Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Torture, Truth to Power
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Men, Mobs and Law by Rebecca Hill
Men Mobs and Law is the title of Rebecca Hill’s new book that explores the complexities of protest movements, race, class and gender. Hill draws comparisons in two types of left protest campaigns, those that defend labor organizers from prosecution and the anti-lynching groups that seek to memorialize lynching victims. Hill says, both groups have influenced each other throughout history and she specifically connects the narratives and stories of the NAACP’s anti lynching work to the IWW’s labor defense campaigns.
Rebecca Hill’s treatment of these dramatic stories has been called “fresh, lively, richly detailed, and impassioned.”
Rebecca Hill:
- When I first started the book it was about martyrdom and the American Left and heroic politics. I’ll take these particular cases, John Brown, Haymarket etc.
- In the research I found that this other problem that there is no law enforcement and the source of terror that black activists were dealing with was extra-legal. . . . and their anti-lynching activism that started in the 60s – and I then went back to Ida B Wells, Dubois – 1887-1890s
- Ida B Wells talking about how dangerous passion is. This is a problem in leftest activism in general. It goes to the big questions of political theory and rationale, the role of emotions, questions of what is the meaning of popular action,
- I didn’t want to condemn either side, the anti lynching movement strategy or and the socialist left defense organizing, because they both came out of experiences that informed their politics.
- If you’re facing terroristic mobs, you’re going to respond with a strategy. The anarchists and socialists movement response spoke to the lynching and their response was in inadequate – “rise up in self defense.”
- If you lived in the post reconstructive South, rising up in self defense was not realistic without legal protection.
- What came out of the Haymarket movement in the 1880s was the idea that the key element of solidarity in a labor movement is when somebody is arrested, or victimized as a result of organizing, its the membership that can save them. Not the law. The law is a tool, it’s not enough perhaps.
- The courts are structured by the ruling class, they’re stacked against the worker who is in court. They didn’t want the court room take away from the radicalism of the movement.
- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn – defense expert in IWW trials and Sacco Vanzetti case. Anarchists connected to Sacho and Vanzetti case didn’t want structure and organizing
- I was very active in the Mumia Abu Jamal campaign, you see the greater successes in the popular defense organizing it’s not based on the legal strategy, its when is the movement stronger. You see more victories in the thirties because the labor movement was big and the consensus was moving to the left during the New Deal
- John Brown’s defense is close to the fugitive slave rescues which were anti-court . John Brown’s notion that the courts are wrong and should answer to a higher power, not the current law of slavery. John Brown attempted to make available weapons for slaves to take up arms. See the book John Brown Mysteries
- I don’t really think of John Brown as a religious zealot, I think he really believed in popular organizing and popular activism.
Guest – Rebecca Hill, author of Men Mobs and Law.
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Wiwa et al v. Royal Dutch Petroleum et al Royal Dutch Shell Case – CCR
Europe’s largest oil company Royal Dutch Shell faces a lawsuit in a case originally filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in November 1996. US District Judge Kimba Wood refused to throw out the case late last month, and the Shell Oil Company faces trial brought by relatives of human rights and environmental activists killed in Nigeria. The activists were protesting oil production pollution such as water contamination and agricultural destruction. The lawsuits are brought against the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and Shell Transport and Trading Company (Royal Dutch/Shell); the head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson; and the Nigerian subsidiary itself, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).
The defendants are charged with complicity in human rights abuses against the Ogoni people in Nigeria. Charges include summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, wrongful death, assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. The trial begins May 26 of this year.
Jennie Green, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement. (quote) “Now, the public will have the opportunity to see how Shell’s complicity with a murderous military regime was its standard operating procedure for doing business in Nigeria.”
Attorney Jennie Green:
- The case is about the concerted attacks on people organizing in the Niger Delta against the environmental devastation and human rights violations committed by the partnership of the Nigerian military and Royal Dutch Shell.
- The Shell Corporation based in the Hague and England.
- We sued them for human rights violations against the leadership of the movement for the survival of the Ogoni people.
- There was a campaign against Ken Saro-Wiwa and other leaders who were charging Shell publicly, coordinating a very effective movement against Shell.
- 300 thousand people peacefully demonstrating against Shell
- They were calling attention to the fact that Shell’s practices in Nigeria involve constant flaring, the flaring of gas products, lasting up to 24 hours a day. Some of kids in the region have never known dark.
- It’s an area based on fishing and farming – polluted water supply and land has devasted their way of life.
- Ken Saro-Wiwa developed a very effective campaign, building international alliances, Shell and the Nigerian military went after them, using torture, imprisonment etc.
- Ken Saro-Wiwa was a very effective writer, producer, poet and environmentalist.
- This started in the 1990’s when the Ogoni people declared in a campaign that Shell (in the area since 1958) could no longer go on exploiting the natural resources of the Delta without some accountability to the Ogoni people.
- As the peaceful campaign escalated, so did the pattern of repression.
- Ken Saro-Wiwa was falsely accused of murdering 4 Orgoni leaders. A military tribunal was created that did not meet any due process standards. In 1995 the Orgoni 9 were executed, hung, including Ken Saro-Wiwa.
- A month later Shell installed a 4 billion dollar liquified natural gas project.
- What we’ve charged Shell with is, complicity with these acts. They subdued protests, they bribed witnesses at the trial,
- Shell claims to be environmentally conscious but this is a classic double standard, their practices in the west are very different from Nigeria.
- The judge rejected Shell’s push to dismiss the international law claims, charging Shell with crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings. Ken Saro-Wiwa did not start out thinking Shell was the enemy, they wanted better business practices could develop and benefit the Ogoni people.
- Shell has approached this in a way to evade all accountability and maximize impunity. They spent 4 years fighting us over whether can be tried here in New York. Where we are is . . . that they need a judge and jury to tell them that they are accountable for human rights violations.
Guest – Jennifer Green, lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs. Jennifer Green specializes in international human rights legal actions in U.S. courts and international bodies. She has represented plaintiffs in successful lawsuits against the Unocal corporation for forced labor in Burma, and against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, former Guatemalan Minister of Defense Hector Gramajo, Indonesian military official Sintong Panjaitan, Ethiopian police official Kelbessa Negewo, and former Haitian dictator Prosper Avril for rape and other acts of genocide and war crimes.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Military Tribunal, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Hear more of the Jim Lehrer Newshour interview with Michael Ratner and Jeffrey Smith
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US To Escalate War in Afghanistan
Nearly 15 thousand US troops have been recently committed to Afghanistan, and progressive think tanks are pushing the Obama Administration to send an additional 17 thousand which would bring the total to 70 thousand troops. Expansions are being built onto the Bagram prison, as mass incarceration is expected. Progressive Think Tank Tells Obama to Escalate
Tom Hayden:
- Global Phoenix Program – in testimony last week, 10 – 12 years overall to win the Afghanistan War. Two years of hard fighting, a couple extra billion dollars a month. I think they plan to send the troops into Southern Afghanistan and to take on the Taliban or who ever the local resistance forces are.
- I think people need to buckle their seat belts for a war. We’re going to have a war in Afghanistan that’s soft on torture. Where are the human rights groups, we’re sending US troops into a dirty war that incarcerates without evidence, tens of thousands of people.
- Center for American Progress – I’m disappointed in them, they’re usually good liberal democrats. Now they’ve come out for a military surge in Afghanistan.
- Obama has narrowed it down to one goal. Can we prevent Al-Quaeda from getting a base area from which they can attack Europe or the United States. The more we go into Pakistan with the predators and drones, the more Pakistan turns against us. It becomes a recruiting tool for more militants.
- The other way to go would be to address the grievances of the Muslim world that give al-queda some support base.
- 1. The US unconditional support for Israel
- 2. 150 thousand troops still in Iraq
- 3. US troops in countries where Muslims control their own oil.
- It’s all laid out in a book by Michael Scheuer -Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
- I work very closely with Robert Greenwald at Brave New Foundation. Getting Afghanistan Right. There’s a huge sectarian problem in the anti-war movement. Nonetheless there’s always a peace and justice community in every city I go to.
- One wonders what it will take for someone in the House or Senate to stand up and say I want to lead the anti-war movement.
Guest – Political and social activist Tom Hayden joins us today to fill in the detail and time line in this escalation of war. Tom is also the author of Ending The War In Iraq.
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US War in Afghanistan and Pakistan – Follow Up
As tensions rise between Pakistan and the United States, President Obama recently mentioned that stability in Afghanistan depends on what will happen in Pakistan. The United States and Pakistan have been allies in their interest to purge Islamist extremism, however the two countries are now embroiled in miscommunication, drone wars and mistrust that is centered around a 10 billion dollar military aid fund. Analysts say the Obama administration is asking a lot from a fragile Pakistani government that has been in power for now only a year.
Michael Schwartz:
- President Obama’s speech – on Pakistan, tells the whole story. You have to unpack it.
- Not a lot of people have read the speech, Obama starts by saying a campaign against extremism will not succeed by bullets and bombs alone then he launches into the peaceful side of American policy.
- The US is planning to make Pakistan another outpost of globalization creating an opportunity for multinational corporations to invest into a local economy and basically take it over.
- What they’re saying is they’re trying to execute a policy to bring Pakistan into full economic domination of American capitalism. – a globalized version of American capitalism. The military aspect of this is only a part to secure the farthest reaches of the middle east, the part of instability.
- Obama’s speech is filled with being “adminstratively involved with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- The delivery is profound American presence. American enterprises, adminstrators, experts, trainers, a kind of colonial presence, then on the other side of this, an integration into the global system.
- Private multinational enterprises will build schools, infrastructure.
- This same neo-liberal process has ocurred in Africa, South America and what we know about this process is that there is an extraction of large profits by these multinational corporations. The Taliban would set up a social organization that is incompatible with the globalized agenda, so you can see this as a counter-insurgency maneuver.
- The military part of this is that they’re not going to be able to do this in a peaceful way, they’re going to have to conquer the area.
- In a period of two years with more than 90 drone attacks have killed 5000 innocent Pakistanis. They want to kill civilians
- The sense that people are waiting to see whether Obama and Congress move to escalate the war is a big part of the lack of energy in the anti-war movement.
- These are colonial wars, because the United States seeks to have a real administrative hold over these countries.
- The United States can’t withdraw from Afghanistan because it borders on the three Caspian Sea oil companies. Those oil companies are gravitating toward China and Russia in the grand scheme of things.
- Regarding the Poppy agriculture in Afghanistan, the Taliban had gotten rid of the poppies, since the US had invaded Afghanistan, the poppy agriculture has come backWe talk today with Michael Schwartz about the current relations amid Pakistan, the United States and the war in Afghanistan.
- $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years – resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan’s democracy. I’m also calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Maria Cantwell, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Hoekstra that creates opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence. And we will ask our friends and allies to do their part – including at the donors conference in Tokyo next month.
Guest – Michael Schwartz is a professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include the recently published War Without End.
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Cuba, South America and the Summit of the Americas
Earlier this year we spoke with film maker and Cuban scholar Saul Landau about the Cuban 50th anniversary and its significance. Now Saul describes the changes we can expect with regard to Cuban / US relations from the Obama Administration. The discussion also covers some detail of the recent talks at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.
Saul Landau:
- Obama has allowed Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba and allowing more loose travel regulations as well.
- What can Cuba really do except to promise to stop hitting the US in the fist with its face.
- What did Cuba do to the United States to merit 50 years of punishment?
- I don’t think Cubans are prepared to have 100 thousand Spring Breakers descend upon Havana.
- Nor are they prepared for American investors with big wads of cash, trying to buy up everybody and everything that they see.
- I think Obama is one of the cleverist, winsome, brightest people I can ever imagine, he’s a hard man to resist. But you have to get behind his optimistic rhetoric, his humility, his smile and his handshake and remember that prize fighters also shake hands before the first round.
- Cuba will have a lower profile in the future, we’ve seen the most publicity we’re going to see for quite a while now.
- I think things are little better, they’re a little quieter and less hostile. I think Cuba has its own problems that it really has to deal with
Guest – Saul Landau is an internationally known author, commentator, and film maker 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, for which he won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” In 2008, the Chilean government presented him withthe Bernardo O’Higgins Award for his human rights work. Landau has written fourteen books including a book of poems, “My Dad Was Not Hamlet.” He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt.
He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Mumia Exception: Supreme Court Denies Appeal For Mumia Abu-Jamal
In early April the Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari in the longstanding case of Mumia Abu Jamal. The appeal to the high Court included an examination of the so-called culture of discrimination operative among Philadelphia prosecutors. It cited 11 separate rulings in which federal and Pennsylvania state courts specifically faulted Philadelphia prosecutors for engaging in intentional discrimination during jury selection. Mumia Exception
Citing dozens of court rulings nationwide, it noted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling where one justice used a statistical study documenting Philadelphia prosecutors purging potential Black jurors at twice the rate of whites during death penalty trials between 1981 and 1997.
Linn Washington:
- Courts, be they city courts in Philadelphia, apellate courts in Pennsylvania or federal courts at the trial level and appeals level,
- they will either ignore or alter their established rulings, their precedent . . .when it comes to the Mumia case.
- In Mumia’s case, we have a situation where police actually, withheld evidence, they altered evidence, we now know this clearly, but the courts have helped suppress that
- Prison authorities have barred photographing or recording for broadcast purposes of inmates in institutions, just as a way to get at Mumia. You can go in with a notebook and pen.
- Batson Case: In the first 3 years of prosecution in Mumia’s trial, there was deliberate purging of black people from the jurors, for racially discriminatory purposes.
- A video tape had surfaced of a training session, a formal training session in the office, where a senior prosecutor was instructing other prosecuters, on how to purge blacks for juries, in a way that it would mask what they’re doing and thus get around the Batson ruling.
- In March 2008, the US Supreme Court issued relief to an inmate on death row in Louisiana, citing Batson, the essence of it was, if there was one provable instance of discrimination against a black juror – you would have a new trial.
- Two months later, the US Third Circuit, ignored that ruling and created new law, new restriction, higher burden for inmates to raise, in Batson cases.
- Justice Samuel Alito had initially ruled if one legal juror was discriminated against, it was provable, . . to get a new trial – Batson case. Then he changed his view.
- Here we had an award winning journalist, at that time the head of the black journalist association in Philadelphia.
- This has been fascinating in terms of the police withholding evidence, perjury, intimidating witnesses, prosecuters engaged in egregious misconduct and judges from the trial court level, all the up to the US Supreme Court ignoring their duty to justice
- Regarding Judge Sabo’s remark ” to fry that n-word” a court stenographer overheard this and years later came forward to make it public.
Guest – Linn Washington is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia and a weekly columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune – America’s oldest black owned newspaper. He has reported on the Abu-Jamal case for nearly thirty years. Linn Washington is currently writing a book on police brutality, the thesis is why we have police brutality. We have a continuation of police brutality decade after decade because prosecutors actually aid by ignoring the misconduct of officers.
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Leonard Peltier: Update On A Political Prisoner
Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist who was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He was recently transferred back to prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania after being attacked and beaten. Leonard Peltier was also denied clemency by the Bush Administration, the request had been pending for 8 years. He is featured in the recently published book, Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, brings together the voices of numerous US political prisoners who have taken great risk and sacrifice to stand up for human and civil rights.
Political prisoners such as Leonard Peltier, receive some of the harshest treatment behind bars, such as torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, they’re also subjected to disproportionately lengthy prison sentences. Attorney Michael Kuzma will give us an update on Leonard Peltier’s current condition and case.
Michael Kuzmar
- Two FBI agents, Kohler and Williams allegedly had a warrant they were trying to serve on Jimmy Eagle, who had allegedly stolen some cowboy boots. They went to execute the warrant, a fire fight erupted and the next thing you know, Joe Stunts and the two agents are dead. Subsequently, Leonard Peltier, Bob Robado, Dino Butler, were charged with murdering the two agents.
- For Leonard Peltier’s case it was tragic in that the lead attorney Eliot Takiff, had never tried a murder case before, you had an unfriendly judge and the prosecutors had a field day with ramping up the fear.
- When Bill Kunstler picked up the case on a Habeas, after losing appeals. It was about the bullet not matching.
- There was a balistics report that was withheld from defense attorneys in 1977, it was later unearthed by John Privatera and Michael Tigar.
- When Leonard was arrested on February 6, 1976, he was with an individual named Frank Blackhorse. Blackhorse was wanted for several offenses and indicted in 1973 for wounding at FBI agent at Wounded Knee.
- The most curious thing about this case is that Frank Blackhorse is not extradicted, he’s allowed to roam free in Western Canada. Turns out also, Frank Blackhorse isn’t his real name.
- The head of security for the American Indian Movement was a paid FBI operative.
- Based on the work I’ve done with the FOIA requests, its clear that along with others in the AIM, Leonard Peltier had been targeted by the FBI under Cointel Pro.
- We’ve been fighting to get documents that show how the FBI used a host of dirty tricks against Leonard.
- One of the prosecutors who is now retired, Len Krooks, has publicly stated that they don’t know who shot the agents.
- What we discovered is that the government turned over 3500 pages of material to Leonard’s defense attorneys and said this is all we have. As a result of a FOIA case brought in the late seventies we discovered the FBI had 18 thousand pages of material.
- Twelve thousand pages were released, 6 thousand pages withheld. Then as a result of another FOIA request in 2001 we found the FBI had 142, 579 pages of material.
- We have a suit still pending, we’re waiting for a decision from the court of appeals, for the 8th circuit. We’re trying to get 90 thousand pages, that’s what we’re sueing for. The government is fighting to hold onto 11 thousand pages of material. The reason they say is that the material if released will hamper the nation’s war on trans-national terrorism.
- The FBI can’t afford to have this information come out, because if people learned how extensive the informants and under cover agents were
- Leonard Peltier will be 65 on September 12, 2009. He has diabetes, his eyesight is not the best. There’s no threat whatsoever if Leonard was released today. William Kunstler believed Peltier did not shoot the FBI agents.
- Leonard is considered to be an old law inmate.
- Leonard had been in Ft. Leavenworth Prison and was transferred to the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. He was then transfere
- January 13th. Leonard was brutally attacked by two other inmates and suffered a possible concussion, he was kicked around the ribcage, he’s having headaches, his knee was bruised.
- What we’ve been hoping to do is get Leonard transferred to a medium security prison, he’s eligible.
Guest – Michael Kuzma, attorney for Leonard Peltier. As many know, Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist who was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He was recently transferred back to prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania after being attacked and beaten. Leonard Peltier was also denied clemency by the Bush Administration, the request had been pending for 8 years.
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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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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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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Frances Golden: Jailhouse Lawyers, Prisoners Defending Prisoners Against the United States of America by Mumia Abu Jamal
Frances Golden joins us today to discuss a very well known political prisoner, as we continue our political prisoner series based on the book Let Freedom Ring. Frances is the literary agent for Mumia Abu Jamal. Mumia as many know, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, Mumia has become an international cultural icon for political prisoners. A previous guest here on Law and Disorder, author/ journalist J. Patrick O’Connor who wrote The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal, says the real shooter was Kenneth Freeman a business partner of Mumia’s brother. Freeman, was found dead in 1985, bound and cuffed in a Philadelphia parking lot.
We get a another perspective today from Mumia’s literary agent Frances Golden. Frances also visits six death row in a Pittsburgh maximum security prison. Jailhouse Lawyers, Prisoners Defending Prisoners Against the United States of America by Mumia Abu Jamal.
Frances Golden:
- Visiting death row inmates happened because I went to visit Mumia as a visitor.
- I had to become a member of the Pennsylvania prison society. 40 bucks a year you can see any prisoner anywhere.
- Now, because the PPS applications were flooded to see Mumia, they changed the policy that only Pennsylvania residents can become members of PPS.
- You have to see more than one prisoner as a PPS member. So, Mumia gave me names of others including Robert Lark aka Sugar Bear.
- I hope I don’t cry when I say this, out of the 6 death row inmates I see, 5 of them are innocent.
- You’re behind very thick glass, there are quarter inch thick screens on each side of the cell where your voice can travel through. It’s awful, insulting but it’s what exists on death row.
- I have a little book with their names in it, with 100 pages(of notes) between each name.
- The prison system is illegal and inhuman. The person who speaks most clearly about that is Angela Davis.
- One prisoner nicknamed Slim was on the streets of Philadelphia without a home at 10 years old. Never went to school, got in trouble ended up on death row. He learned to read in prison, he’s a phenomenal jail house lawyer.
- Two of the five could get out, that’s Sugar Bear and Osiris.
- I have a prisoner friend whose name is Russel Shoates. He will never be executed but he’s on death row because he escaped 3 times. Russell is shackled and tied to his waist. I dance with them and do yoga. I can’t do that with Russell. I asked the warden to unshackle him. This man is gentle, he’s small, he’s wickedly intelligent.
- Philadelphia, the most corrupt city in the United States, from beginning to end. –Judges lock up kids for kickbacks in Pennsylvania
Guest: Frances Golden, activist and literary agent for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Frances is a member of the Pennsylvania Prison Society and visits 6 death row inmates monthly.
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Laura Whitehorn and Susie Day – Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners.
Among the many contributors to the book Let Freedom Ring is revolutionary ex-political prisoner and native New Yorker Laura Whitehorn. Since the 1960s Laura was active in supporting groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Movement and was active with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. Laura also worked to expose the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program. Laura was arrested in 1985, convicted of the 1983 US Capitol bombing and charged with… “conspiracy to oppose, protest and change the policies and practices of the United States government in domestic and international matters by violence and illegal means.” She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and was released August 1999 after 14 years. Laura lives in New York City and is active in a wide range of progressive issues.
Laura’s partner Susie Day, activist, writer and contributer to Let Freedom Ring also joins Law and Disorder hosts in the studio.
Laura Whitehorn:
- I’m in my sixties now, I was moved by the Black Liberation struggle and the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the United States.
- But I ended up spending years in prison later, in a case called the conspiracy case and our indictment was a thing of beauty – using the words violent and illegal means. It was a series of bombings of buildings. No one was ever hurt, great care was taken. One of the buildings was the U.S. Capitol.
- But in that period in 1988, we were in the DC jail for 3 years and it was the beginning of the huge epidemic of AIDS in Washington DC. It was a time of absolute fear, stigma, no drugs to treat HIV, and so we started to learn about HIV and did counseling, almost all the political prisoners had done that. This is because AIDS is huge in prison. A quarter of the people with AIDS in this country go through the prison system at some point.
- The fact that the government says there are no political prisoners, it’s a denigration of everything that you stand for. So, it was important that we had a lot of support.
- There’s a great interest in the sixties movements, the movies and books etc, but that doesn’t translate into the willingness to say enough is enough. People have been in jail since the late sixties and early seventies. How much time do you have to serve in this country, what kind of country do we have?
- In Europe the maxium is 20 years, sometimes they go farther. That’s a life sentence in Europe, but here, you could have saved the warden’s life but if you were a black panther and go to the parole board, they say you can’t get out.
- We have Obama, but the same justice system. We have to fight for a new justice system. What happens to political prisoners will happen to everyone else. We were held in preventive detention now everyone knows what it is.
- The book is a guide in how to raise these cases, who these people are, what kinds of organizations are out there. What can people do? The Jericho Movement
Susie Day:
- Before I met Laura Whitehorn, I was sort of intrigued by all the compromises most of us make everyday, for decades. We cut corners everyday to go to our jobs, to raise kids, to pay the rent, and we support involuntarily things that we abhor. So, I was interested in people who did not compromise. Who lived underground, who would go to extremes of giving up their lives of basic middle class educated comfort. . .and give up their identities to fight an establishment that made it so easy for everyone else to just get along.
Guest: Laura Whitehorn – revolutionary ex-political prisoner and native New Yorker Laura Whitehorn. Since the 1960s Laura was active in supporting groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Movement and was active with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. Laura also worked to expose the FBI’s Counter Intelligence.
Guest: Susie Day lives in New York City where she writes a humor column for feminist and gay publications. She has also written on U.S. political prisoners and labor issues and thinks her girlfriend, Laura Whitehorn, is hot stuff. Can’t get enough of Susie? Read other pieces by Susie Day in MRZine: Susie Day, “Fugitive Offers Reward for Rumsfeld’s Capture” (22 July 2005); “Street Life of a Mad Activist” (28 July 2005);
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Matt Meyer – Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners.
New York based educator and activist Matt Meyer. Matt is the editor of several books including the recently published Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners. – The book nicely pulls together two decades of essays, interviews and resolutions of US political prisoners. These are the voices and intimate writings of those who have challenged the US empire from within, Black Panthers, Puerto Rican independentistas, white anti-imperialists, environmental and animal rights militants and Arab and Muslim activists. Meyer is a former public draft registration resister and chair of the War Resisters League.
Matt Meyer:
- We wanted to bring awareness to that yes, there are political prisoners in the US.
- There’s been a history to support those movements and free them.
- This book focuses on the last 25 years as a key era that took us through the late sixties and seventies of social change.
- The majority of peoples that have been in prison come from the black civil rights liberation movement, come from the American Indian Movement, come from the Puerto Rican and Chicano movements and come from some white allies and supporters.
- Political prisoners are in jail because of the ideas they’ve had as much as the acts they’ve committed. They’re political actions and beliefs and who are in jail 20, 30 years, incredibly long sentences and harsh conditions.
- It is also a collection of documents from the movement to free them. For example from the Puerto Rican movement. We have a collection of documents that began to help free 12 Puerto Rican political prisoners – this shows how this came through by a combination of grassroots support and international pressure.
- This book says to activists and all readers that we can build upon the strategies that have been used in the last 20 years. We can look at some of the documents and get a sense of how to use these strategies today to help not only political prisoners but prisoners in the ever increasing US prison system. There is a growing sense that we should all pay more attention to these folks who are languishing in jail.
- The fact that the information in this book was not readily available, it was scattered here and there. This volume was designed as a tool with the hope to spark new movements.
- What can people do? The Jericho Movement
Guest: Matt Meyer – Founding PJSA Co-Chair along with USF Dean Jennifer Turpin, Meyer has long worked to bring together academics and activists for lasting social change. A former public draft registration resister and chair of the War Resisters League, he continues to serve as convener of the War Resisters International Africa Working Group. With Bill Sutherland, Meyer authored Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation, of which Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, “Sutherland and Meyer have looked beyond the short-term strategies and tactics which too often divide progressive people.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Updates:
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13 Million Dollar Payout in May Day LAPD Police Abuse Cases
In a landmark class action lawsuit settlement, the Los Angeles city council agreed to pay nearly 13 million dollars to those injured or mistreated in the 2007 May Day demonstration in MacArthur Park. As the march ended, LAPD riot police were filmed by camera crews using excessive force, firing rubber bullets and striking people with batons. Dozens were injured in the melee and the footage was seen around the world. The 13 million dollar settlement was part of a larger portion of nearly 300 May Day claims.
Carol Sobel:
- There was an immigrants rights march in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on May 1st 2007, there has been for the last 7 years. The police didn’t want to give the group a permit to march in the streets.
- There are about 20 lawyers on this case, the National Lawyers Guild, the Guild’s Police Accountability Project and MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund.
- As around 10 thousand people approached the park, police “forgot” to direct people into the park.
- The rally was at the Northwest corner of park, so marchers had to cross an 8 lane highway that divides the park. This created chaos of which the problems arose.
- There was no instruction, people didn’t know where they were supposed to go.
- Then people got near police on motorcycles, they used their motorcycles to hit protesters. This was happening as an Aztec circle dance performance closed the march and opened the rally.
- Some protesters through trash, plastic water bottles at police. It was heard that the police said “We need to get rid of these people now.” Police were not giving orders to disperse, they simply said “move”.. to the 10 thousand people in the park.
- The officers were speaking only English, the crowd spoke almost all Spanish.
- Families had no idea why the police were coming with riot gear. While police were saying to move, people were thinking, “well I didn’t do anything wrong, they could’nt be talking to me.”
- So officers began knocking people down and hitting people, firing pellets, it was total chaos.
- 140 rounds of less lethal munitions were randomly fired into the crowds.
- The police report also stated there was no probable cause, no reason to go after the marchers.
- Lesson: It’s very difficult to change the culture of a police department. The police department can’t engage in this behavior, because we can’t afford it as a city.
Guest – California civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, who represented some of the injured. In 2000 Carol was struck by police pellets while serving as a legal observer during the Democratic National Convention.
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Nora Eisenberg: When You Come Home
We’re pleased to have with us Nora Eisenberg, she’s the author of the recent book When You Come Home. It is a powerful novel that acknowledges the physical and psychological effects of veterans returning from Operation Desert Storm-The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991). In this beautifully written ant-war fiction, Nora delves into the corrosive effects post war combat has on the families and communities that are called on to nurture veterans returning home. Mimi is the main character who’s husband was killed in Vietnam, her 20 year old son Tony, a marine reservist, has returned from the Gulf War and there’s Tony’s childhood sweetheart, Lily who was raised by Mimi after her parents disappeared.
One book review describes When You Come Home this way: “In 1991, troops sent to Iraq for the first Gulf War returned home with a litany of physical, neurological, and psychological symptoms that collectively became known as Gulf War syndrome, a subject seldom dealt with in works of fiction. Eisenberg poignantly demonstrates that casualties of war occur both on and off the battlefield and ironically illustrates the vivid consequences when those in charge of veterans’ postwar care fail to meaningfully “support our troops.”
Nora Eisenberg:
- The First Gulf War – “The Good War”, 5 weeks of censorship and fabrication. Fabricated by a Washington based PR firm – Hill and Nolton. The campaign was headed by Craig Fuller. Fuller was also Chief of Staff for George H.W. Bush. Fuller took charge of the campaign to impress the public of what villians the Iraqis were.
- The firm brought this young girl to testify in front of a Congressional Committee – She claimed to work at a maternity ward in Kuwait. “The mean Iraqi soldiers” came in and hurled nearly 300 babies from their incubators and were left to die on the floor.
- This young girl was part of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, her father was Washington / Kuwait ambassador.
- All part of a 10 million dollar PR campaign with Hill and Nolton.
- Aside from the no-fly zones and sanctions, the deaths of Iraqis were massive and continuing.
- I’ve been following the deteriorating health system in Iraq and the rise of disease leading to the deaths of 2 million Iraqi children.
- I started writing this book with the “bad” war looming and with a sense that the ’91 war wasn’t over at all.
- I thought, are we going to kill millions again and get off scott-free, does it really work that way?
- Gulf War Illness, even among progressive people, there remains very little awareness of what this disease is. It attacks the respiratory system, the nervous system, it’s a neuro-toxic event.
- These soldiers got sick, immediately. Some say they got sick after swallowing an anti-nerve gas pill.
- When they were around the insecticides that were soaking the tents, they felt sick immediately, vertigo, stomach cramps.
- The soldiers loved ones, pets and wives coming down with similar symptoms, by proximity.
- It’s taken almost 20 years for Congress to say what the veterans already knew, that they were poisoned.
- A report delivered by high profile doctors at Roberta White say the soldiers were exposed to neuro-toxins. These were not neuro-toxins from Saddam Hussein.
- Those are main culprits, there are other terrible exposures that came out in a report last November.
- Such as the exposure to sarin in a weapons depository that affected 2-3 hundred thousand US soldiers.
- Nearly 15 thousand have died from Gulf War Illness. We have nearly 400 thousand US soldiers coming back as patients / nearly 40 percent are psychiatric patients.
Guest – Nora Eisenberg, New York City novelist and professor of English at the City University of New York (LaGuardia) and directs CUNY’s Faculty Publications Program. The War at Home ws a Washington Post Rave Book of the Year for 2002 and Just the Way You Want Me was awarded the 2004 Gold Prize in General Fiction from Foreword, the weekly of independent publishing. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, Partisan Review, the LA Times, Tikkun., and numerous anthologies.
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