Law and Disorder September 10, 2012

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Torture, War Resister

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

  • Bradley Manning Public Access Case: Amicus Brief Filed by Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press
  • Southern Poverty Law Center Lawsuit Against Chemically Spraying Students

———

Photo by Edward Linsmier/Getty Images)

Attorney Heidi Boghosian Speech: National Special Security Events – RNC / DNC

We hear a presentation by our own Heidi Boghosian. Heidi spoke at an event sponsored by station affiliate WSLR FM 96.5 – Sarasota, Florida. As the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, Heidi had coordinated and organized legal observers during the Republican National Convention in Tampa and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. While in Florida, Heidi delivered a talk about the eroding civil rights of protesters during National Special Security events, pre-event surveillance and tactical strategies deployed by police.

Heidi Boghosian is the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association established in 1937. She has published articles on policing, protest and the First Amendment including Punishing Protest and The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent (North River Press, 2004). Her book reviews have been published in The Federal Lawyer magazine and the New York Law Journal.

———

CCR Stop and Frisk Suit NYC: Floyd et al. v. New York City

Last month, a federal judge excluded portions of proposed testimony from New York City’s key witness in the Center for Constitutional Right’s Stop and Frisk class action lawsuit Floyd v. City of New York. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled the defendants’ testimony untested and unreliable.  The ruling supports that there isn’t evidence that the “Stop and Frisk” practice reduces crime.” said CCR Legal Director Vince Warren (quote)  “The ruling soundly rejects the false choice propounded by the NYPD, between living in a safe city and being free of unconstitutional, racially discriminatory policing.”

In 2009 New York City, a record 576,394 people were stopped, 84 percent of whom were Black and Latino residents — although they comprise only about 26 percent and 27 percent of New York City’s total population respectively. Ten years of raw data obtained by court order from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) showed that stop-and-frisks result in a minimal yield of weapons and contraband.

Attorney Darius Charney:

  • When we say “stop” were really talking about a detention of somebody’s liberty by the police. Frisk is a pat down of the outside of somebody’s clothing.
  • For purposes of the 4th Amendment we are talking about a seizure when somebody is stopped, their liberty is taken away from them for a period of time and when they’re frisked, they’re searched.
  • About 99.3 percent of the time the police find no gun.
  • According the Supreme Court in a case they decided about 44 years ago, called Terry v. Ohio, for a police officer to stop someone on the street they have to have what’s called reasonable, articulatable suspicion.
  • It has to be more than a hunch, or a whim or a subjective belief that somebody’s doing something wrong. It has to be articulatable specific facts that the officer is aware of that would cause him or her to reasonably believe that this person has committed a crime, is in the process of committing a crime or is about to commit a crime.
  • If they have reasonable suspicion and they stop to ask you questions, you’re supposed to answer the questions.
  • They may ask you for identification, that’s not against the law in New York state. You don’t have to provide it to them.
  • You’re free to not answer but depending on what the questions are and if you don’t answer them, that may give the officer a basis to have probable cause to arrest you.
  • For the officer to then put their hands on you, they have to have reasonable suspicion that you’re armed and dangerous.
  • It can’t be that they think you have drugs in your pocket. Officers often get angry or irritated if you assert the rights that you have.
  • What commonly happens in New York and other places is that somebody does assert their rights the officer may retaliate against them by issuing them a ticket for disorderly conduct.
  • The person has a right to say “show me your badge” to a plain clothes police officer.
  • Stop and Frisk has increased over 600 percent in New York City.
  • In New York police are arresting 50 thousand people a year with small amounts of marijuana.
  • The New York Police Department Stop and Frisk practices are literally going to be put on trial in a federal court in Manhattan this coming Spring.
  • We were certified for a class action in May, so we have a website for class members. Stopandfrisk
  • In order to fight crime you need to work together with the community and if the community doesn’t trust you, fear you, that’s not going to happen.

Guest – Attorney Darius Charney,  senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice/Government Misconduct Docket.  He is currently lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s unconstitutional and racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices, and Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department which challenges the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY.

—————————-

Law and Disorder September 3, 2012

Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Targeting Muslims, Torture

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates

  • Michael Ratner: Update on Verdict – Corrie v State of Israel
  • Cardinal Dolan Who Approved Payoffs For Priests Accused of Sex Abuse To Leave Priesthood Gives Speech At RNC and Closing Speech for DNC

—–

 

Islamophobia: Anatomy of an American Panic

In the last few weeks, 8 places of worship connected with South Asians or Middle Easterners have been targets in the United States. As many listeners know, six people were murdered at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin but later that evening a mosque in Joplin Missouri was burned down. Other targets recently included mosques in Rhode Island, Southern California, Oklahoma City and Dearborn, Michigan. These tragic events mark another wave of existential Muslim threats inciting fear and violence against Middle Eastern people while helping to justify the ongoing war on terror.

According to the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism, since 9/11 to 2010 there have been 155 terror incidents in the U.S., and exactly two of them or 1.3 percent have been attributed to international Islamist terror groups. The majority of events involved individuals such as anti-abortionists, right-wing extremists, or extreme animal rights activists.

The Nation Magazine has highlighted the disproportional focus put on Muslim communities in a special issue titled “Islamophobia: Anatomy of an American Panic.” We talk with journalist Lizzy Ratner and authors Deepa Kumar and Moustafa Bayoumi who contributed articles to the Nation Magazine special.

Lizzy Ratner:

  • The Nation did a special issue about Islamophobia. It came out in the beginning of July. You can still find the majority of the articles online. The real credit has to go to Abdeen Jabara whose idea this really was.
  • The civil rights attorney came to me last year and said the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim has reached fever-pitch.
  • So I began to do some research about what exactly was going on and very quickly compiled a massive roster of possible articles.
  • For the most part, the Left and Progressives have been far too quiet.
  • This bigotry that is flourishing right now has a real history, it’s not a just a product of 9/11 and the post 9/11 era.
  • Some of the seeds of bigotry have to do with the role of the United States historically in the Middle East.
  • Islamophobia served an agenda and a number of purposes.

Guest – New York City journalist Lizzy Ratner has written extensively for the Nation and Alternet on issues involving Islamophobia. Lizzy is also co-editor of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
——

Moustafa Bayoumi:

  • I was happy to see that the Nation was happy to take on the question of Islamophobia for a double issue.
  • There’s been a shift in the last ten years from paranoia around security to a paranoia about the basic facts of Muslim life in the United States.
  • In a way you can say it’s a shift from security to culture.
  • At any stage, anything that has to do with a daily concerns about living a life as a Muslim American, somehow now becomes charged with sedition. Part of the funding of the anti-Muslim movement in the United States is basic conservative politics and extreme conservative politics.
  • And also due to the Israel-Palestine conflict. So people who want to come aboard Israel will make a very distorted picture of what Muslim life is like.
  • The NYPD has now a decade long history of “othering” the Muslim-American community.
  • The NYPD had been screening The New Jihad for its new recruits.
  • It’s a crazy film saying that all of the American Muslims are here as a fifth column ready to pounce. It’s a training film for new recruits. That’s true for the Pentagon and the FBI.
  • Muslim Americans are still seen as perpetual foreigners.
  • That Muslim American rights are different than everyone else’s rights.
  • You’re average American consumer of media does not relate to the victims of the Oak Creek massacre because they don’t see them as being part of the American family.
  • They asked American’s in this poll, and 62 percent of the population has never met a Muslim.
  • If you’ve never met a Muslim then it’s very easy to believe all these boogey man ideas. That’s why media plays an important role in this issue.
  • The FBI (training manual) said that it was in the nature of Muslims to try to take over this country.

Guest – Author Moustafa Bayoumi wrote Fear and Loathing of Islam joins us, his book : Being Young and Arab in America, won an American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award for non-fiction. He is also a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

——

Deepa Kumar:

  • As of late the anti-Muslim statements coming from Michelle Bachmann, Joe Walsh, all of whom are Republicans, there is a sense of which it is the Republicans who are responsible for Islamophobia, for the demonization of Muslims and so on.
  • This brand of the war on terror gets hatched and part of that was language developed in the 1990s, called the Clash of Civilizations. It was a man named Bernard Lewis who first penned this term.
  • It’s not so much we’re going to carry out revenge on Osama Bin Laden but that we’re going to rescue Afghan women. In the case of Iraq, we’re going to bring democracy when no weapons of mass destruction were found.
  • This rhetoric has a long history it goes back to the 19th century.
  • Both presidents need Islamophobia. They need to generate this fear and hatred of the “Muslim other.”
  • Operation Boulder
  • The Jonathan Institute holds this conference in Jerusalem . . Islamofacism, the roots are sown at that conference.
  • The idea of this menacing Muslim enemy is not new. It was not something created after 9/11 but in fact it goes back a millennium.
  • It’s about political goals but religious rhetoric gets used. Same thing with the re-conquest of Spain.
  • The Islamophobic rhetoric is one that’s mobilized by the elite.
  • I hold both Republicans and Democrats responsible. These rabid right wingers get their confidence from mainstream figures like Walsh, like Bachmann and others.
  • The sad reality is that the Democrats have done nothing to counter this.
  • The Democrats are not an ally in this fight.
  • I take inspiration from 2 movements in the sixties, the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. I think these 2 strategies need to come together in fighting Islamophobia.
  • We have to take on both the far right and challenge the priorities of empire and bring together a multiracial coalition that can actually change a generation.
  • It was President Clinton with Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996 which made it legal to actually deport people with secret evidence. We know this lays the basis for the Patriot Act. This has really been a bipartisan project in the interest of empire.

Guest – Deepa Kumar, an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. Her work is driven by an active engagement with the key issues that characterize our era–neoliberalism and imperialism. Her first book, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, 2007), is about the power of collective struggle in effectively challenging the priorities of neoliberalism.

———————————————–

Law and Disorder August 20, 2012

CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iran, Targeting Muslims

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

—–

A Challenge to a Brutal Anti-Latino Law

Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently went on trial in Arizona for discriminating against Latinos and for usurping federal authority with roundups of undocumented immigrants. In a related action, a coalition of groups is asking a federal court to block enforcement of Section 2(B) of SB 1070, the Arizona law that compels all law enforcement agencies in that state to enforce the Arpaio model.

In June the Supreme Court rejected the premise of SB 1070 on grounds that making foreign policy – of which immigration law is a part – is a federal government’s domain. However, the Court upheld the law’s “show me your papers” section that requires officers to check the immigration status of anyone they stop, arrest or detain on another basis if the officer has a “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the country illegally.

The motion to block Section 2(B) “involves additional claims, evidence, and irreparable injuries beyond what the Supreme Court had before it.” The challenge explains harms so obvious and unconstitutional that the judge does not need extensive proof of the section’s impact to enjoin it. The Legislature “explicitly intended Section 2(B) to codify the practices” of Arpaio, the motion says, even after his powers had been restricted by earlier investigations into and challenges to his racial profiling. The practices include prolonged stops and detentions of Latinos to check their status or for other immigration-related purposes.

The plaintiffs are also asking the court to enjoin another Arizona law, which turns alleged violations of a federal anti-harboring law into a state crime. Courts have enjoined similar laws in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina since, like Arizona’s, they were clearly pre-empted by federal law.

Lena Graber:

  • The law enforcement in Joe Arpaio’s district have been really outspoken about their intention to stop Latinos and fight immigration.
  • The issues around racial profiling are really huge. I think it’s worth separating out the different lawsuits that are going on.
  • Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs this incredibly punitive jail where they barely feed people enough it’s a 120 degrees, and he’s been sued literally thousands of times for the conditions of his jail.
  • Thats been going on since he was elected in the early nineties.
  • In the last several years he’s really gotten on this tough on immigration, let’s do sweeps through the Latino neighborhood.
  • The ACLU and other civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against him for racial discrimination, violation of equal protection, and violation of civil rights.
  • They filed that 2007, about six months later the Department of Justice initiated a civil rights investigation into Joe Arpaio and his operations in Arizona.
  • In the meantime the state of Arizona passed SB 1070.
  • There are both civil rights groups and non profits filing one lawsuit and the federal government filing a parallel.
  • The Arizona Supreme Court recently ruled on the Arizona law, not on Joe Arpaio, where they struck down most of the law and upheld “show me your papers.”
  • The federal government did not argue that the law was unconstitutional because of racial discrimination.
  • Litigation tends to effect the way law enforcement operate pretty dramatically.
  • Joe Arpaio has been elected five times.
  • The federal government has been very slow on the game to chastise Joe Arpaio.
  • The Department of Homeland Security formed their largest 287G agreement with Sheriff Joe for his deputies to be trained to enforce federal immigration law. At that point the violations really started to go through the roof.

Guest – Lena Graber, a Soros Criminal Justice Fellow who focuses on detention and deportation and state and local enforcement.  Lena Graber’s work seeks to reduce the government’s abuse of immigration detainers–a tool used to maintain custody of potentially deportable individuals in local jails or prisons nationwide.  Lena previously worked at the National Immigration Forum in Washington, D.C.
—–

Mondoweiss: Israel Trip and the Future of Palestine

We welcome back returning guest Philip Weiss, the founder and co-editor of Mondoweiss.net, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East. Philip has recently returned from a trip to Israel and was struck by the ongoing apartheid against Palestinians. During his trip, he traveled an Israeli’s only road. He saw the massive barrier in the West Bank. He toured many Israeli settlements, such as Ma’ale Adumim, the first settlement to be declared a city. Interestingly Philip also saw some of the fund raiser entourage of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney while in Jerusalem.  We talk with him about his trip and the future of the Palestinian state.

Philip Weiss:

  • The last few times I’ve come back I felt a real sense of bleakness.
  • When you’re there and you see just how much force is arrayed on one side and the status quo is of complete inequality.
  • The sense of martial law is overwhelming. Spiritually, it’s awful.
  • When you’re over there you see there is very little left in terms of contiguous territory in the West Bank to create a viable state.
  • You see the settlements all around you, giant swimming pools next to villages with walls around them, to separate themselves from Palestine villages in occupied land.
  • Jeff Halper says the 2 state solution is dead.
  • Area C is ours they say.
  • I saw one ad on my commute here today that read – It’s Not Islamaphobia to Blame Islam for Terrorism.
  • This is extremism, it’s intolerance, it’s racism.
  • It’s statements that we would not accept, that have become off limits in American discourse in almost any other context.
  • One thing I saw there was the separation, the complete separation of two societies.
  • You really get a sense of ethnic purity at work.
  • The denial of that humanity is so profound and offensive.
  • I’ve been struck by the famous Arab hospitality in that region.
  • The sense of sovereignty and domination is profound.
  • It’s hard sometimes to meet people’s eyes, because you know that you’re an author of their humiliation and this human being with a lot of dignity has suddenly become humiliated before your eyes and it’s upsetting.
  • John Brown said the idea that all people are created equal is the exact same idea as do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
  • It’s kinda scary to think that a bunch of Americans to send a signal to Obama would have to go raise a million dollars at the King David hotel in Jerusalem and have Romney talk about Iran and he’s with Netanyahu on Iran. These were powerful political signals being sent while I was there.
  • I think Romney is behaving in an irresponsible manner. It seems like he’s being used in this situation.  Within the Israeli security establishment there is some sense it does not want this attack.
  • They don’t care about Iran, they care about cleansing the West Bank of Palestinians.
  • If there is a war with Iran it’s a perfect opportunity and a crisis to push more Palestinians out of area C into the cities.
  • I’m for BDS. Every time I go there I’m upset by what I see. The question is that whether the South African connection is kicking in. (BDS Collective)
  • I get a lot of criticism from Jews for exposing my people to danger.
  • Jeff Halper studies the occupation and knows it in a granular way.

Guest – Philip Weiss,  founder of Mondoweiss, longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute.  Philip is the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga.  Weiss is one of the editors of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.

————————————————————————–

Law and Disorder August 13, 2012

Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Torture, War Resister

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

—-

 

The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History.

We continue to look into the the Bradley Manning story, the biggest whistle-blower case in US history. Attorney Chase Madar joins us in the studio, he’s the author of The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History. The book moves through Manning’s childhood and up to what led him to allegedly upload volumes of classified secret information to Wikileaks. Madar highlights the value of publicly exposing the endless criminal and immoral actions while government secrecy spins out of control, classifying 77 million documents a year. He also asks what can be done to protect Bradley Manning as a whistle-blower. Since his arrest 2 years ago, Manning’s formal court martial proceedings are not scheduled to begin until February 2013, and as many listeners know the most lethal charge is aiding the enemy.

Attorney Chase Madar:

  • I worked as a staff attorney for many years at a great non-profit in Bushwick section of Brooklyn doing all kinds of low tech services for Spanish speaking immigrants.
  • I quit that and have been writing about foreign affairs. I got put on the sight of Bradley Manning by Tom Englehart, who edits the great TomDispatch web project.
  • So many important issues collide in this case, whether its the comparative risk to our security of secrecy versus leaks. How we judge threats, how we misassess threats. How we use solitary confinement as punishment, is it an acceptable punishment?
  • What power does information have anyway? A lot of intellectuals think that information has an incredible catalytic effect.
  • Bradley Manning enlisted in the Army in October 2007. He’s deployed to Iraq after all kinds of training in Army intelligence in 2009.
  • He allegedly begins leaking things in early 2010 and he’s arrested in late May 2010 over 2 years ago now. He was held in solitary confinement, very strict punitive isolation in Quantico Marine Corp base in Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011.
  • We’re looking at 2.5 years of pretrial confinement.
  • You can divide up the Wikileaks leaks allegedly supplied by Bradley Manning in 3 categories. Iraq material, thousands of war logs: raw reports file by soldiers, Afghan war logs, it’s a composite of a war that’s weirdly aimless.
  • Obama did campaign as the whistle-blower’s best friend, and he has prosecuted twice as many as all previous administrations.
  • Here’s one theory I find persuasive. It’s important for Obama to have the intelligence services on his side. This was a way for him to show the CIA that he would go along them.
  • I would like to see a serious change in foreign policy which has gone off the rails.
  • We haven’t the kind of course correction with Obama that many had hoped for.
  • I hope Wikileaks do disrupt foreign policy more. There’s been all kinds of smack talked about Bradley Manning, he’s a weirdo, a malcontent, he did what he did because he’s screwed up, he did because he’s gay.
  • His motives are very plain to see in the chat logs between him and the informant.
  • The Manning chat logs – they read like a tragic novella.
  • So much of our secrecy law is designed to keep the American public in the dark.
  • I think we have badly confused being clueless with being safe.
  • He comes across as an immensely thoughtful, courageous and very principled young man. In some ways he’s an extreme version of the millennial generation who have a lot of education and potential but find themselves not doing too well.
  • His father was in Naval Intelligence and he’d grown up with a sense of patriotic responsibilities.
  • What makes him turn on the inside and leak these things?
  • He’s asked to look into the arrest and capture by the Iraqi authorities a group of non-violent Iraqi protesters who were handing out pamphlets that were all about corruption in Iraqi government.
  • We are light years away from total transparency.
  • The main thing is to make records of the court proceedings publicly available.
  • I think a guilty conviction and a heavy sentence of at least 50 years is a foregone conclusion.
  • The wages of government secrecy, not security but disaster.
  • It looks like the court martial won’t begin until January or February.
  • Go to the Bradley Manning support network website. Send him a postcard.
  • It’s your patriotic duty to browse the leaks.
  • Legal Atrocities – by Chase Madar

Guest – Attorney Chase Madar , a TomDispatch regular and author of a new book, The Passion of Bradley Manning (OR Books).  Madar tweets @ChMadar. He’s  a contributor to the London Review of Books and Le Monde diplomatique and the author of a new book, The Passion of Bradley Manning (OR Books).

——————————————————-

 

 

Law and Disorder August 6, 2012

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, War Resister

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

  • Maryland Law Allows Police To Collect DNA During Arrests
  • Heidi Boghosian: National Lawyers Guild Monitoring RNC / DNC Demonstrations
  • In Memory: Michael Nash
  • In Memory: Alexander Cockburn
  • In Memory: Professor John (Tito) Gerassi
  • You Have The Right To Remain Silent Booklet

———–

Unrepentant Radical Educator: The Writings of John Gerassi

Professor John (Tito) Gerassi, once an editor at Time magazine, then at Newsweek. He obtained his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was a long time civil rights and anti-war militant and author / editor of ten books plus scores of articles and pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic. He was Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.  Professor Gerassi discussed his book, Unrepentant Radical Educator: The writings of John Gerassi, edited and with interviews by Tony Monchinski (Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education) Indypendent Book Review

The book joins personal narratives from Gerassi’s days of journalism and activism, featuring Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver and others of the era, with  essays on figures such as Sartre, Camus, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  One review writes, (Especially fascinating are the tales of deliberate misreporting by the major media outlets for which he worked, epitomized by the words of owner Henry Luce when Gerassi was hired: “We here at Time believe that objectivity is neither feasible nor desirable.”)

John “Tito” Gerassi:

  • Time Magazine: I hear you’re coming aboard Mr. Gerassi. In the long run, it was great that I got kicked out
  • Met Che Guevara in Uruguay, as a journalist for the New York Times, there was a fight with anti-Castro students, the police were scared, one man fired his gun in the air, it ricocheted and hit and killed a USIS Cuban.
  • Che told me I don’t talk to the imperialist press. At the hotel, they had reserved a large table where all the left-wing characters sat around with Che.  Argentines say chez vous, that’s how Che got his nickname Che.
  • The Great Fear in Latin America – John Gerassi
  • Che Where Are You? Eventually there will be many Che’s.

Guest – Professor John Gerassi, once an editor at Time magazine, then at Newsweek, who obtained his PhD at LSE, is a long time civil rights and anti-war militant. He is the author or editor of ten books and scores of articles and pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.

——————————————————

Law and Disorder July 23, 2012

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

  • Bradley Manning Trial Update: System of a Star Chamber
  • Julian Assange Extradition / Asylum
  • Occupy Chicago Tribune WIPO Lawsuit Update:
  • Donating to Wikileaks

—

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Filed Over Boycott of Israeli Goods

We follow up on the Olympia Food Co-op lawsuit filed over boycott of Israeli goods earlier this year. For listeners unfamiliar with the case,  a judge in Olympia, Washington dismissed a lawsuit tailored to force the Olympia Food Co-op to rescind its boycott of Israeli goods. The judge ruled that the lawsuit brought by opponents of the boycott violated a Washington State law designed to prevent abusive lawsuits which are aimed at suppressing lawful public participation. Interestingly, an investigation by ElectronicIntifada had unearthed that the lawsuit against individuals with the Olympia Food Co-op Board was also planned in collusion with a national anti-Palestinian organization called StandWithUs that was working with the Israeli government. Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that the lawsuit qualified as a SLAPP, that stands for – – Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.  SLAPPs are lawsuits that target the constitutional rights of free speech and petition in connection with an issue of public concern.  Recently, the five Olympia Food Co-op members who had sued to overturn the store’s boycott of Israeli goods must pay $160,000 in damages.

Attorney Barbara Harvey:

  • The judge had before him the issue whether to assess a single statutory penalty of 10 thousand dollars on behalf of all 16 co-op members who served on co-op board members who were sued by the defendants, or would the judge order each individual statutory penalties to each defendant.
  • He decided to order individual statutory penalties to each defendant for a total 160 thousand dollars.
  • The plaintiff sued 16 board members past and present. Standwithus produced a youtube video of the five plaintiffs just before they filed the litigation.
  • The five co-op members didn’t look upset given the judge’s decision. If they’re not upset, why not? – which suggests the costs will be covered but we really have no way of really knowing that.
  • This victory discourages the opponents of the movement for Palestinians to engage in this kind of litigation.
  • TIAA-CREF which manages financial assets of 470 plus billion dollars announced that they had decided to remove Caterpillar from their Socially Responsible Investing Accounts.
  • That’s because Caterpillar supplies Israel with these militarized bulldozers that are sold under Department of Defense contracts to Israel which are used to tear down civilian homes in Palestine.
  • Caterpillar is the poster child of divestment and boycott and TIAA-CREF has done that.
  • All other customers that use that SRIA account will be divesting from Caterpillar.
  • Our campaign is to persuade companies like TIAA-CREF to divest from companies around the world that profit from the occupation.

Guest – Barbara Harvey,  a Detroit attorney who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member
———

 

Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism PART 1

Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism is the title of Professor Rick Wolff’s new book.  After more than a dozen interviews with Rick Wolff since 2008, the theme is consistent, beyond the corrupt banks and stock markets is a flawed economic system. A system that at worst needed to change direction in the 1970s when wages stopped increasing and the cost of living continued to rise.  As we look around, the collapse has been coming down in steps, and many have been trying to dial back, save and prepare. This, as millions have lost their jobs, 401ks, pensions, and homes.  Overseas, the waves of austerity continue to push through Europe as protests have erupted again in Spain.

Professor Rick Wolff:

  • The book is an interesting venture for me, it’s done with David Barsamian, with Alternative Radio.
  • He did 3 major interviews with me, the response was so heartwarming, we published a written version of them.
  • The book is an overview of how we got into this mess, why it’s lasting so long, why it’s hurting so badly, why government policies have in fact, not succeeded.
  • A number of the economies in Europe are on the edge of major breakdown. Spain is already in that situation, Italy is right on its heels. This is not like Greece or Portugal, Ireland or Hungary who are smaller economies, these are major economies.
  • There is active debate in the highest circles of Europe, both critics of capitalism and its leaders, questioning whether the European Union can survive . . its a measure of how serious the problem is.
  • China, by its own announcing running at a rate of growth of 7- 8 percent which is half of what it had very few years ago.
  • It can’t also escape the effect of Europe which is its second most important market.
  • China is trying to reorient the economy away from their dependence from exports to the rest of the world because frankly that’s not a reliable situation for them. To give you one index.
  • As wages in the United States stagnated, wages in China have gone up 20 percent.
  • The slow downs in India, very sharp. The slow downs in Brazil, very sharp.
  • The consensus is what Bernanke said. Things are very poor, very weak and we really have to be alert.
  • The situation is only going to deteriorate over the rest of 2012 and into early 2013.
  • When a capitalistic economic system begins to unravel. . . we’re in the fifth year of this crisis. It officially began in December 2007.
  • Every major government program, the bailouts, the stimulus has not achieved the goals it said it could and would.
  • The biggest capitalist institutions in this country at this time, the banks. . .are in such trouble are so worried about their own prospects in an economy in such difficulty that what they are doing is taking excessive risks, pushing the envelope of what’s ethical and moral and crossing the thin and blurry lines of legality.
  • LIBOR – London Interbank Offered Rate – Starting in the 1980s, London which had been the financial center of the world economy realized what we all understood at that time which was the world economy was becoming dependent on credit.
  • Every corporation was borrowing money all the time, every government was borrowing money on a scale we’ve never seen before, the really innovative thing was the development of consumer credit.
  • The LIBOR became the benchmark for the world.
  • Everyday the British Bankers Association polls the 16 biggest banks who have offices in England, what they are charging each other.
  • It takes an average and it announces that. That number is a standard number for example, variable rate mortgages in the US where the mortgage goes up and down those are based on LIBOR.
  • It’s factored into everybody’s borrowing. If you’re going into store to buy a pair of pants, that store also borrowed money which is also shaped by a relationship to LIBOR.
  • These banks are the biggest holders of debt instruments. Derivatives of all kinds, mortgages of all kinds. You are relying on information from somebody who has an active interest in the information they’re supplying.
  • What we now know is these banks often reported an interest rate different from what they were actually charging.
  • There was no oversight.
  • The world of superbanking is a very cozy world. Barclay’s had admitted to reporting a number that was actually the case. . . and had paid fines now totalling 450 million dollars to both US and British authorities.
  • To be blunt they screwed everybody to save themselves.
  • How could we defend private banking on this scale ever again?
  • The big ones are Bank America and Wells Fargo.
  • Both of them have both agreed to pay fines. Bank of America – 300 million. Wells Fargo 175 million.
  • Here was what their fine was for. They went and charged African American and Hispanic families more interest for mortgages than they did for whites who had identical credit scores.
  • Five of the biggest banks in the world Barclays, Wells Fargo, HSBC, and JP Morgan Chase have all admitted major breaches of minimal ethics, minimal morality, legality all to advantage themselves at the expense of the public.
  • Private monster banks are an unsafe way for any society to manage the credit that has now become central to the economy.  It is inappropriate for us to have banks that have more money than the government supposedly regulating them.

Guest –  Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.

————————————————-