Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Impeachment, Iraq War, Truth to Power
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David Swanson: Vermont AG Candidate Backs Prosecution of President Bush for Murder
Hosts Michael Ratner and Michael Smith check back with journalist David Swanson about the War Crimes Conference. David was at the conference, there was a great turnout at the event and thousands viewed online. One strategy in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is to establish jurisdiction in the cases for Attorney Generals in each state and also the approximately 900 district attorneys in the counties of those states.
Bugliosi says it’s not unreasonable to believe that at least one prosecutor will be courageous enough to step up. She did, her name is Charlotte Dennett, Progressive Party candidate for Vermont attorney general. Dennett says if elected she would prosecute Bush for murder, appoint Bugliosi as a special prosecutor to hold Bush accountable for deaths stemming for the Iraq war.
How to make a citizen’s arrest of a war criminal.
Guest – David Swanson, creator of many media-based websites including ConvictBushCheney.org he has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign.
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Economic and Political Analysis: Historic Financial Crisis and Bailout
Michael Smith and Michael Ratner host a lively discussion with economist Max Wolff and political science professor and author John Ehrenberg. Max Wolff begins with an anatomy of the financial collapses – “Low wage growth for majority of Americans, meanwhile global capacity for productive enterprise has skyrocketed and the way to make money is to find something to produce for very low wages. This creates a classic problem of insufficient aggregate demand. We can make it cheap, we can find this 11 year old in the rain forest to work in the factory for 39 cents an hour. Not successful if you can’t find a buyer. So, your success breeds a nightmare, the nightmare is resolved by international financial markets and growing debt.”
In the last half hour John Ehrenberg joins in. He says the US needs a new New Deal, and though this is a dangerous time, it could be an opportunity for strong social movements. The Republican vetting of Palin is a major concern – “The sneering contemptuous disdain for serious thought or consideration for deliberation.” Faux populism that rewards capital and punishes labor and yet coming forward as a party for the common man.
Guest – Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.
Guest – John Ehrenberg, author of the book “Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice.†A professor of political science at Long Island University, in this, his third book, critically analyzes the rise of an ideologically coherent Right. He dissects their themes of military weakness, moral decay, racial anxiety, and hostility to social welfare to reveal their central organizing objective of protecting wealth and assaulting equality.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Iran, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Updates
The Prosecution of President Bush and Other Administration Officials for War Crimes
This month, Larry Velvel, dean and co-founder of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will hold a conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other administration officials for war crimes. The conference will take on the issues of both domestic and international crimes committed by high level Bush officials, including Federal judges and members of Congress. A coordinating committee of legal groups will also be created, among the legal groups are the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild. Official Site
“This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred,” says convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. “It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.†related article
Velvel Interview Notes:
- Conference will be held in undisclosed location for the time being.
- Until people have the fear they will be brought to book if they violate the law in a very serious ways that cause tens of thousands of deaths, what will stop them from doing it in the future?
- Unless there is something to look back on, like the Germans and the Japanese apparently know, don’t do it again because people swung.
- Who’s to say it won’t happen 20 or 30 years in the future again.
Guest – Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law. Mr. Velvel is a 1960 graduate of the University of Michigan and a 1963 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, where he served on the law review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He was a law professor from 1966-1978, first at the University of Kansas and then at Catholic University. He has been a partner in major law firms in Washington, D.C., and was the first chief counsel of an organization established to write United States Supreme Court briefs in support of state and local governments. read more.
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New Guidelines Would Give F.B.I. Broader Powers
A Justice Department proposal which could be made public in a month, has given the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations, without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on racial or ethnic profiling. Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons, such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated, to investigate US citizens and legal residents. Last month, The Council on American Islamic Relations decried the forthcoming plan as “unconstitutional and un-American.â€
This proposal is among other aggressive plans the Bush administration has put in place such as new wiretapping regulations and authorizing greater sharing of intelligence information with the local police. The Director of National Intelligence has set up – Information Sharing Environment – where certain police authorities will have access to information produced by the FBI, by the intelligence community and also by police departments around the country.
It is “one stop shopping” for all these different police agencies and even private companies to have access to this highly speculative, accusatory, fragmented and often erroneous information.
Intelligence Fusion Centers – which I think is a real problem, particularly since there’s very little oversight of these centers
there’s no way to correct these watch files, – a main problem with the closed system, where no one has an opportunity to go in and say you got this piece wrong.
Related Article : Colorado ‘fusion center’ to step up intelligence gathering during DNC
Mike German Quotes:
- Giving the FBI more authority to collect more information isn’t helping the FBI be more effective.
- Gathering information about innocent people won’t help find guilty people.
- There is no terrorism profile, people are drawn to terrorism for all sorts of reasons.
- Terrorism watch list : 1 million individual records – clearly nobody believes there’s a million terrorists out there.
- The FBI don’t know to this day, how many national security letters they’ve issued.
Guest – Mike German, attorney with the ACLU and former FBI agent. Mike German is a recognized expert in terrorist group behavior, counter-terrorist operations, and right-wing extremism. He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Paula Zahn Now, CNN, and MSNBC and his commentary has been published in the National Law Journal and the Washington Post. Mike served for sixteen years as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is one of the few agents credited with actually having prevented acts of terrorism before it became the FBI’s number one priority.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Jet Propulsion Engineers Win Injunction Over “Unconstitutional†Background Checks
Last year, twenty-eight senior scientists and engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenged the United States government and the California Institute of Technology in a lawsuit claiming that NASA’s new background investigations were unconstitutional. The scientists include members of the Mars Rover program are fighting Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 or (HSPD-12). This directive requires all federal employees and contractors to “voluntarily” sign a form allowing the government the right to investigate them “without limit” for two years- even if they leave government work during that time. NASA and Caltech employees were told, non-compliance will result in immediate termination.
In the interview Bob Nelson describes the drama in a Ninth Circuit Court decision: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction at 4:40pm. The same day around 5pm, JPL managers were approaching the several hundred JPL employees who were non-compliant and reading them an order saying if you don’t comply by Monday, we will advertise your job. You have until 5pm today to decide.
A few minutes before 5pm Bob Nelson brought in a faxed copy of the order by the Ninth Circuit Court judge and told JPL managers that what they’ve done may be illegal, if you have a problem, consult your lawyer. The Ninth Circuit ruled that NASA and the DOJ were out of order and that Caltech was in the wrong for serving as an enforcer.
The lawsuit caused a lot of interest within Caltech alumni who then wrote to the board of trustees and later began to fund the lawsuit. Nelson says, “You can fight the system of a completely entrenched bureacracy that constantly rewrites the rule in their favor.”
Guest – Robert Nelson, Senior Research Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratories and lead plaintiff in the JPL case.
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H.Bruce Franklin – War Stars: The Super Weapon and The American Imagination
Today we welcome cultural historian H Bruce Franklin, author of many books including The Most Important Fish In The Sea and one we will talk with him today titled War Stars: The Superweapon and The American Imagination. One review writes “this book reveals how and why the American quest for the ultimate defensive weapon, guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals has led to the creation of forces increasingly capable of automated global annihilation.”
H.B. Franklin Interview Notes:
Franklin explores the influences of the collective imagination in movies, novels and stories from obscure pre-World War I fiction to modern classics such as Slaughterhouse Five and Dr. Strangelove. War Stars interweaves culture, science, technology and history to demonstrate how the American consciousness shapes ingenious new superweapons while creating its antithesis in art.
Guest – Bruce Franklin, American cultural historian who has authored or edited nineteen books on a range of subjects. As of 2008, he is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He first attained prominence as a Melville scholar and has served as president of the Melville Society. His award-winning books and teaching on science fiction played a major role in establishing academic study of the genre. His books on American prison literature have been said to open an entirely new field of study. His most recent work has focused on relations between the marine environment and American cultural history.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Update: Canadian Rendition Victim Maher Arar
Last month, in the Maher Arar case, the Federal Court of Appeals ruled a 2-1 majority refusing to hold US authorities accountable for complicity in torture abroad. As Law and Disorder listeners may remember, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, traveling back to Canada, was picked up at JFK airport in 2002, detained in solitary confinement for 2 weeks by the US government then deported to Syria where he was interrogated and tortured. Cases involving diplomatic assurances in North America.
Last year, a Canadian commission of inquiry cleared Arar of any links to terrorism and he was given a 10.5 million dollar settlement. Since then, the United States refused to clear his name and now this majority decision rules that his constitutional claims can not be heard in federal court for two reasons. The first reason was based on national security, the second because Mr. Arar, a dual citizen of Canada and Syria, does not have constitutional, due process rights.
Guest – Maria LaHood, Attorney with the Center For Constitutional Rights.
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Deepening Economic Crisis: How Deep, Where Is It Headed, Who is Accountable?
To many, the recent economic downturn could be a rough patch to a full collapse as a financial crisis hits the nation’s markets; add in that the United States is nine months into a significant acceleration in expected energy and food price increases. The distressful interaction is known as a “scissors crisis” among economists. We’ll also discuss the economic sub-genres, such as Military Keynesianism, GWOT spending, and housing markets. This, while Californians made a run on IndymacBank, the biggest bank crisis since 1984. Indymac was started by three former high level people from Countrywide.
Quote: “Even though Iraq is a bad idea, the value of the US military to this country is rising not falling.”
Guests – 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)
Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Hosts Update:
Abu Ghraib Torture Lawsuits Target Military Contractors in US Courts.
Four former Abu Ghraib detainees are suing two U.S. military contractor corporations and three individual contractors. The four were wrongly imprisoned, tortured and later released without charge. According to the complaints, the defendants abused detainees physically and mentally and then destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross. They actually hid detainees and other prisoners from the Red Cross; and misled non-conspiring military and government officials about the state of affairs at the Iraq prisons.
The defendants are CACI International Inc. and CACI Premier Technology, Inc., of Arlington, Va.; L-3 Services Inc., an Alexandria, Va.-based division of L-3 Communications Corp. and three individual contractors, Adel Nakhla, of Maryland, Timothy Dugan, of Ohio, and Daniel Johnson, of Seattle.
Guest – Attorney Susan Burke with Burke O’Neil LLC.
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ACLU To Prevent Deportation Of Egyptian To Torture
The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Pennsylvania challenged the government’s efforts to deport an Egyptian torture victim of Sameh Khouzam. The government claims to be relying on unreviewable “diplomatic assurances” from Egypt that it will not torture him upon his return. Last January, in the first decision of its kind, a federal district court sided with the ACLU and ordered the government to stop the deportation of Sameh Khouzam based on such secret and unreliable promises and release him under conditions of supervision.
However, the Bush administration appealed this ruling, claiming that the executive branch has unfettered authority to deport Khouzam and to detain him indefinitely pending his legal proceedings. Khouzam, a Christian who came to the United States in 1998 fleeing religious persecution in Egypt and a charge of murder, was granted protection from deportation under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) in 2004. This after a federal appeals court found that he would likely be tortured if sent back to Egypt.
Guest – Lee Gelernt, senior staff attorney with ACLU who is working on Sameh’s case.
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Last week, Courage to Resist, Veterans for Peace, and Project Safe Haven took to the streets of major US cities in a national day of action. Recently, the Canadian Federal Court sided for the first time with a US war resister, disagreeing with the Immigration and Refugee Board decision and ordering a re-hearing for military deserter Joshua Key, his wife Brandi, and their four children.
Josh Key moved to Canada during a 2 week leave from the Army. On July 4th, 2008, Joshua Key won a Federal Court appeal thus forcing the Refugee board to re-examine his asylum claim of conscientious objector and Iraq war veteran. The court ruled that Key had been forced to systematically violate the Geneva Conventions as part of his military service in Iraq and that such misconduct amounts to a legitimate refugee claim.
In another case, former National Guard soldier Corey Glass of Fairmount Indiana is facing deportation from Canada. He was recently told that his application to stay in Canada for “humanitarian and compassionate†reasons has been rejected. This, as Pentagon officials suggest he has been discharged and the U.S. Army is not seeking to persecute Glass. But Glass’ lawyer, Alyssa Manning of Parkdale Legal Community Services, says the reports are untrue. Manning says quote “He would be a felon, he’d be criminally inadmissible to Canada; he’d potentially be imprisoned as well as subjected to non-traditional punishment such as ‘hazing’ (within the military)
Canada: Abide by resolution – Let U.S. war resisters stay!
Guest – Matthis Chiroux with Iraq Veterans Against the War.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Green Scare, Guantanamo, Human Rights, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Green Scare: The Case of Briana Waters Update
Briana Waters, 32 was sentenced to six years in federal prison and ordered to pay $6 million in restitution by U.S. District Court Judge Franklin Burgess, who also declined her lawyer’s request that Waters be released on her own recognizance pending appeal. Here on Law and Disorder we’ve discussed how (since December 2005) environmental activists in the United States have been targeted and handed unusually harsh prison sentences. It’s been called Green Scare.
Briana was accused of acting as a lookout in the conspiracy to set fire to the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001. This, despite evidence presented by the defense that she was 60 miles away at the time of the arson. Others claimed responsibility for the fire. How the Government Targets Eco-Activists. Listen to NLG event.
Federal “conspiracy law†is often used by prosecutors to take down drug dealers, the same legal approach is used to charge environmental protesters. Once the judge accepts the charge of conspiracy, here-say is admissible making conspiracy and very easy to prove in court.
Last year the NLG established a hotline 1-888-NLG-ECOL for activists who had been targeted by the FBI for environmental activism.
Guest: Ben Rosenfeld, California Civil Rights attorney
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Taking Back The Right To Dissent: The Case of the Bangor Six
Recently, jurors in the Case of the ‘Bangor Six’ brought back a decisive verdict of ‘not guilty.’ The six veterans for peace, anti war protesters were arrested in March of last year after refusing to leave the federal building where their senator, Republican Susan Collins has her office. The six activists were among 12 that say they were protesting Bush’s proposal to increase troops in Iraq to support a military strategy known s the surge and also urged Collins to vote against continued funding for the war. Collins did not vote against funding for the war and did not meet with activists. Six of the activists were later arrested. (Collins Watch)
During this trial, the jury was allowed by the judge to decide whether the defendants believed that they were not guilty in making a conscious choice to break Maine law because they thought international law was being violated. The jurors decided unanimously that the protesters did believe they had the ‘license and privilege’ to act as they did, in rendering the ‘not guilty’ verdict.
Guest – Bar Harbor attorney Lynne Williams, also with Maine Lawyers for Democracy a group of 65 Maine lawyers, calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
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Amnesty International USA: Guantanamo Cell Replica
This past week, Amnesty International USA hauled a life size Guantanamo cell replica to the National mall in Washington DC. Activists and tourists gathered to experience the bleakness of being held in such confinement without hope. The cell replica visited the nation’s capital as a U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee heard testimony on harsh interrogation techniques from Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington and former U.S. Justice Department lawyer John Yoo.
We listen to voices of tourists, activists and James Yee, former US Army chaplain, who ministered to Muslim detainees held at Guantánamo Bay Naval base. Yee as listeners may know, was the subject to an intense investigation by the United States. A special thank you to Karen Miller for gathering the audio for this segment.
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