on adults in the early 80s and 90s.
- There should be an opportunity, Sullivan’s lawyer argued that at some point they could be granted parole
- Florida is the number one state that puts children in prison for life without the possibility of parole
Guest – Stephen Harper, Adjunct professor of Juvenile Justice University of Miami school of Law.
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National Lawyers Guild Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20
Many listeners have probably seen the videos of the G20 protesters going up against hundreds of riot police. Some of the most compelling footage were of reckless use of LRAD, the sonic weapons, and the surge of riot police onto the University of Pittsburgh campus. Many students who were not protesting were rounded up, knocked down, tear gassed and beaten by police. We reported last month on the blatant violations of first amendment rights as local police engaged in patterns of harassment on activists such as the group Seeds for Peace. Today we hear first hand accounts of police abuse from our own Heidi Boghosian who was at the marches and demonstrations as a legal observer and we’ll be joined by attorney Joel Kupferman, who was also at the also a legal observer with National Lawyers Guild at the G20 Summit. Read Heidi’s G20 Blog Entry Here
Heidi Boghosian / Joel Kupferman
- LRAD Sonic Weapons combined with order to disperse. You had to cover your ears, some stayed still, paralyzed. We think it’s illegal, it’s and invasion, it’s a weapon.
- One of the legal angles, we’re looking into is the fifth amendment, where we charged Christine Todd Whitman after 9/11 for violating our fifth amendment rights of bodily integrity and in this case, that sound pierced that bodily integrity.
- The manufacturer of the device (LRAD) filed in their SEC filings of Sept 2008 that the device is capable of sufficient acoustic output to cause damage to human hearing or human health, expressing concern that the misuse could lead to lawsuits.
- Private security police forces were employed. They went up the hill, onto the campus and students were just coming out of their dorms, hearing this noise, the helicopters, they didn’t know whether they should stay in their buildings. They started to arrest people who didn’t know what was going on.
- This is the highest police per protester ratio I’ve ever seen, definitely a radicalizing experience for these students, definitely no cause for arrests. Wantonly arresting people in a violent fashion.
- When we spoke to shop owners downtown, there was a hatred, I’ve never seen before. The sympathy came from the neighborhoods of color, it was a climate of fear, they were basically saying, you can’t assemble.
- It almost seemed like it was a police convention. The Pittsburgh Police Department wore military fatigues. I saw more Canine Units there then any other demonstration.
Guest – Attorney Joel Kupferman, National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer /New York Environmental Law and Justice Project
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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- States increase opposition to money making traffic cameras: lawsuits.
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Alfred McCoy: CIA OIG Report PDF
Last month, marked the release of the CIA’s Office of Inspector General report investigating the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees. The nearly fifty percent redacted report focused on incidents which exceeded the torture guidelines written in the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos. In the report, waterboarding a detainee 183 times was noted with only a concern, and highlighted abuses include faking the execution of a detainee by (quote) “contractors” without training and pointing an unloaded gun to a prisoners head. This report was not released with John Yoo’s torture memos. A move which could’ve helped prosecute torture architects such as Yoo and other Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who violated their professional ethical duties when they wrote memos claiming the administration’s proposed torture techniques were legal. Hear Al McCoy speak at Left Forum
Al McCoy:
- The chronology is important, the report is an investigation into excesses.
- The report also looks at the period ranging from 12 to 18 months when the alternative methods were authorized by President Bush – “enhanced interrogation techniques”
- For the first time in the history of the CIA, they were authorized to operate their own prisons, the so-called 8 black sites that operated from Thailand to Lithuania
- (Inspector General investigators) They opened up these secret sites and started collecting these detainees before they had clear guidelines and supervision
- Torture is seductive, erotic to the human mind, a process of which we know very little.
- Under US law section 23.40 of the Federal Code, psychological torture is legalized, there are only 4 things you can’t do under US law. One of them is death threats and death threats against a third party
- One of those hapless field agents that went over the top will take the fall. Yet, we know former Defense secretary authorized extraordinary techniques and his directions went down through the chain of command, it got all the way down to Abu Ghraib (prison photos link), where those soldiers were actually complying with those directives.
- The directives were illegal. You should be prosecuting the person who gave those orders at the top of the chain of command.
- In this case instead of having bad apples in military parlance, we’re going to have “rogue agents.”
- The stages of a country ruling with impunity – we’re not talking about a change of regime and then a tribunal, this is assuming continuity of government. (Clinton/Bush/Obama)
- It was necessary for our security: Dick Cheney’s latest argument – “so what, it made us safe.”
- We may have done these crimes but we now need to pull together and develop ourselves as a nation.
- The CIA had two distinguished cognitive scientists at Cornell University medical center in New York City, Doctors Henkel and Wolf. Ultimately they found the most devasting mode of torture is forced standing.
- Stand for hours motionless, sometimes days at a time, fluids flow to the legs, kidneys shut down, hallucinations begin, it’s incredibly painful.
- What they found back in the 1950s is you can make people do forced confessions, but its not very good in extracting objective information.
- Colin Powell’s former military aid, charged that Cheney in particular ordered this torture and extracted the false information – specifically with Ibn al-Shaykh al–Libi a prisoner whose false confession was used to link Saddam Hussein and Al-Queda.
- The best we can hope for is a Congressional Review, perhaps a Senate inquiry into the Bush years, that would look at the origin of the policy, the full nature of the policy, and whether or not it worked, not only gains but the costs. A serious, sober politically objective honest inquiry, apart from the prosecutions that may come from the Special prosecutor. Check out Progress Report’s – Accountability
- Within the American Psychological Association, these are not medical practicioners, they don’t take the Hippocratic Oath. It’s one branch of the medical community, the psychologists.
Guest – Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.
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Labor Law Reform: Employee Free Choice Act
The Employee Free Choice Act is a proposed legislative bill that would speed up the process for employees to form a union. Under current labor law, workers can select union representation either through an election or something called card check, – a majority sign up. The US National Labor Relations Board will only certify a union as the exclusive representative of employees only if it is selected by a secret ballot NLRB election or if the employer agrees to a card check process. The catch is, that companies can refuse to bargain with a union chosen by a card check process even if 100 percent of employees want the union. Right now, the choice to use an election process or majority sign up is controlled by the companies.
The Employee Free Choice Act would change this process and take away employers’ ability to decide whether to use only the card check process or secret ballot election. This would make it much quicker process for employees who needed to form a union. This labor reform law has not been proposed without a fight, nearly 200 million is funding a misinformation campaign back by groups such as the Chamber of Commerce. Read Abby’s Public Eye article here.
Abby Scher:
- In the fifties, unions represented a third of the labor force, now they represent 12 percent.
- Employers have a lot of time to beat back the union. The Center for Responsive Politics found that the Chamber of Commerce spent 400 thousand dollars a day in opposition.
- The chamber of commerce is the largest lobby group in the country
- You can hear the rhetoric in their misinformation campaign. ..“EFCA is unAmerican, it takes away the secret ballot, unionists are thugs that will coerce workers into giving up their individual rights.”
- It’s harsh rhetoric from what you would consider a main stream group
- The national right to work committee since the fifties has flipped the script.
- Two phone calls have gotten attention, Bank of America and Citigroup . . .the center for Union Facts, – Rick Berman and Bernie Marcus talking about how EFCA would destroy capitalism and tried to motivate people on the call to give to Republican candidates
- Chamber of Commerce front group – Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs. In the misinformation campaign, the chamber of commerce is saying that EFCA will hurt small businesses, because everyone loves small businesses.
- They retained this woman to do a study about how EFCA would destroy 600 thousand jobs. This woman’s specialty is intellectual property, this is not her background, she is a gun for hire.
- It (her research) was easily debunked but you still hear people citing that study.
- Surprisingly, unions are growing. Big businesses are the threat against small businesses, not unions.
- I encourage everyone to subscribe to the AFL-CIO blog
- Unions help workers bargain for better wages, people have money to spend, buying power, quality of life.
Guest – Abby Scher, Editorial Director of the Public Eye. Check out Abby Scher on Making Contact’s Radio Feature
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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CIA OIG Report PDF
Attorney General Eric Holder appoints special Justice Department prosecutor John Durham to conduct a preliminary investigation into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of certain detainees in U.S. custody. In this lively first half hour discussion, hosts Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith discuss and detail why the investigation does not go after higher-ups within the US torture program, how tortured confessions are used to support war and that interrogators did not act alone.
- CIA OIG Report (PDF): Released because of requests by the ACLU / CCR / Amnesty International / Physicans For Human Rights
- Office of Legal Counsel Torture Memo Authors Should Be Prosecuted.
- Sham and Diversions: Special Prosecutor not “independent”
- 500 Year Setback: Doctors evaluating limits of torture
- Doctors, lawyers, officials, CIA, government agents involved.
- Torture report also reveal Cheney lies that intel was extracted from torture.
- CIA OIG Report Press Release
- Like a rat through a maze trying to find their way around the language
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Jacob Ratner: Bolivia Debrief (photos courtesy of Jake Ratner)
We are very pleased to have with us Jake Ratner, our own Michael Ratner’s son, that is fresh off the plane from Bolivia. Jake is entering his final year at the University of Pennsylvania and shares with us some of his experiences from his three month stay with a Bolivian family. Experiences include, the Aymara indigenous culture, economics and socialism among the classes of people in Bolivia and comparisons to Cuban culture.
Jake Ratner:
- Working at a Bolivian Womens Prison
- Working with NGO helping women’s prison, teaching workshops, replacing faulty lighting etc
- San Pedro’s Mens Prison in La Paz: The prison is self functioning, the prisoners run small businesses and pay rent for their cells.
- That kind of autonomy was also in the women’s prison.
- When you go into the prison it’s like a small Bolivian village, there’s a fountain, kids running around.
- The spirit of rebellion is completely related to their culture, a culture of collective reasoning and resistance to the imposing power.
- Many women in prisons acted as drug mules. Drug laws in Bolivia, similar to Rockefeller drug laws in New York.
- El Alto, one of the poorest cities in Bolivia, extreme poverty. No plumbing. The eat a lot of freeze dried potatoes.
- Former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante made back room deals with Bolivia’s natural gas resources. Bolivians took to the streets, many were killed. A lawsuit is pending.
- El Alto, Bolivia is a “city” of roughly 800 thousand people that sits on a plateau above La Paz. It has been growing at an exponential rate and will soon supersede the population of La Paz
- Bolivia Social Security system: Bonos – payments to lower income families.
Guest – Jake Ratner, son of co-host Michael Ratner. He is in his last year at the University of Pennsylvania. Jake has traveled to and studied in Cuba. Check out Jake’s Flickr page here.
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