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

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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

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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.
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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.

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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.

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Law and Disorder July 25, 2011

Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister

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Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope

We  hear a talk from our own Michael Ratner who spoke at the James A Little Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was also in conversation with radio host Mary Charlotte Domandi. The event was titled –  Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope.” Michael is introduced by Mary-Charlotte Domandi producer and host of the Santa Fe Radio Cafe on KSFR 101.1 FM (Santa Fe, NM, Public Radio)

Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. Both are non-profit human rights litigation organizations. He was part of the small group of lawyers that first took on representation of the Guantánamo detainees in January 2001, a case that resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court in 2004. CCR established a network of over 600 pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantánamo detainees and continues that work.

He has filed criminal complaints in the courts of Germany, France and Spain against former US officials including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seeking the initiation of criminal prosecutions against them for the Abu Ghraib abuse and torture as well as for their actions at Guantánamo. Recently, CCR and ECCHR prepared papers to file in Switzerland against George W. Bush for torture. As a result Bush canceled his trip. A major area of Mr. Ratner’s litigation and writing is the enforcement of the prohibition on torture and murder against various dictators and generals who travel to the United States. He has sued on behalf of victims in Guatemala, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, among other countries. He has also litigated numerous suits to prevent or stop illegal US wars ranging from Central America to Iraq. A constant in his work has been litigation against government spying and surveillance of activists.

Michael Ratner’s books, authored or coauthored, include the soon to be published, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (2011) and Killing Che: How the CIA Got Away with Murder (2011). Other books include International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, Second Edition (2008); Against War with Iraq (2003); Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (2004); and The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book (2008). Ratner has taught human rights litigation at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Ratner has received many awards including Trial Lawyer of the Year, the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor (2005), the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award, Honorary Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2005), and The Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2007). In 2006, the National Law Journal named Ratner one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.

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Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats

There is a sprawling hidden world of counter-terrorism organizations growing beyond control in the United States. Twenty-four of them were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. The next year, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction and collect threat tips. By 2009, nearly 260 organizations were created as 854 thousand civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances monitor national security concerns. However, according to a report from the Public Research Associates, those same  concerns have bolstered a class of self-proclaimed terrorism experts who decry Islam as an evil religion of terrorists and routinely brand Muslims as primitive, vengeful, duplicitous, and belligerent people who oppress women and gays, and have values irreconcilable with “western Judeo-Christian civilization.”

In fact, when PRA discovered earlier this year that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) had contracted with Security Solutions International to con­duct a training on radical Islam, they noti­fied the Muslim American Society, ACLU, and our other advocacy partners, who used PRA’s research to compel the MBTA to cancel the agency’s training.

Chip Berlet :

  • As part of the Homeland Security Initiatives and working with the FBI in other aspects of the national security apparatus, there was a need to train thousands as part of a local state and federal counter-terrorism “experts.”
  • Some of these trainings are quite good. The problem is that there are a handful of groups that train hundreds and hundreds of local, state and federal counter-terrorism experts, with rhetoric that is basically Islamophobic.
  • In the late 1970s there was an attempt to restrain this illegal surveillance. I’d have to say right now it’s worse.
  • What used to be done illegally and covertly is now done ostensibly legally and openly and in fact proudly by both Democrats and Republicans who should be ashamed.
  • The whole strategic suspicious reporting initiative which basically is a pipeline for unverified rumor and innuendo through local police departments up through a chain of information agencies to the federal government.  We know in Europe this kind of reporting is unconstitutional and bad for society.
  • Now, everyone that was considered illegal and unconstitutional for which there were Congressional hearings and reforms under Jimmy Carter, now we do it.
  • In proper training that is actually looking for criminal activity, not people of color who wear garb that we’re scared of.  What’s going on here is untrained, badly trained officers are reporting the names of people up into a huge infrastructure of information data storage, based on bias they’ve not been trained to resist or confront within themselves.
  • We described this whole process as a platform for prejudice in a report by Tom Cincotta
  • Tom has on his wall a wall chart of all the agencies of this information reporting system and it has 150 dots so inter-connected, no one can control this.
  • I’m urging people to form broad coalitions across the political spectrum.

Guest – Chip Berlet, (senior analyst) is a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and the St. Louis Journalism Review.

Law and Disorder December 27, 2010

Climate Change, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture

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Updates:

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Economic Recovery? Austerity in the US and Abroad

In our previous interview with Professor of Economics, Rick Wolff, we talked about austerity, that is imposing on society a severe regimen of rising taxes, or cut government spending to please and satisfy creditors.  Massive protests erupt against austerity in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and soon maybe Spain, as governments raise college tuition, taxes, retirement ages plus cutting worker benefits and wages. These austerity measures are about to hit the United States. Veiled in the recent tax deal with the Republicans is a decision Americans will need to make. Higher taxes or cut services? With growing debts made worse by Obama’s tax deal, the US moves quickly toward austerity while the political establishment and the media mostly pretend all is well says Rick Wolff.

Professor Rick Wolff:

  • In order to get anything through, the President had to accomodate the richest people in the United States and the biggest corporations.  I’m going to allow you to pass even more wealth to your children or the people who inherit your estate. Here’s an extra gift, the estate tax.
  • These are the people who did the best over the last 30 years. Wage earners and salary earners went nowhere, but people rich enough to own shares in the stock market made out like bandits.
  • Estate tax, you can earn money for the state to run services we all need by taxing the super-rich so they’re not quite so far ahead. What this last bill does . . rich people in America were already allowed to leave 3.5 million dollars for each person (husband/wife) to their children or anyone else and the federal government wouldn’t touch it.
  • Less than one half percent of Americans who even have this amount of money.
  • This new law raises the amount from 7 million per couple to 10 million per couple. The new tax law also reduces the amount to pay from 45 to 35 percent.  A gift in the millions for the super-rich.
  • Translating into billions of dollars that are now going to be saved by the richest people in the United States.  We’re going to be talking about the difficulties the government has in doing things because it doesn’t have money. The government just gave away the store to richest one half of one percent.
  • What the rich do when they get a break like this, and when you turn to Wall Street, the hottest investments are in other parts of the world. Funding economic development in other parts of the world.
  • Unemployment is as high as it was a year ago. Foreclosures are running at a multi-million dollar clip per year.
  • Last month the Federal Reserve decided to print another 600 million dollars. My view is we’ve got years of unemployment ahead of us, years of a disasterous housing market, very few signs of recovery.
  • The worst has yet to hit. It takes time for states to crumble.
  • The municipal bond market, the debts of cities and towns are going to see significant default.
  • You need organization to act in historic moments that moments where people need action.
  • The flow of jobs from the United States to other parts of the world is continuing. American corporations don’t see the US as a “growth area.” They’re focused elsewhere.
  • We’re becoming a society where large numbers of people are living on the margins. It’s a new experience in this country after a century of being a little different from that.

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.

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Two Year Evaluation of  the Obama Administration

There is a long list of items progressive Americans had hoped to accomplish through the Obama Administration. In our interview with Roger Hodge, author of The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism, Hodge says Obama didn’t fight for anything worth fighting for. With corporate backers such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi-Group,  the Obama Administration has been severely compromised. These corporations expect something in return. The Obama Administration has been criticized for expanded the wars abroad from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, criticized for continuing the Guantanamo detention policies, the Wall Street bailouts and bargaining with the Healthcare bill as a bailout for insurance companies. In this aftermath of 2010 and we look  back to 2008.

Nellie Hester Bailey:

  • A browner hue of imperialism. The policy of the US government at home and abroad would remain the same. When we look at the platform of then presidential candidate Barack Obama, he made very clear that he was a centrist candidate. In many instances to the right of Hillary Clinton, if one can imagine that.
  • We were never taken in, mesmerized, blinded . . we knew very well who he was.
  • He has proven to be much worse than anticipated. Not for me but for my colleagues who were cautiously optimistic.
  • On January 20th, President Obama is going to deliver his State of the Union Address. Everyone expects this is going to be the prelude for another deadly compromise for the working class.
  • There was a study done in the Guardian newspaper and amazingly African Americans were more optimistic about their economic situation and felt much more secure under Barack Obama’s administration than ever before.  When in fact just the opposite is true.
  • African Americans have lost trillions of dollars in the housing crisis, the mortgage scam.
  • We have to remember it was President Barack Obama that gave the banks a free ride.
  • We have added 9 billion dollars to the deficit with this tax cut deal, that is extending the tax cuts to the 2 percent of the wealthy. We are supposed to believe that he did this for us? The poor and the working class?
  • Unlike the right wing, I believe he will be a one term president.
  • What we need for the working poor and African Americans is the blinders to be pulled off, so people can see what it is that we are dealing with.  When you look at the report from the CDC where have a 50 percent increase in the number of people that are uninsured.
  • The work force is being reduced, we are expected to work longer hours, we are expected to retire later in life, we are being worked to death.  These are the undeniable realities.
  • You can no longer herd the people like sheep into this nightmare of compromise.
  • After 2 years, I think progressives for Obama need to step back and realize their responsibility for building a working class people, multi-racial movement.
  • You have to commit to a movement, you don’t do that as an individual.
  • Open Letter to encourage self-proclaimed left leaders such as Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and Barbara Ehrenreich to move from critical support into active opposition of the administrations agenda.
  • I co-host a program with Glen Ford who is the Executive editor of Black Agenda Report.
  • Black Agenda Report, we air on Mondays at 5 PM.

Guest – Nellie Hester Bailey, human rights activist who has worked in peace and justice movements for over forty years. From her early organizing with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, to tenant rights and anti-war struggles, to advocacy on behalf of women Bailey has been at the forefront of social justice and social change organizing.   Bailey co-founded the Harlem Tenants Council (HTC) in 1994. She currently serves as Director of the tenant led grassroots organization based on the self-determination tradition of radical activism that provides anti-displacement organizing for poor and working class families primarily in Central Harlem

Bailey is co-founder of Blacks in Solidarity Against the War that in 2005 help stage the largest anti-war demonstration in Harlem since the invasion of Iraq.  A founding member of Cuba Solidarity New York,  Bailey traveled to Cuba on three separate occasions.

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Law and Disorder October 18, 2010

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture

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Updates:

  1. Anwar Al-Aulaqi Case – Drones Targeting US Citizens – Obama Wants To Dismiss CCR/ACLU Case
  2. CCR Guantanamo So Called Suicide Cases
  3. Supreme Court Will Not Review Case On Feds Wiretapping Guantanamo Lawyers
  4. Bombing of the USS Cole – Could Prosecutors Use The Fruit From the Poisonous Tree?

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NYC NLG Street Law and Racial Profiling Program

Today we’re joined by Paula Segal and Gabriela Lopez with the New York City Lawyers Guild Street Law Clinic Program. The project sends groups of attorneys to conduct “Street Law” workshops with a range of students in high school. We’re also joined by students from the Aarturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy High School who were part of the street law classes.

Street Law Students:

  • In my neighborhood it’s really common for the Police to bother you for no reason. I don’t think they had the right to go into my pockets unless they had reasonable suspicion. This happens at least 3 times a week.
  • One time they took me into the precinct, took my picture, ran my fingerprints.
  • I was getting off the train and these two big police men were getting off the train and they stopped me. They said we have her on the walkie-talkie.  This women said take off your sneakers. She kept asking, where is it? Where is it? That’s when she started to get physical and she lifted up my shirt. “If you don’t f-in’ tell me where it’s at, I’m going to strip search you. It happened on Elder Avenue, next to the 6 train.
  • They say no, we’re not going to touch you, then he throws me on the car.
  • You guys are unfolding my socks right now, and I don’t like this. There’s a certain way that I fold my socks.
  • After they find nothing, they say you should change your attitude. I said, you should change your attitude.
  • A lot of cops judge character, when I see cops, you have to give them an expression. Hey look I’m out here, I’m not tryin to get in that car.
  • I’m thinking about the cops catching the real villans. If you’re really guilty you’re going to get hassled, if you’re not guilty,then you can be free.  The advice I get from the street law project is not consenting to the search.
  • From my knowledge, the cops need a certain amount of arrests at the end of the month, so they’ll pick on anybody.  They curse a lot. Undercover cops, they’ll probably have on a hoodie, try to fit in with everybody else, it just don’t work.
  • Law Student Paula Segal: We focus on giving people tools to walk away, to avoid arrest.
  • Law Student, Street Law Coordinator Gabriella Lopez: Last year we went to more than sixty different sites. Sixty to Seventy different trainings that occured last year.
  • Email the Street Law Team – streetlawteam@gmail.com

Guests – Paula Segal and Gabriela Lopez with the New York City Lawyers Guild Street Law Clinic Program. Aarturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy High School Students: Charisma Whaley / Joseph Campbell / Kiara Avila / Stephanie Colon / Jonathan Jeffries.

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Grand Juries Historically and the Minneapolis / Chicago FBI Raids

A total of 12 people were served with subpoenas during last months FBI raids in Minneapolis and Chicago. The FBI targeted anti-war peace activists and key organizers of demonstrations and marches who have been asked to appear before a grand jury. What is a grand jury? Historically, a grand jury was supposed to be citizens coming together to determine if charges should be filed criminally against someone. Today, it’s very different. It’s mostly a rubber stamp for what the prosecutors want. If you refuse to testify at a grand jury, you can be taken to a judge to answer questions. If you refuse to answer those questions you could be put in jail.

Margaret Ratner-Kunstler:

  • If you were subpoenaed before a grand jury in 1968 and you asserted your grand jury right, then that really was the end of your participation in the grand jury.
  • You asserted immunity and if you we’re given immunity, you couldn’t be indicted.
  • Immunity: Nothing you say could be used against you, but anything you testified about could not be the subject of a criminal indictment against you.  Your words could not be held against you, or the fruits of those words. But it’s so easy to get around that, by a prosecutor saying, this didn’t come from this.
  • If you then refused to testify given this minor immunity, you could be subject to imprisonment.
  • If you refuse to testify you’re brought back before the judge and the judge then holds you in “civil contempt.”
  • The grand jury is usually about 18 months. The grand jury in Chicago is a special grand jury which means it’s twice as long.
  • That’s important because if you’re held in civil contempt, the keys to the jail are in your pocket. You’re in jail for as long as you refuse to testify.
  • If you say something you could wave your fifth amendment right by already saying something.
  • The recent FBI raids represents the tremendous see-change we have in terms of the ability for people to actively oppose this government’s policy.
  • In 1983, there were many groups in this country who were joining forces with progressive groups in Central America.  You had the Committee in Solidarity With the People Of El Salvador.
  • Each of the 11 individual persons subpeoned wrote letters to the Attorney General saying that they would assert their fifth amendment right and that they would not testify.
  • If they can’t get you on a federal charge it’s often that they’re looking for a mistake you made in conversation, even an informal conversation with a federal official.

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Kunstler is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

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Law and Disorder May 24, 2010

Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Torture, Truth to Power

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Updates:

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Labor Relations at the American Red Cross and It’s Impact on Employee and Donor Safety (PDF)

Hosts look at a suprising report detailing the cost cutting efforts within America’s premier disaster relief and blood donor organization, the American Red Cross. Award winning Washington based reporter Philip Dine has put together an investigative summary titled – (PDF)Labor Relations at the American Red Cross and It’s Impact on Employee and Donor Safety that enumerates the effects of cut backs that have led to bad labor relations, bungled disaster relief, mishandled blood supplies and federal fines. The investigation examines a far less publicized issue that involves the treatment of Red Cross employees and the impact this has on the organization’s work, with high turnover, younger employees and lower wages.

Philip Dine:

  • Over the years, the Feds saw that the Red Cross was not living up to its promises.
  • Red Cross labor relations: For years the Red Cross has been intent on degrading the training and expertise of the employees.
  • At one point you needed doctors on site for blood drives, then it became registered nurses, then it became nurses on call, and then non-medically trained supervisors.
  • It seems that the Red Cross wants to have more management control and lower pay and that basically means a disposable work force.
  • Management mess: 10 Executive directors in 12 years.
  • High turnover at the top, a budget deficit, despite the main money maker – the blood supply which they get for free. It accounts for 2/3 of revenue.  Calling for an audit
  • Workers increasingly hired from fast food outlets with no experience, workers see co-workers improperly inserting needles into people. More articles
  • I’ve been covering labor for 25 years/ Please contact Philip Dine directly at – philipmdine@aol.com

Guest – Philip Dine author of “State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence.”  Philip Dine is teaching a labor-management course at the George Washington University School of Business this fall.  State of the Unions has won honorable mention for best book about labor or work of the past five years from the United Association for Labor Education.

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Medical Students Advocate Against Health Professional Participation in Torture

Last year it was confirmed that doctors and psychologists were directly involved in the supervision, design and execution of torture at U.S. military and intelligence facilities. This is a violation of state laws and professional ethics. These “health professionals” that were involved in the torture still hold their professional licenses to practice. Legislation introduced in New York by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and Senator Tom Duane would reinforce existing ethical and legal responsibilities by prohibiting state-licensed doctors and other health professionals from participating in such practices. The law would also call for legal protection to resist and report any involvement in acts of torture and abuse. Last week, medical students and health professionals descended on Albany to meet with law makers to advocate the passage of this historic legislation. Physicians For Human Rights / When Healers Harm

Dr.Allen Keller:

  • If you’re a health professional that participated in torture, you can lose your license.
  • Health professionals were front and center and complicit in this policy of torture.
  • Medical professionals provided sanitizing and rationalization for those infamous torture memos.
  • During water-boarding there would be a doctor there. This is clearly a breach of medical and professional ethics.
  • Licenses issued by the state.  Torturers relied heavily on medical opinion.
  • The state chapter of the New York Psychological Association has endorsed this bill.
  • What I believe is that the interrogator looks at the health professional and says, well, if it gets out of hand, the medical professional will stop me.
  • Suvivorsoftorture.org – The Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture provides comprehensive medical and mental health care, as well as social and legal services to survivors of torture and war traumas and their family members. In the past year alone we provided these multidisciplinary services to more than 600 people from 70 countries.

Guest – Dr. Allen Keller, founder and director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. In addition to serving as a primary care physician for many patients in the Program (Dr. Keller speaks French and Spanish). Dr. Keller oversees and coordinates the provision of medical services for Program patients, working with other primary care physicians and medical specialists affiliated with the program.

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Law and Disorder November 9, 2009

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power

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Updates

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ENCORE:  Cuban Five Update: The Re-sentencing of Antonio Guerrero

Earlier this month, Federal Judge Joan A Lenardo replaced the life sentence for Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five.  Mr. Guerrero, a United States citizen, was convicted of spying for Cuba while working at the Naval Air Station in Key West.   His sentence was reduced to almost 22 years, which means he could be out of prison in nearly seven years. Mr Guerrero’s attorneys had asked for the sentence to be reduced to 240 months, but Judge Lenardo set it at 262 months.
Mr. Guerrero’s lawyer, Len Weinglass told the New York Times, it was an odd decision,  he said   “You have a man who was on a military base but who didn’t take a single classified document and no one testified that he injured U.S. national security, but the judge still rejects the prosecutors’ request to lighten the sentence.”  Transcript of Hearing

Len Weinglass:

  • Antonio Guerrero who I represent, was originally sentenced to life in prison.
  • The appellate courts reduced the life sentence for the conspiracy to commit espionage against 3 of the Cuban Five
  • The decision only remanded life sentences for ultimately 2 of the Cuban Five including Antonio Guerrero
  • We returned to Miami for the re-sentencing on October 13.  Prior to the re-sentencing, we negotiated with the government on the issue of re-sentencing alone, making it clear there was no admission of guilt on the underlying charge, which we are still contesting on a later collateral attack.
  • We agreed that it should come down from a life sentence to a period of 20 years.
  • In Miami, the judge took the very unusual step of setting the agreement aside, and set the term to 21 years and 10 months.
  • You can’t give a life sentence ( in this case) on what they intended to get, you can only give a life sentence  on top secret information they did get. So, the original life sentence was wrong.
  • When we got into the re-sentencing hearing, she got back to her original position as if the appellate court hadn’t ruled.
  • I got very upset, the courtroom was packed. Packed with the same old crowd. The crowd in Miami that backs these para-miltary forces, they put the widows up front.
  • I got upset at what I sought to be a climate that was being generated in that hearing and so I reminded the judge very forcibly that she was sentencing an individual not a country.
  • I had given the court government documents from the Bureau of Prisons, all of them saying that Antonio Guerrero who was serving a faulty life sentence, and sent to a maxium security prison, which he shouldn’t have been sent, because the sentence was wrong.
  • But the warden, his counselor and the supervisor of the unit, all extolled his behavior and most significantly pointed out that he had helped save a number of inmates all of whom were doing life sentences, from an encouragable future, by training them in English and Math and overseeing them getting their GED.
  • At that time, she was about to pronounce sentence, then she stopped, walked off the bench.
  • When the judge came back, the first thing she did is recite a Supreme Court decision, all federal judges must sentence an individual according to his character.
  • Antonio was 39 when he was arrested and he will be nearly 60 when he is released. That’s the heart of a lifetime.
  • There was no acknowledgment of context here. That this was provoked by a pattern of violence by the US directed at Cuba. Where more than 3000 people have died in the past 40 years from violence coming from Southern Florida.
  • The Cuban Five performed their task, nobody was harmed, no property damaged and they end up with life sentences for that operation.
  • It came to light that the federal government was paying members of the press in Miami as part of their anti-Castro campaign to write articles about this case that were highly prejudicial. People who were reporters but were on the federal payroll.
  • Can the government be responsible for creating a prejudicial atmosphere?
  • He was at the most hard-nosed prison and after seven years the warden of that prison wrote the Regional Bureau of Prisons, asking that Antonio be released from that prison.  He doesn’t belong, there, he is a lovely sensitive man.

Guest – Attorney Len Weinglass, who represented the Cuban Five, as William Kunstler’s younger partner, Len Weinglass was considered the work horse of the defense team. He’s worked on a number of political cases including the Pentagon Papers trial and the Angela Davis case. He’s a Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Air Force Captain.

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EFFPatriotAct EFF-logo

Will The Sun Set On Surveillance? Patriot Act Reform

Recently, the House of Representatives introduced their own USA Patriot Act reform bill, responding to the Patriot Act renewal bill approved by tthe Senate Judiciary Committee. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says it’s a significant improvement over the earlier Senate bill that gave more authority to government spying power. The renewal bill was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. and others including Civil Liberties Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler; and Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott. These bills are proposals that could pave the way to dismantle the broad surveillance and overreaching executive power currently intact.

Kevin Bankston:

  • Patriot passed after 9/11/2001 – a lot of the provisions were set to expire in 2005, most of those were renewed, but there were 3 provisions left to expire in the end of 2009.
  • Provisions that expanded the government’s power to get orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or any tangible thing, mostly business records. They’re mostly called section 215 orders, under the Patriot Act section 215.
  • Roving wiretaps, more accurately roving “john doe” wiretaps. One that doesn’t name target, or address of target. (These sound the like the warrants our founders rebeled against)
  • Lone Wolf authority, whereby the government can get wiretapping authorities from the FISA court for people who are unrelated to any foreign power but are suspect to engage in or preparing to engage in crimes related to terrorism.
  • The Lone Wolf authority begins to un-moor from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – it looks to be unconstitutional under the fourth amendment. Most in Obama Administration want this to expire.
  • Those are the 3 set to expire. Though worrisome, more worrisome is the National Security Letter Authority, whereby the FBI can write a letter to the court, without suspicion of terrorism, and get bank, telephone and internet records.
  • The Justice Act – Senator Feingold / Durman – reform patriot act authorities- including FISA surveillance act passed last summer, which allows foreign surveillance of Americans.
  • Also, repealing telecom immunity – Reforming the Patriot Act without addressing FISA is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
  • Unfortunately, Senator Leheay, instead of sponsoring Feingold’s Justice Act reform bill, came out with his own bill that didn’t address the FISA amendment acts at all. That was the bill the Judiciary Committee considered 6 weeks ago.
  • The Republicans offered to remove reforms to the already watered down bill, and the Republicans say they got their reforms from the Obama Administration.  The Obama Administration is not only falling down on its promise to reform the Patriot Act, it is working through Republicans to make these bills even worse.
  • So that’s when the USA Patriot Act reform bill, responding to the Patriot Act renewal bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee was proposed.
  • We have 2 lawsuits, the first was brought against AT&T in early 2006 based on news reports and whistle blower evidence based on an AT&T technician info, that the NSA had backdoor access to key domestic communication switches.
  • Whereby the NSA was sucking up millions upon millions of communications and then sorting out the stuff they were interesting in.
  • If the telecom companies aren’t willing to say “NO” when the government secretly comes to them and asks them to break the law, then all of our privacy is in big trouble.
  • We sued AT&T and then Congress passed this Telecom Immunity last summer, and our case along with others were dismissed. If the Repealing of the Telecom Immunity passes, our cases will be revived.
  • Obama can end the Telcom Immunity right now, and have Attorney General Holder withdraw the certification on which the immunity is based.

Guest –  Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney specializing in free speech and privacy law, was the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow for 2003-05. His fellowship project focused on the impact of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws and surveillance initiatives on online privacy and free expression. Before joining EFF, Kevin was the Justice William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. At the ACLU, Kevin litigated Internet-related free speech cases, including First Amendment challenges to both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Edelman v. N2H2, Inc.) and a federal statute regulating Internet speech in public libraries (American Library Association v. U.S.). Kevin received his J.D. in 2001 from the University of Southern California Law Center, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in Austin.

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