Law and Disorder February 2, 2009

Human Rights, Prison Industry, Torture

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Analysis of Current Economy and Economic Aid Package: 2009

Economists say the United States is facing it’s biggest economic crisis since World War II. In the wake of historic massive bailouts to banks, the democratic party has proposed an economic stimulus plan designed to create 3 million jobs, provide tax cuts and stimulate areas of the economy such as energy and health care.

  • Law Enforcement: $3 billion for state and local law enforcement assistance. / $1 billion for community policing services.
  • General Services Administration: $6 billion for construction and repair of federal buildings.
    $1 billion for immigration facilities at ports of entry.
  • Homeland Security: $250 million for salaries and construction at ports of entry. $500 million for purchase and installation of explosive detection systems. $150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges.

Max Wolff:

  • When you look at the stimulus, it’s a kinder gentler and much larger version of what we started 12 months ago when the Bush administration realized the gig was up.
  • It’s nice to see some money for the electrical grid, which now isn’t even the envy of the developing world.
  • We need the stimulus, but we need structural change. It’s a missed opportunity, if we’re going to go this much deeper in debt.
  • We did two things wrong. We kind of nationalized the banks, without nationalizing them, and we kind of bailed out the private banks without giving them enough money.
  • We gave them enough money to not go bankrupt immediately but not enough to get back into the business of banking.
  • Then, we turned the Federal Reserve, without public discussion or Congressional debate, into a giant national central bank.
  • Now the Federal Reserve is getting into the business of buying US treasuries, loaning money to corporations and bailing out private banks.
  • To me, the lesson we should have learned is that you can’t use credit and debt to substitute for people who don’t have enough money to live and can’t make purchases above more than 2 weeks pay.
  • As long as that is in place we are slipping into a debt trap.
  • We needed to do something to bail out the banks. The bottom line is that we’re asking the banks to give more money when we have an international crisis because they’ve loaned to people who can’t pay them back.
  • Remember the Great Depression also involved weapons of mass destruction and the loss of more than 200 thousand lives
  • We need to have higher wages, which means lower profits. We need national health care immediately.
  • We need to import a little less. We need to export a little more.
  • That means ten years of economic pain, best case scenario, while you re-center the economy and teach people a different way to view their citizenship and livelihood.
  • You would need massive unrest, creative and constructive for fundamental change in structure

Guest – Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.

Professor Rick Wolff:

  • Giving a lot of money to the people who screwed up the economy is not the best recipe for fixing it.
  • A great deal of money will be given back to the people in the form of tax rebates. As we have seen people are not using tax rebates in ways that boost the economy.
  • All 50 states who refused to see the writing on the wall, will get money that will drive the same old pork barrel spending scenarios.
  • A very small amount of money will go to significant change that would begin to make a difference. We will be sitting here 6 months from now saying . . this didn’t work either.
  • The fundamental thing that created 30 years of crazy misdevelopment has been the end of rising real wages, it came to end because corporations found ways to stop paying higher wages.
  • From outsourcing to computer technology, between desperate women looking for jobs, desperate immigrants looking for jobs. Put all that together, they didn’t have to pay any more wages to a population who measured their success in life as a rising standard of living.
  • If people believe that and it’s reinforced by every politician and advertisment, then they will borrow, with banks eager to lend, you produce an explosion of credit that, in the end could not be sustained.
  • Our problem now is you fund the banks again and you tell them to go lend, they can’t.
  • One thing no one is talking about is that this stimulus and the next one later this year, is based on the continuing to borrow money. As a hobbling world economy invests back into the United States, it will create a bizarre disorganization.
  • The clue is to look at the Great Depression. There was no social security, no unemployment insurance.
  • If the goverment is going to be the bank of last resort, the lender of last resort, then the logic will arise, why isn’t it the employer of last resort. We have an unemployment rate at nearly 9 percent.
  1. Reorganize the way business works so that the people become there own board of directors.
  2. Corporations reorganized so that workers collectively become there own boss.
  3. Mon-Thurs – You come to work and do your job as you always did, less hours, wage increase.
  4. Friday – Attend meetings all day to assess the impact of the product on the community, what products to make, what to do with profits. Cultivating the community.

Guest – Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst Rick teaches at the Brecht Forum and the New School in New York City. (Read Rick’s article, Economic Blues in the Monthly Review)

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Class Action Victory: More Than 500 Women Prisoners Sexually Abused In Michigan Prisons

More than 500 women prisoners in Michigan say they were sexually assaulted by prison guards in the 1990s. Now after 8 years of getting the courts to recognize women prisoners as people, among other obstacles, this class action lawsuit has brought their stories to the public domain and yielded verdicts of nearly $50 million. Attorney Deborah LaBelle has led a team of lawyers to get justice for the abused women in Michigan prisons. These cases represent only 18 women, many have yet to testify. Read – Human Rights Watch Report

Attorney Deborah LaBelle:

  • The case began with re-framing what the rights are of women in detention and their bodily integrity.
  • Their right to be free of any sexual harassment, or sexual conduct similar to people on the outside.
  • We started out using the State’s Civil Rights Act – A law that had not been used in these types of cases.
  • The SCRA, protected people’s civil rights in employment but expanded to state facilities.
  • It took 8 years to establish that state prisoners are people too, before Deborah LaBelle and her team began trials.
  • Many prisoner cases are tried for injunctive release, the central issue is the awarding of money to validate the humanity of these women.
  • Other than Attica cases, no one has awarded this kind of money to prisoners.
  • Some women were abused within the period of 8 years, rapes/force oral sex/groping.
  • One of the testimonies is that women would put a pop can in front of their cell doors to wake them up when the door opened.
  • When raped outside of prison, you can get away from the location, or not see that person again.
  • They’re being sexually abused by employees of the State – in charge of judging your character – which creates a deep hopelessness for justice.
  • There are 500 women, as a class. The courts decided we would try them in groups of ten.
  • One of the stunning things in the first verdict is that jury came forward in the end and issued an apology.
  • The state has continually said, these are liars, prostitutes, criminals, the same argument that they are not a person was played out in the trials.
  • There are 482 more women to bring to court. Many of the women are out and stumbling, returning to prison.
  • Michigan stopped the cross gender pat downs, and removed men from the housing units.
  • We’re hoping the state says, people were really hurt and you have to acknowledge this, they need treatment.

Guest – Deborah LaBelle, an Ann Arbor civil rights lawyer who headed a team of lawyers to sue on behalf of the women. LaBelle was recently quoted saying . “No one, no one in this country, no one in a civilized society is sentenced to be raped and assaulted in prison.”

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Law and Disorder January 19, 2009

Afghanistan War, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Israel in Gaza: “A Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal” – Michael Ratner’s Recent Post

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Boycott, Divest, Sanction – Naomi Klein

Two weeks ago the 15 nation Security Council at the United Nations approved (14 in favor) an immediate cease fire in Gaza and full withdrawal of Israeli forces. The US abstained from the vote. Yet Israeli forces continue to use military force against Hamas and Palestinian women and children.

There are other ways to stop Israel says award_winning journalist and author Naomi Klein. In her recent Nation magazine article Boycott, Divest, Sanction, Naomi lays out measures that could economically slow down Israel. When weaker measures have failed such as protests, petitions and lobbying, Naomi writes that the Boycott Divest Sanction strategy is practical on a country so small and trade dependent. The strategy worked to help end apartheid in South Africa, and may have a real possibility to weaken Israel.

Naomi Klein:

  • These strategies are based on the effective methods used in anti-apartheid movement.
  • Including consumer boycotts and economic sanctions that governments would impose.
  • Israel’s lawlessness has intensified, from the attack on Lebanon to the siege on Gaza,
  • Despite this, there is the opposite of sanctions with Israel right now.
  • For example: Israel was invited as a guest of honor in the Paris book fair.
  • Israel signs free trade agreement with Mercosur.
  • Israel’s trade with Canada increased by 45 percent last year.
  • This has escalated Israel’s lawlessness and its time for a new strategy.
  • The two companies that are currently the focus of the BDS strategy – Motorola and Caterpillar
  • There’s a very well funded and organized anti-boycott movement/pro-Zionist movement that is spreading disinformation
  • They’ve re-framed the academic boycott as a Nazi style boycott of Jews.
  • This anti-boycott campaign is more aggressive than the actual boycott campaign.
  • It also targets companies to boycott who are boycotting Israel
  • End the Israeli Occupation
  • Hang Up On Motorola
  • Why boycott Caterpillar? – CCR
  • Boycotts also target Israeli wine, Israeli fruit, Israel tourism.
  • Israel is being singled out not for tougher treatment but for lenient treatment.
  • The attack on Gaza was pre-planned since last March.
  • What Israel is doing is very similar to what the US is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan; “responding to terrorism.”
  • I’m hearing from my friends and colleagues in Israel that they really want sanctions to come from the outside, because they’ve lost hope for any internal pressure.
  • There is a one sided boycott going on. It’s been going on for 18 months and its this brutal, illegal, embargo on Gaza imposed by the state of Israel and the United States, and Canada, etc.
  • This is depriving Palestinians of food of life saving medicine, of water, of cooking fuel.
  • Its just amazing to me that they would call this international legal boycott that would deprive Tel Aviv of some international symphonies as “one sided.”
  • Regarding doing interviews and writing recent article: It’s always a difficult calculation of – when do you want to leave yourself open to the onslaught of hate and propaganda. . .?
  • Writing this column wasn’t courageous, it was cowardly. I thought about writing this column about five times over the past couple of years. In many ways this is the easiest time to call for a boycott.

Guest – Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and the earlier international best seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate.

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Adam Shapiro: Israel’s Continued Assault On Gaza

Now into its fourth week, the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has been called catastrophically misguided by human rights supporters. Thousands have come out to protest the bombardment of the residents in Gaza, where the Palestinian death toll is nearly one thousand and more than 4000 injured. Add to that a media blackout around the world about the real facts on the ground in Gaza as Israeli forces use advanced weaponry such as white phosphorus ammunition in civilian areas.

Adam Shapiro: International Solidarity Movement

  • International Solidarity Movement: brings people around the world to come join the Palestinians in solidarity -using non violent resistance to concretely and strategically oppose what Israel is doing in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
  • ISM has evolved in Jerusalem as eyewitness and reporting.
  • Some of you may have seen a youtube video that’s making the rounds of Huwaida standing up to Israeli soldiers
  • She is physically standing in front of Israeli soldiers who are pointing to shoot at Palestinian protesters.
  • The Israeli Defense Force talking point of “merely defending themselves”, ignores the last forty years of history of direct occupation of the Gaza Strip.
  • The blockade has led to the impoverishment of the Palestinians, which has led to some of the worst living conditions anywhere on the Earth.
  • 80 percent of Gazans are refugees of Palestine from 1947. Gaza is not their home.
  • Israel’s version of history is saying, “this conflict started when Israel started to fire back.”
  • Among the rocket fire that was occuring prior to the cease fire, most of them fell into empty areas.
  • These Hamas rockets were meant as a political message and not targeting Israeli civilians.
  • Israel’s arguement that it is acting in self defense is “pure fabrication.”
  • There is no mistake that this war was pre-planned and pre-organized.
  • We know that before the Gaza attack, Israeli soldiers trained in mock Gaza urban settings.
  • We also know that Israel prepared its people months in advance for going to war.
  • If you use overwhelming force you can eventually bend the political party to your will.
  • Arab parties are banned from running in the next Israeli election.
  • NY Times printed that 80-90 percent of Israelis support the war in Gaza. Ridiculous when more than 20 percent of Israelis are Arab.

Guest – Adam Shapiro, human rights activist and documentary filmmaker. He was the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian organization, the stated mission of which is to bring civilians from around the world to resist nonviolently the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. His latest film is the documentary series, “Chronicles of a Refugee.”

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Law and Disorder January 12, 2009

Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Saul Landau – Cuba 50th Anniversary

Then and now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960_2008

Hosts talk with author and internationally known scholar Saul Landau about his recent article titled Then and Now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008 and the Cuban 50th Anniversary.
Saul Landau:

  • It’s almost a miracle the revolution in Cuba survived 50 years, considering the United States was determined to destroy it.
  • In light of all that the Cuban revolution emerges as something miraculous.
  • One looks at Cuba today, one finds lots of despair, especially after 3 brutal hurricanes.
  • You see Cubans hanging out in the street in the middle of the work day, drinking beer, not exactly a sign of high spirited socialist morality.
  • Some are plotting to go to Florida, where they still think there’s some paradise waiting for them. Some do succeed, cleaning the toilets at the Miami airport.
  • I kept saying to myself, if someone came over from Europe to the United States in 1862, they would say “Oh, this place had so much promise.”
  • I see the Cuban Revolution as a total success, in the sense it achieved all of its goals and then some.
  • When I first went to Cuba, I was 24 at the time, the kids were running ministries and it was creative anarchy.
  • Pre – Bay of Pigs: Cuba survived so many US based sabotages, terrorist attacks were launched from the United States.
  • Some were assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, some were attempts to burn down Cuban installations.
  • Fidel set out the goals of the Cuban Revolution that were established in the 1860s with the first war of Cuban Independence against Spain.
  • Which meant not taking crap from the United States. However, anyone who defied the United States was removed from office by the Marines, or overthrown by a coup backed by the US.
  • Removed from office in Domican Republican in 1965, Removed from office in Brasil in 1964, Ghiannah, the coup in Chile.
  • Here Fidel stands for Cuban sovereignty which means disobedience.
  • Today Cuba has 70 thousand doctors. 20 thousand in Venezuela, plus Cubans were actors on the world stage.
  • Cuban soldiers helping stop apartheid in Southern Angola in 1986-87, and paved the way for independence in Angola and the release of Nelson Mandela.
  • The Cuban Revolution WAS successful. Now, there are many professionals, such as engineers and doctors working as cab drivers or making pizza. The salary and wage structure are not just.
  • When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cuban economy tanked and Cubans were on their own. They’ve buying and selling illegally, which in the last 18 years, has had a corrosive effect. Each Cuban has had to have some sort of hustle in order to get along. Cuba must begin to make reforms now.
  • Upsides: They can’t get evicted or homes foreclosed on them/ Access to the best medical care.
  • A gerontocracy has been running Cuba for security reasons and they have to hand the car keys over to their middle aged kids.
  • You have no right to practice opposition politics. Which is a minus. When you have highly educated people without access to the internet, creativity and productivity suffers.
  • Ironically, the US and Cuba military have had good relations.
  • Once the travel ban and embargo is dropped, and a million Americans come pouring in with fat wallets, the state has basically lost control of the economy.
  • If they can’t trust the citizens to back up the system that has given them these rights, the right to housing, jobs, education, medical care etc.
  • The counter-revolution was exported to Florida, (Republican Cubans – Miami) that’s where they are.
  • Obama Administration – look for travel ban lifted for Cuban Americans. For the first time the President of the United States will owe nothing to the Cubans in Miami.
  • Raul Castro has offered a swap of prisoners with new president
  • Monroe Doctrine Funeral : Established 1823, written by John Quincy Adams, essentially saying that European colonial powers should stay out of Latin America

Guest – Saul Landau, an internationally known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker 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. Landau has written over ten books, short stories and poems. His films include: Fidel, 1968 /Cuba and Fidel 1974, / The Uncompromising Revolution, 1990. To order films send email to RoundWorldProductions at gmail.com

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RNC 8: Terrorism Charges Filed, Free Speech Chilled

Eight alleged leaders of the Republican National Convention protest organization called the RNC Welcoming Committee have been charged under the 2002 Minnesota Patriot Act with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. The RNC 8, may each face up to 7 and a half years in prison for their alleged roles in the RNC protest activities. The charges against the RNC 8 follow a year’s worth of investigation by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department with coordination of state and federal agencies that had infiltrated and collected information on the group.

The RNC 8 are Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector

According to Bruce Nestor, Minnesota Chapter president of the National Lawyers Guild, police did not find evidence of bomb making materials during the raids only common household items such as paint and computers. The National Lawyers Guild also mentions that police used paid informants that alleged the protesters intended to sabotage airports.

  • RNC Welcoming Committee: anti-authoritarian anarchist group. It is an open, public organization with a website and press releases.
  • Originally charged with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism.
  • Now, the Ramsey County attorney Susan Gertner in St. Paul Minnesota has added 3 more charges.
  1. Conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism, second degree.
  2. Conspiracy to damage property in furtherance of terrorism.
  3. Conspiracy to damage property criminal charge.
  • With these charges the RNC 8 could get 20 years each under Minnesota patriot act style statute.
  • Includes property damage as an act of terrorism /some plate glass windows broken, some police cars damaged.
  • No property damaged occurred before the RNC 8 were arrested. Evidence Project – National Lawyers Guild

Guest – Gena Berglund with the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration

We hear from Elizabeth Holtzman, Author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush. The panelists at the event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.”

Elizabeth Holtzman:

  • When the president takes the oath of office, treaties are the law of the land.
  • The president is responsible for carrying out the Geneva conventions.
  • The idea to torture in order to get information is not accurate. As a prosecutor, we handle murders, rapes, robberies, everyday in New York City and around this country.
  • We don’t get the information to solve these crimes by beating it out of people, we do it through smart detective work and we do it through careful investigation.
  • The idea that we can handle local crimes without torture or crimes of war is nonsensical .
  • It’s important for us not to get into this trap of the ticking clock. When you’re dealing with a serial rapists or murderer you got a ticking clock too.
  • We manage to deal with that everyday without torturing people in this country.
  • Impeachment: A person can be impeached after he or she has left office.
  • Statute: The Anti-Torture Act, it is a convention against torture making it a US crime. Which makes torture a felony prosecutable in the USA.
  • If death results from torture, there’s a death penalty, which means there is not statute of limitations.
  • Which means that somewhere down the line as long as these people are alive, they can be prosecuted and brought to justice.
  • The War Crimes Act of 1996, which makes it a federal crime to deal in a cruel and inhuman way with detainees. This can be prosecuted in federal courts.
  • So, whether “water boarding” is torture or not, is irrelevant under the War Crimes Act.
  • That’s why Alberto Gonzales, wanted to opt out of the Geneva Conventions with respect to the members of Al-Quaeda.
  • A little problem: The Supreme Court in the summer of 2006 ruled: the Geneva Convention applies to all US detainees. War Crimes Act liability.
  • While passing the Military Commissions Act, they also slipped in that the War Crimes Act would be in effect retroactively.
  • We need to restore the War Crimes Act because it has no statute of limitations. Restore as it was before October 2006, That will allow us no matter what to bring the prosecutions that need to be brought.

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Law and Disorder January 5, 2009

Censorship, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Israel Attacks: Discussion with Author Joel Kovel and Guild Attorney Audrey Bomse

Last week Israel launched what has been described as one of the bloodiest attacks on Palestinians in Gaza since 1948. Protesters demonstrated worldwide as Israeli air strikes continued. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured from the bombing campaign. Targets of the strike include a Hamas building and an Islamic university. Gaza is approximately 146 square miles with a population density of 1.5 million, 2/3 of whom are refugees.  Israel Lets Palestinians Flee; UN Warns of Crisis.

Guest – Author Joel Kovel, politician, academic, and eco-socialist. He has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books including the controversial Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine.

Guest – Audrey Bomse, a Lawyers Guild attorney working with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Audrey has used her 25 years of civil rights legal experience to help establish training programs for attorneys representing prisoners in Israeli military courts and to produce ground_breaking public documents, such as a report published in conjunction with the Mandela Institute for Human Rights on the status of Palestinian prisoners. Audrey was also recently detained at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for 4 days.

Joel Kovel:

  • The Israeli invasion has been going on for 110 years.
  • People have been mystified because of the power of the propaganda system.
  • Zionism predates it Israel nearly 50 years, and is the driving force to remove non-Jewish from historic Palestine.
  • The logic of the force of Zionism, moves back to the early settlers who were not armed, and relied on devious means and foreign powers. = Terror Strategy
  • Balfour Declaration – To gather patrons for Israel. The US is the mega-patron.
  • In 1937 when there was a great Arab uprising, the Peel Commission decided on partitioning the state into Arab/Muslim and Jewish/Zionist.
  • There was consternation because the Zionists wanted the whole thing. Ben Gurion at the time, said don’t worry, once we get a state, we will continue the process of acquiring the whole thing.
  • Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
  • Unless you see it as a long range project, you’re going to be lost, with the notions of let’s have a cease fire or let the sides get together, negotiate.
  • You can’t conceive that the Israelis will negotiate in good faith once you realize how embedded this drive to eliminate everything non-jewish from Palestine.
  • So eventually, you have a concentration of a million and a half people in this very small part of southwestern Israel.
  • Then you have a democratically elected Hamas, elected because it was militant, it wouldn’t go along.
  • These 1.5 million people are now led by a group of people that can’t be bought off.
  • The U.S. not only provide Israel with the F16s, helicopters and cluster bombs, but also impunity.
  • This impunity includes the media, Hollywood, and universities.
  • A great conservative political philosopher said, “in a society, power consists of the capacity to give names and enforce definitions.”
  • Encouraging, boycott, divestment and sanction. Human Rights organizations release dependence on Israeli based funding. Human Rights groups do not condemn the occupation.
  • The apparatus is woven through the society, not that it can’t be dealt with, but it must be dealt with in the manner of which it exists.

Audrey Bomse:

  • Since the Hamas election in August 2007, there’s been a closure that’s getting tighter, first when Hamas took over,with the support of the quartet, the UN, the US, the EU and Russia.
  • They started cutting travel in and out of Gaza, and cutting the basic necessities out of Gaza.
  • This type of abuse was permitted by the world community.
  • Special Rappateur Richard Falk called the abuse a crime against humanity.
  • I see the cease fire as ending in November, not December. When Israel provoked a Hamas reaction.
  • Israel investigated tunnels out of Gaza during cease fire, killed 6 Hamas militants.
  • Hamas reacted with a flurry of rockets sent in to Israel. By the December 9 cease fire,
  • More rockets came from Gaza and Israel was able to portray itself as the victim.
  • I’m not supporting sending rockets into civilian areas, this is the inevitable situation Gaza is placed in.
  • They have to accept the circumstances or resist in anyway they can, which they do, and Israel uses that as an excuse to escalate, which they’re doing now.
  • I was involved with the Free Gaza Movement on the boat to Gaza, before the recent attacks. We brought in 5 tons of medical supplies and Palestinian doctors.
  • Very limited food, no milk available, there’s just enough food brought in to prevent massive starvation and widespread disease. I want to emphasize that this is a man-made catastrophe, its the consequence of a political policy.

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Amnesty International USA: Gaza By The Numbers

Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director with Amnesty International USA of the Middle East has posted a powerful article on the Amnesty International USA blog, where he’s documented the tremendous humanitarian catastrophe that the Israeli blockade has caused for the people in Gaza.

Zahir Janomohamed:

  • Price of food: Palestinian families in Gaza spend 37 percent of their income on food in 2004, in 2007, households spent 62 percent on food.
  • Prices of wheat rose 34 percent in a period of 2 months in 2008.
  • Richard Falk called the Gaza occupation a crime against humanity before the bombings.
  • In my mind the assault on Gaza was going on all of 2007 and 2008. Hospitals don’t have electricity, students dropping out of school because there are no textbooks.
  • For Israel to commit these attacks on this population at this time, it’s like attacking New Orleans during Katrina’s aftermath.
  • Gaza is basically a prison. They eat and move based on factors outside of their control.
  • Amnesty Report of March 2008 – Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion.
  • International law stipulates that these attacks be done so that civilian targets are severely avoided.
  • This is not possible in Gaza. To my mind, Israel broke the cease fire agreement, in early December, there were tons of supplies headed to Gaza from Libya that were blocked.
  • Number of Israelis killed by rocket fire in 2008 . . 11 , Nearly 400 Palestinians killed in seconds.
  • Israel has sort of carte blanche by the international community. Israel: If you test us, we’ll engage in collective punishment.
  • US supplies bunker buster bombs, approved by Congress in September 2008
  • The US policy on Israel is whatever Israel wants to do it can do.

Guest – Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director with Amnesty International USA of the Middle East. Zahir is also the associate editor of altmuslim since 2004, works as the advocacy director for Middle East Programs at Amnesty International USA, and is the co-founder of the Qunoot Foundation, a Washington DC non-profit that seeks to promote socio-political education within the Muslim community.

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Law and Disorder December 29, 2008

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

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Host Updates:

  • Dick Cheney, Stalin and Hitler Torture Guidelines Traced Back to Chicago.

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Naomi Wolf – Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries

Law and Disorder hosts welcome back Naomi Wolf to the studio. Naomi is the author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, which was also turned into a feature documentary now playing in theaters. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. Her new book is titled Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries which is a call to action for every person, activist or not. When you ask that question “What Can I Do?” The answers are outlined in Give Me Liberty.

Naomi Wolf:

  • A small group of people used the law to subvert the law. Reichstag Fire, then disembowel their own Constitution.
  • Initial thinking inspired from my friend who is the daughter of holocaust survivors, she said the Bush strategies echo early 1930s Germany.
  • Enabling Acts in Germany gave the power to the state to read a person’s mail, listen to their phone calls and read their telegrams. This, in the alleged interest of national security and the fight against terrorism.
  • Nazis used to unload the coffins of the war dead at night.
  • A would-be dictator sought to close an open society or crush a democracy movement. Mussolini in 1920, the great evil pioneer. Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler.
  • I looked at Russia, studied Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Pinochet’s coup in 1973, the Chinese crackdown on democracy in the 80s.
  • What I saw was there was a blueprint. The blueprint has 10 steps. The 10 steps have been codified, they teach them at the School of the Americas.
  • To help would be Latin-American dictators to overthrow their own governments. What terrified me is that those ten steps are being put in place by the Bush Administration.
  • The Ten Steps
  1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
  2. Create a gulag
  3. Develop a thug caste
  4. Set up an internal surveillance system
  5. Harass citizens’ groups
  6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
  7. Target key individuals
  8. Control the press
  9. Dissent equals treason
  10. Suspend the rule of law

Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries

Naomi Wolf:

  • I like most Americans felt frustrated, helpless and powerless, I saw that they felt depressed and as if they had no authority. More depressed than in baby democracies like Sierra Leone
  • I went back, just as I studied closing societies, I looked at how people dismantled tyranny and win back a republic.
  • I drew on some remarkable historians who have established that this idea of liberty were brought forth by ordinary people. They meant to bequeath us with these core American values.
  • What I’ve learned is that we’ve (U.S) been brainwashed for the last 30 years, as part of a systematic effort from a vested interested to get us to forget our leadership role as citizens.
  • We’re really expected to lead the nation and have a whole arsenal of tools at our disposal.
  • There’s a section called fake patriotism, where I talk about the false ideology that leads you away from core texts such as the Bill of Rights that tells you how to overthrow the government to dismantle tyranny.
  • The message I categorically got from the founders was . . we were expected to totally take over the power and not leave it to the pundits to have the debates, not leave it to constitutional scholars, or politicians.
  • Just calling your congressperson isn’t enough, you conform yourself into democracy commando teams of 20 to 30 people.
  • Strategically intervene into the election cycle so you have more power, than lobbyists and special interests.
  • You can stop complaining about the media and become the media, write your own op eds.
  • Tools and information are deliberately kept out of people’s hands.
  • People think there’s a brick wall whenever they pick up these tools, but its a Potemkin village.
  • They don’t want us to engage.
  • A Constitutional amendment that would drive a national referendum to bypass corrupt Congress to make law such as capping Campaign Finance
  • Direct Action Activism. It always works to have thousands of people in the streets.
  • But the kind of protest that always works is illegal. The thing that broke up the Soviet Union, we’re not allowed to do in the United States.
  • Political Marches Today: I went from point A to point B but I feel like I didn’t do anything. You didn’t. The only protest that’s effective is protest that stops traffic. By definition, you can’t get a permit for stopping traffic.
  • These horrible laws in the ten steps are still on the books and its going to take a mass movement to reverse them because Obama is not powerful enough to dismantle them.
  • We need to legislate on the city council level and on the federal level, that our police can’t accept Homeland Security money, tasers, microwave technology and rubber bullets.
  • All the cold war weapons manufacturers have shifted into building surveillance and security technologies. Their lobbyists sit down with Homeland Security and write the laws. That pressure is not going away.
  • Barack Obama does not have the power to stop Boeing, Raytheon and AT&T. The population is the back bone for what the next president can do.

Guest – Naomi Wolf, American author, political consultant and intellectual. She is the author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. It’s an impassioned call to return to the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. In the book, Wolf shows how events in the last six years echo those taken throughout history to build some of the worst dictatorships. A documentary film titled End of America was released this fall along with her follow up book Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries.

Naomi Wolf is the co-founder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.

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Law and Disorder December 22, 2008

Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Sit In Victory at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors Plant

Last wee, angry laid off workers from Republic Windows and Doors agreed to leave the closed Illinois plant they’ve occupied in protest for six days. The workers accepted a deal that will give each of them about 6 thousand dollars, accrued vacation time and two months of helathcare coverage. About 1.75 million will be put into an escrow account to be supervised by the worker’s union.

Paul Buhle:

  • Why stand outside where you slug it out with cops and scabs while you can be inside defending your job.
  • The sit down strike goes all the way back to the Wobblies in 1907
  • We have entered a new era, the nation has acquired more political oxygen than it has in a long time.
  • There’s a spirit of empowerment that people feel they have to change the situation immediately around them.
  • In the way of occupying universities, we can move things much better than those in charge with their foot upon us.
  • Now is the time to develop those abandoned factories into living spaces, so they don’t become targets of firebugs.

Guest- Paul Buhle, senior lecturer at Brown University, a historian of American radicalims., a former member of Students for a Democratic Society and author of many books including images of American Radicalism. Also, Che, A Graphic Biography, and Isordore Duncan, a graphic biography by Sabrina Jones.

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Verdict Against Holy Land Charity Could Have a Chilling Effect on the Muslim Community

Last month, a jury in Dallas, Texas found five Palestinian men guilty of more than 100 charges in the nation’s largest terrorism financing trial since 9/11. We talk with Laila Al-Arian, a Washington based journalist, who recently wrote a powerful Alternet article about this case and its impact on Muslim charities.

As many listeners may know, Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the the Bush administration shut it down after the September 11th attacks, and arrested five officials from the charity. In her article Al-Arian describes how the prosecution use unrelated video of suicide bombers to emotionally sway the jury. We’re later joined by Linda Moreno, a defense attorney in the case.

Laila Al-Arian:

  • One of the witnesses (in this recent case) was an expert witness, he was a Shin Bet agent.
  • The way the US government is trying to prove that these Zakaat Committees are funding Hamas is through the testimony of this Israeli witness. The testimony can’t be authenticated.
  • The first time in a US court room that an expert witness, not a fact witness, testified under a pseudonym.
  • How do you detect perjury, or how does the defense cross-examine without background.
  • Expert witness lied to the jury about the Zakat committees being tied to Hamas
  • What you’re really doing is prosecuting an Israeli Palestinian conflict in an American courtroom.
  • For Muslims giving charity is a religious obligation.
  • There will be an appeal on the grounds of the expert witness Shin Bet agent.
  • Joe Lieberman and George Bush commented on the verdict of this case.
  • All this does is punish people who are suffering, and punishing those who want to help them.

Linda Moreno:

  • The government began its exhibit with a photograph of a bombed out bus, which had nothing to do with the accused in the Holy Land case.
  • They also showed video of children doing skits, an art form that is a result of culture under occupation.
  • Children in the US get to play violent video games, but they get to turn that off and go back to the safety of their home, go into your bedroom and shut the door. When you’re a Palestinian child, you don’t have that luxury.
  • We know because we proved in both trials, that the US Government through USAID and other organizations was giving to the exact same Zakat Committees that were at issue in the indictment of this case.
  • And the notion that you have to vet the recipient of charitiable donations, I believe is un-American.
  • There’s just something wrong about criminalizing humanitarian aid. Charities under fire.

Guests – Laila Al-Arian, a Washington DC based journalist. Linda Moreno, high profile defense attorney.

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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration

We hear from our own Michael Ratner President, Center for Constitutional Rights. The event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.” We will hear more from the other speakers in the coming weeks.

  • Elizabeth Holtzman, Author, The Impeachment of George W. Bush
  • Scott Horton, Contributing Editor, Harper’s Magazine
  • Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, House Subcommittee on the Constitution
  • Antonio Taguba, Major General (U.S. Army Ret.)