Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Host Updates
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Some Prisoners at Bagram AFB, Afghanistan May Challenge Detention
Last week a federal judge ruled that some prisoners held by the US military at Bagram Air Base prison in Afghanistan have the right to challenge their imprisonment. There are more than 600 people being held at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan without charges.
The federal ruling does not apply to prisoners captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, citizenship and location of the capture will determine if prisoners could challenge their detention in court.
Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network said that the Bagram ruling meant that changes to the Bush detention policies would go beyond merely closing Guantánamo and extend “to any place where the United States seeks to hold individuals in a legal black hole.”
Attorney Tina Foster:
- Filed writ of Habeas Corpus for the 4 detainees to challenge their detentions.
- Judge Bates: The US cannot manipulate the jurisdiction of the courts by holding people deliberately in places where the courts have not traditionally exercised jurisdiction.
- Bagram is the main military base in Afghanistan, it was an old Soviet air hangar, that’s where they’ve established a prison.
- 600 in Bagram prison.
- There are other coalition forces at Bagram AFB with military presence, but as “guests” of the US.
- US Government: Unlike Guantanamo, Bagram is in the middle of a war zone.
- Bagram was the original Guantanamo, a lot of the people at Guantanamo first spent time at Bagram.
- A few years ago, working with you Michael (Ratner) one of the happy tasks I had, was to travel all over the world, contacting the families of the detainees at Guantanamo. It also became clear that there were people locked up in other places besides Guantanamo.
- Shockingly,the Obama Administration has adopted the Bush Administration policy on Bagram. All of their legal arguments, all of their secrecy, still deciding not to disclose any information.
- What has been different than the Bush Administration, is that when Obama signed orders to close Guantanamo, he set up a task force to look at detainee policy more broadly. That report is due in July.
Guest – Tina Monshipour Foster is the founder and Executive Director of the International Justice Network (“IJN”), and serves as lead counsel in several of IJN’s legal cases on behalf detainees imprisoned without charge at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Ms. Foster’s work on behalf of prisoners and other victims of human rights violations has been featured in major media outlets in the US and abroad, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian, Al Jazeera channel, and others.
From November 2004 to May 2006, Ms. Foster was an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and Counsel for CCR’s Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. Prior to joining CCR, she was a litigation associate at Clifford Chance US LLP and previously served as a law clerk for Hon. Delissa A. Ridgway at the United States Court of International Trade. Ms. Foster is a graduate of Cornell Law School, where she was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal.
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Guantanamo Bay Prison, Update
Today we talk with Emi MacLean, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights to get an update, an impression of where things stand with Guantanamo Bay prisoners, their status of Habeas Corpus, and the Obama administration’s position. There are also 17 innocent Chinese muslims called Uighurs asking, again for their release. Our guest Emi MacLean has worked with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers to torture.
Attorney Emi MacLean:
- More Guantanamo prisoners have left in the last weeks of the Bush Administration then the first 100 days of the Obama Administration.
- 240 people at Guantanamo right now. Approximately, 20 Guantanamo prisoners will face any prosecution.
- We’ve held more than 775 people at Guantanamo
- The people at Guantanamo right now are not there because of some greater threat assessment, they are there because of their country of nationality.
- Almost all the Europeans were released early on, almost all the Yemenis remain behind.
- A federal district judge ordered the release of the Uighers last October, the Bush Administration challenged the release.
- When we asked the Obama Administration to drop the challenge, they have yet to do so.
- I remember seeing civil liberties groups celebrating the executive order calling for the closure of Guantanamo in one year. But nothing has really changed for the reality of those men in Guantanamo. This is a consistent devaluation of the life of the men imprisoned there.
- We’ve seen the Obama Administration lawyers refuse to back away from the Bush Administration’s position on states secrets.
- It’s very hard for people to give up power.
- What makes our work difficult, is that it usually takes a couple of weeks for our communications to clear. The communication between counsels on what the Guantanamo conditions are.
- The Obama Review Team determined that the conditions at Guantanamo complied with Geneva Convention, which was certainly not what we were hearing and certainly not what we were seeing.
- The overwhelming majority of the men at Guantanamo were still in brutal conditions of solitary confinement and still reporting severe psychological and religious abuses at Guantanamo.
- No middle ground, these men should be tried or released.
Guest – Attorney Emi MacLean has worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative (GGJI) since June 2006. She works on issues related to Guantánamo and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers-to-torture. She helps coordinate the pro bono attorneys representing the hundreds of men still detained at Guantánamo and supports CCR’s direct representation of a number of current detainees.
In addition, Emi is involved in civil actions brought on behalf of former prisoners released from Guantánamo (Rasul v. Rumsfeld and Celikgogus v. Rumsfeld) and actions under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) challenging the government’s refusal to disclose information about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of Guantánamo attorneys (Wilner v. NSA) and the CIA’s secret detention program (Amnesty International, CCR, et al. v. CIA). In addition to direct litigation, Emi’s work with CCR includes legislative and international advocacy.
Emi has previously worked or volunteered with the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), Human Rights First, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Prior to law school, Emi worked with South Africa’s National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL), and Médecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). Emi graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center.
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Saul Landau – Cuba 50th Anniversary
Then and now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960_2008
Hosts talk with author and internationally known scholar Saul Landau about his recent article titled Then and Now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008 and the Cuban 50th Anniversary.
Saul Landau:
- It’s almost a miracle the revolution in Cuba survived 50 years, considering the United States was determined to destroy it.
- In light of all that the Cuban revolution emerges as something miraculous.
- One looks at Cuba today, one finds lots of despair, especially after 3 brutal hurricanes.
- You see Cubans hanging out in the street in the middle of the work day, drinking beer, not exactly a sign of high spirited socialist morality.
- Some are plotting to go to Florida, where they still think there’s some paradise waiting for them. Some do succeed, cleaning the toilets at the Miami airport.
- I kept saying to myself, if someone came over from Europe to the United States in 1862, they would say “Oh, this place had so much promise.”
- I see the Cuban Revolution as a total success, in the sense it achieved all of its goals and then some.
- When I first went to Cuba, I was 24 at the time, the kids were running ministries and it was creative anarchy.
- Pre – Bay of Pigs: Cuba survived so many US based sabotages, terrorist attacks were launched from the United States.
- Some were assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, some were attempts to burn down Cuban installations.
- Fidel set out the goals of the Cuban Revolution that were established in the 1860s with the first war of Cuban Independence against Spain.
- Which meant not taking crap from the United States. However, anyone who defied the United States was removed from office by the Marines, or overthrown by a coup backed by the US.
- Removed from office in Domican Republican in 1965, Removed from office in Brasil in 1964, Ghiannah, the coup in Chile.
- Here Fidel stands for Cuban sovereignty which means disobedience.
- Today Cuba has 70 thousand doctors. 20 thousand in Venezuela, plus Cubans were actors on the world stage.
- Cuban soldiers helping stop apartheid in Southern Angola in 1986-87, and paved the way for independence in Angola and the release of Nelson Mandela.
- The Cuban Revolution WAS successful. Now, there are many professionals, such as engineers and doctors working as cab drivers or making pizza. The salary and wage structure are not just.
- When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cuban economy tanked and Cubans were on their own. They’ve buying and selling illegally, which in the last 18 years, has had a corrosive effect. Each Cuban has had to have some sort of hustle in order to get along. Cuba must begin to make reforms now.
- Upsides: They can’t get evicted or homes foreclosed on them/ Access to the best medical care.
- A gerontocracy has been running Cuba for security reasons and they have to hand the car keys over to their middle aged kids.
- You have no right to practice opposition politics. Which is a minus. When you have highly educated people without access to the internet, creativity and productivity suffers.
- Ironically, the US and Cuba military have had good relations.
- Once the travel ban and embargo is dropped, and a million Americans come pouring in with fat wallets, the state has basically lost control of the economy.
- If they can’t trust the citizens to back up the system that has given them these rights, the right to housing, jobs, education, medical care etc.
- The counter-revolution was exported to Florida, (Republican Cubans – Miami) that’s where they are.
- Obama Administration – look for travel ban lifted for Cuban Americans. For the first time the President of the United States will owe nothing to the Cubans in Miami.
- Raul Castro has offered a swap of prisoners with new president
- Monroe Doctrine Funeral : Established 1823, written by John Quincy Adams, essentially saying that European colonial powers should stay out of Latin America
Guest – Saul Landau, an internationally known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights. Landau has written over ten books, short stories and poems. His films include: Fidel, 1968 /Cuba and Fidel 1974, / The Uncompromising Revolution, 1990. To order films send email to RoundWorldProductions at gmail.com
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RNC 8: Terrorism Charges Filed, Free Speech Chilled
Eight alleged leaders of the Republican National Convention protest organization called the RNC Welcoming Committee have been charged under the 2002 Minnesota Patriot Act with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. The RNC 8, may each face up to 7 and a half years in prison for their alleged roles in the RNC protest activities. The charges against the RNC 8 follow a year’s worth of investigation by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department with coordination of state and federal agencies that had infiltrated and collected information on the group.
The RNC 8 are Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector
According to Bruce Nestor, Minnesota Chapter president of the National Lawyers Guild, police did not find evidence of bomb making materials during the raids only common household items such as paint and computers. The National Lawyers Guild also mentions that police used paid informants that alleged the protesters intended to sabotage airports.
- RNC Welcoming Committee: anti-authoritarian anarchist group. It is an open, public organization with a website and press releases.
- Originally charged with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism.
- Now, the Ramsey County attorney Susan Gertner in St. Paul Minnesota has added 3 more charges.
- Conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism, second degree.
- Conspiracy to damage property in furtherance of terrorism.
- Conspiracy to damage property criminal charge.
- With these charges the RNC 8 could get 20 years each under Minnesota patriot act style statute.
- Includes property damage as an act of terrorism /some plate glass windows broken, some police cars damaged.
- No property damaged occurred before the RNC 8 were arrested. Evidence Project – National Lawyers Guild
Guest – Gena Berglund with the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration
We hear from Elizabeth Holtzman, Author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush. The panelists at the event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.”
Elizabeth Holtzman:
- When the president takes the oath of office, treaties are the law of the land.
- The president is responsible for carrying out the Geneva conventions.
- The idea to torture in order to get information is not accurate. As a prosecutor, we handle murders, rapes, robberies, everyday in New York City and around this country.
- We don’t get the information to solve these crimes by beating it out of people, we do it through smart detective work and we do it through careful investigation.
- The idea that we can handle local crimes without torture or crimes of war is nonsensical .
- It’s important for us not to get into this trap of the ticking clock. When you’re dealing with a serial rapists or murderer you got a ticking clock too.
- We manage to deal with that everyday without torturing people in this country.
- Impeachment: A person can be impeached after he or she has left office.
- Statute: The Anti-Torture Act, it is a convention against torture making it a US crime. Which makes torture a felony prosecutable in the USA.
- If death results from torture, there’s a death penalty, which means there is not statute of limitations.
- Which means that somewhere down the line as long as these people are alive, they can be prosecuted and brought to justice.
- The War Crimes Act of 1996, which makes it a federal crime to deal in a cruel and inhuman way with detainees. This can be prosecuted in federal courts.
- So, whether “water boarding” is torture or not, is irrelevant under the War Crimes Act.
- That’s why Alberto Gonzales, wanted to opt out of the Geneva Conventions with respect to the members of Al-Quaeda.
- A little problem: The Supreme Court in the summer of 2006 ruled: the Geneva Convention applies to all US detainees. War Crimes Act liability.
- While passing the Military Commissions Act, they also slipped in that the War Crimes Act would be in effect retroactively.
- We need to restore the War Crimes Act because it has no statute of limitations. Restore as it was before October 2006, That will allow us no matter what to bring the prosecutions that need to be brought.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Host Updates:
Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith update on the media discussions of whether to prosecute the “torture conspirators”, the details of Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s collapse, and a preventive detention scheme that could replace Guantanamo prison.
- No truth commission. Insist on criminal investigations and prosecutions of torture conspirators.
- Power concedes nothing without demand, it never did and it never will.
- Mukasey gives speech about not prosecuting people during Federalist Society speech, then collapses on the stage.
- A Seattle state court judge in the federalist society audience started yelling, Tyrant! Tyrant! Tyrant!
- This was about law itself, unless you have prosecutions going forward it will happen again.
- How will Guantanamo be closed? CCR general position: Repatriate 95 percent, try the rest in federal court.
Related Articles:
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Ali Al-Marri Case Update: Key Police State Building Block At Stake
In June of this year, an en banc Federal Appeals Court in Virginia ruled 5-4 that the Bush Administration could subject Ali Al-Marri to indefinite detention even though he was a resident of the United States. The court in the fourth circuit ruled that US residents could be locked up indefinitely as enemy combatants even though they were never charged with a crime. Al-Marri is the only enemy combatant currently in detention and without charges in the United States.
Jonathan Hafetz:
- Can the president declare legal residents including American citizens, enemy combatants, deprive them a right to a trial and hold them indefinitely.
- This, based on the idea that there is a global and never ending war on terror.
- Though on sovereign soil, no right to habeas corpus. He was declared an enemy combatant, the case was lost in an embank in the fourth circuit
- Why is this case so critical to liberty in the United States . . . ?
- The five judges who ruled against the case, said essentially that there must be this power to effectively detain people in the United States to prevent terrorist attacks.
- Ruling: the president can label legal residents including American citizens an enemy combatant in the United States, without a trial, no habeas, hold them indefinitely.
- It’s the idea of the president to use the military to seize people including citizens from their home or places of work.
- A very dangerous power to allow any president to have, it corrupts the justice system, it can be used as a weapon,
- Seven years of these cases of assertion of executive power, and the courts have not answered this fundamental basic question, who can be detained by the military, who is a soldier and who is a civilian?
- All that is stated is that if someone picks up a weapon on the battlefield, that person can be a soldier, but in the most extreme cases in the war on terror – – such as being picked up in the United States as a soldier in the extended geographic concept of the war on terror – – the courts have not grappled with whether there is habeas in those cases.
- Even the judges who ruled against us did say that it included American citizens.
Guest – Jonathan Hafetz, Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, National Security Project.
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Jeremy Scahill: This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House
As President-elect Barack Obama starts building his administration, many are watching who he selects and how these choices will be consistent with the rhetoric of change. Hosts talk with investigative journalist and author Jeremy Scahill about his recent article calling to question the list of recent appointees to the Obama team. Some have a history of supporting torture, despite Obama calling for the shutting down of Guantanamo, and others have associations with the neo-conservative Project For The New American Century.
Jeremy Scahill:
- Clinton’s policies laid the groundwork for some of the most repressive and violent policies of the Bush era, on Iraq, civil liberties, on economic policy.
- He (Clinton) rained missles down on Iraq, bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 without UN authorization. He pushed through NAFTA and GAT, he launched airstrikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, he militarized the war on drugs, particularly the counterinsurgency war in Latin America. CIA renditions began.
- Obama is taking these same individuals who were part of that bi-partisan war machine and putting them back in prominent positions.
- Obama’s defense secretary – Robert Gates, George HW Bush’s former director of the CIA.
- What message does that send not only to the anti-war people who were a large part of Obama’s base but to those which heard Obama say we’re going to change the way Washington’s foreign policy is run?
- Henry Kissenger says it’s (Obama administration) outstanding.
- The fact that these people are praising Obama, gives us a sense of what to expect from the economic team.
- The message is clear that corporate interests are going to reign supreme, over the interests of ordinary working folks in this country.
- A total contradiction in Obama’s campaign pledge to speak up for the middle class. The reality is is that he is putting together a team with the people who are part of the problem.
- Naomi Klein: Obama represents the status quo, which is not good for people who roll up their sleeves everyday and go to work, or suffering poor
- Eric Holder, attorney general, though better than any AG the Bush Administration has appointed, Holder has worked the Chiquita Banana Co., the most vicious violators of human rights in Latin America.
- I think its incredibly important that we put tremendous pressure on the Justice Department, on the Obama Administration to actually seek out justice.
- Obama Adminstration may not prosecute “torture conspirators.” because they open themselves up to Democratic complicity. Complicity such as voting for the Patriot Act, supporting the illegal, unlawful prison in Guantanamo.
- Former Chief Assistant of the CIA, Brennen steps down from CIA director nomination, a passionate supporter of torture techniques.
- The idea that Obama even keeps him on board as one of the people who is going to decide who runs the intelligence apparatus in this country is shameful.
- It’s Orwellian, you vote for change, and you get torture and skewed intelligence.
- The reality is that Obama is not going to end the occupation in Iraq, he is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
- He’s not going to be great at all in holding the Bush officials accountable.
- We need to start building a movement in this country that is independent of electoral politics.
- Ultimately the premier issue of our time – Radical Privatization.
- Yes, its good that John McCain and Sarah Palin are not in power in this country but Obama is not a saint, he is a center democrat, closely tied to the democratic policy elite.
Guest – Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation. Scahill and colleague Amy Goodman were co-recipients of the 1998 Polk Award for their radio documentary “Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship”, which investigated the Chevron Corporation‘s role in the killing of two Nigerian environmental activists.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Federal Appeals Court Overturns Two Terrorist Convictions
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sheik Mohammed Ali Al Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Zayed, convicted of supporting terrorists, can have new trials. The men were convicted in federal court in Brooklyn after a six week trial in early 2005 on charges of conspiring to support Al Qaida and Hamas.
National Lawyers Guild Lawyer, Robert Boyle: This case involved an FBI sting operation where the FBI and the Dept of Justice lured Sheik Mohammed Ali Al Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Zayed from their native Yemen to Germany.
- They were lured on the promise (…and this was an FBI informant that told them this) that they would provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to Al Moayad’s charitable organizations. The issue was entrapment – set up by the FBI.
- The Sheik went to Germany arrested there in 2003 after meetings with the informant -all recorded. He was brought to trial in Brooklyn but imprisoned in a Florence, Colorado supermax prison.
- The trial judge allowed the government to introduce a host of prejudicial and irrelevant evidence.
- Robert Boyle – “Its rare that they find the cumulative prejudicial evidence as grounds for reversal. This decision is gratifying and unique, its rare to get a reversal in a case where there is alleged terrorism.”
- Extremely similar to Lynne Stewart’s case, if you don’t have direct evidence, prejudice the jury. Raise the spectre of Osama Bin Laden and you hope that the jury overlooks the weaknesses of the government’s case and convicts.
Guest – Lynne Stewart, has also helped set up the Muslim Innocence Project for Muslims caught in similar entrapment.
Guest – Robert Boyle, a national lawyers guild attorney who represented Sheik Mohammed Ali Al Moayad and former civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart who tells us why this brings other issues to light in her case.
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Luis Posada Carriles: A Tribunal
We hear a speech from Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy, he was among three speakers. We e will hear Brian Becker, Director of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in the weeks to come.
Wayne Smith addressed the failure of the United States, specifically the Bush family to prosecute Luis Posada Carriles on charges of terrorism. The failure to charge Posada with terrorism is an open violation of the Resolution 1373 of the UN Security Council. A resolution George Bush pushed through on the days following the attacks on 9/11.
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Collateral Damage : Chris Hedges
Author, journalist Chris Hedges exposes the dark violence deep within the ranks of the Iraq War. The type of violence and eyewitness accounts you don’t hear about in the media. His book pulls together the 50 stories from by combat veterans as they describe the day to day carnage.
Chris Hedges:
- We wanted to give people a window into the sheer terror that has been visited on Iraqi civilians.
- Convoys have to keep moving: Running over children. If an IED goes off, soldiers lay down withering suppressive fire.
- The Sunnis are building a powerful force and will soon unleash a civil war
- Barack Obama speaks in the same toxic language of war bequeathed to us by the Bush Administration. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan, he talks about leaving behind troops in the green zone and the super bases and fighting terrorism.
- We have no rights as citizens of this country to debate the terms of this occupation, in post Nuremberg terms this war is a criminal war of aggression.
- Resistance. We find our spiritual worth in our ability to resist and to take moral stance n0 matter how lonely.
Guest – 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 Institue in New York City and a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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(Encore Interview) Economics Professor Rick Wolff: The Capitalist Crisis
In this interview Professor Rick Wolff focuses on the larger issues beyond finance such as banking, money lending and credit, he says it was a problem in the making for the last 30 years. He describes historic underlying causes such as the end of the wage increase back in 1970. From 1820-1970 the American economy delivered a rising standard of living, wages went up every decade in that time and they used that money to buy more things.
In the last 30 years the wages in the United States did not go up. In order to keep buying things, people worked more hours and borrowed money, exhausting themselves in additional work and taking on more debt. From the workers point of view, there is increased anxiety and exhaustion, their lives are strained, pressurized. Meanwhile financial markets and banks compete with each other to profit from the workers’ massive debt.
Bail outs and extreme right anti-immigration moves will not solve underlying problem. A fundamental reorganization of the American economic system will not be done by the people who run the corporations, yet the change has to begin at the Board of Directors, the small groups of people heading corporations who have been making decisions in a classical way for 150 years.
Rick Wolff – Possible Solutions:
- Reorganize the way business works so that the people become there own board of directors.
- Corporations reorganized so that workers collectively become there own boss.
- Mon-Thurs – You come to work and do your job as you always did, less hours, wage increase.
- 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.
“This, instead of a handful of people, “the bosses†set against the employees in a conflicted situation that periodically makes each group behave in antagonistic ways in turn destroying the community – which is where we are now.â€
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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Luis Posada Carriles: A Tribunal
We hear a speech from Historian, Jane Franklin, she was among three speakers. Jane is a contributing editor to the Cuba Update, the journal of th eCenter Cuban Studies in New York City, since 1979. She is the author of two books: Cuban Foreign Relations 1959-1982 and Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History (Ocean Press, Melbourne, Australia) Jane has published numerous articles, poems and film reviews and has lectured extensively about Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua El Slavador and Panama.
We will be hearing from speakers Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy and Brian Becker, Director, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in the weeks to come.
From the New York Daily News: “It took years, but he is finally going to be charged in the U.S. for his crimes – even if only symbolically. It will occur here, in New York, when a tribunal composed of scholars and human rights activists take up the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, a man who is responsible for a long list of murderous attacks.
Posada, though, is a very lucky man. Despite his dark history, Posada remains free to roam Miami’s sunny streets and happily lives at home with his family. His rap sheet is long and deadly. A convicted terrorist in two countries – he escaped Venezuela and was pardoned in Panama – Posada is considered the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines Fight 455, which killed the 73 passengers on board, including the Cuban national fencing team. He is believed responsible for a string of hotel bombings in Cuba, resulting in the death of Italian tourist Fabio diCelmo. But these are only two examples of his treachery. Posada later boasted about the diCelmo killing in a New York Times interview, which should give everybody a clear idea of what kind of person this man is. Inexplicably, the Justice Department has refused to classify the former CIA operative as a terrorist. The reason may have to be found in Posada’s long and extensive ties with the CIA and several other nation’s intelligence agencies.”
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