Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Death Penalty, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- FDNY Lawsuit Update
- Guatemalan Genocide Verdict Overturned
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We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks – Michael Ratner
Our own Michael Ratner delivers a critical review of the film documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks” by director Alex Gibney. The annotated transcript, reveals errors, rank speculation and a focus on personality that detracts from the important revelations by Manning and published by WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning’s 12-week trial commences on Monday (3 June) and the film may have been released to take advantage of that date. Manning may face life in prison and could potentially face the death penalty. Julian Assange remains in the Ecuadorian embassy legitimately fearful that extradition to Sweden is a one way ticket to the US and potential for life in prison.
Attorney Michael Ratner, attorney in the US for Julian Assange and Wikileaks:
- (The film) does a great disservice to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.
- I think it trivializes the incredible courage that both of them had as well as what was revealed by the documents.
- Julian Assange declined an interview by Alex Gibney and no one currently associated with Wikileaks participated in the film. This may explain in part Gibney’s poor treatment of Julian Assange.
- What grabs you immediately is the title, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.” Wikileaks is a publisher. Yet the title implies that the story of Wikileaks is the story of it stealing secrets.
- That implication plays into the government’s theory that somehow Wikileaks and Julian Assange are co-conspirators with Bradley Manning in taking secrets. The film does so in other places as well.
- A second criticism is that part of the film focuses on Bradley Manning’s psychological problems and implies that those are the basis for Manning’s revelation of documents.
- Gibney has said as much in interviews given after the film: “I think it raises big issues about who whistleblowers are, because they are alienated people who don’t get along with people around them, which motivates them to do what they do.”
- In fact, Manning gave an incredibly moving political explanation for each leak of documents; an explanation not covered in any detail in the film.
- Third, Gibney claims Wikileaks is dead. Nothing could be more of fable.
- Since December 2011 Wikileaks has released the SpyFiles, the Stratfor emails dubbed the GIFiles, the Syria Files and in April 2013 both Cablegate and 1.7 million Kissinger Cables in an easily searchable Plus Public Library of US Diplomacy.
- Fourth, somehow, Gibney claims there are no charges filed against Julian Assange. How does he know that? It’s a secret Grand Jury, and if there’s an indictment, it’s going to be a sealed indictment because an indictment is not made public when a person is not in custody. In fact, there is significant, irrefutable evidence of an on going investigation and its likely there is a sealed indictment.
- Gibney diminishes the risk to Julian Assange if he were sent to the United States because he wants to claim that Assange is in the embassy to avoid going to Sweden to answer questions about sexual misconduct allegations. But it does not work. Were Sweden to guarantee Assange would not be sent to US he would go there to answer questions.
- Assange has also offered to answer those questions in the embassy–Sweden has refused. In the end, the problem is the United States–Gibney, in his effort to demean Assange, needs to play down the huge risk he faces in the US.
Law and Disorder Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. Ratner is also a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights.
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Palestinian Prisoners Legal Support: Addameer
On the 17th of April, hundreds of Palestinians filled the streets in the West Bank in protest to mark Palestinian Prisoners Day. Right now there nearly 5000 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails, 14 of them are women. More than half have been convicted, 33 percent have not been sentenced and 3 percent are being held in administrative detention. 235 of Palestinian prisoners are minors ranging in age from 14 to 18. As many listeners may know, Palestinian activists are often targeted and detained. In prison, tactics are used such as solitary confinement and forbidding family contact.
Attorney Sahar Francis:
- Currently there are still 4900 Palestinians inside Israeli prisons. Most of them are adults. There are 236 minors under age 18. 14 women and 14 Parliamentarians.
- The majority of them I would say were arrested because of political activism and being involved in the peaceful struggle, and resistance especially in the last couple of years against the wall, the checkpoints, the settlements, land confiscation, house demolition all these practices of the occupation.
- Including Jerusalem residents, they would be arrested inside Israel but they could be subjected to 2 different legal systems. The Israeli legal system or the military system that applies just to the Occupied Territories.
- Settlers are not subjected to the military court system that is imposed on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
- It’s violation of International Law to move them to prisons inside Israel. This is what Israel was doing since 1995.
- They moved the prisoners from prisons inside the Occupied Territories to prisons inside Israel and this is a violation for the 4th Geneva Convention Act actually.
- The number of Palestinian prisoners decreased compared to previous years, 2005, 2006.
- Since 1967 til today more than 750 thousand Palestinians were arrested. It’s almost hitting every Palestinian house. It’s estimated to be about 40 percent of the Palestinian men population that were at least once incarcerated in their life.
- In the 7 years of Oslo, Israel kept 1500 political prisoners.
- Now I can say that the majority of the prisoners would be sentenced for periods less than 10 years.
- There’s around 430 of them sentenced for life.
- We still have cases of families where they have 4 sons or 5 sons in the same time in prison.
- In some cases they (the sons) would be distributed in all prisons, in north, south of Israel and the mother would be traveling all the way trying to visit them.
- The women prisoners number was much higher we used to have 120 female prisoners.
- Most of them involved in political activism, mainly supporting their brothers or husbands in their political activism or in stop cases involved in trying to stop soldiers.
- Addamer was established in 1991 by ex Palestinian political prisoners and lawyers who were aiming to give legal support for free to Palestinian prisoners in military court system.
- Our focus is on political arrests. We have 8 members in Addamer. We are members of the Israeli Bar Association and members of the Palestinian Bar Association.
- Most of the cases in military court would end in plea bargain without exhausting the system because neither the system or the lawyers don’t have much trust in the system.
- You could end up being interrogated in the detention centers inside Israel and they will decide whether to transfer the case for the civil prosecution or the military prosecution.
- You can have a person 90 days before charging them (military system) Civil system it’s 35 days.
- Law In These Parts – Film Documentary.
- Regarding torture and terms such as enhanced interrogation techniques : In our place its called moderate physical pressure.
- We can’t sue them because the prosecutors claim out of necessity we used the torture.
- Seeing the photos of Abu-Ghraib with this sack on the detainee’s heads, this was used in the Palestinians case since the early years of the occupation.
- This is the method that was used to prevent them from breathing, from sleeping, and they were tied to these kindergarten small chairs with the sack on their head, with playing music 24 hours a day. Then after in this position for 2 weeks, the interrogator shake you.
- We’re promoting Boycott Divest and Sanction.
Guest – Sahar Francis, human rights lawyer and director of the Palestinian NGO Addamer. (Arabic for conscience) Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association is a Palestinian non-governmental, civil institution which focuses on human rights issues. Established in 1992 by a group of activists interested in human rights, the center offers support to Palestinian prisoners, advocates the rights of political prisoners, and works to end torture through monitoring, legal procedures and solidarity campaigns.It’s an organization offering legal services to political prisoners under Israeli occupation and represents prisoners in Israeli military and civil courts.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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MOVE Bombing: 28th Anniversary
This week marks the 28th anniversary of an armed police mission in Philadelphia that ended in a helicopter bombing of the headquarters of the group known as MOVE. The fire commissioner in that city allowed a fire to rage unabated at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, killing six adults and five children, destroying 65 homes and leaving more than 200 people homeless. Despite two Grand Jury investigations, and a commission finding that top officials were grossly negligent, no one from city government was ever criminally charged. A recent film called Let the Fire Burn, chronicles the events leading up to the conflagration.
Ramona Africa:
- The government, through the media had mislead people to believe that what happened in May of 1985 was because of complaints from neighbors which is absolutely not true.
- What happened on May 13, 1985 happened because of our unrelenting fight for the release of our innocent sisters and brothers known as the MOVE 9 who were arrested in August 1978.
- After years of abuse, physical abuse, judicial abuse by this system, MOVE babies being killed through miscarriage and a 3 week old baby being trampled to death by police, after countless unprovoked beatings of MOVE men and women, children, even pregnant women, MOVE people took a stand and said listen, we are uncompromisingly opposed to violence, we’re a peaceful people. We’re not stupid and we’re not masochistic or suicidal.
- We do believe in self defense which is the law, the law of life. There is not a species on this Earth that doesn’t defend itself, when threatened, when attacked.
- When MOVE took that stand, the government became enraged.
- They alleged housing code violations, and they wanted MOVE to move out of the home based on housing code violations.
- MOVE people wouldn’t go along with that. A judge gave MOVE people til August 1 to get out.
- On August 2, 1985, a judge issued warrants on any MOVE people he knew of including people he knew were not in the house.
- After the warrants were issued, hundreds and hundreds of cops were sent out to our home.
- They shot thousands of bullets into that house. The fire department used deluge hoses to flood our home.
- The officer that was killed was standing on street level while everybody including the police acknowledged that all MOVE people were in the basement of our home.
- This policeman was shot from a bullet traveling on a downward angle.
- Hours after I was arrested on August 17, the city sent a demolition team out and completely demolished MOVE’s home which was the scene of the crime.
- The MOVE 9 trial was a bench trial, not a jury trial.
- They did it to silence our righteous protest and our unrelenting fight for the release of our family the MOVE 9.
- They came out to our home on Mother’s Day, May 12 1985, with warrants they obtained on May 11.
- The Fire Department as in 1978 was their first mode of attack.
- They came out there to kill, that’s the bottom line.
- When their ten thousand rounds of bullets didn’t kill us, the water hoses, the tear gas didn’t do the job, they concocted a bomb made from powerful military explosives, C4.
- They got the C4 from the federal government, from the FBI.
- The state police helicopter flew over our home without any warning, and two Philadelphia Police bomb squad police officers dropped that bomb on the roof our home. It ignited a fire. They made a conscious decision not to put the fire out.
Guest – Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the 1985 police bombing of the home occupied by members of the MOVE organization. Email Ramona – onamovelleja (at) gmail.com
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Assata Shakur Placed On FBI Terror List
Last week, the FBI placed Assata Shakur on its Most Wanted Terrorists list, while the state of New Jersey raised the bounty on her head to 2 million dollars. These actions fall on the 40th anniversary of the 1973 shoot out in in which police allege Shakur killed a police officer during a traffic stop on the New Jersey turnpike. Assata also known as JoAnne Deborah Byron is an African American activist was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Assata Shakur: Understanding the politics behind the FBI’s new attack.
Eugene Puryear:
- I think why a 65 year old grandmother has been put on the FBI terrorist list is a reflection of the United States government’s fear of that which opposes it.
- Assata Shakur was part of the 60s movements . . . a movement that the Nixon administration attempted to criminalize, to say that political dissent and political opposition to the US government and its imperial moves around the world.
- She does fit the profile of what the US government has been trying to perpetuate for the last 30 years, in a sense an extension of COINTELPRO.
- One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.
- Assata Shakur, her actions and beliefs is certainly not something that is beyond the pale but the US government view her as a terrorist.
- By placing her on this terrorist list, it’s a way of criminalizing dissent.
- Assata’s trial was moved several times, it was placed in counties that were mostly wealthy, mostly white where pre-trial publicity around the case had biased people in a major way against Assata Shakur.
- When the government wants to put someone away and they know they don’t have the evidence they want to do everything possible to both manipulate the venue and also bring in people whose predisposition will make them more likely to believe the government’s version of events.
- Assata was in a position to be put in prison for the rest of her life in these human-breaking conditions.
- The day before this happened, the US government refused to remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list. This is used in part for keeping Cuba on that list.
- Also to give a chilling effect to progressive movements in the United States.
- The US seems to be redefining what are terrorist actions and what its responses are.
- The lock down of Boston, the reclassification of Assata Shakur, the issuing of the drone memo of what eminence actually means.
- The US is attempting to create enough ambiguity in the statutes.
Guest – Eugene Puryear, Eugene is a writer and on the editorial board of the Liberation, Newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberations.
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CIW – Fair Food Program: Wendy’s
Last year Trader Joe’s and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers signed an agreement that formalized the ways in which Trader Joe’s support the CIW’s Fair Food Program, a hard won victory.. Since then efforts have turned to companies such as Publix supermarkets in Florida and the Wendy’s fast food chain. Recently, Fair Food activists across the country visited their local Wendy’s to deliver a message: It’s time to join the rest of the fast-food industry and support the Fair Food Program.
Emilio Faustino:
Translator Joe Parker:
- We’re farm workers who come from the town Immokalee, Florida that’s based in the Southwestern part of the state. Our community is a farm worker community and for many years we faced a number of different kinds of exploitation, poverty, wage theft, physical and verbal abuse as well as sexual harassment of many women working in the fields.
- We began our campaign focused on the big corporate buyers of the produce that we pick back in 2001 in an effort to improve wages and working conditions in the fields, we began with Taco Bell and from there had campaigns with McDonald’s, Burger King, until as you said 11 other companies came to the table to dialogue with farm workers and work to improving those wages and working conditions in their supply chains.
- We’re here in New York focused on Wendy’s fast food chain. For a number of years the coalition has been sending letters to the fast food chain asking them to join the Fair Food program. We launched a public campaign with them earlier this year but thus far they have ignored us.
- We want Wendy’s to do what most of these corporations have done, that’s pay one penny more for each tomato that they buy.
- We’re here for the Wendy’s shareholder action, and we’re going to be organizing an protest on Saturday, May 18, at 2PM at Union Square to send a message to company’s investors that this is something that farmworkers in Wendy’s supply chain really deserve. There will also be a number of actions taking place that day all over the country in a number of communities standing together with the CIW.
- Contact: www.ciw-online.org, email: workers@ciw-online.org, 239-657-8311
Guest – Emelio Faustino, farm worker, CIW activist living in Florida. He is among other workers picking tomatoes by hand for 10-12 hours per day, while getting paid 50 cents per bin, or about 200 to 283 dollars per week.
Guest – Joe Parker, CIW spokesman and translator.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Guantanamo Bay Prison 11th Anniversary
- Abu Ghraib Settlement: Defense Contractor Engility Holdings Pays $5M To Iraqi Torture Detainees
- Stop and Frisk Lawyers Praise Decision Finding NYPD Stops Unconstitutional
- Bradley Manning Case: Judge Gives 112 Days of Sentence If Convicted
- Law and Disorder Tip of the Hat: New Yorkers Respond to Hateful Subway Ads & Declare Them War Propaganda
- In Memory of Adnan Latif, A Cleared Guantanamo Detainee Who Was Found Dead In His Cell
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Obama to Nominate John Brennan, ‘Kill List’ Architect, as New CIA Chief
As many listeners know, President Barack Obama has nominated John Brennan as director of the CIA. Brennan is currently Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. In this capacity Brennan meets with the president daily and is governed the administration’s program of extrajudicial assassinations known as the “kill list.”
In 2011 and 2012, Brennan used his position to “re-organize” the process by which people outside of war zones were put on the list of drone targets. Basically, this “reorganization” gave the White House the power to secretly determine who would die in the US assassination program overseas.
We welcome back retired CIA officer, Ray McGovern, now a political activist. McGovern was a federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray McGovern’s article on Consortium News: The Grilling That Brennan Deserves.
Ray McGovern:
- After 9-11, the acceptance of things like torture has become even more widespread.
- I spent a little time in Germany and I know about Gestapo tactics, and it seem to me that enhanced interrogation techniques sounded very familiar, and indeed its right out of the Gestapo lexicon.
- The immediate post World War II experience was very vivid.
- Obama is very fastidious in looking over this “kill list.” He’s got his own priest.
- It did me great good to know there were a handful at least of Fordham students that stood with their back to Brennan and protested vigorously against not being the commencement speaker but awarded the Doctorate of Humane Letters.
- He openly advocated kidnapping, the euphemism there is extraordinary rendition.
- There are black prisons all over Europe and Asia where these people were kept and tortured.
- He was an open advocate of at least the kidnapping and he was there. He was at the right hand of George Tenet so to speak.
- I have good information that Brennan was among those in the White House basement supervising the demonstration of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that Condeleeza Rice arranged for all the personages there.
- It’s all a master weaving, webbing of deceit and John Brennan is at the bottom of it.
- He was a classis example of a failed analyst. Why did he get where he is?
- He made an important friend George Tenet.
- Is Brennan suggesting that Muslims are hard wired to want to knock down planes over Detroit.
- I have very good information in that report that Brennan is the prime mover in all these abuses.
- It’s not about success, it’s about principle here.
- I like Dr. King’s motto, there is such a thing is too late. Sometimes you really have to put your body into it.
- Unless we act, nothing will be achieved.
- There are 2 CIAs. The one that Truman set up to give him honest answers to what’s going on in the world.
- To speak without fear or favor, to tell ’em the truth. That’s the one I worked in. That’s the one I could with career protection knock noses out of joint in the Pentagon and the State Department. I could do that.
Guest – Raymond L. McGovern, retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad. His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well. He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad. Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees. He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University.
A Catholic, Mr. McGovern has been worshipping for over a decade with the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and teaching at its Servant Leadership School. He was co-director of the school from 1998 to 2004. Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Heidi Boghosian: EyeSee Mannequins and Surveillance State: “In-Person Community” Destroyed
- Michael Ratner: Bradley Manning Case Update
- New York Times Fails To Cover Manning Testimony
- Michael Ratner: Julian Assange Ecuador Embassy Update
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Marijuana Laws: State Votes v. Federal Government
Washington State and Colorado are the first political jurisdictions to legally approved marijuana to be regulated like alcohol. However, federal laws explicitly criminalize marijuana transactions and the federal government can continue to enforce those laws by blocking the progress of state initiatives. For example, it’s likely that the federal authorities will step in when large transactions and large scale production begin in Washington or Colorado. Meanwhile, the Colorado provision allows personal possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and the growing up to six plants at home.
Ethan Nadelmann:
- Colorado and Washington are the first 2 political jurisdictions in the world to do this.
- The United States of America is emerging as the global leader of marijuana law reform.
- As of now it’s legal under state law to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and in Colorado legal to have up to six plants in the privacy of your own home.
- Parts of the initiative that authorize the state to set up a legal regulatory system like with alcohol that doesn’t kick in in Colorado until July, and in Washington state until next December.
- Not in public, let’s be clear.
- My colleagues at Drug Policy Alliance led a broad coalition effort and pushed back the mayor and police chief, rallied the DA’s to say this policy (stop and frisk) made no sense.
- The opportunity here for the federal government to say, let’s get Washington and Colorado a chance to figure this out; a way to effectively regulate this stuff.
- From the public health perspective if you have something that’s being consumed by millions of Americans you want authorities regulating quality and potency.
- The Federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970 is in conflict with this.
- There are now 18 states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Colorado already has a model of regulation on marijuana in respect to medicinal use.
- The fact is you hundreds if not thousands of dispensaries in many states, some are very open ended such as California.
- If the Feds prevent the state governments in Washington and Colorado from responsibly regulating this stuff, you’re essentially going to have a defacto alliance between the federal government on one side and an irresponsible elements of the marijuana community on the other.
- The worst possible thing in Mexico is the legalize drugs in the US. They would lose out just like Al Capone after the alcohol prohibition.
- Latin American leaders: They know that what Washington and Colorado did is the beginning of the ending of the global drug prohibition system which has wreaked havoc in that region for decades.
- People are realizing that among the other ingredients in marijuana, CBD which is the anti-anxiety and anti-inflammatory property of marijuana.
- It’s all about reducing the harms of drugs and the harms of failed prohibitionist policy.
Guest – Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.
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Egypt and Syria Update: Glen Ford
Protests and violence continue in Egypt as Islamist President Mohamed Morsi pushes toward ratifying a draft constitution. Egyptians who oppose the controversial new constitution argue it weakens human rights doesn’t guarantee women’s rights and that it was written by an Islamist dominated assembly. The opposition National Salvation Front says it will not recognize the draft constitution. We talk about that and the disturbing events unfolding within the ongoing conflict in Syria with Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report. We welcome him back to Law and Disorder. Glen Ford is also a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Glen Ford:
- In the Muslim world, the Left has been decimated not once, not twice, but over and over again in the last 50 years. That’s occurred in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq.
- It would be expected that in Egypt, the part of secular Egypt that is Left, secularized would represent 15-20 percent of the people.
- The language of politics in that world is spoken in an Islamic dialect.It’s difficult for Left folks here to understand it.
- Leftists here get confused by the corporate media which inflates business secularists in contests all over the world.
- How many people realize that the opposition party, party number two, in Russia is the Communist Party?
- Everybody is at work in Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and freelance millionaires from all over the region are sponsoring their own brigades and fighting forces.
- Before the CIA and the Pakistanis got together to create a force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan no such thing existed as a national Jihadi network.
- Syrian situation really heated up after the fall of the “Libyan regime”. 600 to 900 of the Libyan Jihadis were then sent directly to Syria.
- It’s really not in U.S. hands.
Guest – Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report and many other media forums. Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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Updates:
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Facing The U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong
As many listeners may know the United States has incarcerated more people than any other country in the world, and also within the history of humanity. The newly published book titled Facing The U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong by Shawn Griffith gives the reader a rare perspective from an ex convict who served a 20 year sentence in some of the harshest conditions. These include being confined to a small cement cell in the late Florida summer without sheets, laying in pools of sweat on a plastic covered mattress. Vindictive prison guards and case workers in the criminal justice system had made life nearly unbearable for Shawn Griffith. His book hopes to inspire movement building among the families of prisoners to develop a non-profit corporation called the Prisoner Family Union.
Shawn Griffith:
- As a youngster, it was a very difficult childhood.
- My parents were very religious, there was a lot of alcohol abuse.
- Early on I went on a truth seeking thing. I also became very rebellious at a young age.
- At 16, I met these people who were crack cocaine addicts. They were the only place I could find to stay off the street. They introduced me to the drug, which I had no knowledge of, how addictive it was.
- Then they told me I had to help them support their habit. They started training me, taking me to homes showing me how to burglarize them, steal cars, a number of things to support our habits.
- When I committed an armed robbery for 100.00 ended up with a 24 year sentenced in which I did 20 years.
- I knew that I had some emotional problems, I started studying psychology for about 4 years. By the age of 23, I attempted to escape initially.
- In Chapter 1, where I explain in detail, some of the sentencing laws that were passed in Florida, those same laws that were passed show decreases in crime rate before the laws were instituted.
- Inmates and their families are by majority below the poverty line. They don’t have a lot of resources to fight back.
- These large groups that influence the correctional system, they are unionized.
- Speakoutpublishing.com
Guest – Shawn Griffith, founder of Speak Out Publishing and has been an institutional teacher of adult basic education for the past sixteen years. He has received many teaching and writing awards from professors and others with whom he has worked, as recently as 2011. He is author of the recently published book Facing The U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong
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Professor Francis Boyle: Palestine Observer Status
Now that Palestine has been voted in as a new non member state status within the United Nations, Palestinian leaders can join the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and challenge Israel’s violations of international law. We talk with Professor Francis Boyle, the leading expert in international about his role as a Palestine observer. In his book Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Professor Boyle outlines 6 critical points, among them are:
1. “Palestine can join the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court and file a Complaint with the ICC against the illegal settlements and settlers, who are committing war crimes;
2. “Palestine can join the Statute for the International Court of Justice, sue Israel at the World Court, and break the illegal siege of Gaza;
3. “Palestine can join the Law of the Sea Convention and get its fair share of the enormous gas fields lying off the coast of Gaza, thus becoming economically self-sufficient;
4. “Palestine can become a High Contracting Party to the Four Geneva Conventions [this deals with the laws of war];
5. “Palestine can join the International Civil Aviation Organization and gain sovereign, legal control over its own airspace;
6. “Palestine can join the International Telecommunications Union and gain sovereign legal control over its own airwaves, phone lines, bandwidths.”
Professor Boyle is the author of many books including Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, The Palestinian Right of Return Under International Law, and United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law.
Professor Francis Boyle:
- The negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians broke off because Israel continued to build settlements. The Palestinians took the position that well, we’re negotiating over a pizza while you eat it.
- I went back with them with a proposal longstanding with President Arafat, that we apply for membership in the United Nations organization.
- That was approved by the PLO executive committee. The Obama Administration bottled the application up in the UN Security Council.
- The mainstream news media has it wrong, Obama can exercise over their admission if they want to, but under the Uniting For Peace Procedure, they can turn it over to the General Assembly where Palestine can be admitted as a full fledged state by a 2/3 vote.
- They took an intermediate step last Spring, the PLO executive committee that serves as the provisional government for the state of Palestine created by the 1988 Declaration of Independence, voted to apply for UN observer status.
- Look at what Switzerland did from the founding of the United Nations to about 10 years ago as a UN observer state. Palestine can now if it wishes join pretty much every international organization in the world and treaties.
- They can simply use the Swiss model, join the International Criminal Court, join the International Court of Justice, join the Law of the Sea convention, join the International Civic Aviation Convention.
- We already filed a complaint with the ICC after Operation Cast Lead.
- If you follow the Israeli press they’re deathly afraid of prosecution by the ICC.
- The step we saw last week, took two years in the making. The Palestinians had to go all over the world to line up that support.
- It’s been my advice, we go after the settlements now – what they do is up to them (PLO)
- The second legal step is to sue Israel at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The so called World Court of the United Nations system.
- I’ve offered to do that work for them and try to break that genocidal siege of Gaza.
- You or I aren’t going to decide this.
- We have to stand back and support the Palestinians and let them decide what they’re going to do.
Guest – Professor Francis Boyle, leading American expert in international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. He served as legal adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993.
In 2007, he delivered the Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare and Terrorism, Tackling America’s Toughest Problems, and The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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Russell Tribunal on Palestine Findings
We follow up on the findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. As many listeners may know, the tribunal was created in response to the international community’s inaction regarding Israel’s recognized violations of international law. Jury and speakers included Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Peter Hansen, Diana Buttu, Phyllis Bennis, Katie Gallagher and Russell Means.
Attorney Noura Erakat:
- Each of the sessions focuses on a different component of the problems that has led to a failure to achieve a solution to what some may describe as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
- More specifically to achieve Palestinian self-determination and equality with their Jewish-Israeli counterparts.
- The first tribunal explored the EU complicity. A condition for Israel’s acceptance into the United Nations was its acceptance of returning refugees to their homes per UN Resolution 194.
- Since the 1967 war they’ve been supported by unequivocal US financial, military and diplomatic support.
- Corporate complicity: The corporations that are involved in funding the Israeli military arsenal and its construction arsenal to expand its colonial settlements in the Occupied Territory as well as building a wall deemed illegal by the National Court of Justice.
- This fourth and final session brought everything back to the U.S.
- To New York specifically because the U.S. has proven to be the primary obstacle in resolving this conflict.
- Consider first that Israel has received 115 billion dollars in aid since World War 2. Making it the highest recipient of US foreign aid.
- In addition to that Israel receives approximately 3 billion dollars a year. It receives money without any review in US law, specifically the Arms Export Control Act which conditions that all US aid to foreign countries must be used to further human rights or in self defense.
- The US is shielding Israeli responsibility in the UN Security Council
- The resolution process is stonewalled internationally.
- One of the things that we’d love to do is remove the veto power from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
- BDS Movement: 2011 – Dock Workers refused unload Israeli products from a boat.
- EndtheOccupation.org
Guest – Attorney Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and activist. She is currently a Abraham L. Freedman Teaching Fellow at Temple University, Beasley School of Law and the U.S. based Legal Advocacy Consultant for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. She has taught international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University since Spring 2009. Noura also has helped seed BDS campaigns as a national grassroots organizer with the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
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Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Ilan Pappé Speech
The final session of the Tribunal focused on the responsibility of the United States of America and the United Nations regarding the Israeli breaches of international law towards Palestine and Palestinians. There is now a situation in which Israel has achieved a status of immunity and impunity, facilitated by the US, despite its complete disregard for the norms and standards of international law.
Speaker – Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian and activist. He is currently a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Modern Middle East (2005), A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003), and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988)
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