Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Military Tribunal, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Hear more of the Jim Lehrer Newshour interview with Michael Ratner and Jeffrey Smith
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US To Escalate War in Afghanistan
Nearly 15 thousand US troops have been recently committed to Afghanistan, and progressive think tanks are pushing the Obama Administration to send an additional 17 thousand which would bring the total to 70 thousand troops. Expansions are being built onto the Bagram prison, as mass incarceration is expected. Progressive Think Tank Tells Obama to Escalate
Tom Hayden:
- Global Phoenix Program – in testimony last week, 10 – 12 years overall to win the Afghanistan War. Two years of hard fighting, a couple extra billion dollars a month. I think they plan to send the troops into Southern Afghanistan and to take on the Taliban or who ever the local resistance forces are.
- I think people need to buckle their seat belts for a war. We’re going to have a war in Afghanistan that’s soft on torture. Where are the human rights groups, we’re sending US troops into a dirty war that incarcerates without evidence, tens of thousands of people.
- Center for American Progress – I’m disappointed in them, they’re usually good liberal democrats. Now they’ve come out for a military surge in Afghanistan.
- Obama has narrowed it down to one goal. Can we prevent Al-Quaeda from getting a base area from which they can attack Europe or the United States. The more we go into Pakistan with the predators and drones, the more Pakistan turns against us. It becomes a recruiting tool for more militants.
- The other way to go would be to address the grievances of the Muslim world that give al-queda some support base.
- 1. The US unconditional support for Israel
- 2. 150 thousand troops still in Iraq
- 3. US troops in countries where Muslims control their own oil.
- It’s all laid out in a book by Michael Scheuer -Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
- I work very closely with Robert Greenwald at Brave New Foundation. Getting Afghanistan Right. There’s a huge sectarian problem in the anti-war movement. Nonetheless there’s always a peace and justice community in every city I go to.
- One wonders what it will take for someone in the House or Senate to stand up and say I want to lead the anti-war movement.
Guest – Political and social activist Tom Hayden joins us today to fill in the detail and time line in this escalation of war. Tom is also the author of Ending The War In Iraq.
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US War in Afghanistan and Pakistan – Follow Up
As tensions rise between Pakistan and the United States, President Obama recently mentioned that stability in Afghanistan depends on what will happen in Pakistan. The United States and Pakistan have been allies in their interest to purge Islamist extremism, however the two countries are now embroiled in miscommunication, drone wars and mistrust that is centered around a 10 billion dollar military aid fund. Analysts say the Obama administration is asking a lot from a fragile Pakistani government that has been in power for now only a year.
Michael Schwartz:
- President Obama’s speech – on Pakistan, tells the whole story. You have to unpack it.
- Not a lot of people have read the speech, Obama starts by saying a campaign against extremism will not succeed by bullets and bombs alone then he launches into the peaceful side of American policy.
- The US is planning to make Pakistan another outpost of globalization creating an opportunity for multinational corporations to invest into a local economy and basically take it over.
- What they’re saying is they’re trying to execute a policy to bring Pakistan into full economic domination of American capitalism. – a globalized version of American capitalism. The military aspect of this is only a part to secure the farthest reaches of the middle east, the part of instability.
- Obama’s speech is filled with being “adminstratively involved with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- The delivery is profound American presence. American enterprises, adminstrators, experts, trainers, a kind of colonial presence, then on the other side of this, an integration into the global system.
- Private multinational enterprises will build schools, infrastructure.
- This same neo-liberal process has ocurred in Africa, South America and what we know about this process is that there is an extraction of large profits by these multinational corporations. The Taliban would set up a social organization that is incompatible with the globalized agenda, so you can see this as a counter-insurgency maneuver.
- The military part of this is that they’re not going to be able to do this in a peaceful way, they’re going to have to conquer the area.
- In a period of two years with more than 90 drone attacks have killed 5000 innocent Pakistanis. They want to kill civilians
- The sense that people are waiting to see whether Obama and Congress move to escalate the war is a big part of the lack of energy in the anti-war movement.
- These are colonial wars, because the United States seeks to have a real administrative hold over these countries.
- The United States can’t withdraw from Afghanistan because it borders on the three Caspian Sea oil companies. Those oil companies are gravitating toward China and Russia in the grand scheme of things.
- Regarding the Poppy agriculture in Afghanistan, the Taliban had gotten rid of the poppies, since the US had invaded Afghanistan, the poppy agriculture has come backWe talk today with Michael Schwartz about the current relations amid Pakistan, the United States and the war in Afghanistan.
- $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years – resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan’s democracy. I’m also calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Maria Cantwell, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Hoekstra that creates opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence. And we will ask our friends and allies to do their part – including at the donors conference in Tokyo next month.
Guest – Michael Schwartz is a professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include the recently published War Without End.
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Cuba, South America and the Summit of the Americas
Earlier this year we spoke with film maker and Cuban scholar Saul Landau about the Cuban 50th anniversary and its significance. Now Saul describes the changes we can expect with regard to Cuban / US relations from the Obama Administration. The discussion also covers some detail of the recent talks at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.
Saul Landau:
- Obama has allowed Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba and allowing more loose travel regulations as well.
- What can Cuba really do except to promise to stop hitting the US in the fist with its face.
- What did Cuba do to the United States to merit 50 years of punishment?
- I don’t think Cubans are prepared to have 100 thousand Spring Breakers descend upon Havana.
- Nor are they prepared for American investors with big wads of cash, trying to buy up everybody and everything that they see.
- I think Obama is one of the cleverist, winsome, brightest people I can ever imagine, he’s a hard man to resist. But you have to get behind his optimistic rhetoric, his humility, his smile and his handshake and remember that prize fighters also shake hands before the first round.
- Cuba will have a lower profile in the future, we’ve seen the most publicity we’re going to see for quite a while now.
- I think things are little better, they’re a little quieter and less hostile. I think Cuba has its own problems that it really has to deal with
Guest – Saul Landau is an internationally known author, commentator, and film maker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights, for which he won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” In 2008, the Chilean government presented him withthe Bernardo O’Higgins Award for his human rights work. Landau has written fourteen books including a book of poems, “My Dad Was Not Hamlet.” He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt.
He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Some Prisoners at Bagram AFB, Afghanistan May Challenge Detention
Last week a federal judge ruled that some prisoners held by the US military at Bagram Air Base prison in Afghanistan have the right to challenge their imprisonment. There are more than 600 people being held at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan without charges.
The federal ruling does not apply to prisoners captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, citizenship and location of the capture will determine if prisoners could challenge their detention in court.
Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network said that the Bagram ruling meant that changes to the Bush detention policies would go beyond merely closing Guantánamo and extend “to any place where the United States seeks to hold individuals in a legal black hole.”
Attorney Tina Foster:
- Filed writ of Habeas Corpus for the 4 detainees to challenge their detentions.
- Judge Bates: The US cannot manipulate the jurisdiction of the courts by holding people deliberately in places where the courts have not traditionally exercised jurisdiction.
- Bagram is the main military base in Afghanistan, it was an old Soviet air hangar, that’s where they’ve established a prison.
- 600 in Bagram prison.
- There are other coalition forces at Bagram AFB with military presence, but as “guests” of the US.
- US Government: Unlike Guantanamo, Bagram is in the middle of a war zone.
- Bagram was the original Guantanamo, a lot of the people at Guantanamo first spent time at Bagram.
- A few years ago, working with you Michael (Ratner) one of the happy tasks I had, was to travel all over the world, contacting the families of the detainees at Guantanamo. It also became clear that there were people locked up in other places besides Guantanamo.
- Shockingly,the Obama Administration has adopted the Bush Administration policy on Bagram. All of their legal arguments, all of their secrecy, still deciding not to disclose any information.
- What has been different than the Bush Administration, is that when Obama signed orders to close Guantanamo, he set up a task force to look at detainee policy more broadly. That report is due in July.
Guest – Tina Monshipour Foster is the founder and Executive Director of the International Justice Network (“IJN”), and serves as lead counsel in several of IJN’s legal cases on behalf detainees imprisoned without charge at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Ms. Foster’s work on behalf of prisoners and other victims of human rights violations has been featured in major media outlets in the US and abroad, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian, Al Jazeera channel, and others.
From November 2004 to May 2006, Ms. Foster was an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and Counsel for CCR’s Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. Prior to joining CCR, she was a litigation associate at Clifford Chance US LLP and previously served as a law clerk for Hon. Delissa A. Ridgway at the United States Court of International Trade. Ms. Foster is a graduate of Cornell Law School, where she was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal.
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Guantanamo Bay Prison, Update
Today we talk with Emi MacLean, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights to get an update, an impression of where things stand with Guantanamo Bay prisoners, their status of Habeas Corpus, and the Obama administration’s position. There are also 17 innocent Chinese muslims called Uighurs asking, again for their release. Our guest Emi MacLean has worked with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers to torture.
Attorney Emi MacLean:
- More Guantanamo prisoners have left in the last weeks of the Bush Administration then the first 100 days of the Obama Administration.
- 240 people at Guantanamo right now. Approximately, 20 Guantanamo prisoners will face any prosecution.
- We’ve held more than 775 people at Guantanamo
- The people at Guantanamo right now are not there because of some greater threat assessment, they are there because of their country of nationality.
- Almost all the Europeans were released early on, almost all the Yemenis remain behind.
- A federal district judge ordered the release of the Uighers last October, the Bush Administration challenged the release.
- When we asked the Obama Administration to drop the challenge, they have yet to do so.
- I remember seeing civil liberties groups celebrating the executive order calling for the closure of Guantanamo in one year. But nothing has really changed for the reality of those men in Guantanamo. This is a consistent devaluation of the life of the men imprisoned there.
- We’ve seen the Obama Administration lawyers refuse to back away from the Bush Administration’s position on states secrets.
- It’s very hard for people to give up power.
- What makes our work difficult, is that it usually takes a couple of weeks for our communications to clear. The communication between counsels on what the Guantanamo conditions are.
- The Obama Review Team determined that the conditions at Guantanamo complied with Geneva Convention, which was certainly not what we were hearing and certainly not what we were seeing.
- The overwhelming majority of the men at Guantanamo were still in brutal conditions of solitary confinement and still reporting severe psychological and religious abuses at Guantanamo.
- No middle ground, these men should be tried or released.
Guest – Attorney Emi MacLean has worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative (GGJI) since June 2006. She works on issues related to Guantánamo and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers-to-torture. She helps coordinate the pro bono attorneys representing the hundreds of men still detained at Guantánamo and supports CCR’s direct representation of a number of current detainees.
In addition, Emi is involved in civil actions brought on behalf of former prisoners released from Guantánamo (Rasul v. Rumsfeld and Celikgogus v. Rumsfeld) and actions under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) challenging the government’s refusal to disclose information about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of Guantánamo attorneys (Wilner v. NSA) and the CIA’s secret detention program (Amnesty International, CCR, et al. v. CIA). In addition to direct litigation, Emi’s work with CCR includes legislative and international advocacy.
Emi has previously worked or volunteered with the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), Human Rights First, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Prior to law school, Emi worked with South Africa’s National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL), and Médecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). Emi graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Frances Golden: Jailhouse Lawyers, Prisoners Defending Prisoners Against the United States of America by Mumia Abu Jamal
Frances Golden joins us today to discuss a very well known political prisoner, as we continue our political prisoner series based on the book Let Freedom Ring. Frances is the literary agent for Mumia Abu Jamal. Mumia as many know, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, Mumia has become an international cultural icon for political prisoners. A previous guest here on Law and Disorder, author/ journalist J. Patrick O’Connor who wrote The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal, says the real shooter was Kenneth Freeman a business partner of Mumia’s brother. Freeman, was found dead in 1985, bound and cuffed in a Philadelphia parking lot.
We get a another perspective today from Mumia’s literary agent Frances Golden. Frances also visits six death row in a Pittsburgh maximum security prison. Jailhouse Lawyers, Prisoners Defending Prisoners Against the United States of America by Mumia Abu Jamal.
Frances Golden:
- Visiting death row inmates happened because I went to visit Mumia as a visitor.
- I had to become a member of the Pennsylvania prison society. 40 bucks a year you can see any prisoner anywhere.
- Now, because the PPS applications were flooded to see Mumia, they changed the policy that only Pennsylvania residents can become members of PPS.
- You have to see more than one prisoner as a PPS member. So, Mumia gave me names of others including Robert Lark aka Sugar Bear.
- I hope I don’t cry when I say this, out of the 6 death row inmates I see, 5 of them are innocent.
- You’re behind very thick glass, there are quarter inch thick screens on each side of the cell where your voice can travel through. It’s awful, insulting but it’s what exists on death row.
- I have a little book with their names in it, with 100 pages(of notes) between each name.
- The prison system is illegal and inhuman. The person who speaks most clearly about that is Angela Davis.
- One prisoner nicknamed Slim was on the streets of Philadelphia without a home at 10 years old. Never went to school, got in trouble ended up on death row. He learned to read in prison, he’s a phenomenal jail house lawyer.
- Two of the five could get out, that’s Sugar Bear and Osiris.
- I have a prisoner friend whose name is Russel Shoates. He will never be executed but he’s on death row because he escaped 3 times. Russell is shackled and tied to his waist. I dance with them and do yoga. I can’t do that with Russell. I asked the warden to unshackle him. This man is gentle, he’s small, he’s wickedly intelligent.
- Philadelphia, the most corrupt city in the United States, from beginning to end. –Judges lock up kids for kickbacks in Pennsylvania
Guest: Frances Golden, activist and literary agent for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Frances is a member of the Pennsylvania Prison Society and visits 6 death row inmates monthly.
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Laura Whitehorn and Susie Day – Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners.
Among the many contributors to the book Let Freedom Ring is revolutionary ex-political prisoner and native New Yorker Laura Whitehorn. Since the 1960s Laura was active in supporting groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Movement and was active with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. Laura also worked to expose the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program. Laura was arrested in 1985, convicted of the 1983 US Capitol bombing and charged with… “conspiracy to oppose, protest and change the policies and practices of the United States government in domestic and international matters by violence and illegal means.” She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and was released August 1999 after 14 years. Laura lives in New York City and is active in a wide range of progressive issues.
Laura’s partner Susie Day, activist, writer and contributer to Let Freedom Ring also joins Law and Disorder hosts in the studio.
Laura Whitehorn:
- I’m in my sixties now, I was moved by the Black Liberation struggle and the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the United States.
- But I ended up spending years in prison later, in a case called the conspiracy case and our indictment was a thing of beauty – using the words violent and illegal means. It was a series of bombings of buildings. No one was ever hurt, great care was taken. One of the buildings was the U.S. Capitol.
- But in that period in 1988, we were in the DC jail for 3 years and it was the beginning of the huge epidemic of AIDS in Washington DC. It was a time of absolute fear, stigma, no drugs to treat HIV, and so we started to learn about HIV and did counseling, almost all the political prisoners had done that. This is because AIDS is huge in prison. A quarter of the people with AIDS in this country go through the prison system at some point.
- The fact that the government says there are no political prisoners, it’s a denigration of everything that you stand for. So, it was important that we had a lot of support.
- There’s a great interest in the sixties movements, the movies and books etc, but that doesn’t translate into the willingness to say enough is enough. People have been in jail since the late sixties and early seventies. How much time do you have to serve in this country, what kind of country do we have?
- In Europe the maxium is 20 years, sometimes they go farther. That’s a life sentence in Europe, but here, you could have saved the warden’s life but if you were a black panther and go to the parole board, they say you can’t get out.
- We have Obama, but the same justice system. We have to fight for a new justice system. What happens to political prisoners will happen to everyone else. We were held in preventive detention now everyone knows what it is.
- The book is a guide in how to raise these cases, who these people are, what kinds of organizations are out there. What can people do? The Jericho Movement
Susie Day:
- Before I met Laura Whitehorn, I was sort of intrigued by all the compromises most of us make everyday, for decades. We cut corners everyday to go to our jobs, to raise kids, to pay the rent, and we support involuntarily things that we abhor. So, I was interested in people who did not compromise. Who lived underground, who would go to extremes of giving up their lives of basic middle class educated comfort. . .and give up their identities to fight an establishment that made it so easy for everyone else to just get along.
Guest: Laura Whitehorn – revolutionary ex-political prisoner and native New Yorker Laura Whitehorn. Since the 1960s Laura was active in supporting groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Movement and was active with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. Laura also worked to expose the FBI’s Counter Intelligence.
Guest: Susie Day lives in New York City where she writes a humor column for feminist and gay publications. She has also written on U.S. political prisoners and labor issues and thinks her girlfriend, Laura Whitehorn, is hot stuff. Can’t get enough of Susie? Read other pieces by Susie Day in MRZine: Susie Day, “Fugitive Offers Reward for Rumsfeld’s Capture” (22 July 2005); “Street Life of a Mad Activist” (28 July 2005);
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Matt Meyer – Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners.
New York based educator and activist Matt Meyer. Matt is the editor of several books including the recently published Let Freedom Ring, A Collection of Documents From the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners. – The book nicely pulls together two decades of essays, interviews and resolutions of US political prisoners. These are the voices and intimate writings of those who have challenged the US empire from within, Black Panthers, Puerto Rican independentistas, white anti-imperialists, environmental and animal rights militants and Arab and Muslim activists. Meyer is a former public draft registration resister and chair of the War Resisters League.
Matt Meyer:
- We wanted to bring awareness to that yes, there are political prisoners in the US.
- There’s been a history to support those movements and free them.
- This book focuses on the last 25 years as a key era that took us through the late sixties and seventies of social change.
- The majority of peoples that have been in prison come from the black civil rights liberation movement, come from the American Indian Movement, come from the Puerto Rican and Chicano movements and come from some white allies and supporters.
- Political prisoners are in jail because of the ideas they’ve had as much as the acts they’ve committed. They’re political actions and beliefs and who are in jail 20, 30 years, incredibly long sentences and harsh conditions.
- It is also a collection of documents from the movement to free them. For example from the Puerto Rican movement. We have a collection of documents that began to help free 12 Puerto Rican political prisoners – this shows how this came through by a combination of grassroots support and international pressure.
- This book says to activists and all readers that we can build upon the strategies that have been used in the last 20 years. We can look at some of the documents and get a sense of how to use these strategies today to help not only political prisoners but prisoners in the ever increasing US prison system. There is a growing sense that we should all pay more attention to these folks who are languishing in jail.
- The fact that the information in this book was not readily available, it was scattered here and there. This volume was designed as a tool with the hope to spark new movements.
- What can people do? The Jericho Movement
Guest: Matt Meyer – Founding PJSA Co-Chair along with USF Dean Jennifer Turpin, Meyer has long worked to bring together academics and activists for lasting social change. A former public draft registration resister and chair of the War Resisters League, he continues to serve as convener of the War Resisters International Africa Working Group. With Bill Sutherland, Meyer authored Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation, of which Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, “Sutherland and Meyer have looked beyond the short-term strategies and tactics which too often divide progressive people.
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Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Steve Downs: The Yassin Aref Story and Muslim Database, Project Salam
Imam Yassin Aref is among numerous Muslim men in the United States who were targeted by the FBI framed and wrongly convicted. Aref is Iraqi Kurd who came to Albany, New York in 1999 as refugee from Kurdistan. He later became the leader at a local mosque. After 9/11 the FBI began to illegally wiretap and eavesdrop on the mosque and Yassin. It was later reported in the New York Times that these wiretaps were conducted without court approval. As retired attorney Stephen Downs explains, Yassin is one of 400 in a database site, Project Salam that keeps track of Muslim men in United States prison.
Stephen Downs:
- Whatever it was that triggered suspicion, the FBI decided they wanted to convict Yassir
- So, they set up sting operation, it was run by a guy who was convicted of a number of felonies.
- Yassin was convicted and sentence to 15 years in communication management units at Terra Haute Prison, Indiana,
- They’re trying to seal them off from the prison population and society at large.
- They’re being treated like they have some horrible disease and would infect anyone that they’d come in contact with.
- I have a suspicion that the Bush Administration was thinking of closing Guantanamo and I can’t help thinking that because the size of this place is about right, that they’d consider transferring prisoners there, but that didn’t happen.
- There is room for 400 prisoners, there are 50 or 60.
- We began to realize that all over the country there were groups that were forming around certain people in their communities that had been simply, locked away.
- So, we got together at Albany Law School and decided to set up a database of all the Muslims in the country who had been improperly gone after. They were under suspicion from the government for some reason.
- We just wrote to President Obama and Attorney General Holder regarding what has happened under the Bush Administration in that we change the paradigm in how we prosecute people.
- Now we’re going to be writing letters about specific cases. We got 900 people to sign the first letter.
- We are asking people to adopt a defendant.
- We have about 400 Muslims in the database. We can’t say that all 400 are innocent. Some people are overcharged.
- We appealed and lost. There was a secret appeal and a top secret brief that even the prosecutor wasn’t allowed to see.
- The appellate decision was harsh, it either mischaracterized what we had to say or brushed them aside immediately.
- We thought it was a victory because the standard is a 30 year prison sentence, based on the all the “enhancements” that they added.
Guest – Stephen Downs, a retired New York State attorney and a volunteer attorney for the Yassin Aref case.
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George W. Bush, War Criminal ? by Michael Haas
In the book titled George W. Bush, War Criminal? author Michael Haas counts 269 war crimes that the Bush Administration are liable to be prosecuted for. He itemizes each war crime into a specific category of four classes, such 36 war crimes committed in the conduct of war, 175 war crimes committed in the treatment of prisoners and so on. This book carefully documents the war crime evidence, making it quick work to investigate how George W. Bush, the military officers under his command and the staff in his administration can be brought to justice.
Michael Haas:
- The illegality of the war.
- The misconduct during war, militarily, the mistreatment of prisoner.
- The misgovernment of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
- The decision to indiscriminately bomb without giving proper notice to the civilian population and then the use of illegal weapons such as Daisy Cutters, White Phosphorous and Depleted Uranium Weapons which not only affected the civilian population in Iraq, but the American soldiers who came in to occupy.
- I have a table in the book indicating 40 international agreements that are war crimes treaties.
- The most prominent to begin with is the Red Cross Convention of 1864 and then going on to the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions before and after WWII and then the subsequent conventions against torture and forced disappearances.
- Any kind of torture is illegal involving prisoners of war.
- When they couldn’t get information out of Guantanamo prisoners, the Geneva Convention orders to not torture prisoners was countermanded to try other techniques by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – by executive order through George Bush.
- Most of the war crimes are from the mistreatment of prisoners, because the Geneva Convention is very detailed and specific about what cannot be done.
- The Bush executive order details what had happened and in fact is an admission of abuse.
- Extraordinary renditions, to send someone to another country to be tortured is itself a war crime.
- War crimes are ongoing now, they’re happening under the Obama Administration.
- If we can’t focus on now, which apparently isn’t happening, then we can’t learn lessons from the past.
- At Guantanamo, the following war crimes are taking place: Failure to transmit legal documents to prisoners, secret judicial proceedings, refusal to cooperate in investigations and prosecution of torturers. The wreckless endangerment of health in prison, the violation of medical ethics, that is the force feeding. Indefinite imprisonment of children, cruel treatment, that is the beatings after force feedings.
- These are what I’ve counted to be 22 war crimes since the inauguration of President Obama.
- The thesis of the book is to have a truth commission on the war crimes published in this book so that people know, the public what is a war crime, what is not a war crime.
- Some of the war crimes are only heresay right now, so we need sworn testimony, though some of the war crimes are signed by George W Bush. www.uswarcrimes.com
- I was writing a textbook on human rights, I’m a scholar, political scientist, while I was reading the Geneva Conventions to summarize them for the purpose of a chapter, I was also reading the newspaper, I realized that the violations of the Geneva Conventions, and reading them item by item – its very dry reading, but I can make it much more interesting.
- I quit my job as a professor, and relentlessly began getting up at 5 AM and going to bed at 1AM day after day to finish this book, so it would be coming out just a few days before the inauguration of the new president.
Guest – Michael Haas, has written more than 30 books on human rights, he is currently Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii and the Chairman of the International Academic Advisory Board of the University of Cambodia. He played a role in stopping the secret funding of the Khmer Rouge by the administration of President George H. W. Bush. He has taught political science at the University of London, Northwestern University, Purdue University, and the University of California, Riverside.The argument is that all 4 types of war crimes were violated with great impunity by George W Bush and members of his administration.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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13 Million Dollar Payout in May Day LAPD Police Abuse Cases
In a landmark class action lawsuit settlement, the Los Angeles city council agreed to pay nearly 13 million dollars to those injured or mistreated in the 2007 May Day demonstration in MacArthur Park. As the march ended, LAPD riot police were filmed by camera crews using excessive force, firing rubber bullets and striking people with batons. Dozens were injured in the melee and the footage was seen around the world. The 13 million dollar settlement was part of a larger portion of nearly 300 May Day claims.
Carol Sobel:
- There was an immigrants rights march in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on May 1st 2007, there has been for the last 7 years. The police didn’t want to give the group a permit to march in the streets.
- There are about 20 lawyers on this case, the National Lawyers Guild, the Guild’s Police Accountability Project and MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund.
- As around 10 thousand people approached the park, police “forgot” to direct people into the park.
- The rally was at the Northwest corner of park, so marchers had to cross an 8 lane highway that divides the park. This created chaos of which the problems arose.
- There was no instruction, people didn’t know where they were supposed to go.
- Then people got near police on motorcycles, they used their motorcycles to hit protesters. This was happening as an Aztec circle dance performance closed the march and opened the rally.
- Some protesters through trash, plastic water bottles at police. It was heard that the police said “We need to get rid of these people now.” Police were not giving orders to disperse, they simply said “move”.. to the 10 thousand people in the park.
- The officers were speaking only English, the crowd spoke almost all Spanish.
- Families had no idea why the police were coming with riot gear. While police were saying to move, people were thinking, “well I didn’t do anything wrong, they could’nt be talking to me.”
- So officers began knocking people down and hitting people, firing pellets, it was total chaos.
- 140 rounds of less lethal munitions were randomly fired into the crowds.
- The police report also stated there was no probable cause, no reason to go after the marchers.
- Lesson: It’s very difficult to change the culture of a police department. The police department can’t engage in this behavior, because we can’t afford it as a city.
Guest – California civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, who represented some of the injured. In 2000 Carol was struck by police pellets while serving as a legal observer during the Democratic National Convention.
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Nora Eisenberg: When You Come Home
We’re pleased to have with us Nora Eisenberg, she’s the author of the recent book When You Come Home. It is a powerful novel that acknowledges the physical and psychological effects of veterans returning from Operation Desert Storm-The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991). In this beautifully written ant-war fiction, Nora delves into the corrosive effects post war combat has on the families and communities that are called on to nurture veterans returning home. Mimi is the main character who’s husband was killed in Vietnam, her 20 year old son Tony, a marine reservist, has returned from the Gulf War and there’s Tony’s childhood sweetheart, Lily who was raised by Mimi after her parents disappeared.
One book review describes When You Come Home this way: “In 1991, troops sent to Iraq for the first Gulf War returned home with a litany of physical, neurological, and psychological symptoms that collectively became known as Gulf War syndrome, a subject seldom dealt with in works of fiction. Eisenberg poignantly demonstrates that casualties of war occur both on and off the battlefield and ironically illustrates the vivid consequences when those in charge of veterans’ postwar care fail to meaningfully “support our troops.”
Nora Eisenberg:
- The First Gulf War – “The Good War”, 5 weeks of censorship and fabrication. Fabricated by a Washington based PR firm – Hill and Nolton. The campaign was headed by Craig Fuller. Fuller was also Chief of Staff for George H.W. Bush. Fuller took charge of the campaign to impress the public of what villians the Iraqis were.
- The firm brought this young girl to testify in front of a Congressional Committee – She claimed to work at a maternity ward in Kuwait. “The mean Iraqi soldiers” came in and hurled nearly 300 babies from their incubators and were left to die on the floor.
- This young girl was part of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, her father was Washington / Kuwait ambassador.
- All part of a 10 million dollar PR campaign with Hill and Nolton.
- Aside from the no-fly zones and sanctions, the deaths of Iraqis were massive and continuing.
- I’ve been following the deteriorating health system in Iraq and the rise of disease leading to the deaths of 2 million Iraqi children.
- I started writing this book with the “bad” war looming and with a sense that the ’91 war wasn’t over at all.
- I thought, are we going to kill millions again and get off scott-free, does it really work that way?
- Gulf War Illness, even among progressive people, there remains very little awareness of what this disease is. It attacks the respiratory system, the nervous system, it’s a neuro-toxic event.
- These soldiers got sick, immediately. Some say they got sick after swallowing an anti-nerve gas pill.
- When they were around the insecticides that were soaking the tents, they felt sick immediately, vertigo, stomach cramps.
- The soldiers loved ones, pets and wives coming down with similar symptoms, by proximity.
- It’s taken almost 20 years for Congress to say what the veterans already knew, that they were poisoned.
- A report delivered by high profile doctors at Roberta White say the soldiers were exposed to neuro-toxins. These were not neuro-toxins from Saddam Hussein.
- Those are main culprits, there are other terrible exposures that came out in a report last November.
- Such as the exposure to sarin in a weapons depository that affected 2-3 hundred thousand US soldiers.
- Nearly 15 thousand have died from Gulf War Illness. We have nearly 400 thousand US soldiers coming back as patients / nearly 40 percent are psychiatric patients.
Guest – Nora Eisenberg, New York City novelist and professor of English at the City University of New York (LaGuardia) and directs CUNY’s Faculty Publications Program. The War at Home ws a Washington Post Rave Book of the Year for 2002 and Just the Way You Want Me was awarded the 2004 Gold Prize in General Fiction from Foreword, the weekly of independent publishing. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, Partisan Review, the LA Times, Tikkun., and numerous anthologies.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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Zionist Critic Joel Kovel: Terminated From Teaching Position At Bard College
Since author and professor Joel Kovel, published, Overcoming Zionism, Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel and Palestine, he has endured accusations of anti-semitism, Michigan Press temporarily suspended distribution of the book – calling it “hate speech” and recently Kovel was terminated from his teaching position as a professor of 21 years at Bard College. Joel Kovel is back with us on Law and Disorder to give us a brief chronology of these controversies and deliberate set backs.
Joel Kovel:
- I was terminated from an endowed chair (at Bard College) 3 weeks after I published an article critical of Israel and Zionism. Then asked to resign 3 weeks after I published another article critical of Zionism.
- This is a good example of the kinds of repression that the Zionist lobbies impose upon the people who dissent on the unholy relationship between Israel and the United States.
- Most campuses in this country are highly Zionist in organization, but Bard is exceptionally so. The president is the conductor of the Jerusalem symphony orchestra. He says he makes 10 trips a year to Israel. He brought the symphony around and played the Israel national anthem and the audience all stood, which I thought was just outrageous.
- I tried to give a lecture to call attention to that and was shunned.
- My book Overcoming Zionism did not only focus in on the occupation of Palestine or Israeli abuses but the fundamental structure of the Israeli state which is animated by Zionism which leads to all of the woes and abuses of human rights.
- Unless you deal at that level and point towards an overcoming and not just Zionism, but the special status and you treat Israel as we treated South Africa for equivalent crimes of Apartheid; namely a systematic racism against an indigenous people.
- So I started catching hell from the Zionist lobbies. “I’m anti-semitic, full of hate.” They panicked the University of Michigan Press, and they pulled the book.
- It’s remarkable that Bard College which is very proud of its image of being a bastion of defense of freedom of speech. Not a single peep. So I knew we were in serious straights at that point.
- I put up an anti-Zionist course last fall, which was evaluated. The evaluation was dripping with innuendo, and references to me losing my grip as a teacher, and was basically the preliminary to my termination at Bard College after 21 years.
- The alumni has supported me, the faculty not so. This is important because it is now a place that has instilled timidity and even terror amongst the faculty.
- They’re intimidated and its distressing that you can take people who are sophisticated and ostensibly good values and they will not bring themselves to utter basic criticism of an event that has shocked the world and caused millions to change their view of Israel.
- Bard is creating a new class of bourgeois who would get the jobs, auto dealerships, burger kings, whatever they’re planning.
- It’s typical of a liberal institution to use generous impulses and they want to make something good happen, but we also know how many pitfalls there are. Just think of all the universities that were founded by the British and the French to secure their empires. I think it has a lot to do with that.
Guest- Joel Kovel, scholar and an activist. In the former capacity he has published nine books and over a hundred articles and reviews. His books include White Racism, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1972; A Complete Guide to Therapy; The Age of Desire (in which his work in the psychiatric-psychoanalytic system is detailed); Against the State of Nuclear Terror; In Nicaragua; The Radical Spirit; History and Spirit(1991) – Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism
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Office of Legal Counsel Release Secret Memos: First Batch
Last week the Justice Department released internal Bush documents that revealed more legal memos authorizing torture and interrogation outside of the United States. These “police state” memos include the military’s search, detention or trial of civilians in the U.S. without congressional input and a newly disclosed opinion by torture memo author John Yoo who argued that constitutional provisions ensuring free speech and barring warrantless searches could be disregarded by the president in wartime.
Scott Horton:
- The Bush Administration kept them secret to the very end. The Obama transition team went in to get the memos and were told you can’t have them, you can’t see them.
- These memos were published because they were sought in litigation. Specifically in the lawsuit – Padilla v Yoo
- Memorandum Oct 25, 2001 – talks about the ability of the Bush Administration to drop a bomb on my house? Unreasonable search and seizure doesn’t apply if the president engages in domestic military operations. Neither does the First Amendment.
- It says the Posse Comitatus Act is essentially a dead letter.
- What they’ve said in this memo is that 200 years of Constitutional history is gone.
- These memos have an instrumental role. They set the legal policy, that’s in accordance with the Judiciary Act of 1789.
- There seems to be a vague presumption that all these memorandum are invalid. The OLC will be repudiating these memos and put a priority on publishing them because they welcome public participation in this process.
- Michael Ratner: Can you really prosecute John Yoo for these torture memos?
- You look at his public statements of which there are hundreds, he seems to understand that he has an acceptable legal defense, because everything is geared to “that’s my honest opinion and nothing has changed” Is that argument correct? No, it’s not.
- He says he was asked his opinion, he gave his opinion. I think what we will see is that he was told in meetings in the White House, before he wrote opinions, that a torture program was put in place, pushback was coming from career lawyers saying this is unlawful conduct .. and he was told we need you to protect us from this and write legal memos.
- Implying, that these memos had an instrumental role to silence critical lawyers and push the torture program, already in motion, forward.
- If that’s the case, he’s beyond the role of advisor. Mis-stating advice and corrupting the law.. .that is the precedent to be liable for war crimes. The most likely outcome from all of this is a lot of disbarmments
Guest – New York attorney Scott Horton, known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict. Scott is also the contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine
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Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri Indicted on Terrorism Charges
Last week, a federal court charged the only enemy combatant with two counts of providing material support to Al Qaeda. This will allow his release from six years of military custody and into the criminal justice system. The ACLU says this is exactly where the case should be to determine whether al-Marri is guilty. Jonathan Hafetz, working as al-Marri’s lead defense counsel says despite the news, he will not drop the habeas corpus challenge in the case.
Michael Ratner Update: Since this interview, Al-Marri’s enemy combatant status was wiped off the books. The Obama Administration in it’s brief, essentially insisted they might well have the right to hold people as enemy combatants. As it now stands, the president has the power to hold a person in the United States as an enemy combatant.
Attorney Jonathan Hafetz:
- On Feb 27, the US government unsealed an indictment that had just been filed, in the central district of Ilinois, charging Mr. Al-Marri with 2 counts of material support for terrorism.
- At the same time the government filed a motion in the Supreme Court asking to dismiss Mr. Al-Marri’s appeal claiming it was moot.
- Michael Ratner: Now this was an appeal that was going to test the power of the president to detain as unlawful enemy combatants, people in the United States?
- This sweeping power, that the president could seize and militarily detain potentially with life without trial, any individual including a US legal resident and a US citizen, based on the assertion that they were involved in terrorist activities.
- Since 9/11, this policy is finally being called into account in the Supreme Court. The Obama Administration effectively refused to defend the policy.
- In their motion paper in the Supreme Court, when they were seeking to have the case thrown out of the Supreme Court, the Obama Administration did not renounce the policy as they are trying to shield this policy of military detention from review but at the same time they’re not renouncing it.
- We filed an opposition a motion saying that the case is not moot because while the government has charged Mr Al-Marri, it has not renounced its policy or properly detaining US residents or American citizens within the United States.
- So, the Obama Administration is trying to keep all it’s options open avoiding review of this repugnent and unlawful policy that’s been in place since 9/11.
- We hope in our opposition that even if the court dismisses the case as moot, it must take one measure which is to effectively overturn the lower court’s decision in upholding the president’s power so that decision (Executive power to detain US enemy combatants) is not on the books.
Guest – ACLU attorney Jonathan Hafetz with the National Security Project.
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