Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights
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Brandworkers Defeats Anti-Speech Legal Action from the Flaum Appetizing Corp.
Workers of the Campaign for Justice at Flaum Appetizing Corporation stand up. Immigrants for Mexico and Ecuador challenged sweatshop conditions at a New York City processor and distributor of kosher foods. The workers used innovative legal advocacy and organizing tools to win justice at the company. The company Flaum Appetizing illegally withheld hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation owed to the workers and used anti-immigrant retailiation when workers stood up for their rights.
Attorney Daniel Gross:
- Brandworkers work on a joint campaign called Focus on the Food Chain.
- Much of the food that we consume at markets and restaurants is distributed by a corridor of sweatshops that line southern Queens and northern Brooklyn.
- Overtime is hardly ever paid, no retirement benefits, no health care, extreme discrimination, extremely heavy work without appropriate health and safety standards.
- The company owes them 260 thousand in this labor board case after a full trial.
- The employer had the chance to make their case, call their witnesses, they lost. That order has been enforced, but Flaum is still resisting. They’re resisting for one reason. Immigration.
- We’ve had members there at Flaum, no question where they’re from, say no to abuse, say no to conditions where Latino workers are called cockroaches.
- It’s despicable, we need to put all our energy and all our heart into opposing this type of discrimination.
- Brandworkers: We’re very pleased to report we stared down their Taft-Hartley charges at the board.
- December 8th, 2010 at the Labor Board of Brooklyn / 2 Metro Tech Center / Brooklyn, NY /
- Focus On The Food Chain / Facebook
Guest – Daniel Gross, attorney, co-founder and executive director of Brandworkers International, a non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees.
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Human Rights Groups File Legal Petition on Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Camps for Displaced in Haiti
It’s been almost a year since Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake took the lives of nearly 200 thousand people and left 1.5 million homeless. Now, women and girls living in the camps have lived in fear of the constant threat of rape and violence.
Groups of attorneys and advocates for displaced women in Haiti are calling for urgent action to confront an epidemic of sexual violence in the camps. On-the-ground investigations have revealed a shocking pattern of rape, beatings and threats against the lives of Haitan women and girls. A petition submitted by the groups to the the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calls for the IACHR to require the Haitian government to take action such as installing lighting in the camps and provide housing.
Bill Quigley, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said “The ultimate solution here is permanent, safe housing for Haitians. Unfortunately, the international community has reneged on its commitment to provide essential funds for rebuilding and the U.S., in particular, has not delivered even one cent of the reconstruction funding it pledged. Women are being forced to live in extremely unsafe conditions for the foreseeable future and it is a deplorable failure on the part of those who made such a show about standing with the Haitian people in their greatest hour of need.”
Attorney Bill Quigley:
- I was in Haiti, and visited a number of the camps with some grass roots womens’ organizations.
- I really was shocked by how terrible things were there. Still over a million people who are homeless. They’re really not camps. Every park, every school yard, every backyard, every churchyard has people living in it. Over 1300 hundred of these camps.
- None of these camps have running water or electricity or proper sanitation or food availability.
- Women and children are much more vulnerable when chaos hits.
- In one community, tens of thousands line up in the morning and afternoon just to get water. If you go to the bathroom at night, you run a real risk of being assaulted or raped.
- The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
- They don’t want the UN to be the security down there, by and large they’re considered occupiers by the people of Haiti.
- They’re preserving order but the order is that 90 percent of the people are disenfranchised.
- Somebody with a gun or machete is empowered when all you have for protection is a plastic sheet.
- A few people can terrorize thousands and thousands of folks. Every single day is a survival day.
- Only 2 percent of the rubble has been removed.
- You can’t depend only on volunteers. Volunteers can’t build hospitals.
- The legal action filed is asking to hold the United Nations and the international community in the way the aid is being spent that is not prioritizing the safety of women and girls.
- We included in that dozens of reports of kidnapping, starving and women having to sell themselves to survive.
- I’m not sure I could live that way for a month, less than a month. Toilet facilities used by thousands of people that’s far away to get to. Mario Joseph, Haitian human rights lawyer.
- Three sources of power in Haiti, the Haitian government, the US-UN and the NGO community.
- Five cents out of every dollar actually goes to the Haitian government. Bill Clinton has more power than anybody else in Haiti.
Guest – Bill Quigley, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national legal and educational organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bill joined CCR on sabbatical from his position as law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. He has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Drone Based Targeted Killings of U.S. citizens. Anwar Al-Aulaqi
Can the Obama Administration or any future administration use lethal force against US citizens who the executive office unilaterally determines as a threat to the nation? Not yet, but in recent government arguments, in the Anwar Al-Aulaqi case, the executive branch would have unreviewable authority to carry out targeted killings of Americans deemed to be enemies of the state. The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on August 30, and the government filed its reply brief on September 25.
The ACLU and CCR were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death.
Pardiss Kebriaei:
- This will be our first chance to defend our motion for a preliminary injunction and respond to the government’s arguments. The sum and substance of the government’s arguments is that there should be no rule for the court at all in the question we presented. Whether the government has authority to execute one of its citizens without any kind of due process.
- There should be absolutely no judicial review at all. They have not got into the merits of why they believe they should have this authority. They assert the US is involved in a global war against Al-Qaeda, by virtue of the war the US has the ability to target any suspect of Al-Qaeda.
- Outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the question of whether armed conflict exists, is a factual objective question. It’s not a matter of which the president declares and that the level of hostilities and the organization of groups in Yemen are just not such that they to the level of war.
- Anwar Al-Alwaqi is not Al-Qaeda, he is associated with Al-Qaeda.
- The US is not only claiming broad authority geographically but global authority in terms of any and all groups they deem somehow linked to Al-Qaeda.
- They’re claiming AUMF but they’re also claiming a very vague principle of self defense which is tricky. They are claiming self defense under article 51 of the UN charter.
- They’re going around criminal law and claiming un-reviewable authority to carry out global assassination. This is an escalation of what we saw under the Bush Administration with global detention authority, this is global killing authority.
- The authority could reach any citizen they deem a threat to national security. It could reach someone in the United States, the full contours of the government’s arguments would be that the decision to kill is for the executive to determine and that should be an un-reviewable decision.
- The mechanized disconnected nature of the killing is alarming, both by an accountability point of view and a moral point of view.
- The drone project is operated by the CIA and by a covert unit in the Department of Defense called the Joint Special Operations Command.
- Documenting them is incredibly hard, but yet you have the expansion of the war and killings, in this shadow war way. You have this parallel secret war being conducted by the CIA and JSOC largely through the use of unmanned drones. What we have here is the pre-determination of the ability to kill.
- There’s been a steady increase of rhetoric about Yemen and an escalation in the language of war.
Guest – Pardiss Kebriaei, she joined the Center Constitutional Rights in July 2007. Since then, her work has focused on representing men detained at Guantánamo Bay in their habeas corpus challenges, before international human rights tribunals, in diplomatic advocacy with foreign governments to secure resettlement for men who cannot return home, and in post-release reintegration efforts. Her clients have included men from Yemen, Syria, Algeria, and Afghanistan. Her work includes seeking accountability for torture and arbitrary detention at Guantánamo.
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Justice On Trial: Documentary on Mumia Abu-Jamal
We’re pleased to have with us today the director Kouross Esmaeli of the new documentary Justice On Trial. The film focuses on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of the most scrutinized and contested legal cases in American history. Justice on Trial examines the facts of the case, the judicial bias, racial discrimination in jury selection, prosecutorial misconduct and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction. The injustices and problems in Mumia’s case as many listeners know, are common within the criminal justice system in the United States.
Kouross Esmaeli:
- I tried to get an interview with the wife of the police officer who was killed on the night of December 9, 1981
- I thought it was important to show what drives that side I came to realize that Tigre Hill was making a film (about Mumia, titled Barrel of A Gun) that was propaganda for the other side.
- We had to make sure that film doesn’t become the voice of the nation.
- (Film includes photos 12 minutes after shooting occurred)
- The photos were discovered by an activist and scholar in Germany. He found them online, Michael met the photographer in the US, and realized there were 22 photographs from that night.
- They were offered to the prosecution, they refused.
- What the photographs show is incredible, they show a roving police hat.
- Officer Faulkner’s hat is placed in different spots on the crime scene.
- They show police handling the gun that was supposedly used in this crime. Handling it without gloves.
- There’s this push to kill Mumia and silence him physically. I’m interested to know what drives these people.
- For a screening in your area contact – – Kouross by email – – Kouross@bignoisefilms.org
Guest – Kouross Esmaeli, independent filmmaker and journalist.
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Final Verdict : What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case.
In 1965, Walter and Miriam Schneir published Invitation to an Inquest, it was among the first critical accounts of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. They were executed in 1953 for passing atom bomb secrets to Soviet Russia. In that book the Schneirs presented exhaustive evidence that key witnesses in the trial had changed their story after prompting from prosecutors. Their conclusion was, the Rosenbergs were innocent. Now after 30 years, Walter Schneir returned to the case with new evidence. Schneir had found that Julius Rosenber was marginally involved in the atom bomb spy ring and Ethel wasn’t involved at all. However they both lied about not knowing about espionage because of their earlier activities in World War II. All of this unravels in the Final Verdict : What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case.
Miriam Schneir:
- The case began in 1950, 60 years ago. American cities were vulnerable to nuclear attacks. In that climate the Rosenbergs were arrested. The legal charge was conspiracy to commit espionage. During the trial, they were charged with stealing the secrets of the atomic bomb.
- The principle witnesses were Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass and his wife Ruth.
- David was in the Army and serendipitously was sent to Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was being constructed.
- Julius was a spy during the wartime years. Ethel did nothing, she was not a spy.
- In a report by the Atomic Energy Commission, Greenglass was ranked as the least effective atomic spies back then. There was a lot of effort on the part of the Department of Justice to convict these people.
- This case is relevant today in a larger frame work.
- We can see that the Rosenberg case is like the Dreyfus case or the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
- It’s essential that leftists of each generation should keep that history alive.
- Now it’s Islam fundamentalism. That’s not to say there was no danger.
- You see the government use the courts to advance policies.
- On a personal level, Walter and I learned from the Freedom of Information documents we recieved, on the basis of the Meeropol suit, that while we were researching an Invitation to an Inquest, the FBI had been track our activities.
- We were just two writers who were trying to research a book, they were tapping our phones, and finally they placed us as well as thousands of others on an index of people who would be detained in the event of a national emergency.
- After the book was published, an FBI memo, directed that the book should be smothered and forced out of the public eye.
Guest – Miriam Schneir, editor of Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present and Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. In addition to Invitation to an Inquest, she is also the co-author of “Remember the Ladies”: Women in America, 1750–1815.
Walter Schneir, a freelance writer on law, politics, and science. He is the co-author, with his wife Miriam Schneir, of Invitation to an Inquest, long considered the definitive book on the Rosenberg case. He is also the editor of Telling it Like it was: The Chicago Riots, an early account of the 1968 Democratic Convention. He died in April 2009 soon after completing this work.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Oklahoma:Voters Approve Sharia Law Ban
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French Labor Activism, US Labor Passivism
In the United States, unemployment rose from its level in 2008 (5.8 %) to its level in the second quarter of 2010 (9.7 %). These are numbers never seen before. However, by comparison, French unemployment rose from 7.4 % in 2008 to 9.2 % in the second quarter of 2010. This data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show unemployment had risen further and faster in the US than in France across in the last 3 years. This is found in Economics Professor Rick Wolff’s article French Labor Activism, US Labor Passivism.
Yet French workers are in the streets by the millions demonstration against anti-worker “austerity policies.” Government policies that could cut workers payroll or the services that are provided to the public. Meanwhile US workers are taking it sitting down, there’s no resistance. In California, there’s now a 22 percent unemployment and it takes the average unemployed American about 35 weeks to find a job. US states and towns cut payrolls and public services and as President Obama’s special commission gets ready to reduce social security benefits to the American people. Consider that in September 2010, according to the BLS, while the total US private sector added 64,000 jobs, state and local governments fired 77,000 people.
Rick Wolff:
- This is a tsunami of a political movement. All the six different organizations of trade unions have unified in organizing and moving these demonstrations. They haven’t unified on anything for a long time. They’ve drawn in students.
- Sarkozy almost in a way provoked the students to join the demonstrations in huge numbers.
- The students quickly understood that if the older workers stayed in their jobs an extra 2 years, those are jobs they’re not going to get. 70 percent of the French people support demonstrations. What we see now is a minority government, isolated, entrenched.
- If you want to see a movement that is doing something, mobilizing mass opinion, you got it.
- If you read what the French are saying, it’s this. We’ve already paid for the crisis, with unemployment, lost homes, insecure jobs.
- We’ve done our part, we’ve accepted that. We’ve drawn our line in the sand. We’re not gonna pay for fixing this mess from which have suffered. Why is this relevant? It is exactly like the United States.
- The atrophy of left here is much more palpable, then what happened there. We’ve had a much worse decline of our trade union movement then they did.
- We have to create anew the organizations that could bring people together into an effective coalition. The last thing we need is 800 single issued groups, cultivating its own garden and not talking to the other.
Guest-Richard D. Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
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Entrapment and Conviction of the Newburgh Four
Last week, the four men accused of planting bombs outside synagogues in the Bronx and plotting to fire missiles at military planes were convicted in a case that was the test of the entrapment defense. The jury of the Newburgh 4 trial convicted James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot military planes. Cromitie and David Williams were also convicted of conspiring to kill officers and employees of the government. Sentencing is scheduled for March. The four face life sentences.
It wasn’t difficult for Shahed Hussain, a government agent provocateur who was facing incarceration, to offer food, money, marijuana, cars and vacations to the four men and ultimately coercing them to collaborate on so-called “terror plots.”
According to a press release by Project Salam (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims) The defendants had absolutely no intention to commit any terrorist crimes until the FBI agent provocateur, Shahed Hussain, promised them each $5,000––and in one case $250,000––if they did his bidding. He posed as a rich man who could give the defendants everything they’d ever wanted. He chose the targets, he told them how it would all work, and the FBI paid for everything. The four defendants were petty criminals, none of whom had a car or even a driver’s license. When the so-called leader, James Cromitie, decided to back away from Hussain’s scheme and refused to answer his calls for about a month, Hussain said, “Brother, I told you you could have $250,000, but you don’t want it.” Cromitie’s response: “OK, I’m in.”
Attorney Steve Downs:
- We were really surprised, we thought the edge had been reached here. They (Newburgh Four) were convicted of participating in this plot that had been cooked up, manufactured by the FBI
- These are four individuals who had no way to undertake any kind of terrorist plot. They had no automobile, no driver’s license, no money, no training, they had nothing. The FBI simply provided everything, including driving them to a spot where all they had to do is deliver a package, outside of building to complete this crime which the FBI concocted. There’s no other way to look at it.
- There is the pre-disposition idea and that comes from the ready-response argument. That has simply been misused.
- Example: Would like a loan of 5 thousand dollars, or a gift of 5 thousand dollars? Then only afterward you find out this “gift” has to do with money laundering.
- In the meantime, the person is being asked to make a ready-response. In the Newburgh case, Shahed Hussien, the informant, suggested an illegal plot. The main person he was working on James Crominic, essentially backed out of it.
- There’s a six week period that James didn’t correspond with the government at all. Then finally, Shahed called and said look you’ve got 250 thousand dollars here if you go through with this.
- These people had been somewhat exposed to Islam in prison, but didn’t know much about the religion.
- One of them had a crack-cocaine problem, another had mental problems, very serious mental problems.
- You could’ve gone to any place in upstate New York and found somebody who would grab at a deal like this.
- It was a lot of money for potentially very little activity.
- The building that was going to blow up would be unoccupied, the plane was on the ground without people in it.
- They were paid to make a political statement and not to kill anybody.
- These things are very very cleverly crafted by the FBI.
- Because people don’t know much about Islam, the government is free to play upon stereotypes and fears that people have.
Guest – Attorney Steve Downs, retired chief attorney with the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct, is a founder of Project SALAM (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims).
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Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights
The Color of Law recreates the compelling story of Ernie Goodman, one of the nation’s preeminent defense attorneys for workers and the militant poor. Author’s Steve Babson, Dave Riddle and David Elsila tell the story from the beginning, starting at Goodman’s early years as a corporate lawyer to his conversion to labor law during the Great Depression. From Detroit to Mississippi, Goodman saw police and other officials giving the “color of law” to actions that stifled freedom of speech and nullified the rights of workers and minorities. The Color of Law demonstrates that the abuse of power is non-partisan and that individuals who oppose injustice can change the course of events. Published by Wayne State University Press.
Bill Goodman:
- The book goes beyond my Dad as just an individual person who led a wonderful life and talks about the experience of going through the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s.
- His awakening as a political person, came about out of the formation of the labor movement in the United States.
- He was one of the key people that provided legal counseling to the UAW.
- The sit down strike in Flint, Michigan: Governor Frank Murphy refused to send in the National Guard troops.
- Literally taking power and grabbing these factories from huge corporations was enormously important and symbolic. Ernie Goodman and others ended up representing UAW during McCarthy period.
- George Crockett was one of the most courageous people I’ve ever known in my life. He would not bend.
- My Dad got one of those Attica grand jury cases.
- Colman Young was highlighted in this period. Our law firm took the lead in the National Lawyers Guild saying this has to be the priority of the guild to represent the civil rights movement.
- Ernie Goodman grew up in the Jewish ghetto in Detroit
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Steve Babson:
- When Ernie Goodman died in 1997, his wife Frieda wanted some way of chronicling his life. She contacted Dave Elsila and he contacted Dave Riddle, and began writing the book. Dave Riddle became ill. We saw what a wonderful start he made to the book so, we picked it up and I became the lead writer in 2005 and 2006.
- Ernie was not unlike millions in the US that confronted the collapse of capitalism.
- They were collecting the cadavers off the streets every morning (in Detroit, during Depression)
- He was a repo-man, repossessing furniture, which brought him face to face with the unemployed councils and some of the early organizing in response to the Depression.
- He finally has a conversion crisis, where he finds his way to the other side of barricades, where he joins those contesting the outcomes of the Great Depression. It’s the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the UAW and this upsurge of worker mobilization on the job on behalf of industrial unions to turnback the Great Depression that leads to the black and white unity in the workplace.
- The Civil Rights Federation was supported by these new unions. It was the Civil Rights Federation that not only questioned segregation in neighborhoods and on the job, but the role of these vigilante groups. (The Black Legion) that were trying to roll back the New Deal and the CIO.
- The Lawyers Guild represented a progressive alternative and on that basis quickly grew in the late 30s to about 5000 members. 90 percent of the Guild was driven from its ranks from this concerted and fabricated web of lies, typical of the McCarthy era.
- Ernie Goodman takes the Guild to the South, first Virginia, then Mississippi.
Guest – Steve Babson, one of the 3 authors, Steve is a labor educator and union activist living in Detroit for the last 32 years with his wife, Nancy Brigham. He received his doctorate in U.S. History in 1989 from Wayne State University, where he also worked as an instructor in the Labor Studies Center from 1985 to 2006. Steve has published six books, including Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town and Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry.
Guest – Bill Goodman, former legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights has been an extraordinary public interest lawyer for over 30 years, and has served as counsel on issues including post-Katrina social justice, public housing, voting rights, the death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights, human rights work in Haiti, and civil disobedience.
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Foreclosure Scandal: Last Stage of Mortgage Scams
Big banks have resumed the foreclosure process in 23 judicial states after a temporary suspension. Judicial states require a judge and court hearing for foreclosure proceedings, not so, for the remaining 27 non judicial states. Faulty databases that track mortgage foreclosures electronically have made big mistakes amid the high volume of mortgage defaults. Meanwhile, Bank of America started to file new paperwork for 102,000 foreclosures. Consumer advocates and lawyers for homeowners doubt Bank of America completed an accurate review of the paperwork. Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, expressed his skepticism to one media source, “These are lawyers. These are banks going to court and committing fraud,” he said. “For them to say this is a minor technical problem is mind-boggling.”
This is part 2 of the mortgage crisis. The same banks the public bailed out stand to make hundreds of billions more on these foreclosures of homes.
Ira Rheingold:
- We have a broken mortgage system. The same system that created all those terrible mortgages, that led people into default and losing their homes also created a mortgaging servicing that’s completely broken.
- Anything that would stop them from moving quickly they avoided, they figured they weren’t going to get caught.
- You have GMAC, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup.
- As a lawyer I’m offended by the law firms who are involved and really are knowingly committing fraud.
- These affidavits that they were putting before the court, the person signing them, said I have knowledge we are proper owner of the mortgage. I have knowledge this is the amount that’s owed.
- That person that was signing that affidavit was signing 500 that same day. They’re not going to suddenly have a staff to track down the original documents saying they have proper ownership.
- We’ve seen time and again those industries, those banks add fees they’re not allowed to charge, mis-ordering payments like we’ve seen in the credit card industry.
- The bottom line is what does this demonstrate? It demonstrates the banks can’t be trusted.
- What the foreclosure crisis has done is devastate communities across this country.
- The way we rebuild our economy is allowing homeowners to actually capable of affording thier house and stay in their homes. We’re talking about 3 million foreclosures across the country.
- FHA is a mortgage that the federal government insures.
- http://www.foreclosurelegalassistance.org. You need to clean this mess up.
Guest – Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. (NACA), an organization dedicated to protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices. At NACA, Mr. Rheingold has testified before both Houses of Congress on various mortgage lending and consumer finance issues, offered commentary before federal agencies charged with regulating financial service industries and protecting consumers, and helped draft amicus briefs on issues of great concern to consumers before the nation’s highest courts
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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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Rachel Corrie Lawsuit In Israel
Rachel Corrie, an American student activist and human rights defender from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003, by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer while nonviolently protesting Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement.
The first phase of the trail began in March 2010, when the Corrie family presented its witnesses, including several of Rachel’s colleagues from ISM who witnessed her killing. During the second phase of the trial, which began last month, the government presented several witnesses, including the Israeli military police investigator who headed the investigation into Rachel’s death, and the bulldozer operators who struck and killed her.
The lawsuit charges that Rachel’s killing was intentional. It also charges that the Israeli government was negligent for allowing Israeli soldiers and military commanders to act recklessly using an armored military bulldozer without regard to the presence of unarmed, nonviolent civilians in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Lastly the lawsuit alleges that the Israeli military failed to take appropriate and necessary measures to protect Rachel’s life, in violation of obligations under Israeli and international law.
Katherine Gallagher:
- Rachel had been serving as a peace activist with the Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.
- The case is unfortunately taking quite a while, it was filed back in 2005, then the evidentiary phase opened in 2010. At that point the Corrie’s were able to call their own witnesses. They also called an expert who could speak about how to conduct a proper investigation.
- The investigator testimony revealed huge errors in the way the investigation was carried out.
- Errors include: The bulldozer was removed from the scene of the killing. There were investigators in the case who never went to the scene of the crime.
- On October 7, right before testimony, it was permitted that soldiers involved in the incident be allowed to testify behind a screen.
- This is an extraordinary step, the family if unable to see those soldiers who are able to provide some answers even through their body language as they testify.
- For the Corries who have waited 7 and a half years for some answers, that they won’t be able to assess the credibility by his body language is a significant blow.
- When you say the name Rachel Corrie in Israel, people know who she is.
- CCR Lawsuit: Caterpillar had aided and abetted war crimes and other serious violations of international law.
- It struck how Jerusalem has changed. There’s been a massive amount of construction in the old city and particularly around East Jerusalem.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she focuses on holding individuals, including US and foreign government officials, and corporations, including private military contractors, accountable for serious human rights violations. Among the cases she is working on are Arar v. Ashcroft, Matar v. Dichter, Saleh v. Titan and Estate of Atban v. Blackwater.
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You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America
John Rick MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. He’s an award winning journalist and author. We want to talk with Rick about his third book titled You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America and explore the topic of who finances the Republican and Democratic parties. A recent book review states, that it (quote) advances a familiar argument: that moneyed and privileged interests, rather than the needs and opinions of ordinary citizens, dominate contemporary American politics. MacArthur, begins by lamenting the lack of basic comprehension of the Constitution and American government on the part of the political and media elite. The book also criticizes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Rick MacArthur:
- There are two balance sheets, there’s one with regard to the people of the United States and the other which I talk about in You Can’t Be President is the internal party structure.
- The balance sheet for the people is bad, we are now enmeshed even more in a self destructive war if possible than Iraq was. Afghanistan is a disaster and you don’t have to ask a peacenik.
- You have a fake health care reform which really reinforced the power of the insurance companies.
- You have a very feeble reform of Wall Street. You have a continuation of anti-labor,orthodox “free trade” policies. You have the continued corruption of the lobby system in Washington.
- Coming from Chicago, if Obama attacked the lobby system it would be like committing political suicide.
- Obama broke every record in corporate fund raising, PAC fund raising. He raised money from Jack Abramoff’s old law firm.
- In sum, he’s (Obama) has been an anti-reformer, anti-progressive.
- On civil liberties, if you criticize Bush it’s great, if you criticize Obama, you can hear a pin drop.
- I met someone who did a tour of the new prison in Baghram, Afghanistan. He said it was terrifying.
- You have to understand that the Chicago machine, is the most powerful local machine in the country.
- Almost every important job in the county is held by a Democrat. The mayor of Chicago is very much like the dictator of Chicago. Obama came out of the most intolerant, the most monopolistic, one sided political machine in the country.
- Murdoch’s bundled campaign contributions were 50/50 between Clinton and Obama.
- I don’t see why we can’t organize around an opposition candidate, raise some money.
- I think what you’re seeing is disillusionment among the party leadership with Obama, because he hasn’t delivered the goods.
- They wanted Obama to deliver the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
- Obama is a tremendously prudent and cautious politician, there’s no audacity at all.
Guest – John Rick MacArthur, an American journalist and author of books about US politics. He is the president of Harper’s Magazine. MacArthur has been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal (1977), the Washington Star (1978), The Bergen Record (1978–1979), Chicago Sun-Times (1979–1982), and an assistant foreign editor at United Press International (1982).
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Updates:
- Anwar Al-Aulaqi Case – Drones Targeting US Citizens – Obama Wants To Dismiss CCR/ACLU Case
- CCR Guantanamo So Called Suicide Cases
- Supreme Court Will Not Review Case On Feds Wiretapping Guantanamo Lawyers
- Bombing of the USS Cole – Could Prosecutors Use The Fruit From the Poisonous Tree?
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NYC NLG Street Law and Racial Profiling Program
Today we’re joined by Paula Segal and Gabriela Lopez with the New York City Lawyers Guild Street Law Clinic Program. The project sends groups of attorneys to conduct “Street Law” workshops with a range of students in high school. We’re also joined by students from the Aarturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy High School who were part of the street law classes.
Street Law Students:
- In my neighborhood it’s really common for the Police to bother you for no reason. I don’t think they had the right to go into my pockets unless they had reasonable suspicion. This happens at least 3 times a week.
- One time they took me into the precinct, took my picture, ran my fingerprints.
- I was getting off the train and these two big police men were getting off the train and they stopped me. They said we have her on the walkie-talkie. This women said take off your sneakers. She kept asking, where is it? Where is it? That’s when she started to get physical and she lifted up my shirt. “If you don’t f-in’ tell me where it’s at, I’m going to strip search you. It happened on Elder Avenue, next to the 6 train.
- They say no, we’re not going to touch you, then he throws me on the car.
- You guys are unfolding my socks right now, and I don’t like this. There’s a certain way that I fold my socks.
- After they find nothing, they say you should change your attitude. I said, you should change your attitude.
- A lot of cops judge character, when I see cops, you have to give them an expression. Hey look I’m out here, I’m not tryin to get in that car.
- I’m thinking about the cops catching the real villans. If you’re really guilty you’re going to get hassled, if you’re not guilty,then you can be free. The advice I get from the street law project is not consenting to the search.
- From my knowledge, the cops need a certain amount of arrests at the end of the month, so they’ll pick on anybody. They curse a lot. Undercover cops, they’ll probably have on a hoodie, try to fit in with everybody else, it just don’t work.
- Law Student Paula Segal: We focus on giving people tools to walk away, to avoid arrest.
- Law Student, Street Law Coordinator Gabriella Lopez: Last year we went to more than sixty different sites. Sixty to Seventy different trainings that occured last year.
- Email the Street Law Team – streetlawteam@gmail.com
Guests – Paula Segal and Gabriela Lopez with the New York City Lawyers Guild Street Law Clinic Program. Aarturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy High School Students: Charisma Whaley / Joseph Campbell / Kiara Avila / Stephanie Colon / Jonathan Jeffries.
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Grand Juries Historically and the Minneapolis / Chicago FBI Raids
A total of 12 people were served with subpoenas during last months FBI raids in Minneapolis and Chicago. The FBI targeted anti-war peace activists and key organizers of demonstrations and marches who have been asked to appear before a grand jury. What is a grand jury? Historically, a grand jury was supposed to be citizens coming together to determine if charges should be filed criminally against someone. Today, it’s very different. It’s mostly a rubber stamp for what the prosecutors want. If you refuse to testify at a grand jury, you can be taken to a judge to answer questions. If you refuse to answer those questions you could be put in jail.
Margaret Ratner-Kunstler:
- If you were subpoenaed before a grand jury in 1968 and you asserted your grand jury right, then that really was the end of your participation in the grand jury.
- You asserted immunity and if you we’re given immunity, you couldn’t be indicted.
- Immunity: Nothing you say could be used against you, but anything you testified about could not be the subject of a criminal indictment against you. Your words could not be held against you, or the fruits of those words. But it’s so easy to get around that, by a prosecutor saying, this didn’t come from this.
- If you then refused to testify given this minor immunity, you could be subject to imprisonment.
- If you refuse to testify you’re brought back before the judge and the judge then holds you in “civil contempt.”
- The grand jury is usually about 18 months. The grand jury in Chicago is a special grand jury which means it’s twice as long.
- That’s important because if you’re held in civil contempt, the keys to the jail are in your pocket. You’re in jail for as long as you refuse to testify.
- If you say something you could wave your fifth amendment right by already saying something.
- The recent FBI raids represents the tremendous see-change we have in terms of the ability for people to actively oppose this government’s policy.
- In 1983, there were many groups in this country who were joining forces with progressive groups in Central America. You had the Committee in Solidarity With the People Of El Salvador.
- Each of the 11 individual persons subpeoned wrote letters to the Attorney General saying that they would assert their fifth amendment right and that they would not testify.
- If they can’t get you on a federal charge it’s often that they’re looking for a mistake you made in conversation, even an informal conversation with a federal official.
Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Kunstler is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.
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